Tactical Advantage (6 page)

“What are you doing? Where are you taking me?” What was happening to her? Nick Fensom couldn’t annoy the hell out of her and then haul her around without some kind of explanation. She slitted her eyes open when the movement stopped. “You know, you’ve never once touched me before tonight, and now this is the second time you’ve gotten personal without my permis—”

Her butt hit the passenger seat of his Jeep as he set her inside. He reached across her lap and pointed to the radio on his dashboard. “Call it in to Dispatch. Lock the doors.”

He hadn’t even acknowledged her protest. Instead, he was pulling his gun again, retreating.

Annie grabbed a fistful of his jacket. “You’re leaving me?”

“You said you were all right on your own.” She’d lied. Yes, she knew how to be self-sufficient. Didn’t mean she liked it. Especially when shadows came to life and attacked her. He laid his gloved hand over hers and gently pried it free. “Sit tight. I’ll be back. I’m going to find out what the hell just happened.”

“Nick—” But the door closed and he darted into the alley again. Falling snow and loneliness swallowed Annie up.

* * *

“W
HERE
DID
G
ALBREATH
AND
Foster go?” Nick muttered out loud as he retraced the footprints he’d run past earlier before they disappeared beneath a fluffy layer of snow in the alley. Two sets besides his own went out, but only one came back into the alley. The perp who’d gone after Annie had waited there, by that trash can. Why hadn’t the two uniformed officers gotten back to the scene ASAP? Or called him if they’d been delayed?

Nick stood at the edge of the curb where the north/south alley came out onto the street and looked up and down the block. With his gun still drawn and hanging down at his side, he took note of the green neon shamrock hanging in the bar window across the street a little ways down the block.

His instincts were to go over there and see if the missing officers had decided to ignore his emergency call and have an extra cup of coffee. He didn’t know either man personally, but the only reasons a cop wouldn’t answer a call for backup was because he was a lazy dumbass, he’d been disabled or he was on the take—and Nick wasn’t comfortable with any of those options.

Nick’s breathing quieted, but his suspicions mounted with every passing second. Something about this picture was all wrong. The street was too quiet. The hour might be late, but New Year’s was a holiday that was about staying up all night and partying, especially in a trendy area like this downtown neighborhood. Yet there was not one person on the street besides him. No one waiting for a bus or cab or scraping off a windshield or darting through the shadows.

The man who’d attacked Annie was gone. And the two uniformed cops assigned to the crime scene weren’t coming back.

Nick didn’t like the answer he got from Dispatch when he called in to get the officers’ location. “Relieved of duty? What do you mean they were relieved? By whom?”

“Officer Galbreath said Officer Gobel met them at the Shamrock Bar. Gobel and an Officer Ramirez were taking over the crime scene detail.”

Nick swore. “Then put me through to Gobel and Ramirez.”

A couple of minutes passed before the Dispatch operator came back on the line. Her apology was a bad, bad sign. “I’m sorry, Detective. Apparently, Officer Gobel is out of town on vacation. I have three Ramirezes on the personnel list—do you have a first name for me to contact?”

“No, forget it.” If one cop was a fake, then he was guessing both men were impostors. He’d bet his next paycheck that one of them had come back to attack Annie while the other had waited close by to drive the getaway car. “Wait, do you have a twenty on Galbreath and Foster?”

“Yes, they’re back at Fourth Precinct HQ.”

“Good. Tell them to stay put until I call them.” He had a traumatized CSI waiting for him back in his Jeep. He’d made a promise to his partner that he’d keep an eye on Annie Hermann and the crime scene—that he’d protect the task force and the work they were doing. He’d better turn around and do just that. With one last glance at the empty street, Nick headed back into the alley. “Call in a sketch artist, too. I want them to give me a good description of what this fake Officer Gobel looked like.”

“I’ll let them know. Dispatch out.”

How had the two men gotten access to KCPD uniforms and IDs to look authentic enough to waltz into a cop bar and convince two legitimate officers to head back to HQ? How did they find out about the crime scene in the first place? Or were they after Annie? And why?

Nick wasn’t going to find his answers here. His best bet was to get a description from the real officers and then run a facial recognition check through criminal databases and hope to get a hit on some real names. All that would take time. But right now, he needed to get back to Annie.

Decision made, Nick traded his gun for a flashlight and headed south toward the east/west alley. Because his gut was telling him he wasn’t catching the perp in the black parka and ski mask tonight, he let his thoughts stray from the doorways and trash bins where he automatically checked for anyone hiding there. What was it about men in black parkas? First, Jordan Garza had put his paws all over his baby sister, and now one had assaulted Annie. Or maybe it was the New Year that had brought out all the creepies and tilted Nick’s world on its edge.

And what was the deal with Annie Hermann tonight anyway? Had he come to the crime scene with his concentration and emotions so out of whack over finding Nell making out with a gangbanger that he wasn’t thinking straight? His concerns for his family had distracted him from the role he needed to play here. KCPD detective. Task force member. Protector. Period.

The Annie he knew had always been big mouth and attitude, not shy glances and vulnerability. She was Ivy League education and absentminded professor to his working-class street smarts and willingness to take point on the front line of the action. He teased her the way he teased his sisters. He respected her skills, got frustrated with her stubbornness and argued her out-of-left-field ideas. So there was no call for noticing how perfectly her small, dexterous hands had fit between his, or how her plain brown eyes turned a deep, soulful amber when she tilted them up at him and questioned why he was so eager to touch her tonight.

Man, he should be asking himself that same question. He needed a stiff drink or a good lay or a smack on the back of the head to get this ill-timed and inappropriate awareness of the woman—of the fact Annie Hermann
was
a woman and not some girl playing with her chemistry set—out of his head.

Nick turned the corner and collided with the distraction herself.

“Did you find Galbreath and the other officer?” She was sharp elbows and flashing eyes and tripping over one of his feet.

“Damn it, Hermann, I told you to stay in the car.” He caught her by the arms to steady her and quickly release her, but she’d already latched on to the sleeve of his coat, denying him the clear-thinking distance he needed.

“It’s been ten minutes.”

“You’re timing me?”

“I didn’t know if something had happened to you.” Her other hand was clutching the front of his coat now. “I didn’t want to be alone. Even being with you is better than being alone right now.”

“What you don’t do for my ego.” Casting aside the humbling revelation, Nick freed the leather from her death grip to turn her back toward the Jeep. “Come on. I don’t think our perp’s coming back. Neither are Galbreath and Foster.”

He raised her fingers up to the illumination from his flashlight. She’d peeled off those sterile plastic gloves and replaced them with royal blue knit ones. But there was still blood on the fingers.

Her
blood?

Nick swung the light up to her face, ignoring her squint as he brushed that wonderfully curly, dark brown hair off her forehead.

“What are you doing?” she protested, batting his hand away. “What happened to Galbreath and Foster? Are they okay?”

Nick pushed back the edge of her blue stocking cap and cursed at the weeping gash at her temple.
Way to take care of people, Fensom.
The thickness of the wool and Annie’s hair had probably saved her life. Answering the 9-1-1 pouring through his system, Nick mentally shifted gears. He hugged his arm around Annie’s shoulders and hurried her through the alley. “That needs stitches. I have to get you to the E.R.”

“But the officers—”

“Are gone. Some bogus cop calling himself Gobel met them at the Shamrock and sent them back to HQ.”

“Fake cops?”

Nick nodded. “I’m guessing one of them attacked you.”

“Why?”

“How the hell would I know? They didn’t wait around to chat.”

“And I never got a good look at him. All I saw were brown eyes. And he only spoke in a whisper. Nothing I could make out...” She kept pace with him for several yards. He gripped her arm tighter when they had to step over the flailing corner of a fallen tarp. When they reached the Dumpster where she’d found the victim’s purse, Annie stumbled. She swayed back a step. And then she stopped.

She’d lost too much blood. She was passing out.

Halting in his tracks, Nick quickly unzipped his coat and shucked out of it. He draped it around her slender shoulders to add some warmth and stave off shock. But like his sister earlier that night, she shrugged it off. “Of all the stubborn...”

He saw the focus of her eyes and understood it wasn’t stubbornness or bravado as much as something else had caught her attention. She lurched forward and Nick grabbed her arm to support her. She touched the pink, slushy smear on the brick wall where the blood had been. “He wiped away the handprints.” She brought her glove back to her nose and made a face. Even Nick could smell the bleach from where he stood. “He’s contaminated everything—cut the anchor ropes on the tarp. Snow’s getting into...” She pulled away and dived into the pile of trash. “Oh, no.” She tossed aside one bag, then two. “No, no, no, no.”

“Annie.” Nick slung his jacket around her again, looping his arm about her waist and lifting her away from the mess she was making. “We need to go. You’re not thinking straight. We need to get you to the hospital.”

“No.” She spun in his grasp, fisted her fingers in the front of his sweater. “My kit is gone. He took my spare kit.” She blinked away the snowflakes and blood from her upturned eyes. “Along with the evidence I’d gathered inside it.”

Chapter Three

“It’s just a cut, sir.” Annie looked from the harsh scrutiny of her boss, Mac Taylor, the director of the KCPD crime lab, to the baffled expression of her friend and fellow CSI, Raj Kapoor, who lurked near the curtain separating this bay of the Truman Medical Center’s E.R. from the other emergency treatment rooms. “Really, I’m okay.”

Raj’s black eyebrows came together like a fuzzy caterpillar when he frowned an apology. “You don’t look so good to me, Annie.” His accented voice conveyed both sympathy and surprise. “When Mac said you needed help at the crime scene, I thought he meant you couldn’t carry everything in your kit.”

Her kit. She let her head sink back into the pillow on the E.R. bay’s exam table. Why would the rat who’d clobbered her steal her kit?

Her boss scowled behind the lenses of his glasses. He was so going to take her off this case if he believed she couldn’t fix this mess.

Opening her eyes at the touch beneath her neck, Annie looked for an ally in the friendlier countenance of the E.R. nurse who lifted Annie to wrap stretch adhesive around her head to anchor a protective gauze pad over the nine stitches in her hairline. “The doctor didn’t seem to think it was anything serious, right?”

“I believe he mentioned concussion.” The trauma nurse, whom Annie recognized from a couple of departmental social functions, was her supervisor’s wife. Julia Dalton Taylor offered her a kind smile before reaching over to touch Mac’s hand. “But trust me, I’ve seen a lot worse.”

Even scarred by the accident that had cost him part of his vision, the stern look behind her boss’s glasses melted for a second while he squeezed his wife’s fingers. “You’re in good hands, Annie.” Then he turned the focus of his sighted eye back down to her. “I know some of the CSIs in my lab were cops before they became forensic investigators, but most of us are scientists—like you and Raj. I don’t care if you are trained to use a gun, we’re not supposed to go head-to-head with the bad guys out in the field.” He leaned over her a moment, pulling aside the collar of Annie’s sweater to inspect the bruise darkening around her throat, where the attacker had tried to yank the camera from her neck. “This shouldn’t have happened.”

“Mac.” Julia shooed away her husband’s hand and inquisitive concern. “She’ll be fine.”

With a pensive sigh, he adjusted his glasses at his temple and pulled back. “When I got the call about your attack, the first thing I thought was that the Rose Red Rapist had returned to the scene to hurt you.”

Interesting. Rumor—make that
legend—
around the crime lab was that Mac Taylor had earned those facial scars and lost the vision in one eye years earlier when
he
had gone head-to-head with some bad guys out to destroy the department’s then-fledgling crime lab. Annie had a strong suspicion that she’d been the victim of something similar, albeit on a much smaller scale.

“The attack on me wasn’t about rape, sir. This was...vandalism. Someone wanted to steal the evidence and erase any clues from the crime scene.”

“From the sound of things, he did a thorough job.”

Raj came over to the foot of the exam table. The caterpillar had separated into two eyebrows again. “I couldn’t find the handprints you mentioned. Or any sign of your kit.” He turned his dark eyes to their boss. “I did find bleach that had been splashed onto the bricks. Between that and the weather, the blood evidence Annie found has all been compromised.”

“Raj, I want you to take those tarps and the cut ropes back to the lab. See if you can get any kind of trace off them, either from the original crimes or from Annie’s attack. Maybe we can identify the tool that cut the ropes.” Mac stepped aside as his wife moved in to finish doctoring Annie’s wound. “It’s not enough that this bastard won’t get caught. Now he’s messing with what little evidence we do have. I want to stay on top of this. I know it’s a holiday, Raj, but I need you at the lab today.”

“Of course, sir. I’ll find whatever I can. Take care, Annie.” Raj circled the table to take Annie’s hand on the opposite side. He wrapped his dark-skinned fingers around hers and squeezed. “I’ll see you soon.”

“I’ll be at work later today,” she insisted, squeezing back. “Save something for me to do.”

His dark eyes sparkled when he laughed. “You’re a shameless workaholic, Annie.”

She smiled back. “It’s what I do.”

Raj’s phone rang and his smile vanished. He pulled the cell off his belt and checked the number. His eyebrows gathered in another frown.

Julia Dalton Taylor looked up from her work. “No cell phones in the E.R., please.”

“I need to take this.”

With a curt nod across the table, Mac dismissed Raj from the E.R. “Yes? I said I would. It’s a holiday and we’re short-staffed. You have to give me time...” Raj’s voice grew more strident, his Indian accent more pronounced, as it faded into the hallway.

“I wonder what that was all about. He’s right about one thing—we are short on help today.” But when Mac looked down at Annie lying on the bed, his expression said he wanted to dismiss her, too.

“I’m so sorry.” Annie’s spirits faded beneath the bright lights shining down onto the E.R. gurney where she lay. Those tarps would be next to useless for retrieving any evidence; they’d been out in the elements for so long. There had to be a way to salvage this train wreck of a night. And then a memory surfaced in the pounding throb of her brain. “Wait. Call Raj back.” She pushed herself up onto one elbow and pointed to the camera sticking out of her oversize purse on a chair in the corner of the treatment room. “I did manage to save the camera with all the shots I took of the crime scene. I’ll show you.” Swinging her legs over the edge of the gurney, Annie sat up to get it.

“Hold on, you’re not going anywhere yet.” With a hand on either shoulder, both Julia and Mac urged her to stay put. “I’ll check it out.”

Once he seemed convinced she’d sit still for Julia to complete her work, Mac borrowed a pair of sterile gloves from his wife’s medical supplies and retrieved the camera himself.

Ignoring the headache that had been aggravated by the sudden movement, Annie still wanted to prove that she hadn’t completely botched the investigation. “I can document everything he took, so we can put out a BOLO on the items that were in my spare kit.”

Mac shook his head. “Even if we found them, they’d be out of our chain of custody. Any findings would be inadmissible in court and any discoveries made from those tainted findings would be thrown out.”

Annie knew that, but hope was about all she had left. This was a worst-case scenario for any criminologist, and if Rachel Dunbar’s killer went free because Annie hadn’t done her job, then she’d be disappointing all kinds of people—Mac Taylor, the crime lab, the task force, the D.A.’s office and KCPD—not to mention the Dunbar family. “Well, we still have whatever evidence comes off the victim. And I can go back with Raj to process anything that’s left at the scene. Footprints, fibers from my attacker.”

Mac offered her an apologetic smile. “It’s been snowing out there for hours. Any trace evidence has been buried and degraded beyond usefulness. Raj already took anything we can process to the lab.”

Hopeful thoughts faded and Annie’s shoulders sagged. The clock on the wall above Mac’s head said it was nearly time for breakfast. “The press has probably gotten wind of the theft by now. That’ll give Gabriel Knight and Vanessa Owen plenty to criticize KCPD for in their reports. I’m sorry, sir.”

“Quit apologizing.” Mac opened up his own evidence kit and pulled out a bag to place the camera inside. “I’m more interested in the well-being of the people who work for me rather than a newspaper reporter with a grudge against the department or some spotlight-seeking woman and her camera crew.” He locked down his kit and peeled off his gloves before facing her again. “I don’t blame you for any of this, Annie. I’m mad because one of my people got hurt. Where’s the officer who’s supposed to watch over you while you process the crime scene?”

“Right here, sir.” The curtain blocking off the room opened and her dark-haired annoyance-turned-rescuer appeared. “I assume it’s all right to come in now, ma’am?”

What was Nick Fensom still doing here? She’d been in this examination bay for nearly two hours now. Once she’d filled out her paperwork and been called in to see a doctor, she assumed he’d gone back to chase down the bad guys, or at least knock on more doors and ask more questions and intrude on more New Year’s Eve celebrations in the neighborhood where Rachel Dunbar’s body had been found.

With a nod of permission from the nurse, Nick let the curtain close behind him and came farther in, filling up the tiny space with his heat and charging the cool, sterile air with that electric energy that seemed to follow him wherever he went. His blue eyes winced as they danced over Annie’s bandaged head. Oh, great. First Raj and now Nick? Just how beat-up did she look? The grimace disappeared as he nodded to the trauma nurse. Then he turned his attention to the taller, older man bagging up her camera. “I’m Nick Fensom. Fourth Precinct. Your nephew, Pike Taylor, is on the task force with me.” He thumbed over his shoulder to include Annie in the introduction. “With us.”

“Mac Taylor, Crime Lab Supervisor.” He slowly reached out to take Nick’s extended hand. “This is your idea of teamwork? Maybe you’d better put Pike in charge of crime scene security, Detective.”

Annie sat up a little straighter. True, Pike Taylor was a K-9 cop who specialized in security procedures, and whose height and bulk made up almost two of Nick. But the attack on her had been about stealth—Pike’s brute strength wouldn’t have kept her any safer than Nick’s speedy response had.

“It wasn’t Nick’s fault,” Annie explained. “I should have been more aware of my surroundings. I get a little obsessed when I’m working evidence and can forget the bigger picture. I should have called for backup as soon as I suspected there was someone in the alley with me. But I hesitated. I wanted to verify the intruder’s presence first.”

Nick’s blue gaze nailed her over the bulge of his shoulder.

“You shouldn’t have had to.” Apparently, he didn’t need or want her defense. His hand fisted in the thick leather jacket he held down at his side, his expression grimly apologetic as he faced the higher-ranking officer. “This is all on me, sir. I dropped the ball. I sent the uniformed officers away, and then got distracted by my own end of the investigation. I let her out of my sight for longer than I intended. It won’t happen again.”

“You won’t let me out of your sight?”

“That’s right. I intend to keep a close eye on you.”

Annie puffed up at the implication she wasn’t capable of taking care of herself. She pushed against the exam table. “I don’t need a babysitter or a nurse.” She flashed an apology to Julia Dalton Taylor. “Except for you, ma’am, of course. But I don’t—”

“Relax, Hermann.” Nick reached back and tapped her knee with the back of his fingers and she froze.

What was with all the touching tonight? This morning? Why were her traitorous nerve endings leaping to attention at even that most casual contact? Nothing had leaped when Raj had squeezed her hand. And who did Nick think he was anyway, deciding what she should or shouldn’t do?

“Relax?” Impossible. But Nurse Taylor’s hand on her arm diverted her attention, forcing her to be still while she cut and secured the last few inches of the bandage around her head.

Nick had already turned his attention back to Mac anyway. “If you need to write me up, sir, I understand.”

Nothing about tonight was standard operating procedure in Annie’s book. At last, she scooted off the edge of the table without anyone trying to stop her. When her feet hit the floor the room swayed a little and she grabbed on to the bed behind her and held on while her stomach righted itself.

“Whoa.” Julia Dalton Taylor’s hand was instantly there.

But Annie was tired of sitting and feeling weak and unable to take care of herself. “Why would he write you up? He’s my supervisor, not yours. I’m the one who lost the evidence.
I
screwed up.”

As soon as Nick spun around, he tossed his jacket over the end of the exam table and braced his hand beneath her elbow. “Are you seriously arguing with me about who gets to take the hit on their service record?”

Ignoring the zap of heat through her sweater sleeve, she shrugged his hand away and held on to Julia’s arm until her legs steadied beneath her. “I’m saying I don’t need a babysitter. I’ve never had a problem before tonight’s call, and I damn sure won’t ever let it happen again.”

“Are you gonna take the next guy down all by yourself? Where was your gun?” Nick leaned in half a step. “Still in your car, right? Do you even know how to shoot the thing?”

Silently cursing her diminutive height, Annie tilted her head back and splayed her hand in the middle of Nick’s chest to push him out of her personal space. “I was freezing cold and not thinking straight.”

But the man didn’t budge. Instead, she palmed a hard swell of muscle beneath the taut softness of the pale gray sweater he wore and her argument stuttered into silence. Nick wasn’t the only one who’d overstepped the boundaries of professional distance and adversarial banter that normally described their relationship. She’d reached out to touch him more than once tonight, too.

There was a beat of silence in the E.R. bay, a moment frozen in time, before Nick spoke in a tight voice. “You shouldn’t have gotten hurt, Annie. Not on my watch.”

Her fingers tightened in the finely knit wool as the shadows of something mysterious darkened his eyes to a rich midnight blue. Her lips pursed to question him on the raw sound of that apology.

But before she could figure out exactly what she needed to ask, Julia circled behind Nick to stand in front of her husband.

“Mac, quit analyzing these two.” Mac’s quick snap of attention down to his wife made Annie realize her boss had been observing the interchange. She quickly snatched her hand away from Nick’s chest and curled her tingling fingers into her palm. Just what had that clever eye seen? What was the deal between her and Nick this morning?

“She’s my responsibility, Jules,” Mac insisted. “I don’t like it when my people get hurt. I feel I need to restrict her to the lab, where it’s safe.”