Read Online Rapid Fire by Jessica Andersen - Free Book Online Page B

up under a BCCPD
ball cap. “Alissa! What are you doing here?”
     
    Her
friend quirked a half smile. “I work here, remember?” Then she winced. “Sorry.
That was mean.”
     
    “No,”
Maya countered, burying the unintended sting, “It’s the truth. The real
question is what am I doing here?”
     
    Alissa
hit the lights before she moved around the desk and sat in a visitor’s chair,
which hadn’t been there when Maya had last used the office. That detail brought
a pang, as did the subtle differences she noticed now that the room was fully
illuminated. Her piles remained on the desk, but her computer had been shifted
slightly, and the mouse was positioned on the left of the keyboard, not the
right. Thorne had just arrived, which meant that someone else had used her
space, touched her things.
     
    She tried
not to let it bother her.
     
    “I heard
he called you again,” Alissa said without preamble, her eyes reflecting her
worry. “I don’t like that.”
     
    “I’m not
exactly turning handsprings, either,” Maya said. She’d aimed her tone for dry,
but it came out sounding more plaintive than she’d intended.
     
    “What
happened?”
     
    Knowing
she would have to go over it again in a few minutes with Thorne and the chief,
she quickly sketched out the phone call for her friend. She left out the
physical sparks she’d sensed—or imagined—between her and Thorne in the elevator
and in her apartment, but couldn’t quite mask the fear she’d felt when she’d
thought he was in danger.
     
    It was
concern for a fellow cop, she told herself, but heard her voice hitch on the
details and cursed herself for the weakness, for falling back toward the same
pattern of mistakes when she damn well knew better.
     
    Thorne
was as much a temptation for her as the rum. She’d learned that once before,
and didn’t need to repeat the lesson.
     
    When she
got to the part about the delivery van, Alissa’s eyes sharpened. “Did you get a
look at the van and the driver?”
     
    “Yes, but
Thorne traced the license plate back to a stolen vehicle. I—” Maya broke off as
she realized she was talking to a woman whose first and best love was
sketching, though her talents had been underutilized within the Bear Claw PD.
“Hell yes, I saw the driver!”
     
    Alissa
leaned over to her desk—which wasn’t much of a stretch in the small office—and
snagged a spiral-bound sketchpad and a cup full of pencils, some plain lead,
some colored. “Was his face round or oval?”
     
    Though
the forensics department had sophisticated software packages capable of
generating uncanny likenesses from witness descriptions, the programs worked on
human averages rather than feel, and were limited by their templates. Alissa
preferred sketching the old-fashioned way when possible, and had a damn good
record doing it her way.
     
    Maya
closed her eyes and tried to picture the scene out in front of her building.
She edited out the emotions and focused on the van.
     
    “He had
an oval face,” she said, trying to put the image into words, “but his jaw was
square. More like a bottom-heavy oval.” She described the driver as best she
could—short dark hair, lined brow, jowly cheeks—and a good likeness emerged on
Alissa’s pad.

     
    Trouble
was, another suspect fit all too well in Maya’s brain. Henkes was powerful.
Arrogant. Needed to be the center of attention, whether in politics or his own
home. And though profiling was designed to identify the type of person who’d
done the crimes—not the specific person who’d done them—she couldn’t ignore the
fact that her profile matched the personality of a man she already knew to be
capable of violence against his own son. More importantly, he was tied to at
least two of the crime scenes. How could she not consider him a stronger
suspect than the man in the picture?
     
    Because
coincidence isn’t evidence, her conscience warned, and because you have another
reason for wanting it