Kelly merely nodded his head. His thinning red hair was fading, evolving into the color of unripened strawberries. The florescent lighting managed to find all the sparser areas and reflect off them. Nick tried not to notice and kept his eyes on the A.D.’s flushed round face.
His new superior made no effort at more of an explanation. Instead, he rounded his desk and headed for the door.
“Come with me. You need to meet the others.”
BILL CHAN WIPED AWAY traces of the raspberry jelly that had oozed out of his doughnut. His latest conquest worked at a bakery three blocks away from the building and he made a point of stopping there each morning for a double sugar hit. Abby’s lips were almost as sweet as the jelly was. He tossed the napkin into his basket just as Charley hurried in.
Turning, he gave her an appreciative look. Her navy skirt hugged curves he was the first to appreciate. “Hey Charley, you got legs this morning.”
Charley dropped her purse into her bottom desk drawer, then shoved it closed with her foot. “I’ve got legs every morning.”
Bill leaned back in his chair, deliberately eyeing her. “Yeah, but they’re not usually out in plain view.”
Not to be left out, Sam Daniels, Bill’s partner and the other man in the room, added his two cents. “And a very nice view it is, too.”
The relationship Charley had with the two partners was one deeply rooted in friendship and mutual respect. Which was why the hazing was generally good-natured, and at times relentless.
She grinned, leaning her face in close to the older man’s. “Behave. Especially you, Daniels, or I’ll call your wife and tell her you’re trying to kick up your heels where you shouldn’t.”
In reply, Sam drained the last of his coffee and set down his less-than-sanitary mug.
“Seriously Charley, how come you’ve never gotten married, or at least heavily involved?” Sam asked.
She shrugged, deadpanning. “Just lucky, I guess.”
Placing himself in her path as she went to get her own mug of coffee, Bill raised and lowered his dark eyebrows. “I’m just the man you’ve been waiting for.”
She laughed shortly, moving around him. “In your dreams, Billy-boy.”
Bill sighed, covering his heart.
Charley poured inky-black coffee into a mug whose interior was only slightly lighter. “Anyone got any details yet?”
Sam shook his head. “We’re all sitting tight, waiting on the A.D.”
She sighed. The nature of the game. Hurry up and wait. “Might as well get some paperwork done,” she murmured half to herself.
At the coffeemaker for her second hit of caffeine in less than ten minutes, Charley felt her attention divert to the noise in the doorway. She turned around as the A.D. entered with someone she didn’t recognize. A very tall, good-looking someone.
A witness, she wondered hopefully.
THE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR brought Nick into a room that was not much larger than Kelly’s had been. The main difference was that four desks had been crammed into the room. Lining the walls were bulletin boards perched above aging file cabinets. Photographs of the Sunday Killer’s victims ran across the boards. Each bright, young face had a column of facts directly beneath it.
Nick felt the energy in the room mingled with a sense of futility.
There were three people in front of him, two men and a woman. One less than the number of desks. Nick wondered who the fourth desk belonged to.
And had a feeling he knew.
“That’s Special Agent Bill Chan,” Kelly said as he nodded toward the young Asian in a designer suit. In response, Bill smiled broadly at him. Not standing on ceremony, he crossed the room and extended his hand in welcome.
“Over there’s Special Agent Sam Daniels,” Kelly continued.
Prematurely middle-aged, Sam looked as comfortable as Bill was dapper. His clothes gave the appearance of being chosen for ease rather than for style. They might have even been slept in.
The man nodded in his direction, choosing to look him over from a distance. Sam’s body language was deceptively lax. Nick had a feeling that was how the man operated and that not much got by the older veteran. Sam’s thick mustache effectively covered his lips, hiding his expression.
Nick moved over toward him and shook his hand.
“And this,” Kelly said, nodding at the remaining person in the room, “is Special Agent Charlotte Dow.”
The woman moved toward him like fog encroaching the moors, telegraphing an inherent sexuality with every step. Her eyes washed over him. Nick felt something stir in his gut. He would have had to be dead not to have felt it.
“I’d say it was nice to meet you,” she said in a voice that made him think of whiskey being poured into a glass, neat, “but the assistant director hasn’t given us your name yet.”
Her eyes were an intense Florida ocean blue. “I can give my own name,” he said.
She cocked her head. “And that is?”
“Nick Brannigan.”
Kelly stepped into the arena. “Your new partner, Charley.”
It took everything Charley had not to let her mouth drop open.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE NEXT MOMENT, Charley regained the use of her brain. “New partner?” she echoed, staring at the assistant director. “What do you mean, new partner?”
A.D. Kelly kept a tolerant expression on his face. “Temple’s gone, Dow,” he reminded her evenly. “He’s not coming back. Get used to it. Only I don’t have to be partnered with anyone. You do. Brannigan’s your new partner. Get used to that, too.”
That settled, Kelly turned to the four main people who headed up the task force formed expressly to apprehend the Sunday Killer. The nickname had come about in-house, because the killer seemed only to strike on the seventh day of the week.
“Our boy’s newest victim was Stacy Pembroke. Like the others, she’s young, single. This one was a food server at La Boheme.”
“That new trendy place on the Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach?” Bill asked. “Dinner for two over there’s at least a hundred dollars, without drinks.”
“Out of my league,” Sam commented.
“One and the same,” Kelly confirmed. “Her boss found the body after she didn’t come in to work last night.”
Charley was still chewing on the bombshell that Kelly had thrown her. She’d been secretly nurturing the hope that Ben Temple would change his mind and return to work, despite what he’d told her. To know that he wasn’t going to be part of her everyday life was going to take some getting used to.
But her current state of unrest didn’t prevent her from listening to what the assistant director had to say.
She raised her hand now, stopping him before he continued. “Wait a minute, the owner of the restaurant came to her place when she didn’t show up for work?”
“That’s what the report said,” Kelly confirmed.
Charley shook her head. “That doesn’t sound very kosher to me.” She looked at Kelly, a hint of a smile playing on her lips. “You wouldn’t come looking for one of us if we didn’t show up.”
“Not unless Pembroke and her boss had some kind of personal relationship