The badge she wore like a necklace, the gun resting on the curve of her hip, and the accusation filling her green? gray? gold?—curiously indefinable eyes did little to diminish her striking beauty. She might wear her sable dark hair in that mannish cut and talk the same sarcasm and suspicion the male cops he knew used, but there was no mistaking the femininity in that husky voice and her leggy, athletic build—or his damnable reaction to them.
For the six years he’d been obsessed with finding Dani’s killer, he’d been anything but a fan of KCPD. That another woman, a cop—Thomas Watson’s daughter, no less—should get him thinking randy thoughts about stripping off all that hardware and attitude didn’t sit real well with his celibate devotion to the fiancée he should have saved. His curious fascination with the mysteries surrounding the lady detective who’d tracked him down rankled his long-held contempt for the police department that had failed to bring Dani’s killer to justice.
“I need you back downstairs,” she ordered. “Now.”
Thanks. The sharp command took the sexy out of her voice and made it easier for Gabe to dismiss his far too male reaction to her.
He moved to the edge of the landing, toward the woman attempting to stop his return to the taped-off office suite on the tenth floor. “There’s no such thing as a perfect crime, Detective. Only an inability to see and understand the clues that are there. If you aren’t willing to find the connection between the two murders, I will.”
With a curt nod, he turned to the next set of steps, skipping a stair and another pointless conversation with KCPD.
“Don’t make me pull my gun, Mr. Knight.”
He stopped and leaned over the railing. “Why don’t you join me and do some real police work, instead of standing there, trying to make me think you can stop me.”
“Trying?” The curse that followed definitely wasn’t feminine. Gabe laughed and climbed the steps. He heard her charging up the stairs after him.
Good. He’d goaded at least one KCPD cop into taking some action. Even if she argued every step of the way, Detective Watson’s presence would get him back into Ron Kober’s office so he could pick up what the CSIs and detectives were saying, and he could get a closer look at the crime scene for himself.
But Gabe’s smug smile flatlined when he felt a strong tug at his shoulders. “What the—”
“You are officially trespassing in a restricted area.” Olivia yanked his jacket halfway down his arms, twisting them back and restricting his movement long enough to snap a pair of handcuffs around his wrists. She wrapped her hand around his elbow and turned him to face her. “And you’re annoying the hell out of me. Now, either go out front with the other reporters, or I’ll happily escort you to a jail cell myself.”
Locking his hands behind his back wasn’t going to stop his investigation. “I know Dani Reese is in your cold case files.”
“Fine. I’ll look it up when I get back to the precinct. You’re still leaving.”
With a tug on his arm and a dare to defy her challenge bringing out the green in her eyes, Gabe reluctantly fell into step beside her and headed back down the stairs. She might have changed his direction, but she hadn’t silenced his voice. He calmly explained his reasons for ignoring her order to clear the building. Again. In case Olivia Watson had more bravado than brain cells going for her. “I’m trying to speed the process here, Detective. Dani was getting inside information on strong-arm tactics and a possible mob connection to Senator McCoy’s campaign. Six years ago. And now he’s running for reelection?”
“I get your timeline. And I get that the events are too serious to dismiss as coincidence. You said Kober was feeding your fiancée intel on the senator’s campaign?” Her fingers tightened around his arm as they turned the corner—probably standard procedure to provide extra balance to a man in handcuffs. But his pulse leaped at Olivia’s firm grasp on him, momentarily distracting him from the questions laced with skepticism. “How do you know that? Were you working the story, too?”
“No. It was Dani’s big scoop. She was trying to make a name for herself. I didn’t even realize what she was onto until it was too late.” Taking a deep breath, he pushed aside his lusty reaction to Detective Watson’s touch and let his heart fill with its customary guilt and grief. It wasn’t hard to replace Detective Watson’s changeable eye color with the sky blue beauty of Dani’s soft gaze in his mind. “I started reading the notes she had saved on a zip drive one night. I found Kober and Senator McCoy’s name, along with the draft of a story on kickbacks from Leland Asher.”
Olivia’s pace slowed. “The alleged crime boss?”
“You know there’s nothing alleged about the way he conducts business. That man has more ways to launder money than an industrial linen service. When I confronted Dani about the scope of what she was working on—and warned her of the danger—she got mad and stormed out. By the time I found out where she was meeting her contact, it was too late.” He stopped on the landing, needing to set his feet to withstand the memory that chilled his blood like a ghost passing through his body. He should have stopped Dani that night. He should have gone with her. He should have covered the damn story himself and not let a junior reporter—no matter how good her instincts might be—take that kind of risk. When he found his breath again, when he could firmly close the door on the gruesome images from the past, Gabe continued. “The next time I saw Dani, she was lying on a slab in the morgue. She’d been shot three times. The ME had to identify her by the dragon tattoo on her ankle and what was left of her teeth.”
“I’m sorry.” Olivia’s fingers curled into a fist and she pulled away. “I know that’s rough. Losing someone you love is tough enough. Seeing them in the morgue...”
Gabe glanced down to see her unfocused gaze staring off into the corner. Was that real empathy? Some haunting remembrance of another case she’d worked? An official training technique to gain his cooperation? Didn’t matter.
“Save your pity. Do your job.” As soon as he spoke, her gaze snapped back to his. “A couple of dock workers found Dani lying beside her abandoned car near an old warehouse. The killer had taken her engagement ring and billfold, and tried to make it look like a robbery. That’s how KCPD investigated her death, as a carjacking gone bad. But I tell you, it was all about the story she was writing. That’s why you people never solved the case.”
“You people?” He watched her bristle at the dig against cops, against someone much closer to the case than she probably realized. Detective Watson wrapped her hand around his arm again and pulled him into step beside her. Ah, hell. She hadn’t really been listening. She was just humoring him. “Less talking and more moving, okay, Knight?”
Gabe lengthened his stride to get ahead of her. He stopped on the next landing and turned, forcing her to halt on the step above him. He had no problem getting in her face and making his point. “Connect the dots, Olivia. If Ron Kober knew enough about Leland Asher’s influence on the campaign to share it with the press six years ago, I don’t imagine either Senator McCoy or Asher would want Kober around now. McCoy is already under investigation. If Kober told anyone what he knew? What Dani knew? You know how the press is ready to jump on any hint of a scandal during a campaign.”
To her credit, she didn’t back down from the confrontation. “Look, I understand why you think there could be a shared motive between the two deaths. I promise, I will read through your fiancée’s case file. But I told you, I’m not even assigned to Kober’s murder. All I can do is inform Detectives Hendricks and Kincaid that—” She stopped abruptly and angled her head to the side.
“I’m telling you.”
She leaned toward the steel railing. “Shh.”
He leaned with her, demanding she pay attention. “It makes sense that the same person who wanted Kober dead might also have wanted to silence Dani. The two murders—”
“Shut.