Kansas City Christmas (7 page)

“I’m in the civilian division, developing a robotics project. Caldwell Tech also has a military supply division that produces everything from communication and guidance software to experimental weaponry.” He dropped his hand down to brush Jillian’s shoulder. “If you’re interested, we could go out tonight, and I could fill you in on all the details of my work.”

The two of them out on the town? No way. “Honey, you can’t go clubbing.”

Blake answered before Jillian could speak. “You misunderstand me, Holly. I was thinking more along the lines of inviting Jillian to our office Christmas party tonight. Refined company. State-of-the-art catering and decor. The reception is being held at our headquarters building in Lenexa. I think she’d love it. And it would give us a chance to get reacquainted.”

Fine. He could play the polite facade, but she needed to remind them of some nitty-gritty facts. “You both have had dependency issues in the past. Don’t you think it’s a bit risky to attend a party like that? I’m sure there will be alcohol there, and who knows what else?”

Jillian rolled her eyes before sending over a reassuring smile. “C’mon, Holly. That’s Eli talking. You can’t protect me from every single temptation in the world. I have to live a normal life. And I’ve been doing that just fine for a long time now. A date with Blake sounds like fun.”

“Good. Then it’s settled.” Blake squeezed Jillian’s shoulders in a sideways hug. “Where are you staying now?”

“At Holly’s apartment. Two blocks south of Brush Creek Boulevard.”

As Jillian proceeded to recite the exact address and home phone number, Holly realized two things. Her baby sister really had grown up and taken control of her own life. And, she wasn’t entirely comfortable with Blake Rivers knowing where she lived. Something about unnamed callers and someone she didn’t trust knowing more about her than she did about him left her feeling distinctly unsettled and vulnerable.

But Holly was no longer part of this discussion.

“Do you have a fancy dress?” Blake asked. “Something that will show off those long legs of yours?”

Jillian smiled, more charmed by Blake’s confident manner than Holly was. “I think I could dig something out of the closet.”

Get her out of this. Say something. Do something
. “What about decorating the apartment? You said you’d help.”

“C’mon, Holl. We have a week until Christmas, so there’s plenty of time to get it done. I promise I won’t let you down. Besides, you’re working tonight, right?”

“The second half of my split shift, but I can switch—”

“Then you won’t miss me if I’m gone.” Jillian turned to Blake and tugged playfully on his lapel. “Do you promise to be on your best behavior?”

“Do you promise to wear some really high heels?”

She laughed. “I’ll tower over you, Blake.”

“Maybe. But you’ll be the hottest woman there, and I’d love to show you off. I can give you a grand tour of the CT building and show you some of the really fascinating stuff we’re working on, and we can catch up on old times.”

Old times. Exactly what Holly was afraid of. “Jillian,” she cautioned one last time.

“Don’t worry, Mother Hen.” Jillian reached across the table and squeezed Holly’s hand. “I can take care of myself now. And I promise to get to the decorating tomorrow.”

“Fine. But I’ll have my phone on all night. Call me if you need anything.” She looked straight at Blake, then back at Jillian. “Anything.”

A
UTOPSY
.

Edward worked his jaw as though he was grinding a toothpick between his teeth. With holiday tunes and the scientific chatter of two lab techs and Holly Masterson filtering through the crisp air around him, he sat at an empty work counter with his arms folded across his chest, staring at the ominous black lettering across the door’s reinforced glass.

Although he’d been lying in a hospital bed recovering from a gunshot wound, cuts to his face and torso, broken ribs and a shattered leg when Cara and Melinda had been brought here, he felt the sorrow of the place down to his bones. His father had gone to the morgue that night to identify the bodies and make arrangements for their funeral. Edward had barely been alive enough to attend the double service a few days later, in a wheelchair with a nurse and I.V. at his side.

But he felt them here. His wife and daughter were with him in this room more strongly than he’d felt them in a long time.

Which one of those stainless steel drawers had they lain in? Had André Butler’s busted-up body been in the same room with them?

This sterile environment was all facts and logic to the medical examiners and CSIs who worked here, but to Edward, it was a haunting, emotional tomb.

“Earth to Edward.”

The subtle scent of something warm and sweet filtered through the memories and pulled him away from the darkness of his past. He wasn’t alone. A woman who was very much alive—and very much concerned, judging by the small crease that furrowed her brow—stood beside him.

He pushed his stool away from the counter. “What did you say?”

“Nothing yet. I just called your name. I forget that this place can really freak visitors out sometimes. Are you okay?” Holly Masterson’s voice wasn’t come-hither husky, but it was gently articulate, laced with intelligence and practicality—and Edward found its sound a welcome solace to his morbid thoughts. “If it helps, you should know that there’s no one in there right now.”

Edward spun on his stool and glanced around the lab. He must have been pretty deep inside his head because he hadn’t heard the techs leave the room, or sensed the leggy M.E. moving in beside him. He closed the cover of the file he’d been reading. “I was just thinking that my wife and daughter were customers of yours two years ago, almost to the date.”

Huh? Where had that come from? He hadn’t mentioned that kind of thing to anybody but his therapist and his parents. And now it had popped out in casual conversation with a woman he’d only known professionally until last night. What was wrong with him?

Plenty, Holly seemed to think. She picked up the files he’d been going through and tucked her hand through the crook of his elbow, pulling him to his feet. “If you’d rather sit in my office to read the reports, you can. But I don’t want them to leave my lab.”

His hand lingered on hers a moment too long when he rose. Though an inexplicable heat radiated between her fingers and his arm, Edward nonetheless pushed her pitying touch aside.

“I can do my job anywhere you…” His gaze traveled higher than the frown between her eyebrows. Were those…? Resolutely, he forced himself to look into her eyes. “In James McBride’s autopsy, you mentioned that an indentation on his right hand indicated he was missing a ring, but…”
Watch the eyes
. “…his attack had been staged to look like a robbery. His family didn’t offer any kind of description…”
The eyes.
“Do you know if Detective Grove followed up…?” Nope. He just couldn’t look away from the two brown felt antlers sticking up from the top of her head. “Do you mind?”

Without waiting for an answer, he plucked the headband from her hair.

“Hey.”

He pushed the Christmas-costume piece into her hand. “I can’t have a serious conversation with you when you’re wearing these.”

“And people tell me
I
can’t take a joke,” she groused, dropping the headband into the pocket of her lab coat. “It’s the holidays. I think we’re allowed to indulge in a little goofiness. What
does
make you smile, Detective?”

“I thought we were going with Edward, remember?” Drawn by way of an apology, his hand went back to the staticky ruffs he’d left in her hair. He sifted the short strands between his fingers, combing them back into place. The urge to tangle his fingers deeper into the sable-colored silk took him by surprise, and he quickly pulled away. “There. Much better.”

For a long time, he’d thought that Cara’s strawberry-blond coloring was the only kind of pretty in the world. But in the past twenty-four hours, he’d been repeatedly distracted by dark brown hair, green-gold eyes and a long, lean figure that had a few surprising curves if a man knew to look for them.

And he’d been looking.

Now he was touching.

Edward lifted his cane from where he’d hooked it over the edge of the counter, giving himself a swift reminder that he was here to investigate his father’s murder—to find some new lead that had eluded his brothers and KCPD for too many months. He wasn’t here to discover that male blood still pumped through his veins, or that this stick of a woman with the strict rules and Christmas spirit would be the one to jump-start his flatlined libido.

“You didn’t answer my question,
Edward
. You do smile, don’t you?”

He grinned from ear to ear. “How about that bullet?”

Her laughter softened his mouth into a more honest version of a smile. Nope, he shouldn’t be liking that, either. “All right. I can’t tell if you’re cleverly disarming or ruthlessly persistent. But I’ll go get it.”

As she went into her office and unlocked a cabinet, Edward tried to analyze just what was going on here. Months ago, at his father’s funeral, he had promised his mother he’d find out the truth. He’d get his dad’s badge back into her hands and help KCPD put his killer behind bars. But he wasn’t on active duty. He was just supposed to be puttering around behind the scenes, using his free time to dig into things Detective Grove might have overlooked, searching through places his brothers couldn’t legally go.

He wasn’t supposed to be seizing clues and turning them into leads. He wasn’t supposed to be getting closer to the players in the investigation. He wasn’t supposed to be feeling that guarded alertness simmering in his veins again, that awareness that an answer could present itself at any moment, and that he needed to have his eyes open wide to see it when it came. That was a cop’s way of thinking. Despite what working for KCPD had cost him, he was thinking like a cop again.

That wasn’t all that felt foreign to him this afternoon.

When Holly came out of her office and crossed the lab her coltish legs gave a distinctly feminine sway to her hips, and whatever was awakening his long dormant hormones began to steam. She was stubborn and reserved and totally hot. And only a man who was interested in such things should be thinking that way.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to be a cop anymore.

He wasn’t sure he was ready to be a man who wanted something from a woman.

Yet here he stood, acting like a cop and thinking like a man, unable to look away from the woman who was unintentionally messing with his head.

Holly Masterson, fortunately, attributed his hard stare as interest in the plastic evidence bag she carried.

“Gloves, first.” She pointed to the box of disposable gloves like the ones she wore, and while Edward covered his hands, she pulled out a scalpel-like instrument and slit open the labeled bag. She lifted out a sealed glass tube with clear liquid and what looked like a corroded slug from the Civil War inside. “It stays in the bottle. We’ve got it stored in a vacuum to help retard the decomp process, but it’s still extremely fragile.”

She laid the bottle in his waiting hands and he lifted it up to the light. With the naked eye, he couldn’t see much beyond a gray metal blob. “This isn’t from my dad, is it?”

“No. Here, try this.” She turned on a halo light and encouraged him to look at the bullet through its magnifying center lens. “These bullets are layered with acid components built in at a microscopic level that react to chemicals inside the human body, speeding the decomp process. This particular bullet is the one that Truman Medical Center took out of your brother Holden two months ago—fired from a gun used by a hired assassin he called Mr. Smith. Unfortunately, the samples I extracted from your father’s body are little more than dust now.”

As she continued to point out the lack of striation markings and explain the tests they were able to run to verify the caliber of the projectile, Edward clenched his jaw, determined to ignore the way her body brushed up against his and focus on the science she was sharing.

“I’d love to get my hands on a new one that hasn’t been corrupted yet—get some baseline data. These disintegrator bullets degrade the surrounding tissues so much that it’s hard to get an accurate read on the trajectory and distance of the shot.”

“Did you recover any from Mr. Smith’s gun?”

She shook her head. “Apparently, this was the last one in his clip when he fired. Your brother and the witness he was protecting covered a lot of territory through a state park when Smith was after them, so it’s difficult to narrow down a crime scene and conduct a search. We did recover one bullet from the vehicle they were driving—”

“That would have been the Jeep I loaned him. Man, I miss that car.”

“Sorry we had to take it all apart.”

Edward straightened on a long exhale and handed her the bottled bullet. “From what I hear, there wasn’t much left to take apart.”

She resealed the bag with tape and labeled the time it had been opened with a marker. “That particular bullet had normal degradation after passing through several layers of metal, but it allowed us to pinpoint the caliber. It’s up in the ballistics lab right now. We’re trying to match it to one of these but haven’t come up with anything conclusive yet.”

The woman was smart and thorough and…a terrible actress.

Her cell phone rang from one of the deep pockets of her lab coat. Her shoulders stiffened and a soft gasp escaped her lips.

Something was wrong.

She worked on labeling the evidence bag until there was absolutely nothing left to label. Only then did she finally turn her back and reach into her pocket to answer the phone. “Excuse me a minute. Holly Masterson, KCPD crime lab. Hello?”

He should have politely turned away to let her handle the call. Instead, Edward angled himself to watch the color drain from her cheeks.

“Hello?”

Something very cop-like and more territorially male than he’d like to admit sparked along his nerve endings, giving him a clearer picture of the tight press of her lips and the nervous way she reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear.