Chapter Two
Isabella Moreno pushed back from her desk, trying with all her might to evil eye the paperwork at her elbow into submission. For every report she’d filed this morning, another three had popped up in its place, and after four hours, she was damn near ready to cry uncle.
Give her thieves, rapists, and gang-banging street thugs any day. But all the requisition-this and document-that required by the Remington Police Department? Now that could really kill a girl.
The sound of her boss’s throat clearing kicked her chin to attention and her pulse into third gear.
“All right everybody, listen up,” Sergeant Sam Sinclair said in a clipped voice that reminded Isabella—and probably every other cop in the Thirty-Third, maybe even all of Remington—that he was as tough as he was dedicated to the job.
“We just caught a double. Convenience store robbery over in South Hill and a report of something suspicious found at the scene of a house fire over on Glendale.”
“Something suspicious?” Isabella asked, her chest tightening by just a fraction. “Like a body?”
“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?” Detective Shawn Maxwell threw her a wry smile from his desk across the squad room, and she worked up an identical twin to the expression in return.
“Yeah, that’s me.” She snorted, although not unkindly, because truth? Maxwell’s sarcasm wasn’t poorly placed. “All hugs and rainbows and unicorns.”
“And bodies, apparently. Overachiever,” he lobbed back.
Of the four detectives in the Thirty-Third Precinct’s Intelligence Unit, she and Maxwell had the most seniority at the RPD, and shared a warped sense of cop humor as a result.
Kind of funny that he was the oldest detective in the group while she was the youngest, but hey.
Experience was experience, and they both had a buttload.
“The suspicious find is not a body,” Sinclair said, shooting a glance in her direction. “But first responders are calling it evidence of a possible crime.”
Despite the brashness she wore like body armor, her sergeant’s gruff affirmation allowed Isabella to breathe a little easier. As much as she loved her job and would stop at nothing to get it done, the grim parts were still…well, grim. Victims most of all.
Crimes, she could solve. But saving a victim after the fact was as impossible as hitching a wagon to the moon.
Not that Isabella hadn’t spent the last eleven years of her life trying.
Knock it off, she silently chided, pushing back from the stack of paperwork strewn over her blotter and the three half-to-mostly-empty cups of tea surrounding it.
“Which call do you want me and Hollister to take?” Isabella asked, reaching for the car keys in the top drawer of her standard-issue metal desk.
Grim or not, there were still bad guys out there who needed to be put to justice.
It was time to shove up her sleeves and make that happen.
“Actually, neither.”
She froze, her eyes darting from her partner Liam Hollister’s don’t-look-at-me expression to Sinclair’s impenetrable blue-gray stare. “Sorry?”
“Hollister’s going to back up Maxwell and Hale at the robbery.” He jerked his crew cut at the three detectives sitting at their respective desks, all of whom started to move at the action. “You and I are headed to the fire over on Glendale.”
Oooookay. Although it was on the tip of her tongue to ask what she’d done to deserve special snowflake status, Isabella refrained.
Despite the fact that she and Hollister were technically partners, the four of them worked interchangeably on cases.
She worked apart from the group often enough—mostly when she requested extra assignments or volunteered to fly solo, but still.
Anyway, the two years Isabella had worked for Sam told her in no uncertain terms that questioning his methods—in front of the team, no less—wouldn’t land her anywhere she wanted to be.
“Copy that,” she said. Double-checking the Glock-and-badge combo at her right hip, she grabbed the least cold cup of tea from her desk and followed her sergeant down the hallway of the Intelligence office.
She steadied her pulse to keep time with her footsteps, smoothing the thump-thump-thump into a steady rhythm until she and Sinclair reached his city-issued unmarked Chevy Tahoe.
“Everything okay?” Isabella lifted her brows just slightly, pulling her seatbelt across the front of her fitted black top.
They didn’t stand on a whole lot of pretense in Intelligence, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have to play this just right in order to figure out why her boss was acting nine kinds of cagey about this call.
Sinclair’s blond brows went up to mirror hers. “You mean other than the suspicious evidence found at this fire?”
Alllllrighty. If Sinclair wanted to get right to the case, she certainly had no problem jumping feet-first into work. It was, after all, her MO. “Suspicious evidence is a little vague, huh? We got anything else to go on?”
“Not much, I’m afraid.” Sinclair slid a pair of aviator sunglasses over his face and pulled the Tahoe out onto Franklin Street, headed toward Remington’s north side.
Having lived in the city her whole life, Isabella knew the place as well as her own last name.
Not an entirely small feat considering it was the second largest city in North Carolina.
“Well, it’s not a body,” she prompted, and Sinclair nodded to reaffirm.
“Story I got from the call-in was that RFD responded to a house fire, and after the flames were out, they found something they deemed serious enough to have us take a look at.”
The back of Isabella’s neck prickled beneath her ponytail. Something about this still wasn’t gelling. “And you’re doing the walk-and-talk because…?”
“Captain Bridges out at Seventeen called it in.”
And there it is. “That’s why you’re coming out with me instead of sending Hollister or Maxwell or Hale? Because Seventeen is on-scene?”
“I’m coming out with you because I enjoy your sparkling personality, Moreno.” God, he put just enough good humor to the words to make the sentiment stick, too. “But, to address your concern, yes. Kellan Walker made the find. Since you two have a little history, I thought I’d tag along.”
Isabella’s stomach pinched beneath the top of her jeans.
“Kellan Walker and I don’t have any history.
And he definitely doesn’t concern me,” she said.
Piss her off? Check. Drive her bat-shit crazy?
Check. Hell, he’d even turned her on a little (translation: a lot) with those crystal blue eyes and stupid-broad shoulders and dark, sexy scruff.
At least, he had before the whole Chicago debacle three months ago. But nobody—nobody—concerned her.
Because Isabella knew far better than to let them.
“Okay,” Sinclair said, a pop of surprise moving through her veins as his tone backed up the word. “Then we shouldn’t have any issues.”
Sure. Just as long as she and Walker didn’t have to speak, they’d be peachy.
Not that she was the one with the problem.
She’d busted her ass three months ago on his sister Kylie’s case, which had been a doozy and a half, thank you very much.
In order to keep Kylie safe after she’d witnessed a brutal murder halfway across the country, Isabella had trusted a former colleague, and Kellan had trusted her.
Funny thing about a house of cards, though.
If even one was crooked, the whole lot of them came crashing down.
Isabella had promised Walker’s sister protection she unknowingly hadn’t been able to deliver when a member of her old colleague’s team had turned out to be dirty, and the case had culminated in a violent shootout.
Even though Kylie had ended up unharmed, it hadn’t been due to Isabella’s slick detective skills.
Walker had been furious with her that his sister’s safety had been compromised.
She shoved back the fresh shot of remorse blooming in her chest. “So, what exactly did these guys find, anyway?” she asked, focusing her thoughts on this call, where they belonged.
“I don’t know, but we’re about to find out.”
Sinclair pulled up to the uni directing traffic around the sea of emergency response vehicles, flashing his badge to gain entry to the scene.
They got as close as they could, which wasn’t saying much under the circumstances, but Isabella didn’t mind hoofing it a little if it meant she could observe the scene of a crime from the outside in.
She and Sinclair got out of the Tahoe about a half-block from what—as best she could tell—was ground zero for the fire.
Every last one of her senses pinged to life as they moved over the seen-better-days sidewalk and past a couple of detached row houses.
The neighborhood was known for its high crime, which meant the intel likely wouldn’t be great, either.
People in high-crime neighborhoods tended to have selective memories when it came to recounting suspicious activity.
But if the address of the fire had popped anything weird in their database, Sinclair would’ve mentioned it.
So, right now, Isabella had to fly on what they had.
Which was a whole lot of French-fried house.
Damn, the thing smelled as bad as it looked, the bitter-burnt punch of smoke combining with the scorched siding and smashed out windows to hammer home the suggestion that the structure was a total loss.
She scanned the scene, her stomach tightening involuntarily at the sight of the firefighters milling around and storing their gear in various response vehicles.
Stop being an idiot. She and Kellan might not have the best history in the galaxy, or okay, even be on speaking terms right now. But a job was a job. There was no reason for her stomach to get all traitorously jumpy over clapping eyes on him again.
Even if he did hate her guts.