Skin Deep (22 page)

Vaughn clacked a series of commands over the nearest keyboard, one-handed. “Yup, sure do. I tapped into the security feed for her building—piece of fucking cake, by the way—but she’s not there now. The camera in the lobby has her leaving at about oh-five-hundred this morning. Interestingly enough, she landed on the firefighter’s doorstep.” Another clack, and the grainy image on the computer monitor changed. “They got hot and heavy on their way into his place a couple hours ago, and haven’t come out since.”

Julian smiled. This was going to be even easier than he’d anticipated. “Excellent. Don’t take your eyes off that feed. If either one of them so much as sets a toe over the threshold, I want to be informed on my cell phone.”

“You’re headed out?” Vaughn’s fleece-covered head pulled back in surprise.

Julian’s heart beat faster, his blood beginning to rush at the dark pleasure of the task in front of him.

“Yes. Charles and Franco and I have some work to do. It’s time to bait the hook.”

K
ellan sank
his shoulders beneath his RFD hoodie, blocking out the early October chill as he surveyed the front of Isabella’s tidy, three-story apartment building along with the two on either side of it. Evening sunlight still illuminated the city block, although the collection of evenly placed streetlights would take over the job in less than an hour. The handful of people crossing the leaf-covered sidewalk looked friendly and perfectly in-place as they walked their dogs or strolled by, and after his second three-sixty, Isabella cleared her throat from beside him.

“You do realize this is completely unnecessary,” she argued—albeit lightly—for the thousandth time.

And for the thousandth time, Kellan argued right back. “Look, you can blame my lieutenant for this. But if I have to check in with him every twelve hours as a just-in-case, then you can put up with me doing a little look-see while I walk you to your door.”

“A little look-see?” Isabella’s caramel-colored brows lifted in challenge, and okay, she might have him there.

Too bad for her, the last ten years had honed his ability to field a raft of shit like a consummate pro. “Suck it up, buttercup. I like you. I’m not going to apologize for wanting to make sure you get into your apartment safe and sound.”

Although he’d intended the words as a tease, Kellan couldn’t help but realize how much truth hid behind them, too. Yes, the sex had once again been mind-blowing, and he and Isabella were clearly compatible between the sheets. But then she’d opened up about Angel and getting taken off this case, trusting him enough to let him in, then spend an entire day with him besides, and damn it, Kellan couldn’t deny what was right in front of him.

He
did
like her.

Which would be dangerous, except for the fact that right now, in this moment, it felt too fucking good to scare him.

“Fine.” Isabella’s throaty voice brought him back to reality with a sexy snap. She tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, a tiny smile shaping her mouth as she turned and started to move over the sidewalk. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you insist on checking under my bed, you’re going to find a legion of dust bunnies. They may or may not be friendly.”

“You’re a badass,” he said, falling into step beside her and nudging her shoulder with his. “I’m willing to bet you can take the dust bunnies.”

“You’re lucky I like you, too. Otherwise I’d make you fend for yourself,” Isabella quipped back. She pulled her key ring from her jacket pocket, unlocking the main door to the building and holding it wide to usher him over the threshold. “Here we are. Home sweet home.”

Kellan scanned the tiled, hallway-style lobby, and nice, there were two—make that three surveillance cameras in place. “Not bad security,” he said, jutting his chin at the acrylic dome anchored to the ceiling by the bank of metal mailboxes lining the main corridor.

She nodded. “The feeds aren’t monitored live, but the cameras are a nice deterrent. We haven’t had so much as a purse-snatching since they were installed a couple of years ago.” She pressed the
up
button, stepping onto the elevator when the doors opened a few seconds later.

Kellan followed, and as much as he knew his segue to the next topic might tempt her to clam up, he also knew he couldn’t dodge it. “Are you going to be okay, not working on this case?”

Isabella’s shoulders tensed around her neck. Still, she answered. “I don’t know. The most important thing is that DuPree gets caught. But this is personal. My c—”

Her lashes fanned wide for just a breath before her eyes dropped to the thin carpet covering the elevator floor, and Christ, the sadness on her face was enough to gut him.

“Hey.” Kellan stepped in, hooking a finger beneath her chin. “I know you feel responsible for Angel. Your team will get DuPree, Moreno.”

By the time Isabella lifted her gaze back to his, she’d nailed her guard back into place. “I know,” she said, her smile as small as it was brief. Before he could answer—or call her out on
her
answer—the elevator bumped to a stop, the doors sliding open at the third floor. He and Isabella moved down the hall, the jingle of her keys breaking the silence as she flipped them against her palm.

“This is me,” she said, stopping in front of a glossy black door labeled with a brass plaque reading 311. The hallway looked as bright and well-kept as the rest of the building, the door solid and undisturbed, and Kellan’s muscles loosened with ease.

Right up until Isabella turned her key in the lock, and the deadbolt didn’t click.

She whipped her hand from the door just as a shot of adrenaline punched through Kellan’s chest. “I always lock it,” she whispered, bending down noiselessly to liberate the Glock 43 from the ankle holster beneath the cuff of her jeans.

Fuck
. He reached beneath his hoodie for the holster at his side, pulling out the SIG Sauer P229 he’d been licensed to carry ever since he’d been discharged from the Army. Sending one last split-second gaze over the hallway, Kellan double-checked to be sure the space was empty of either potential threats or friendlies who could get hurt.

“You’re clear,” he whispered.

She nodded, one hard dip of her chin. “My kitchen is at three o’clock, and there’s a breakfast nook next to it. Clear that space while I check the bedroom on the other side. You copy?”

“Affirmative.”
Focus. See what’s in front of you. Breathe.
“I’ve got your six. Go.”

Reaching down with her left hand while she held the Glock steady in her right, Isabella turned the knob, pushing her way inside the apartment. Her body tensed three steps over the threshold, and holy
hell
.

The place was ruined.

A hard prickle of warning set in over the back of Kellan’s neck, growing sharper with each passing second. Daylight slanted in past the mostly closed blinds, outlining the wreckage of what looked to have once been her living room. An upholstered love seat sat in the middle of the room, sideways and slashed to ribbons. The coffee table in front of it had been upended, the TV beyond smashed and scattered to the four corners of the hardwood floors. Although the room wasn’t particularly large or overly cluttered, everything Kellan could see—picture frames, a handful of throw pillows, books that had presumably been yanked from the shelf on the wall—was all shattered or shredded beyond repair.

Although her eyes were saucer-wide, Isabella still remained on point, her movements quiet and her muscles spring-loaded and ready to strike. With her left hand, she indicated for him to head to the right side of the apartment, leading with her Glock as she headed down the hallway to the left.

Air so hot it hurt to breathe…sunlight scorching in through the windows…

“If you move, I will kill your friend. You’ll watch him die screaming, and then I’ll kill you just as slowly.”

Old emotions threatened to burn bright and bubble up, but Kellan set his mind on the here and now of Isabella’s apartment.
Focus
.

He inhaled, marshaling his heartbeat to a steady rhythm and squeezing his shoulders in readiness. The kitchen was as trashed as the living room, pine cabinets gaping wide, dishes scattered in pieces over the terra cotta floor tiles. But both it and the breakfast nook were thankfully free from threats.

Or at least the people who had caused them. For now.

“Clear,” Kellan called out, his voice sounding canon fire-loud in his ears. Relief spun through him as Isabella echoed the sentiment a few seconds later, and he retraced his steps back to the living room.

“The place has been completely tossed,” he said, holstering his weapon and waiting for her to do the same before reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder. “This had to be DuPree.”

Isabella let out a slow exhale, her expression unreadable. “It was.”

Concern mixed with confusion in Kellan’s veins. Both must have shown on his face, because she turned on her heel to lead the way to her bedroom. The quilt had been pulled from her bed along with the powder blue top sheet, and Kellan’s blood turned to ice at the sight of the deep gouges cut into the mattress, all the way down to the fabric-wrapped springs. Every dresser drawer had been yanked open and emptied, her underwear strewn all around the room as if on display. But it was what hung over the full-length mirror in the corner of the once-cozy space that made Kellan’s heart go ballistic.

“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.”

I
sabella 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 break-ins 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 break-in.” 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.”

Her pulse clattered in yet another round of
you can’t be serious
. “What? No.”

“A clear and present threat was made against you,” Sinclair said, gesturing to the mirror where her dress and the ominous message still stood like a taunt. “What else would you suggest we do?”