Disarming Detective (10 page)

Logan sucked in a deep breath and tried to blink the images away. He stepped closer, forcing her to look up at him.

“I’m so sorry, Ella. I swear, I tried to keep any knowledge about your presence totally in-station. I don’t know how Lyla got hold of it.”

“I know you did.” She sighed, then squinted at him. “Lyla?”

Logan felt his face heat. “The reporter at the station.”

Her eyes narrowed, filled with suspicion. Served him right for trying to get anything past a profiler.

She opened her mouth, so he preempted her, “Yes, we used to go out.”

Something flashed in Ella’s eyes. “It was pretty serious, I take it?”

When he didn’t immediately answer, she cringed a little and he realized what he’d seen in her eyes. Jealousy.

A smile tugged at his lips, but faded fast as he admitted, “We were engaged.”

“Oh.” Surprise darted across her features. “Well, that
is
serious.”

Before he could tell her it was long over, she hurried on, “Not that it’s any of my business. Anyway, I just—I don’t know what I’m going to do if my boss calls me back in.” She set her coffee down untouched, rolled her shoulders. “I joined the Bureau because of that pact I told you about, the one that Maggie, Scott, and I made. But the job has become more than that. It’s become really important to me. It’s become....” She trailed off, looking lost and completely torn.

“I understand. If your boss calls, you’d have to leave.” He reached out and folded her hand in his as dread and sadness coursed through him in equal measure. He didn’t want her to leave. And it was about a heck of a lot more than this case.

She looked down at their entwined hands and tightened her grip. She had small hands, but man, was she strong. It was another one of those incongruities he loved about her.

His hand jerked in hers as he realized what he’d just thought. He felt her curious expression just as he felt himself go a little light-headed. He
did
love her odd little inconsistencies. And that nervous feeling rolling around in the pit of his stomach at the thought of her leaving wasn’t simply about the way she looked in that skirt or the way her mouth felt against his.

It was about how she’d gone instantly still and serious when he’d asked her to help him keep his sister safe. It was about how she’d stood up for him in the diner that first day he’d met her. It was about how she made him feel every time he looked at her. Which, even in the middle of a homicide investigation, was freaking
giddy
.

A curse wanted to break out, but he held it in. He didn’t believe in love at first sight. And given the short time they’d known each other, that was what it might as well be. Which was completely ridiculous.

This was a complication he hadn’t expected. And one he didn’t need in the middle of Theresa’s case. With a woman who lived too far away, who’d be gone as soon as the case was closed. Or sooner.

“Logan?” Ella’s voice sounded remote as she asked, “Are you okay?”

“Not really.”

“Look, I know you need my help.” She gave a quick nod, as if she’d just made a decision. “I’ll work it out. I’ve got important reasons to stay myself.”

He took a deep breath, getting it together, then smiled at her, wishing one of those reasons was him. “Whatever I can do, let me know. I’ll talk to your boss if you want.”

“Well, thanks, but that’s probably not the best idea. I’d rather he didn’t find out you put in a request for a profiler that he denied and that I took the case anyway. I’ll figure it out if he calls. Until then, let’s see what you’ve got.”

It took him a second to realize she was talking about the credit card information. “Right. Okay.” He glanced out the conference room door into the station to make sure no one was within sight. Then, he lifted her hand and pressed it to his lips before letting go.

He saw her surprise as he picked up the thin stack of charge information. “These were faxed in from her credit card companies. I was about to get started on them when you arrived.”

She settled into a conference chair and yanked her hair back into a ponytail, her serious face on. “Great. I’ll take half.”

She held out her hand and he gave her the coffee cup she’d set down beside the carafe, then sat next to her. He slid the charges from half of Theresa’s cards over to her, keeping the rest for himself. “I figured I’d start from the end of each statement and work my way backward, see if I found anything interesting.”

“Makes sense,” Ella said, taking a quick sip of coffee, then flipping to the last page in her pile. “Uh, Logan...”

“What?”

“What time did Theresa leave for the airport?”

He gave her a half smile. “Show-off. You already have something?”

“This past Sunday, at seven a.m., she’s got a charge at a gas station.”

“Seven?” Logan leaned forward, until Ella’s bangs brushed his forehead, as he squinted down at the small text. “Her flight left at six thirty. I checked right after we found her body, confirming that she hadn’t changed the flight for some reason, and she hadn’t. Obviously, she didn’t make it, but because time of death wasn’t pinpointed that closely, I assumed someone had already grabbed her by then.”

He looked up and found Ella’s eyes inches from his. The other times he’d been this close to her, his eyes had been closed as he’d sought out her mouth. Now, he realized her deep brown eyes were the shade of really good dark coffee. He’d expected flecks of lighter brown around the edges, or a hint of some other color up close, but they were just pure, deep brown. They were mesmerizing, and he realized he was staring, but he couldn’t seem to stop.

Her pupils dilated and he leaned even closer, reached his hand up to touch her face.

“Logan,” Ella said, her voice unsteady. She moved away from him, breaking the spell.

“I’ll bet the killer
did
grab her before she could make her flight. This charge probably means Theresa wasn’t using the card. I think it was her killer.”

* * *

“
W
HAT
TIME
DID
you need again?” the kid at the gas station asked Logan.

Despite looking as if he was still in high school, the pimply-faced kid was the manager on duty. He was sitting in front of a dinosaur-age TV in the back room, rewinding through hours of security footage from last Sunday, which, thank goodness, the gas station hadn’t taped over yet.

He also had the attention span of a gnat. He kept glancing over at Ella, who stood beside the kid’s chair, hands planted on her hips. The kid couldn’t stop staring at her gun. And her legs, which Logan had to admit looked pretty fantastic in the knee-length skirt she wore.

The kid checked out her legs again, and Logan was ready to slap him upside the head. “Ten minutes before seven,” he bit out.

“Okay.” The kid nodded, still rewinding, and glanced over at Ella again, his eyes practically bugging out of his head. “So, what kind of gun do you carry?”

“One issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” she replied dryly, then, “Stop!” as the time stamp on the bottom of the tape reached 6:50 a.m..

On either side of him, she and Logan leaned toward the screen. The kid backed up his chair a little, seeming uncomfortable with their sudden intensity.

On the tiny TV, cars came and went as Logan carefully watched the time stamp. The person who paid at 7:01 a.m. was the one they wanted. That was the guy who had Theresa’s credit card. And if he had her card, he was almost certainly the person who’d killed her.

With luck, he’d glance up at the camera, give them a good shot to plaster across every news network. Make it easy to track him down so Logan could slap a pair of cuffs on him.

Maybe the guy would even resist, and Logan would have to use a little force to put him down. The idea made his hands tense hopefully into fists.

Another car pulled out of the gas station, and then a little red compact drew up to a pump. Logan leaned even closer, his jaw locking as the driver’s side door opened. And then the driver did look up, right at the camera.

Beside him, Ella did a double take. “Logan, is that...”

His shock was followed by a rush of unease. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t right at all. Had their investigation been going in completely the wrong direction?

He turned to Ella, and the shock he felt was written all over her face, too. “It’s Theresa.”

Ella looked at the screen, then at him. Between them, the kid’s head swiveled back and forth; a moment later, he ducked his head and pushed his chair backward so he was entirely out of their way.

Logan gestured to the door. “We’ll call if we need you.”

The kid gave Ella one last longing look, then left them alone.

“Are you sure her flight was at six thirty?” Ella asked.

“Positive.”

“So, what’s she doing on the opposite side of town half an hour after her flight left?” Ella frowned at the screen, where Theresa held out her key fob, as though she was locking the car doors, then headed inside the building, presumably to pay. “She certainly doesn’t look like she’s being coerced. It doesn’t look like anyone else is in the car, either. I’d thought...”

Ella had thought by 7:00 a.m., Theresa had already been snatched by the killer. That she was already being tortured, that very soon afterward, she would be dead. So had Logan.

“What’s she doing here?” Logan mumbled. On the screen, Theresa filled her tank, then got in her car and drove away.

Ella shook her head. “Everything we’ve been assuming is wrong,” she said, glancing quickly at the TV. “This means— Whoa!”

“What?”

“Rewind it!” She scooped up the remote herself.

“What did you see?”

“Hang on.” Ella leaned close to the screen as she rewound, then paused. “There!” She pointed to the very edge of the shot, at the front of a blue van that backed out shortly after Theresa’s car pulled away.

“What? You think the person in the van is following her? It could be any of the cars here, couldn’t it? Or, who knows, she could’ve been meeting someone after all. I mean, why was she still in town after her flight left?”

“No, Logan.” The look on Ella’s face was dead serious and slightly apprehensive. “A blue van was following me yesterday.”

“What?”
Logan grabbed her arm, worry filling him. “When?”

“Last night. Right before you showed up at my hotel. I was walking that trail to the hotel. It was deserted. When the van came up, I actually pulled my gun. But then the guy said something about being confused about directions and took off. I figured I was just getting paranoid.”

She let out a string of curses so creative Logan felt his eyebrows rise; they would’ve made him laugh had this not been so serious. “You think Theresa’s killer was following you?”

Ella glanced down at his hand on her arm, and he realized he was squeezing.

He relaxed his hold, trying at the same time to loosen the grip panic had on him. Ella was a trained FBI agent who carried a weapon. And, judging by the surprising strength he’d felt in her arms, she could hold her own in a fight.

“I don’t know. I can’t actually be sure he was following me. Plus, it was dark. It was a guy in the van, that I know from his voice, but I couldn’t see him. And how common are blue vans?” She sighed. “But we’d better check this out, because it seems too coincidental that a blue van shows up on the last image we have of Theresa before she died—and there was one at my hotel last night.”

She pulled her arm free from his grip. “We’d better get Theresa’s phone records, too, and see if she called someone that day. See if we can figure out why she wasn’t on that flight.”

“I’ve been working on that. It’s a process. Warrants and all. But they should be on their way now.”

Ella looked troubled as she turned to him again, and this time it had nothing to do with her fear of who’d been following her the other night. “Logan, we should push the phone company and get them to do it faster. If she
was
meeting someone that day, we might be going at this all wrong. Maybe she called some old boyfriend who lived around here. Or he called her, convinced her to come see him and catch a later flight. This could be a single murder with a typical motive.”

She hustled to the door, opened it and called out to the kid, “We need a copy of this tape.”

The kid rushed back in to do her bidding and as Ella sank into a chair to wait, Logan heard her mumble, “Maybe this isn’t a serial killer at all.”

Chapter Eight

Logan’s ex-fiancée was tall, thin and blonde. She had the kind of face that made her an obvious choice for an on-camera reporter and the kind of body that could have modeled underwear. She was absurdly perfect-looking, like a supermodel who’d stepped out of the pages of a magazine, still air-brushed.

Ella would have been happy to go her entire life without knowing that was Logan’s type.

When Logan had told her this morning that the reporter she’d seen on the TV last night was his fiancée, she’d tried not to react. And she’d tried not to think about it all afternoon as they ran down leads.

Now she stood in the police station bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror above the sink. Compared to Lyla’s blonde perfection, Ella was ordinary—with plain brown eyes and plain brown hair. She was average height, with ropey muscle hiding underneath her curves, a mouth just a little too big for her face and bags under her eyes after a sleepless night.

Get a grip, Cortez.

It didn’t matter what Logan’s type was, because she wasn’t going to stick around long enough for it to matter. And if that thought made her chest feel a little too tight, she was just going to have to deal with it.

She was here to catch a killer. And she needed to get back to it.

Straightening her spine, she pushed open the door and found Logan waiting for her.

“Did you get Theresa’s phone records yet?” she asked.

“The phone company is faxing them over right now. They should be here soon,” Logan said, walking with her toward the conference room they’d staked out earlier in the day. “I just went to the vending machines while you were in the bathroom.” He held out a candy bar. “Thought you might want something to hold you over until we grab some real food,” he said, peeling back the wrapper on his own candy.