Skin Deep (Station Seventeen #1)(82)

“Is that…?”

“The dress I wore to the party,” Isabella finished, her eyes moving from the photograph pinned to the thin strap of the dress to the message scribbled on the glass beneath the cherry-red hemline.

See you soon.

“I need to call Sinclair,” she said, and Kellan turned, his legs not quite steady but the rest of him one hundred percent goddamn sure as he replied.

“Yes, you do. And when you get him on the phone, make sure you tell him that either he finds this guy, or I will.”



* * *



Isabella looked around her ruined bedroom and tried with all her might not to kick the crap out of something. Even though nearly an hour had passed since she and Kellan had found her apartment ripped open and ransacked, the damage still sent shockwaves down her spine. The knowledge that DuPree had been in her space, riffling through her panty drawer and carving up the spot where she slept like a Thanksgiving turkey, was enough to tempt her to vomit.

The way the slimy bastard had ripped the photograph of her and Marisol out of the frame by her bedside and pinned it to the top of the dress in a clear-cut effort to rattle her? Now that made Isabella want to head straight for his penthouse to drag him down all forty flights of stairs and into the precinct with her bare freaking hands.

This case had just gotten personal on a whole new level, and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it from behind her desk. Just like there hadn’t been a damned thing she could do for her cousin eleven years ago once she’d made the fateful phone call that had led to Marisol’s death.

No. No. Isabella would not—could not—be bullied by Julian DuPree. Now more than ever, she had to stop him from hurting any more women. Which meant she had to prove to Sinclair that she trusted her team so he’d put her back on this case.

No matter what.

“All right,” Sinclair said, rocking back on the heels of his heavy-soled boots to give her bedroom one last look before fixing her with a gray stare that meant business. “The crime scene techs are on their way. Maxwell is canvassing the building to see if any of your neighbors saw or heard anything unusual. Hollister and Hale are talking to your landlord, but our initial check with dispatch doesn’t have any other reported breakins on this block today.”

Isabella had to give Sam credit. For as pissed as he surely still was that she’d pursued DuPree on her own in the beginning, he had to have walked out his door less than a minute after she’d called to tell him she and Kellan had discovered this mess.

God, this mess was her apartment. Her personal, private space.

“Okay,” she said, taking a deep inhale and trying to organize her spinning thoughts. There had to be some way of proving DuPree was responsible for this. He might be cagey, but he wasn’t the goddamned Invisible Man.

“Did you have the building’s security company pull the footage from the cameras in the lobby?” Kellan asked from beside her, putting her thoughts into words.

Sinclair lifted a brow at him before sending his answer in her direction. “Capelli’s on the footage, but it’s going to take him a little time. Is there anything obvious that’s missing?”

Isabella knew he had to ask, but still… “Other than my sanity, you mean? Come on, Sam. You know this wasn’t some random breakin.” Between the threat and the dress and the picture of Marisol, the mess had DuPree tattooed all over it.

To her surprise, he kept his cool. “Just like you know I can’t exactly ask Peterson for an arrest warrant labeled ‘because I said so.’ Now you want to try again? In order to rule DuPree in, we have to rule everything else out.”

“Fine,” she said, because as much as she hated it, he wasn’t wrong. “I don’t really have anything all that valuable. My SIG is in the safe in the closet.” She’d checked about two seconds after she’d called him, leaving everything else untouched. A stolen weapon was bad enough. A stolen weapon that belonged to a cop? Now that was a bad fucking day. “Everything else looks like it’s here. In pieces, but still here.”

“And you were gone all day?” Sinclair asked, and Isabella nodded, going through the drill.

“I left at five this morning. When Kellan and I came back from his place about an hour ago, my apartment looked like this.”

“You two have been together the whole time.” Sinclair shifted his gaze from her to Kellan and then back again, his brows rising just enough to let her know he’d read between the lines, and although her gut tightened, she didn’t hold back the truth.

“Yes. We’ve been together all day.”

Kellan stiffened from his spot next to her on the floorboards. “Sorry,” he said, his arms forming a knot over the front of his dark blue hoodie. “What does that have to do with the fact that DuPree trashed Isabella’s apartment, exactly?”

Her pulse jumped. Time to step in so Sinclair wouldn’t. “He just needs to confirm there was no threat made to you, too, since we were both at the party together. Don’t worry, it’s standard procedure to ask.”

Kellan’s shoulders lowered, if only a fraction. “Oh. No, nothing out of the ordinary on my end. My buddy Devon has my sister covered. He’d have called if something went pear-shaped there.”

“Okay, good.” Sinclair paused to look around Isabella’s wrecked bedroom, the frown lines bracketing his mouth turning softer. “Well, you know the drill, Moreno. We’re going to need to get you into protective custody.”