Who?” Mark straightened.
“The waitress at the Black Diamond. Her name was Star…something. We interviewed her and she gave us information concerning the Noel case. Blond with pink streaks, too young.”
“Star Colton?” Juan asked.
“Her?” Doubt surrounded Mark’s one word. “The accent might be right, but she’s not much over five feet and can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. How could she take out Billy?”
“Look at Vicki. She got the best of me,” Juan said.
“But Vicki trained for a triathlon. Star’s a waitress,” Mark said.
Mark’s argument played in Connor’s mind. He mentally measured up the woman in his mind. “But I remember her looking…fit.”
“You mean hot?” Juan grinned.
“That too.” Connor grinned.
“But she didn’t come across as a car thief.” Juan looked back at Connor. “Wait. She took my card, not yours.”
“I gave her mine when I went there and questioned a few of the Black Diamond employees. She even said something about wanting to have a friend in the department.”
Juan gave the pencil another tap, tap. “She said that to me, too.”
“Yeah, but I’m sure she really meant it with me,” Connor joked.
“So you slept with her?” Mark asked Connor.
“No!” Connor said. “I don’t sleep with women who might still believe in Santa Claus.”
Laughter filled the small office.
“Seriously,” Connor added, “the younger they are, the clingier they are. I don’t do clingy. I don’t do—”
“Women with kids or women who might actually want a second date,” Mark added. “I’m shocked you ever get a first.”
“I get very few complaints.” Connor grinned.
Juan cut off the video. “Well, you screwed the pooch on this one. When I met her, I didn’t think she was old enough to serve drinks, so I checked. Her license put her at twenty-nine.”
“Damn,” Connor said with sarcasm. “Then again, I don’t do car thieves either.” He looked back at Juan. “But you’re right. I didn’t peg her as that type.”
“So why is she wanting you to look into the Ronan case?” Mark walked back to his desk, dropped into his chair, then turned to face them. “We need to find her.”
“Yeah.” Connor glanced at Juan. “I remember she called you. Do you still have her number?”
Juan scrubbed his palm over his chin. “I think I jotted her number down in the file.”
* * *
“What’s wrong, Brie?” Eliot asked, his voice coming in extra loud over the line.
All she’d said was hey, but obviously he’d heard the emotion in her voice. Seeing Carlos had been hell. His face had been beaten beyond recognition, and there was a tube down his throat forcing air into his lungs.
“Brie?” Eliot repeated. Since she was eight, Eliot had been there for her. Scraped knees, broken hearts, attempted kidnappings. The whole shebang. As the stepdaughter of one of the most popular international political writers, she’d lived in countries some Americans wouldn’t visit.
Eliot had kept her safe. Oh, for the first few months after he’d been hired as her bodyguard, he’d tried to keep his heart out of the job, playing tough. But with her parents too busy to care, she’d needed him. And even as young and oblivious as she’d been, she knew he’d needed her.
A knot formed in her throat. “Carlos has been shot.”
“What happened?”
She told him the high points, which included coming clean about what she’d been doing these last four months.
“I should’ve known you weren’t just taking a break,” he growled. “I told you a thousand times that your sister’s death wasn’t your fault.”
And a thousand times she hadn’t believed him. “If I’d just called her back—”
“You barely knew her.”
Only partially true.
“She didn’t even say why she was calling. For all you knew, she wanted to borrow money.”
Logically, Brie knew he was right. Emotionally, it didn’t matter. “My father said he’d told her to call me because she was worried about something bad going down.”
“And if you’d known that, you’d have called her back.”
Would she have? Or was her grudge more important? She swallowed. “I still wish…”
“Wish all you want. Just don’t blame yourself.” Taking a deep breath, he asked, “So, your father called you again?”
“No. I called him when I heard that her body had been found. He had a right to know.” Before this, Brie hadn’t spoken to her father since she was seven. That was when he’d left her and her mother to go live with his second family, whom he’d kept a secret. And when she’d learned he had another daughter her age, it made the abandonment worse. He hadn’t just left her—he’d chosen someone over her.
“How did it go?” Eliot asked.
“How do you expect?”
“So no apology for walking out of your life?”
“He blamed Mom.” She looked at the door leading into the ICU, keeping tabs on anyone going in or out.
“I should’ve killed him when I had the chance,” Eliot snapped.
“He wasn’t worth it.”
The line went silent. Eliot spoke first. “So, Carlos was helping you? Why didn’t you call me? You know I would’ve been there.”
“Carlos came only to collect Armand’s prints. Otherwise, I was handling it.”
“Obviously, things weren’t being handled if Carlos got shot. You can’t do this alone.”
“I know…that’s why I’m calling.” She told him what Tory had said about the Sala case.
“Fudge!” His creative cursing came out. “You told me you blamed the ATF.” He paused. “Do you believe this?”
She hesitated, collecting her thoughts. “I want to say no. But Carlos isn’t one to toss out something like that if he didn’t have some proof.”
“Do you think Tory could have gotten it wrong?”
“No.” Brie nipped at her lip with worry. “He was sure.”
“Have you talked with anyone from the FBI?”
“Yeah, with Agent Calvin a little while ago.”
“Did you tell him?”
“About what Tory said, yes.”
“What did he say about the leak being internal?”
“He said he’d look into it, but he thinks Tory misunderstood. He doesn’t believe it’s possible.”
Eliot got quiet. “You don’t think it might be Agent Calvin?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You’ve met him. You went to his house for that barbeque. He’s a good guy.”
“Good people sometimes do bad things, Brie.”
“I know that.”
“Who else worked the case?”
“Agents Bara and Miles.”
“You trust them?”
“If you’d asked me that yesterday, I would have said, yes. But honestly, I don’t know them that well. Problem is that’s who Calvin is sending to look into Carlos’s attack. And if Carlos was right and one of them is behind this? I need someone at the hospital, so I can work the case. Is there any way you could come here? Just until I know who I can trust.”
“You know I can. Why don’t I see if Sam can come, too? We can take shifts.”
Sam had served in the Special Forces with Eliot. And since Sam lost his wife last year, they’d spent a lot of time together. “That’d be great.”
“I’ll be on the next plane, Brie.”
Her phone beeped with an incoming call. She frowned when she saw it was from the Anniston Police Department.
Dang it. The officer she’d cuffed to the light post must have gotten word to Connor Pierce. Earlier, she’d been prepared to face the music. But that was when she’d assumed Carlos would take her lead back to Calvin and open a case. That would’ve gone a long way in getting any charges dismissed.
She remembered Eliot was still on the line. “Call me when you have a flight.”
“I will. Brie, be careful. Whoever did this to Carlos could—”
“You know I can take care of myself.”
“So could Carlos,” Eliot said.
They hung up. Her phone beeped with a voice mail.
She hit play to see just how much trouble she was in.
“Ms. Colton. This is Detective Pierce.” Yeah, she recognized his voice. Deep, kind of sultry. An image of him flashed in her mind. Tall, blond, broad shoulders. A bad-boy smile, with maybe a hint of bad-boy attitude.
She’d met all three of the cold case detectives. Dubbed by the press as the Three Musketeers, they were touted as officers who played by their own rules. But from everything she’d read about them, their rules came with a moral code and it got scum off the streets. Brie respected that.
“We met a few months ago,” Detective Pierce continued. “You helped APD out on a cold case. We need to talk. Can you please call me back?” He ran off his cell number. “It’s imperative we speak.”
“Yeah, I get that,” she muttered to herself. “But you’re going to have to wait.”
* * *
Connor wasn’t going to sit by and do nothing while waiting for Star to return his call. He called the Black Diamond, but no one answered. So he called Star three more times. When she didn’t answer the fourth time, he ran her through the database. No priors. No warrants. No tickets.
No shit!
She’d gotten a California license a year ago, then applied for a Texas license four months ago. The fact that there was no record of her identity before that made him skeptical. The fact that she had no priors and now had stolen a car made him suspicious.
He copied her address down. He knew the complex from some busts when he’d worked the Drug and Gang Unit. The place seemed to have cleaned up its act but was still a bit dodgy.
Finding her apartment, he pounded on the door, but got nothing. Almost ready to walk, he saw the front curtain flutter. He knocked harder. “I’m not going away!”
A gray longhaired tabby cat jumped up into the window, but when the cat saw him, it bolted.
“Stop. For God’s sake, she’s not home.” A woman stuck her head out from next door.
He flashed his badge and she disappeared as quickly as the cat.
After searching the parking lot, and not finding her silver Chevy Cruze, he headed to the office. A woman in her late fifties, who looked like someone’s grandmother, sat behind a desk.
“Hi,” she offered with a looking-for-a-sucker smile. “Hope you’re in the market for an apartment. I have three freshly painted units that are move-in ready.”
“Sorry.” He showed his badge and asked about Star Colton.
The apartment manager’s smile diminished. “I don’t know what to say. She pays her rent on time—which is a rarity around here—keeps to herself, and never causes trouble.”
Connor handed the woman his card. “Keep an eye out and when you see she’s home, call me.”
The woman’s mouth thinned. “Has she done something wrong? Is she dangerous?”
Billy might think so, but Connor couldn’t say dangerous fit. Then he remembered her in her short-shorts and low-cut tank top when she was serving drinks, and well, yeah, dangerous fit. “We just need to talk to her.”
Heading to his car, he decided to leave his card under Star’s door. Maybe if she realized he knew where she lived, it would convince her to return his call.
When he was only a few feet from her door, he noticed it stood slightly ajar. Another step and he saw the wood splinters on the concrete by a green welcome mat.
Had someone just broken in?
Reaching inside his shirt, he pulled his Glock from his shoulder holster. His heart bounced around his chest as he pressed himself against the outside wall. Counting to three, he leaned over until he could see inside. The living room appeared empty, but an oversized sofa was large enough to hide behind.
Grip firm on his weapon, he eased open the door a bit and cut his eyes to the small kitchen area. Empty. He quickly moved inside and positioned himself against a wall, so he could see behind the sofa and the hallway. Was the perp gone or hiding in the back of the apartment?
“Police,” he called out. “Come out with your hands up.”
He heard a noise, as if someone had knocked something over.
“I said come out!”
He inched down the hall, his gun tight in his palm. His finger pressed against the side of his weapon, while a memory pressed against his conscience. For a fraction of a second, he was no longer in the apartment, but in that dark alley where he’d lost his partner. He shook it off.
He heard another clatter. The bedroom door inched open. His finger eased onto the trigger, then the gray feline hauled ass down the hall.
His heart slammed against his sternum as he tore through the door.
The window over the bed was open and the drapes hung half off the curtain rod. He bolted to the window. The alley was empty.
Why had someone broken into Star Colton’s apartment?
His gaze caught on the bed, or rather the white comforter, with dirty shoe prints on it. Large shoe prints. Definitely male.
Before he left, he took pictures of the prints, and because the front door didn’t close all the way, he put the cat and its litter box in the bathroom. He ended up getting a damn six-inch scratch up his arm for his trouble. He and cats never got along. Maybe he’d add that to his list of deal breakers. Never date a woman with cats.
He called in the break-in, and when a black-and-white arrived, he used the I’m-just-a-cold-case-detective card and managed to hand it over. He was too exhausted to deal with paperwork, but he did warn the guy that the demon cat was locked in the bathroom.
Before leaving, he knocked on the neighbor’s door to see if she’d seen the perp.
“I thought it was you again. I ignored the noise.”
Frustrated, he went back to his office. Mark and Juan were still thumbing through old files, looking for their next case.
Juan stretched back in his chair. “Find her?”
“No. But I found out I’m not the only one looking for her.” Connor’s sleep deprivation sounded in his voice.
“What?” Mark looked up.
“Her apartment was broken into.”
“No shit?” Mark said.
“Did you call it in?” Juan sat back up.
“Yeah.” He gave them the facts and dropped in his chair. The dang thing squealed as if protesting. Running a hand over his tired eyes, he actually considered going home for a nap, but he spotted the file in front of him. There had to be a reason why Star mentioned the case.
He went and snagged a cup of coffee, opened the file, and vowed to stay awake to read it.
After only five minutes, he hadn’t found an answer, but he had confirmation that Star was the car thief. “It has to be her,” Connor announced.
Mark stretched his hands over his head. “What did you find?”
“Guess where Alma Ronan worked a month before she went missing? The Black Diamond,” he answered. “And look at this.” He held up a picture of the missing woman. “She’s blond with blue eyes. Looks a little like Star, doesn’t she?”
“You think they’re sisters?” Juan asked.
“That’s what I thought, but according to this file, Alma didn’t have any siblings. Maybe a cousin?”
“Does it say where she was from?” Mark asked.
“Dallas.”
“Didn’t Star say she was from Alabama?” Juan asked.
“But the resemblance is so close. It’s suspicious.”
“What’s suspicious?” Sergeant Brown walked into their closet of an office. They looked at him then at one another with the same unspoken question. Who’d done it this time? Nine times out of ten, when Brown showed up, he was here to call one of them out for some infraction. And yeah, they bent the rules a little, but they’d also solved more cold cases in the last two years than had been solved in the previous fifteen.
“Just a case.” Connor grew an inch in height. Brown always had his spine tightening as if he were back on the football field playing defense.
“What’s up?” Mark asked, probably wanting to get the reaming over with.
“Can you push those cases to the back burner? I’d like you three to help out with something else.”
“Define ‘something else.’” Connor picked up a pen and tapped it on his desk. Chances were Brown was trying to stick them with some grungy, unsolvable case no one else wanted. Connor was allergic to grunge.
Brown tugged at his belt. Between the man’s gut and stained tie, he wasn’t what you’d call a good face for the department. But his seniority kept him on the job, or at least at a desk. Connor really hoped he wasn’t looking at himself in thirty years.
“An FBI agent, Carlos Olvera, was attacked and shot this morning. He’s alive but in bad shape.”
“Was he on the job?” Mark asked.
“I hear he was confirming a lead in a case,” Brown said.
“What kind of case?”
“Human trafficking was brought up, but we don’t have anything official yet. The agent was found under the bridge at Fifth Street and Chestnut. We aren’t sure if the assault happened there, or if he was moved. We have the crime scene preserved and guarded. Someone needs to get over there.”
Connor rolled the pen in his hands. “Won’t the FBI be working this, considering it’s one of their own?”
“They’re sending someone, but they’ve asked for assistance.”
“Isn’t that odd?” Connor asked.
Brown frowned. “Not when you consider they’ll kick us off the case and take the credit after we solve it.”
“And if the Feds are going to make the department look bad, you figure to let the shit fall on us three. Is that what this is?” Connor asked.
Before Brown answered, Mark added, “If the guy’s in bad shape, why not give it to Homicide?”
“Homicide got four new cases last month. And haven’t closed one.” Brown looked at Connor. “I’m not looking for a fall guy, or fall guys, on this case. If we could solve this before they even show up, or do it so they couldn’t take credit, it’d be a feather in the department’s cap. I need someone on this who isn’t afraid to stand up to them or piss them off if need be.”
“Well, we’re really good at pissing people off,” Connor said, “but I don’t know if—”
“You want it or not?” Brown spit out. “I’m not begging.”
Connor knew he was pushing it, but after the department had hung him out to dry, he deserved to push. “Really—”
“We’ll do it,” Mark said.
Brown strolled over to Mark’s desk and dropped a Post-it note. “Here’s the crime scene address. The vic is at Westside Hospital. I was told there’s an on-leave FBI agent there looking into the case as well. Someone needs to shake him up and see what we can get before his cronies get here. And let me know what you need to get this one done. The quicker the better.”
No one spoke until Brown was out of earshot.
“You could have let him beg a little,” Connor said to Mark.
“I agree.” Juan laughed.
Mark picked up the Post-it note. “That was already as close as he gets to begging. Two of us should take the scene and one go to the hospital.” He motioned to the file on Connor’s desk. “I know you wanted to dig into that, but let’s get this started first.”
“Yeah.” Connor stood. “I’ll go to the hospital. I’m in a bad enough mood that interrogating an arrogant, know-it-all FBI agent sounds fun.”
* * *
On the drive, Connor got a text from Billy reporting that the Mustang had been found, and he wanted to know why Connor hadn’t figured out who the woman was who’d humiliated him.
Connor called Star…again. It went to voice mail…again.
He left another message. “Call me. I’m not going to drop this.” He hung up and got out of his car.
Crossing the parking lot to the hospital, his mind pulled up an image of the car thief. Blond, blue eyes, and hot. Thankfully, her young appearance had saved him. If he’d slept with her that would’ve made this awkward.
Getting to the front desk, he learned Carlos Olvera was in the ICU. On the elevator ride up, his phone dinged with a text. He recognized the number. Star.
He swiped his screen to read what the little ballbuster had to say.
Sorry. On vacation in Florida. Will call when I get back.
“Fuck.” He hit her number again. She didn’t answer. “Look, Ms. Colton, you’re in trouble. I know you stole the Mustang. Don’t make it worse for yourself! Call me.”
The elevator doors opened. Properly pissed to face down a high-and-mighty FBI agent, he walked to the family waiting room. Five people waited in the somber, church-like atmosphere. While he wasn’t a churchgoer himself, his mom had been. She’d dragged his sinful soul to church every chance she’d had, but the quiet reverence of the room reminded him of the last time he’d sat in a pew. His mom’s funeral six years ago.
He continued to look around. No one fit his mental profile of a black-suited FBI agent with a rod up his ass. Then he saw the patrol officer sleeping in a chair.
He walked over and read the name on the uniform. “Officer Heyes, I’m Detective Pierce.”
The man’s chin lifted quickly, no doubt embarrassed for sleeping on the job. Connor couldn’t blame him. He fell asleep in church every dang time he went and got elbowed for doing so. Then again, if Heyes had let the FBI agent slip away…
“Sorry,” he said. “I work a second job and I’m already into overtime on this shift.”
“Where’s the FBI agent?”
He looked around, then glanced at the clock on the wall. “I think she’s in with the victim.”
“She?” Had Sergeant Brown just assumed the agent’s gender?
“Yeah. Agent Ryan. Brie Ryan.”
“You verify her identity?”
“Yes. She showed me her driver’s license and I spoke with her boss at the FBI. He identified her.”
“Okay,” he said, already tamping down his attitude. Oh, he believed in gender equality, but his upbringing by his southern churchgoing mom assured he’d go in soft, until she earned his indignation.
“Were you the first one on the scene when the victim was found?”
“No, that’d be Officer Monroe. He stayed at the scene and asked me to follow the ambulance here and locate next of kin. I contacted Ryan through the victim’s phone. Ryan’s boss said other agents are on their way.”
“Fine, you can head out. I’ll take it from here.”
He handed Connor a hospital bag. “The victim’s things.”
Connor glanced at the bag. “Wallet?”
“No. It’s missing. Only thing the guy had on him was his phone. But there’s a nice ring and a gold necklace in there. So it doesn’t look like a robbery.”
Connor took the bag and headed to the ICU. As soon as he pushed through the double doors, he was met with a chorus of heart monitors keeping pace. He’d left the church atmosphere only to enter one that was cold and morgue-like. He approached the nurses’ station. “Carlos Olvera’s room?” he asked in a hushed tone.
“Room three.” She motioned to the left. “You family?”
He pulled out his badge.
She nodded. “He’s unconscious, but his wife is there.”
Wife? This wasn’t adding up. He moved toward room three.