Her last hours were hazy in her mind. She must have fallen asleep.
She sat up, throwing her feet over the side of the bed; one stiletto heel caught the sheet.
She hadn’t even taken off her boots?
Out of habit, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before flipping open the phone and bringing it to her ear. “Special Agent Kahill.”
“Christ-a-mighty, Kahill, don’t you ever sleep? Just once I’d like to hear that husky voice, a little disoriented, drowsy, maybe. All playful. Sexy.”
She pressed the palm of her hand to her forehead, feeling hungover, even though she’d not imbibed alcohol. “What do you want, Sedowski?”
“What does any man want? True love, of course. That’s all I’m looking for.”
“And your teeth? Will you be looking for them when I knock them out and they’re spread all over the conference room?” Her tone was a warning, laced with just enough humor to keep the exchange light between them.
The night-shift supervisor chuckled. “Just sweet nuthins to me, Kahill.” Then his voice changed and he was the old-school FBI agent she had admired since joining the Philadelphia Field Office nine years before. “Listen, I’d love to talk dirty with you, but I got a homicide needs your attention. Over in Lansdowne.”
“Lansdowne?” She walked into the bathroom and turned on the cold water at the sink. She didn’t need a light to know she looked like crap. “What? Some guy catch his wife cheating on him and strangle her with her pantyhose?”
“Got no details, Kahill. Only that the vic had her throat slashed, and an address.”
“Give it to me.”
Sedowski knew better than to bite on that one. Unlike some of the men in her office, he knew where the line was between light banter and sexual harassment. Besides, he was married to a pleasingly plump woman named Ann, who made him potato dumplings on Sunday afternoons and still adored him, despite his protruding abdomen and receding hairline. Fia admired the intimacy Sedowski shared with his wife; maybe she was even jealous of it.
He read the address to her and she committed it to memory. Tossing the phone onto her bed, she splashed water on her face and walked back into the bedroom.
She glanced at the clock again. She hadn’t been home long. Couldn’t have been asleep more than half an hour.
She perched on the edge of a chair in the corner and grasped the heel of one knee-high black boot. She gave it a hard tug. With a groan, it released and the supple leather slid off her foot. She yanked on the other boot and dropped it on the floor. Next came the black thigh highs. Not fishnet; she was classier than that. Sheer black argyle.
She rolled them off and tossed them into the clothes hamper, then wiggled out of the black leather skirt and bustier and walked naked into the bathroom, still in the dark. She made sure there was steam rolling over the glass shower stall door before she stepped in.
A few minutes later, wrapped in a towel, Fia folded the skirt and bustier and crammed them into the back of her closet behind her suits. She rarely invited anyone into her apartment, and never into her bedroom, but these were trappings best concealed from the light of day.
Trying not to think about where she had been tonight, what she had done, Fia chose a dark navy suit from a dry-cleaning bag. She grabbed a blue sleeveless shell, donning the clothes quickly over a black bra and panties.
She was out of her apartment by 4:45 A.M. Too bad she didn’t drink coffee. She probably could have used a cup.
Less than an hour later she was at the scene in the suburb of Philadelphia, red and blue flashing lights marking the location of the crime. She displayed her credentials, X Files style, the way she and her brothers used to, playing cops and robbers under the eaves of their attic.
“Special Agent Kahill,” she told a uniformed cop. He was nice looking. Young. A little scared. She wondered if this was his first messy homicide.
He glanced up at her and even in the bleak light of the flood lamps, running on noisy generators, she could tell he found her attractive. She was used to it. She saw that gleam of lust in most men’s eyes. What she also saw was intimidation. People tended to become uncomfortable pretty quickly when confronted with a six-foot-tall redhead with no-nonsense eyes. It used to bother her, but over the years she’d resigned herself to it. Besides, it was handy with thugs. Or men, in general.
“Your investigating officer?” she asked as she glanced away, already taking in the scene.
The narrow, normally unlit alley was framed by the brick walls of two buildings. It looked like any other in Philly, or any city in the United States: a dumpster, some trash, a few used condoms, and some broken bottles. She smelled cat piss, and three-day-old potato skins. Typical and yet not typical. This alley also had a young blond woman, sprawled dead not fifteen feet from the street.
Fia felt, at once, as if she’d been here before. As if she had seen these very same walls, these same shadows, and the body, unnaturally twisted on the damp pavement.
Caught off guard, she tried to inhale through her mouth, exhaling through her nose, blocking out the smells, reining in her thoughts. Her job was not about weird flashes of déjà vu or uncanny feelings. It was about facts and evidence, and she needed to focus and get to work. The ME’s van was here and the police would want the body out of the alley before citizens hit the streets, headed for work. Early-morning joggers were already out, gawking on the other side of the street.
“Lieutenant Sutton’s in charge, ma’am.” Flustered, the uniform stepped back and pointed to a trench-coat hunkered down over the body.
Fia brushed by him. She had her “FBI Special Agent” game face on, practiced for years in the mirror. It kept her safe. Kept the men around her safe. Usually…
“Lieutenant Sutton? Special Agent Kahill, FBI.” The badge in its leather case again. Fia squatted beside the suit in the shadows over the lifeless body.
The victim was half nude, her black miniskirt pushed up around her waist, her silver metallic tank top ripped down the middle to expose small, round breasts. No bra. High heels were missing from her bare feet, but nearby. There was a halo of blood. A lot of blood.
It wasn’t just a murder; it was a sexual assault, too. The front of her thong panties had been shoved aside and Fia could still detect the pungent scent of semen. She could smell the terror of the last moments of life on the victim’s absent breath.
“I’m from the Philadelphia Field Office. I’m going to need my own photos, if you don’t mind,” Fia told the officer in charge, without looking at him.
“Special Agent Kahill, thank you for coming.” The lieutenant glanced over to meet Fia’s gaze, still squatting.
He was a she. Forty, maybe, honey hair, shoulder–length bob.
“Time of death?” Fia glanced down again at the victim. She appeared to be in her late twenties. Nice clothes, good haircut, no roots showing in her platinum blond hair. Expensive lingerie. She was educated, a professional; a CPA, attorney, maybe.
“ME just took a liver temp, but he can only give a range until he gets her into the morgue.” The lieutenant continued to study the body. “Happened between one and two this morning. A barback called it in at three-fifteen. He was tossing out trash, closing up for the night. We’ve got bars on both sides here, upscale. She was in one or the other, I’m sure. We’ll have to wait until tonight to ask around, see if the regulars saw her.
Fia shifted her weight, inching to the left, taking care not to step in the blood, already dark and congealing. She tried to keep breathing through her mouth, tried to ignore the fresh, heady scent. “Throat’s obviously been slashed. I don’t suppose he left the weapon