Drawing The Line (5 page)

             
“I’m not exerting myself. I’m sitting perfectly still.” The even cadence of Serenity’s voice clapped him back to reality, and he shuffled the paperwork in front of him into an orderly pile.

“
Ah, right.”
Real smooth, jackass.
Okay, so she was pretty. But she’d just been assaulted. He had no business thinking of anything other than making a collar on the guy who’d broken into her diner. “I didn’t mean literally. Just that the computer screen might hurt your eyes after a while.”

             
“I’d rather get this over with, if that’s okay. No offense,” she added swiftly, and great. Her blush was even hotter than the crease in her forehead. “I just want to help catch whoever did this so I can get back to normal.”

             
The last thing Jason could argue with was the desire for justice, especially when someone you cared about had been hurt. Or worse. “I’m glad Colin’s surgery was successful,” he said, hoping the reminder of the last update she’d gotten would at least put her at ease.

             
Bingo
. A tiny smile flickered over Serenity’s lips. “Me too. His wife said he’s still in recovery, and he’ll be in the hospital for a while, but the overall prognosis is hopeful.”

             
Jason matched her smile with one of his own before tipping his chin at the computer in front of her. “Well, if you need a break from faces, we can switch to trying to figure out the tattoo.” The city database had thousands of body art images in it, not a small number of which were of the skull and crossbones variety. “Just let me know.”

             
“I will. Thank you.” She returned her attention to the screen in front of her, the click of the mouse sounding off like a tiny plastic metronome against the pale green walls, and Jason looked at his stack of paperwork with renewed vigor. He had the power to solve this case, and that’s what he needed to do, plain and simple. No matter how cute Serenity’s forehead looked.

Pushing up his sleeves, he flipped
open a case file from one of the robberies he’d investigated last month after Noah had been shot, cross-referencing the details with this morning’s assaults. They were close, but there was something just off enough about the alley, the way this morning’s assailant knew just how
not
to get caught, and the niggling feeling that had been pulling at him all day took another tug at his gut.

A skel
eton tattoo…a crime with no evidence…not calculated, but cold-blooded…

“Oh my God.” Serenity’s voice wa
s barely a whisper, but it gripped every ounce of his attention as if she’d stood on the desk and screamed. “That’s him. That’s the man who was in Mac’s.”

Jason stood, rounding the corner between their adjacent desks to look over her shoulder.

Oh shit.
Shit.

“Are you sure?” Dread knifed through his gut, and he prayed for her to recant, to be
mistaken, to say anything other than—

“Definitely
. That’s him. I’m sure of it.”

S
uddenly
shit
didn’t begin to cover it.

“I’m going to nee
d you to sit tight while I talk to my Lieutenant,” Jason said, running off a quick printout of the mug shot on her screen. He hustled into the hallway before she could ask any questions, not breaking stride as he summoned Noah from their shared office a few doors down.

“
We need to talk to Lieu, right now. This case just went from bad to nightmare.”

A frown bracketed Noah’s
perpetual five o’clock shadow as he followed Jason toward the glass-walled office at the end of the hall, where Lieutenant Martin was clearly on the phone. “Come on, Jay. How bad could…ho-ly shit,” Noah said, staring at the printout Jason had just flashed in his direction. “Please tell me that’s not who Serenity Gallagher just put an ID to for this assault.”

“I could
.” Oh man, he wanted to. The word
no
felt almost decadent in his mouth. “But it would make me a liar.”

“You think he’s getting opportunistic now that Sands is in jail?”

“I think the Black Skulls made a lot of money ripping people off with the smash and dash. This is just a slicker version of the same crime. Only this time, he left a witness.”

Having likely seen them coming, Lieutenant Martin waved Jason and Noah into his office, hanging up the phone as they crossed the threshold and shut the door. “
Tell me we’re getting somewhere on the Gallagher case.”

Jason gripped the printout in his hand
so hard it crumpled, and he forced himself to stand still on the carpet in front of Lieu’s desk. “We’re getting somewhere, alright. She just gave up a positive ID on a mug shot.”

“And why is it that we’re sitting here talking about it instead of bringing this guy in?”

“Because that tattoo she saw isn’t of a skeleton. It’s of a very distinct Grim Reaper.”

The lieutenant’s brows snapped together. “Are you telling me—
”

“She
ID’ed Dirk Brody.”

L
ieutenant Martin’s shoulders hit the back of his desk chair with a thump and a hard curse, and yeah, that about summed things up. “Christ. Is she sure?”

The image o
f Serenity’s face, with the stubborn crease in her forehead and her balls-to-the-wall attitude, forced a humorless laugh past Jason’s lips. “One hundred percent. And now that Ernie Sands is in jail, it only makes sense that Brody would step in to expand his territory.” The guy might value brute force over brilliance, but he was slicker than a case and a half of Pennzoil. Copycatting the robberies with his own touch in order to make fast cash was just his speed.

“Detective Morgan.”
Lieutenant Martin split his dark-eyed gaze between him and Noah, settling it on Jason before he spoke. “Are you still interested in this task force?”

Confusion pricked through him, but he answered anyway. “Yes, sir.”

“Good, because you’re about to be up to your ass in it. Up until this morning, Brody belonged to vice. But now he’s ours, and we’re going to need to work fast.”

Noah shook his head, marking his confusion.
“I don’t get it. Dirk Brody fronts the biggest drug ring in Brenstville, possibly in half of upstate New York. Vice has been trying to nail him for ages. Why would they just turn him over to us?” he asked, and Jason echoed the sentiment. No self-respecting cop would let another department snap up jurisdiction on a case they’d been building for years. Unless…

“Because I just go
t off the phone with dispatch,” Lieutenant Martin said. “There was another robbery with the exact same MO at a hardware store on Ninth. Both employees were stabbed to death at the scene. This is a murder case now, gentlemen, and it happened in our backyard. Which means we have jurisdiction, but we’re going to need vice’s help to nail Brody if he’s responsible.”

“Oh hell,” Jason murmured, his shoulders threading up tight. Brody had never been afraid to get his hands dirty, but he was notoriously careful
, and even more notoriously clean. No one had ever been able to pin him for anything, let alone anything that would send him to prison for the rest of his rotten life. “You want me on this case as part of the task force so we can collar Brody for these murders
and
break up his drug ring?”

Lieutenant Martin’s voice went as unyielding as his stare. “
Exactly. And if Serenity Gallagher is going to testify against him in a case that’ll link him directly to a double murder, we need her in protective custody. As of right now, Morgan, that woman doesn’t leave your sight.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Serenity
stared at Detective Morgan’s GQ-worthy profile from the passenger seat of his Tahoe, stuck squarely between wanting to scream her head off and cry her eyes out. Not that either would help her epically crappy situation, but right about now, at least the screaming would feel down-to-her-toes good.

“Look, are you absolutely certain all of this is neces
sary?” It was a total last-ditch effort, but come on. Protective
custody
? She had a business to run. Not to mention sanity to preserve. Yes, Jules had stepped up to run Mac’s temporarily, and her staff had rallied to fill in the gaps in a show of incredible support. But being cooped up all alone with no one to cook for and no diner to manage was going to drive Serenity completely whack-a-doo.

“
’Fraid so,” Jason said, keeping his eyes on the road as he passed off a little shrug, and God. How could he be so nonchalant?

“But you said this
Brody guy has been arrested. I mean, I picked him out of a lineup.” A thick tangle of dread tugged her belly at the memory. None of the men in the lineup had been able to see her, and Jason and his boss had been right there at her side the whole time. The process had taken less than a minute once the DA had asked her to identify who’d attacked her in the diner.

But a minute’s worth of looking
into the eyes of the man who’d viciously stabbed her friend was fifty-nine seconds too long.

“
Yes, Brody’s in custody.” Jason made the turn toward her apartment building, the headlights of the SUV slicing through the warm evening air. “But since Colin wasn’t able to identify anyone from the photos my partner brought to the hospital, you’re our only witness. It’s safer to keep you in a secure location, at least for now.”

Serenity
cleared her throat, not quite willing to ditch her last-ditch. “If he’s in jail, then Brody can’t hurt me, right?”

“It’s a necessary precaution, Ms. Gallagher
. We wouldn’t do it otherwise.”

The easygoing flash of his baby blues hit her in ful
l force from the driver’s seat, and she rubbed a hand across the back of her aching neck with a wince. “That doesn’t work on me, just so you know.”

He pulled the Tahoe into a vacant parking spot and
cut the engine before turning to look at her more closely. “What doesn’t work on you?”

“That…
charming
thing you do. To try and distract people and get what you want. It doesn’t work on me.” Okay, so maybe she was pushing the boundaries of polite conversation. But her whole life had just been upended with one swift tug. Would it kill him to give her a straight answer?

Rather than take offense, or eve
n get frosty, he simply said, “Good to know. Look, we don’t have a whole lot of time here, and I’m sure you’re exhausted. So what do you say we get your things and head over to the safe house so we can get settled in?”

Her thoughts screeched to a halt right along with her movements
, and she froze with one hand mid-lift toward the car door. “I’m sorry. Did you say
we
?”

J
ason got out and popped the handle for her, smooth as freshly rolled pie crust. “You’ll have someone with you for the first few days, at least until the arraignment.”

“And that someone is you?”
Say no. Please say no. Please…

“Yes.
” Cue the mischievous boyish smile, and her traitorous immunity considered a permanent holiday. “Most of the time, that someone will be me.”

Fantastic.
Because what she needed was a whole bunch of downtime with a silver-tongued detective whose ass looked firm enough to give perfectly in-season cantaloupes a run for their money.

Not that she was checking
out his ass for less-than-savory purposes, but come on. The guy was right in front of her on the sidewalk, and for God’s sake, dress pants at a casual gait gave a whole new meaning to the phrase
scenic view
.

Serenity
stumbled for just a step before speeding up to slip around him as they got closer to her front door, and she forced herself to focus. It wasn’t lost on her that Jason’s gaze swung from one end of the grounds to the other in a constant assessment of their surroundings. In the four years she’d lived here, there had never been so much as toilet paper in the trees. Surely he was overreacting with all this cloak and dagger stuff.

“Okay,” he said after a cursory sweep of her apartment
. “There’s a backup unit nearby who will come get your laptop and cell phone so we can keep them secure down at the precinct, but go ahead and grab anything else you’ll need.”

Unease trickled into her chest
as one more thing hurtled out of her control. “Nobody said anything about handing over my cell phone.”

“
It’s too easily traced. If we have guys who can find you in less than five minutes using the GPS coordinates, you can bet Brody does too.”

“But what if there’s an emergency at Mac’s?” At the very least, Serenity needed to be a
ble to get in touch with Jules. The diner was her lifeblood, her home. She hadn’t worked her butt off for four years just to pass it off like a football on game day.