Skin Deep (Station Seventeen #1)(19)
If only. “I’d need a crime scene unit to process the place in order to find out, which I can’t do without an open investigation. Even then, any prints they’d find in the room would be circumstantial. Who knows how many squatters might’ve been in and out of here in the last five months. Getting from the furniture to the photos is a pretty giant leap.”
“So you’re stuck with whatever you can get to lead you out of this room.”
“Pretty much.” Isabella’s eyes narrowed on the pizza box splayed open over the top of the desk, a spark of hope kicking at her pulse. “Hold on a second.” She pressed to standing, flipping the box closed, and halle-freaking-lujah, finally the ball had bounced in her direction.
“What?” Kellan asked, dropping his gaze as he stood. “Three Brothers Pizza. Isn’t that the place down by the pier?”
“There are a couple of locations around Remington, but yeah, the one by the pier is the closest. This might be a little thin, but I know someone who works there.” She didn’t add that the ‘someone’ was a mouthy former junkie turned CI. The less Walker knew about Carmen, the better.
If his expression was anything to go by, he didn’t need to know more to think Isabella was nuts. “Tying prints from the desk to whoever took those pictures is thin, Moreno. Tying a pizza box to the guy? That’s anorexic.”
Isabella knew he was right. If she went to Sinclair with a pizza box that might have belonged to a suspect, he’d laugh her right out of the intelligence office, and give her what-for over returning to the scene without permission while he was at it. But flimsy or not, the pizza box was more than she’d had when she’d walked into the room, so she borrowed Kellan’s cross-armed stance as she fixed him with her very best stare.
“Maybe. But if you think for a second I’m going to back down just because my only lead is a shot in the dark, then clearly, you don’t know me as well as you thought you did.”
5
Kellan sat back on his bar stool at the Crooked Angel, a beer in his hand and his brain waging an epic battle with his dick. Which wouldn’t necessarily be the worst thing in the world if the topic of said battle wasn’t Isabella Moreno and his downstairs head wasn’t winning by a landslide.
Unfortunately for his sanity, Kellan was a big, fat oh-for-two.
Twelve hours had passed since Moreno had given up that bulldog-fierce conviction that he didn’t know her as well as he thought he did, and they hadn’t exchanged more than half a dozen words since they’d left the scene of the fire shortly thereafter. She’d spent most of the ride back to Seventeen reading and responding to a string of text messages—presumably from the person she said she knew from the pizza place—and then offered up a brief but sincere ‘thanks for the favor’ once they’d reached her car. Kellan had headed toward his apartment with every intention of putting the whole morning in his rearview; Moreno’s smart mouth and sleek curves, the photos, the fire scene, the possibility of a lead from that pizza box, all of it. The fact that he hadn’t been able to come within a thousand meters of ditching his thoughts of this morning had been pretty frustrating.
That Isabella had been sitting less than thirty paces away from him for the last half hour and flat-out ignoring him for just as long?
Now that was driving him bat-shit crazy.
Flicking a glance across the Crooked Angel’s wood-paneled main dining room, Kellan took in the Thirty-Third’s usual four-top over by the plate glass windows lining the front of the bar. His eyes settled on Moreno, then the detectives she worked with, for just a minute before he let out a heavy breath and placed his beer on the table in front of him.
If you think for a second I’m going to back down…you don’t know me as well as you thought you did…
Kellan’s gut tightened beneath his T-shirt. Yeah, he’d spent the better part of a nonstop week with Moreno after Kylie had called him from Montana three months ago, saying she’d witnessed a brutal murder committed by a thug who ran with dirty cops. Kylie had managed to get as far away as Chicago with the help of Kellan’s Army buddy, Devon. And thank fuck he’d been with her, because even though Moreno’s work to track the scumbag chasing Kylie had been solid, the case had ended in an adrenaline-soaked shootout, courtesy of a filthy agent on the FBI field team Moreno had vouched for. Kellan had trusted her in the beginning—up until everything went pear-shaped, actually—but then all of a sudden, he hadn’t. He couldn’t. Although Kylie had ended up unharmed, she could’ve easily been killed.
But this morning, Moreno had been nothing short of all-in and no holds barred on this case, which begged the question he’d been unable to answer all freaking day.
How well did he know Isabella Moreno?
His mind took the rational route, tilting back to their trip to North Point. As much as he wanted to deny it, Kellan had to admit that when they’d been combing the scene of that fire for evidence, she’d been exactly as she had during the bulk of Kylie’s case. Determined. Capable. Smart.
Don’t forget sexy, came a voice that sounded suspiciously like his mutinous dick, and okay, he officially needed to get laid. Nothing else explained the insanity of his current preoccupation with Moreno’s curves or her tenacity. So she’d grabbed the case in front of her this morning with both hands. So what? She’d still made a horrible mistake not vetting Collins’s field team three months ago. It had still been her judgment call that had put Kylie’s life in danger.