Dana Nussio - Her Dark Web Defender

The guy with a crew cut and a gym body lifted his hand in a wave. “Don Strickland, Detroit Police.”

“Trooper, tell the team a little bit about yourself,” Dawson said.

Kelly shifted her feet. “I’ve worked with the state police for three years, assigned to the Brighton Post. I’m usually alone in my own patrol car, so you’ll need to give me a few days to get used to working in an office.”

She might have said something else after that, but Tony couldn’t get past the thought that she’d been a police officer that long. She wasn’t a rookie, though nothing could prepare someone to work on this task force.

“One more thing. I’ll do whatever it takes to get this guy. It’s personal for me. I mean, I live in Brighton.”

Dawson’s gaze narrowed. “Are you sure you’re not too close to this?”

“No, I’m fine.”

Tony wasn’t certain of many things. He definitely wasn’t sure this officer’s voice would help them locate the suspect who’d murdered these victims or even if they’d met online before the attack. But he was convinced of two things at that moment. The first was that he wanted to get this guy—and in statistical likelihood the suspect was male—as much as the trooper did.

His second certainty concerned him more, though. With that gut sense law-enforcement officers hone over time, he knew that the state trooper who’d just marched in there to mess up the task force’s equilibrium had also just lied to the team. What he didn’t know was why.

Kelly slid her chair closer to the edge of her cubicle, so she could see the office door. She could shoot out and be back on Interstate 96 on her way to the Spencer Road exit and the Brighton Post in ten minutes flat.

At least she was wanted there.

A report lay open on her desk, but the words and the grisly crime scene photographs swam on the pages in front of her. This was a mistake. She shouldn’t be there, and it went beyond the special agent who clearly agreed with her on at least that.

She’d believed she could do this. That eighteen years was enough time. Enough distance from those bicycles. That creepy smile. She’d been wrong. Shame filled her, heavy and familiar. The uniform that she wasn’t supposed to be wearing seemed to be the only thing preventing her from splintering into thousands of pieces.

But she had to keep it together, for Emily’s sake. She took several deep breaths and focused on a pushpin on her bare bulletin board instead of the file. Finally, her rapid heartbeat slowed.

She’d hoped for an opportunity to make up for the mistakes she’d made following her friend’s abduction, and now she was balking. Yes, it would require her to work with someone who clearly didn’t want her there, but atonement wasn’t supposed to be easy.

What was Special Agent Lazzaro’s problem with her, anyway? He must have thought that those Italian good looks of his—the kind that a sculptor’s knife would have loved and a sonnet or two had already mentioned—gave him an excuse to be a jerk. Not that she’d noticed the olive skin, that strong jaw, the dimple in his chin or those blue-gray eyes, anyway, but none of those things made the way he’d spoken to her okay. What had she ever done to him?

Eric had said the agent was always hard on new team members, but she couldn’t help thinking it might be something more. That she was a woman? Well, tough crap. She’d proven herself to her fellow troopers by working harder than any of them. If he thought rudeness from one curmudgeonly FBI agent would be enough to scare her off, then he was about to find out how wrong he was.

“You about ready?”

She nearly jumped out of her seat as Tony leaned in to speak to her. The cubicle’s walls had prevented her from seeing his approach, but he’d caught her thinking about him. She didn’t have time to worry about him or anyone else when they had a double murder to investigate.

“Uh. Ready?” Could she have sounded any less like she was about to prove something to him? And why did his eyes have to smile like that, before his lips even moved?

“I just wanted to know if you’re finally up to speed on the case so we can get started. You know, on the voice recordings.”

“For the record, I was already well informed about this case. I was first on the scene, remember?” She took a breath so she wouldn’t tell him where he could shove all his assumptions. “Now what did you say about recordings?”

“You didn’t think you were going to do all of this live, did you?”

The corner of his mouth lifted in a way that was beginning to annoy her. As a matter of fact, she had believed she would always be speaking live, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of having her confirm it.

“I figured at least some of it.”

“Then you were right. Here, let’s go back to my computer to make the recordings.”

He strode to his desk without looking back at her. She grabbed the binder of case overviews that Dawson had given her and fell into step behind him. Inside his cubicle, Lazzaro had already turned his straight-back visitor chair so that it was right next to his. Too close for Kelly’s comfort, but the microphone cord wasn’t long enough to reach across the room.

Nothing about the special agent’s cubicle surprised her, from the obsessively straight collection of pencils in his top desk drawer to the line of photographs—some children, some adults—in the bottom corner of his bulletin board. All about a half inch apart. Just like the crisp creases in his slacks and dress shirt and his perfectly knotted tie that weren’t supposed to be parts of a uniform, Tony Lazzaro was all about preciseness and control. Her arrival must have thrown off his perfect balance.

She rested the binder on the corner of his desk, pulled the seat back and sat. A masculine amber scent filled her nostrils. She’d never been a fan of cologne, but this one was almost pleasant. Distracting.

But she didn’t get distracted. By anyone. If she’d never allowed male-female nonsense to disrupt work with her fellow troopers, even the hotties, she should have no trouble ignoring a surly law enforcement officer. Especially one who had a sprinkling of gray in his black-brown hair that made him look at least a decade older than her twenty-seven.

Tony obviously had no trouble tuning her out as he focused on his laptop and clicked through several screens. Then he moved the standing microphone closer to her. She didn’t miss his frown when he noticed the binder, out of place on his orderly desk.

“Now we just need to record the early stuff. The greetings,” he said. “That way you can practice the flirtation.”

Her breath rushed out in a choked sound. “Are you saying that some victims flirt with their eventual offenders?”

The thought of it made her stomach roll. Emily’s attacker had required no enticement. No encouragement at all.

“I guess some potential victims think they’re supposed to talk more like grown-ups would when they’re in online chat rooms,” he explained. “Seventy-six percent of underage victims first encounter their offenders in chats.”

Kelly blinked away images from her past to focus on details of the current case. On offenders they might have a chance to stop.

“But don’t victims in chat rooms believe they’re talking to someone their own age and not some guy in his sixties with a double chin and a second mortgage?”

“Maybe potential offenders aren’t that specific, but most tell their victims they’re older when they initiate contact.”

As he spoke, he scrolled through a website with a series of conversations rolling down the screen.

She leaned forward to get a better look. “That’s where you’ll have me hanging out? In chat rooms like that one?”