Lorie O - Strong, Sleek and Sinful

“Yes, and her right hand was above her head, her forearm resting over her face. I’m sure it was just the position she was in when she finally gave up on life.”

“Or how she stopped moving after being tossed out of a car.”

“Tossed out of a car?” Gracie asked, standing when the medics walked over to them with a gurney.

“Why would she die up alongside a building like this?” Perry stood as well, facing Gracie and watching her chew her lower lip and study his face. It was as if he could see her brain churning, struggling to come up with a believable answer that might impress him.

“Well, maybe she couldn’t walk very well from her injuries and started walking alongside the building, using it to hold her up.”

“Good.” Perry nodded. Maybe Gracie wasn’t as self-centered and cold to the line of work she was in as she first appeared. “If your theory is right, though, with the amount of blood covering her body, if she walked along the building there would be blood on the bricks. Have you checked?”

“No. Do you think I should?”

“Yup. If your theory is right, it would tell us which direction she came from. If there aren’t any blood trails on the wall, then my theory might be right.” He decided Gracie had a pretty smile, although he missed the glow that Kylie would get in her eyes when challenged.

“I’ll check,” Gracie said, as if she’d just decided she would do so. “If I’m right, though, you have to take me out for a drink,” she added, winking at him. She didn’t take his comments as instruction but almost as a game.

“We’ll see,” he said, watching when she again walked to her case and pulled out what she needed to search for blood samples on the brick wall. “What was this picture you mentioned?”

Gracie stood over Lanie’s body, facing the wall. She looked over her shoulder, grinning at him, her gaze traveling down his body shamelessly, and the sparkle he had missed in her eyes when he challenged her was there now as blatant interest brought out color in her cheeks.

She licked her lips and arched her back slightly, reminding him of a hungry feline, or possibly a feline in heat. “I’ve already tagged it as evidence,” she said, and turned from the wall and walked up until she stood close enough that she needed to tilt her head to look at his face. “It was a picture of another girl. It looked like it was taken with a camera phone possibly and blown up and printed. But I think I’ve seen the girl in the picture before down at the station. You might know her.”

Taking his arm, Gracie wrapped hers around his and escorted him to Goddard’s patrol car. Perry freed himself, frustrated with her unprofessional behavior, and the curious look Goddard gave him when he and Gracie rounded the car to the trunk.

“Where is that picture?” Gracie asked Goddard. “The one the girl had in her hand?”

“You didn’t see it already?” Goddard frowned at Perry but then sifted through the evidence bags and pulled out a piece of typing paper in a bag with a picture printed on it. Then grabbing his flashlight, he turned on the beam and handed the picture to Perry.

If the thing were alive it would have bitten off his hand. Perry gawked at the picture, his stomach churning so furiously while bile moved to his throat. He stared, his hand shaking, at the picture of Dani, taken in the dark, with her staring slightly above the camera, as if possibly she didn’t know the shot had been taken. Over the picture, written in block letters with a red marker, it said: Guess who is next?

“Fucking son of a bitch,” Perry roared, needing to hit something worse than he’d ever needed to before.

“What’s wrong?” Gracie asked, once again touching his arm.

He didn’t try to prevent her from touching him this time. If she wanted to mess with his boiling outrage, that was her own stupidity at work.

“It’s a goddamn picture of my niece,” he roared, turning from both of them and staring at the dark parking lot. It took him a minute to register what he saw, but he did a double take on the car turning in the parking lot and heading toward the exit.

It was Kylie’s hybrid.

“Okay, I think we’re ready.” Paul walked around the conference desk and looked at the recorder in the middle of the oblong table. “Next time you want to record something, though, let me know. I can hook you up with much better equipment than this.”

“It was a consensual recording. I wasn’t worried about trying to determine back-down noise, or anything like that.” Kylie rubbed her left temple, where a dull throbbing headache had been nagging her since she woke up this morning. It hadn’t surprised her that Peter was a no-show the night before. She hadn’t talked to him or seen him on-line since he’d suggested they meet Thursday night. The media had spooked him, putting her back to square one. At least she had Dani’s testimony to offer.

“Let’s hear what it says,” John said, sitting across from her. “As long as it picked up what the two of you said to each other, we’re fine.”

He scowled at the handheld recorder Kylie had owned for a couple years now. She used it any time she wanted to record an interview and never had problems with it. But with her headache, not enough sleep, and feeling grouchier no matter how much coffee she downed, she didn’t feel like arguing with them.

Reaching for the recorder, she pushed “play,” turned up the volume, and reclined in her chair. Static popped for a moment but then stopped. Kylie relaxed her elbows against the armrests and held her cup with both hands, watching the steam twist and evaporate above her fresh cup.

The recording began, Kylie’s voice sounding tinny but audible.

“ This is a recorded interview conducted by Kylie Dover ,” she said through the small speaker, using her undercover name and the front that she was recording this in an effort to show the reaction of a teenager to a traumatic, terrifying, event.

Dani stated her full name and age; then Kylie announced the date and time. After the usual formality of asking Dani if she would willingly participate in the interview and consent to it being recorded, the questions began.

Kylie had listened to the tape several times already but knew her presence was advantageous while playing it back for John. Paul was present for two reasons. One, he was very good at deductive reasoning and two, because Kylie knew if she was left alone for too long with John, she’d kick his ass. The man just rubbed her wrong every time she was around him.

And this morning wasn’t a good time to be around anyone. After showing up at the crime scene last night, keeping her distance, and observing, she immediately wished she’d stayed home and in bed. More than once she had stopped herself from marching across the parking lot and throwing that little runt of a cop as far away from Perry as she could.

It had been impossible to fall asleep after that. She’d even gotten dressed and gone over to his house, hell-bent and determined to give him more than a piece of her mind. Driving across town to his house didn’t calm her down, but she did manage to stop herself from barging into his home when it was mere hours before dawn. It would be better to take him on after a good night’s sleep. Except she didn’t get one.

It was bad enough that she tossed and turned once she finally crawled back into her bed, but she woke up with a headache. And it appeared to have no intention of going away.

“After walking out of your house, you text-messaged Petrie, your online boyfriend whom you hadn’t met yet, and told him you’d fought with your mother and left home?”

“ You make it sound really bad ,” Dani said, but then cleared her voice. She mumbled something inaudible. Kylie ignored John’s and Paul’s inquiring looks. Dani had mumbled under her breath, begging Kylie not to make her out to look like a fool. Kylie remembered Dani later admitting she felt like an ass for committing the most stupid stunt of her life, and hugging Kylie and thanking her for saving her life. That wasn’t information John, or Paul, needed to know, though. Dani continued, “ But yes, I texted Petrie. He told me it wasn’t safe walking around alone at night and that he would pick me up. He offered to take me to get a pizza .”