Latent Danger (On the Line #2)(42)

Being with her now, working this case, he was a smart enough man to know that no other woman would ever measure up. Especially now that he’d gotten his head out of his ass long enough to see that she was a lot more than just the sexiest woman he’d ever had. She was tenacious, committed to the same cause he was, taking her passion for justice to the same level he did with his work.

She was sharp, but also had a hell of a lot of compassion, often dealing with witnesses better than he did. He liked that about her. He liked so many things about her.

He didn’t know if it was possible, but he wanted to see if they could try again. If she’d give him a real shot at a relationship. If he could get her to see that he was more than the ass he’d been when they’d been together so many years before.

The first thing he had to do, though, was to solve this case. They needed to bring a killer to justice.

Giving up on the fantasy of a nap, he walked back down the hall to the bullpen, finding Ronan approaching their desks at the same time that Zach came in.

“Did you get the parents?” Ronan asked as he sank into his chair. Like all partners in the major crimes division of NHPD, Zach and Ronan’s desks were pushed together so they faced each other as they worked.

Zach scowled as he answered, but his annoyance wasn’t with his partner. “Left messages.”

Ronan’s face looked like Zach felt, his mouth open in shock. “I guess we should have expected that.”

Zach clicked through screens on his computer.

“What are you looking for?”

Zach didn’t look up as he answered. “Checking to see if they have any history with child protective services.”

“Anything?” Ronan asked.

Zach shook his head.

“What’s bugging you? You’re too quiet.” Ronan studied Zach.

“I can’t put my finger on it, but I know I’m missing something.”

Ronan snorted. “We’re all missing something. We’ve been missing it this whole damned time.”

“No, this is different. I don’t mean the big picture. We’ve obviously all been missing something this whole time. But this is different. I feel like I’ve seen something today that should mean something to me.” He stopped, frustrated, then began again. “You know when a word is on the tip of your tongue? It’s like that.”

“Have you tried laying down?” Ronan knew Zach often put things together when he took a break, but this time, the question only reminded Zach of the uncomfortably tight state his pants had been in minutes before.

Zach cleared his throat. “Yeah. Didn’t work.”

If Ronan noticed his discomfort, he didn’t comment on it. “When did the feeling start?”

This was one of the reasons Ronan and Zach worked so well as partners. They each thought of things the other hadn’t. Zach thought back through his day.

“When I started to try to reach Liz Gordon’s parents.”

“Then, we start there.” Ronan gestured to the slip of paper with the parents’ name and number on it.

Zach picked it up from his desk and looked at it. The nagging feeling was there, but nothing jumped out at him.

“What else were you doing at the time?” Ronan asked.

“Talking to Liz Gordon.”

Ronan looked thoughtful. “Is it something about her that’s bothering you?”

Zach thought back to the way Liz had watched he and Shauna in the bullpen when she’d been waiting for Shauna to escort her home. If he had to name his feelings, he’d probably say his spidey senses were tingling.

“It could be her.” Zach thought through what he’d seen of her and how she’d looked that day. What she’d sounded like. “She’s calculating. It’s barely there under the surface, but I get the sense in a lot of our interactions, she’s there and part of the conversation, but there’s this small piece of her that’s watching the conversation from a distance to see what’s happening, to see people’s reactions to her.”

Zach looked up at Ronan with the sudden realization that he hadn’t consciously thought that about her until now. It was like the thought had only come to him as he found the words to describe it to Ronan.

“What else did you do today?” Ronan asked, despite the fact he knew all of Zach’s movements throughout the day. He was trying to dislodge his partner’s memory, so his plan was to get Zach to move through the day.

“Went up to the cold case unit to see what they were working on.” Zach didn’t need more prompting. He ran through what they had seen in the short time they were there. “They’re working through huge lists of people who could have been our killer thirty years ago, looking for any connection to our suspects. It’s slow.”

Ronan waited as Zach closed his eyes and ran over what he’d seen and done up in the cold case offices.

Hell. He let the curse come out under his breath as he fished for the paper with Liz Gordon’s parents’ information on it again. “That’s it.” Zach tapped the paper and picked up his phone, calling up the information for Detective Hutchinson.

While the phone rang, he talked to Ronan. “Liz’s mother hyphenates her name. Kenworth-Gordon.”

Hutch answered the phone before Zach could finish.