Skin Deep (3 page)

She cleared her throat and tried for round two. “What I meant was, are these the only suspicious items your team found from the entire house,” she qualified, but still, Walker’s expression remained as unmoved as it was chilly.

“Still yes.”

Alrighty then
. Although she had to bite her tongue to do it, she focused on the evidence in front of her. Kneeling down to the concrete, she picked up the photographs, dropping her stare over the first one in the pile.

And her breath came to a crashing halt in her lungs.

“Jesus.” The photograph showed a young woman in profile, her face turned just far enough away from the camera to be useless to any sort of recognition software. Bent halfway over a crushed velvet settee, she wore a lacy black tank top and matching thong underwear, both pulled provocatively low. Her hands were bound behind her with a thin length of nylon rope tied in an intricate knot reaching halfway up her forearms, her back arched at a sharp angle as if her hair was being yanked by someone just outside the camera’s range. The corner of her darkly lipsticked mouth was pulled into a tight grimace that further supported the guess, and Isabella’s heart took a potshot at her breastbone as the rest of the photo registered. The angry red marks covering the woman’s wrists beneath the bindings looked fresh.

The bruises on her throat didn’t.

“Yeah,” Kellan said, the word going soft at the edges. “That’s why we called.”

Isabella flipped through the rest of the photos—twenty-two in all, of what appeared to be five different women all in the same setting and same basic pose—before swallowing past the knot in her throat and handing them over to Sinclair.
Don’t go back there. Don’t think about it. Don’t.
“These items were inside the lock box with the pictures?”

Walker nodded. “The rest of the closet is empty and nothing else was on the shelf. These fell out of the box with the pictures.” He pointed to the baggie full of jewelry and the bundle of rope, the same thin, white nylon kind used in the photos.

Unfortunately, it was used in a ton of other places, too, and the rope on the floor looked brand new. “Okay.” Her brain spun, trying to calculate how long it would take to get a crime scene unit out here. Chances were there was little to no evidence to go on in the rest of the house, especially after the fire, but who knew. They might get lucky. “Thanks for calling this in.”

“I take it Seventeen is done with the scene?” Sinclair asked, and Captain Bridges answered with a tight nod.

“The house will still be monitored by the RFD for the next twenty-four hours to make sure nothing flares back up. But yes. We’re about to head out.”

“Okay, thanks. We’ll let you know if we need anything else. Sharp eyes, Walker.”

“Just doing my job, Sergeant.”

Although he delivered the words without attitude, they bulls-eyed into Isabella’s sternum all the same. She flicked a nanosecond’s worth of a glance at Kellan, but he’d already aimed his boots toward the door. Which was fine, really, because she had work to do.

I trusted you, and you put my sister’s life at risk! That fucking psycho nearly killed her, Moreno. Do you have any idea what I could’ve lost?

Isabella’s heart twisted involuntarily, her mouth going dry as the image of a bright-eyed girl with dark braids and an entire life to live flashed through her mind’s eye.

Yeah. Even if Kellan didn’t know it, Isabella had
every
idea of what he could’ve lost.

And wasn’t that all the more reason to focus on nailing whoever was hurting women in the here and now?

“I’ll go ahead and do a quick look-see to make sure nothing got missed from the closet down here. Then I’ll call the fire marshal’s office to let him know we’ll need full access for CSU,” she said, locking her resolve into place as she turned toward Sinclair. “We can probably get a unit down here by lunchtime. Those guys owe me a favor for—”

“Hold on for just a second, Moreno. Don’t you think you’re jumping in a little hard?”

She let go of a shocked exhale. “No. I think I’m taking this seriously.”

Sinclair measured her with a slow glance that said he was choosing his words with care. “You take all your calls seriously. It’s what makes you a good cop. All I’m saying is maybe we should take a closer look and see if there’s something here to pursue before we go all gangbusters.”

Isabella’s chin hiked, her palms going slick beneath the clingy material of her nitrile gloves. “See if there’s something here? Are you kidding me?”

She knew playing Devil’s Advocate was a smart way to get all the angles on a case, just like she knew leading with your emotions could give you tunnel vision, or worse yet, get good cops into bad trouble. But the girls in the photos were bound and bruised, for fuck’s sake. There was no telling what might’ve happened to them off camera, if they’d been hurt or made to do things. Or worse. How was she supposed to take her emotions out of
that
?

“This looks like abuse at the very least. At worst, maybe forced prostitution or rape—God, Sam, are you looking at these pictures?” She swiped a photograph from the top of the pile on the desk in front of her, trying like hell to keep her anger in check so her hand wouldn’t shake.

“I am,” he said, a muscle pulling tight across his jawline. “And I’m trying to see them objectively, like all other potential evidence. Look at the background.”

Her stomach churned, but she forced her focus away from the girl in the photograph, taking in the black settee along with the dark red walls behind it. “What about it?”

“It’s not here, for one.” Sinclair gestured to the dingy, low-rent room around them with a quick lift of his hand. “These pictures look like they were taken someplace way more upscale. Like maybe a sex club.”

“Or an Internet porn set,” Isabella argued, but Sinclair just nodded.

“Neither of which are illegal all by themselves. As off-putting as these pictures may be to some, others participate in rough sex acts consensually. Including people who star in Internet porn,” he reminded her.

He had a point. Albeit a thin one. “What about her expression?” she challenged. “This girl looks about as far from enjoying herself as it gets.”

“Maybe,” Sinclair said, the muscle ticking in his jawline telling Isabella in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t unaffected by the photo. “But a large part of BDSM culture, not to mention porn, is role play. Acting. There are too many rape fantasy videos on some of these websites to even count.”

Gut clenching, Isabella took a different tack. “Yeah, but the girls in these photos barely look eighteen.”

“Barely eighteen and
not
eighteen are two totally different scenarios. I’m not saying I agree with either,” he said, cutting off her brewing protest with a surprisingly soft tone. “But you and I both know one of those things won’t make a case. Without an ID on any of these women, we have no way of knowing whether what’s happening in these pictures is consensual kink or a sex crime.”

Okay, so it was going to be an uphill climb. Still… “Age aside, if these girls are being forced to do anything against their will, that’s illegal no matter how old they are,” Isabella said.

Sinclair paused, his gaze going dark as it landed on the stack of photos, and finally—
finally
—he was ready to play the other side of the coin. “If someone’s moving girls, eighteen or not, that’ll fall under Peterson’s jurisdiction at the FBI.”

Isabella’s stomach clenched. Derek Peterson was in charge of their local FBI task force unit, and while he was a good agent and a decent enough guy, to say his team was overextended was a gift. “You think he’ll open an investigation?”

“Based on just the photos?” A frown bracketed Sinclair’s mouth. “Not likely.”

Oh, come
on
. “Sam—”

He stopped her words with a lift of one hand. “Listen, Moreno. If someone’s turning these women out, I want to grab whoever’s responsible just as badly as you do.”

Isabella knotted her arms over the front of her shirt, and although she was tempted as hell to refresh her argument, she knew Sinclair wasn’t the bad guy here.

At her silence, he continued. “RFD’s got this place on lockdown, so no one’s coming or going. Our best bet is to bag what we have, do our due diligence on making a case, and run all the facts up the chain of command to the FBI field office. If there’s something here, we’ll do our best to find it.”

Dammit, she didn’t like this plan. But she didn’t hate it yet, either. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this one,” Isabella said, looking down at the stack of photos Sinclair had placed on the desk. The cop in her saw all the variables, heard everything her sergeant had said about the possibility for consensual encounters.

But the part of her beneath her armor saw something very, very different. Something Isabella knew by heart and would never forget.

Something she could not, under any circumstances, let her boss or her fellow detectives or anyone else ever see, so she scraped for a breath and took a step back, focusing on the job in front of her like always.

“Someone’s hurting these girls. Or worse. It’s our job to help them,” Isabella said.

Sinclair scrubbed a hand over the light blond stubble peppering his face. “If that’s the case, we’ll do all we can to make that happen. But everything Peterson comes at us with will need a solid argument if we want him to open an official investigation.”

Isabella straightened, tucking her shoulders in toward her spine. No way would she leave these girls without someone to stand up for them. Without someone to keep them safe.

Without someone to keep them alive.

“Okay,” she said. “Then let’s give him one.”

I
sabella pushed away
from her desk, her back creaking as badly as her ancient office chair. The convenience store robbery Hale, Maxwell, and Hollister had caught three days ago had turned out to be a slam dunk thanks to a smart store owner with a lot of security cameras and a stupid thief whose license plate they’d easily lifted from the footage, so she’d thrown the last seventy-two hours’ worth of her energy into working alone, making a case
for
her case.

Hell if she hadn’t had to throw down for what little she’d been able to scrape up, too. Facial recognition on the girls in the photos had been the bust she’d expected it to be, although of course she’d tried. The rental agency for the house confirmed that the place had been vacant for nearly half a year, and the former tenant was an eighty-year-old woman who’d had no known relatives and a squeaky clean record when she’d passed away five months ago.

Still.

Isabella might be lean on hard evidence from the scene of this fire, but her gut absolutely screamed of things not right. If Peterson sank his hooks into the case, maybe took a harder look at the crime scene, had CSU scour the room in the basement for something they could’ve missed, she was positive he’d uncover something illegal.

And whoever was responsible for hurting those girls needed to go down.

“Moreno.” Sinclair stood in the doorframe of his office, tipping his head to the room behind him. “You got a second?”

Her gaze spun over the open space of the intelligence office, briefly connecting with Hollister’s before she planted her boots onto the linoleum and scooped in a deep breath. “Sure.”

“Have a seat,” he said, closing the door when she’d crossed the threshold, and shit.
Shit
. Getting asked into Sinclair’s office was a fifty-fifty on bad things about to happen, and the odds increased to seventy-thirty when he shut the door. When he told you to sit down on top of it all?

One hundred percent chance you were about to get news you didn’t want to hear.

“I just heard back from the FBI on the photos RFD found at that fire call,” he said, sliding into the chair across from her. “They’ve decided not to pursue the photos found at the house fire.”

Isabella’s heartbeat slammed in her ears. “What?”

“You put together a compelling report, and Peterson gave everything a hard look,” Sinclair said, propping his elbows over his desk and steepling his fingers as he gave her a sympathetic look. “But with all this gray area and no clear-cut evidence of an actual crime, he doesn’t have a damn thing to go on.”

There was no fucking way she was hearing this properly. “That’s what an investigation is for,” she said, trying—and failing—to keep her words level despite the anger free-flowing through her veins.

Sinclair sat perfectly still, save the barely-there lift of one brow. “An investigation into what, exactly? This case is already cold and it hasn’t even been opened. Look”—his voice softened in both volume and tone, and God, she officially hated this as much as possible. “I know this is personal for you, and it’s tough to let this one go. But for now, it’s what we’re stuck with.”

Translation: Until one of the girls in those photos becomes a body.

Not on her watch. Not
ever
.

Isabella set her molars together with a firm clack. If more evidence was what the FBI wanted, then she wasn’t going to stop until she damn well had some.

“
B
oss
, we got a problem.”

Julian DuPree took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was wearing a five thousand dollar suit. If he hadn’t been so finely dressed, chances were rather high he’d have murdered the idiot in front of him.

At least his tailor would be pleased. Julian, on the other hand? Remained highly unimpressed.

“Come in, Charles.” Julian lifted a manicured hand, ignoring the frown on his employee’s normally vacant face as he waved the behemoth into his office. Muscle had its place within Julian’s organization, and he knew the value of a good enforcer. Still, he had standards. Calling the man Rampage wasn’t going to happen, no matter how deeply he frowned or how long he’d gone by the nickname in other circles.

“So.” Julian shuffled through the papers on his antique mahogany desk even though his attention was zeroed in on the no-neck delinquent in front of him. He fucking hated
problems
. They were so untidy. “What seems to be the issue?”

“There was a fire at the holding facility in North Point,” Charles said slowly, using all the right vernacular to relay all the wrong things. “The fire marshal says it was caused by bad wiring. Ruled the whole thing accidental. That geeky freak looked up the report online.”

Ah, Vaughn. Having a hacker on staff was wonderfully beneficial. Especially one with no conscience.

“We vacated that location several weeks ago, if I recall.” Julian kept his expression purposely neutral, calibrating his tone to match even though his senses were on high alert. The only thing he hated more than problems were surprises. “How is an accidental fire in an empty facility we can’t be tied to problematic?”

Julian had gone to great lengths to make sure no names were ever used to secure his holding facilities, no rental agreements, no middlemen, no paper trail whatsoever. Using vacant houses in low rent neighborhoods to house his girls meant frequent and strategic movement on his part, but since it also kept him six steps ahead of law enforcement, the effort paid off.

Plus, the girls were filthy anyway. Turning them out in dirty, abandoned flophouses actually seemed quite fitting.

Charles shifted his weight, his cheap work boots becoming suddenly riveting. “The fire is being ruled an accident, but the location wasn’t quite empty. There…might have been some photos left behind.”

“I see.” Julian remained perfectly still even though his anger slithered beneath his skin like a living thing. “Would these be photos of my merchandise?”

He kept his girls carefully catalogued, just as he did with all of his investment property. All hard copy photos, carefully posed for anonymity, and never, ever put on the Internet. Vaughn was good, and so far, loyal. But anyone could be bought. Or sold, as it turned out. No sense in taking chances.

“Uh,” Charles said, his beady eyes still focused on the Aubusson beneath his clumsy feet, and the grunt was all the answer Julian needed. “They were just some of the extra pictures, mostly duplicates. But yeah, of the stuff we used to keep there.”

Julian’s anger flirted with rage, making his pulse pound and pushing his next question between his teeth. “And where are the photos now?”

“I’m not sure. I went back to try and find them after Best Buy over there told me a nine-one-one call had popped on the address.” Charles hooked a meaty thumb over his shoulder, gesturing in the direction of the server room down the hall where Vaughn worked, ate, and slept. “But it took a couple of days before I could dodge the cops and the fire department. The place was pretty fucked up. Barely anything left. The pictures might’ve burned along with most everything else.”

“But they weren’t there when you went back,” Julian said, his rage growing sharper and more focused as the man shook his fat, bald head.

“No, but Vaughn said the fire marshal doesn’t have the case listed as pending investigation from the RPD, and—”

Julian silenced him with nothing more than a look. “Even if the police department did open an investigation, they wouldn’t get anywhere. Do you know how I know this, Charles?”

“Uh. No, sir.”

“Because I don’t make errors. And do you know what those photos being left behind at that holding facility is?”

Charles swallowed, but at least he had the decency to answer. “An error.”

“Exactly.” Julian folded his hands over the long-forgotten paperwork placed neatly on his desk. He had far more important things to deal with than sloppy work. “Tell me, Charles. Why were the photos not moved along with the merchandise in the first place?”

“I thought…the rental company didn’t have anyone scheduled to move into the house”—Charles’s brick-end chin jerked up at the error, and he took an awkward step back on the ornately patterned rug—“uh, I mean the facility, any time soon, so I thought I had more time to get everything out of there.”

Julian knew running an organization like his meant delegating certain tasks. After all,
he
certainly wasn’t going to stay in some hovel on Glendale fucking Avenue to guard a bunch of junkie whores. Bad enough that he had to go to these flophouses on occasion to break their spirits and their bodies in order to show them to whom they belonged. But loose ends and negligent work by his subordinates, in
his
organization? That simply wouldn’t do.

“That’s not how we do business,” Julian said, forging his words in cool, quiet steel. “The photos should’ve been the first thing you took care of after the merchandise had been moved.”

“I know, boss.” Unease flooded Charles’s beefy features. “But they were just the extras. I figured keeping them wouldn’t hurt. You know. For, uh. Personal use.”

One corner of Julian’s mouth lifted. Weak bastard. Just like the rest of them.

“Ah, Charles.” Pushing back from his desk, he slipped out of his charcoal gray suit jacket, letting the lush fabric slide through his fingers before starting to roll up his shirt sleeves with meticulous care. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

This time, the man didn’t frown at the formal address. “I am?”

“Yes.” Julian opened his desk drawer, his heart pumping faster at the gleam of razor-sharp stainless steel. Yes.
Yes
. “Your error is going to hurt. A lot.”

Looked like he was going to get his suit dirty after all.

K
ellan hung
the last of his gear in the equipment room, finally allowing his muscles to unwind in relief. Considering the flash-bang that had kicked off his tour four days ago, yesterday’s twenty-four-hour shift had been relatively quiet in comparison. Two traffic wrecks, both pretty minor, and three medical assists that were more of the same. Still, a shit show could land in his lap at any time, so Kellan knew better than to let his guard down when he was on the clock at Seventeen.

If his emotions didn’t stay boxed up, things like those photos he’d found Monday morning would fuck with his head. Being cautious, even to the point of toeing the line of mild paranoia, was better than the alternative. Letting your guard down only made you vulnerable, and people who were vulnerable had a way higher chance of breaking.

And there was one thing Kellan knew for damn sure. With everything he’d seen and done, if he broke, there wouldn’t be a chance in hell of putting his ass back together.

“Walker.” Gamble’s voice caught him by the edge of surprise, and hell, for a guy that big, his lieutenant was freakishly sneaky. “You out of here?”

Kellan blanked the momentary ripple of shock from his veins, re-setting his vitals in less than a breath. “Yup.” They’d finished shift change two minutes before he’d come out here to store his gear. Next stop was food, a shower, and bed. In that order. “You?”

“Affirmative,” Gamble said, letting his roots as a Marine show.

“See you tonight at the Crooked Angel?” Kellan asked, shouldering the duffel he’d dropped by his feet. The crew on engine, squad, and ambo embodied the whole work-together/play-together thing pretty much down to the letter. Nearly everyone on Seventeen’s A-shift, along with a few people who worked in the admin offices at the RFD, killed the clock with one another on a regular basis at the local bar. Given that today was Friday and they didn’t have to be back at the fire house until Sunday morning? No way they wouldn’t all gather to blow off some steam.

Gamble lifted a dark brow along with one corner of his mouth. “Fifty bucks says I’ll see you first.”

“Dude.” Kellan conveyed his doubt with a look. No need to say out loud that he’d been a sniper in one of the most active Ranger units in the entire Army. Guys who bragged about their experience were either douchebags or posers, and anyway, he and Gamble had worked together for two years. The lieutenant definitely knew whose thread he was pulling.

But he also didn’t recant, so Kellan worked up a lazy smile. “Okay by me if you want to give me your money.”

“Uh-huh. We’ll see.”

They walked from the equipment room to the engine bay, parting ways with a pair of easy nods and see-ya-laters. Kellan made his way up Washington Boulevard, where he’d parked yesterday morning before shift. Funny how quiet the city could be before things like rush hour and regular workdays kicked in, all soft sunlight and clean storefronts. He slid in a breath of cool air, scanning the sidewalk and the two-lane thoroughfare where Station Seventeen was situated.

He saw the woman leaning against his ’68 Camaro from forty feet away.

Kellan’s pulse flared even though his footsteps never faltered. Long, denim-wrapped legs leading to lean muscles and lush, sexy curves. Loose, confident stance that spoke of both awareness and strength. Long, caramel-colored hair that she tossed away from her face as soon as she saw him coming, and God
dammit
, that was the second time this week he’d been blindsided by Isabella Moreno.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, wincing inwardly as the words crossed his lips. Not that he didn’t feel every inch of the attitude behind them, because after her fuck-up had put his sister’s life in danger three months ago, he so did. But slapping his emotions on his sleeve wasn’t on Kellan’s agenda, good, bad, or extremely pissed off. Of course, Isabella already knew he was chock full of the emotion behind door number three, anyway.

She pushed herself off the Camaro’s cherry red quarter panel, sliding one hand to her unnervingly voluptuous hip while the other remained wrapped around a cup of coffee. “Waiting for you.”

“I got that.” His tone left the what-for part of the question hanging between them, and Kellan had to hand it to her. Moreno wasn’t the type to mince words.

“I need a favor. I want you to walk me through the scene of Monday’s fire.”

Jesus, she had a sense of humor. Also, balls the size of Jupiter. “You want me to take you back to the scene of a fire that gutted a three-story house just to give you a play by play?”

She nodded, her brown eyes narrowing against the sunlight just starting to break past the buildings around them. “That about sums it up, yeah.”

“It’s a little early for you to be punching the clock, isn’t it?” he asked. Most people weren’t even halfway to the door just shy of oh-seven-hundred on a weekday morning.

Moreno? Not most people, apparently. “What can I say? I’m feeling ambitious.”

Kellan resisted the urge to launch a less-than-polite comment about her work ethic, albeit barely. “I already told you and Sinclair everything I know.”

“Okay.” Her shoulders rose and fell beneath her dark gray leather jacket, easy and smooth. “So humor me and walk me through it again anyway.”

His sixth sense took a jab at his gut, prompting him to give the question in his head a voice. “Is this part of the investigation?”

“Why do you ask?” she said, and yeah, that was a no.

“Because you called it a favor, and you just answered my question with a question.”

Moreno paused. “I’m a cop. We do that.”

Nope. No way was he buying this. Not even on her best day. “And I’m a firefighter who’s not interested in putting his ass in a sling just to humor you with an unsanctioned walk-through.”

The RFD might offer a little latitude on firefighters revisiting scenes—a fact Kellan would bet his left nut Moreno damn well knew—but just because he’d worked the job didn’t mean he had carte blanche to prance through the place like a fucking show pony now that the fire was out.

Not that a little thing like protocol seemed to bother Isabella in the least. “Your ass will be fine. I’ll take full responsibility.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that one from you before.”

The words catapulted out before Kellan could stop them. Moreno flinched, just slightly, but it was enough. “Look, I need to get back onto that scene,” she said. “Are you going to help me or not?”

His brain formed the word “no”, but all of a sudden, he registered the weary lines bracketing her eyes and the shadows that went with them like a matched set of good and tired, and his mouth tapped into something entirely different. “Did you even sleep last night?”

An image of her in bed, honey-bronze skin against pristine white sheets, barreled through his mind’s eye, and Jesus. Maybe he was the one who needed some shuteye if his subconscious was going to go off the deep end like that.

“Not really, no,” Isabella said, shifting her weight from one heavily soled boot to the other in order to stand at flawless attention on the sidewalk. “I was a little busy worrying about those girls in the pictures you found.”

The answer hit him like the sucker punch it was. Fuck.
Fuck
. “Your boss doesn’t seem to find them quite as concerning,” Kellan managed, and at her look of surprise, he continued. “If he did, he’d have opened an official investigation and you wouldn’t have needed to haul yourself all the way down here at o’dark-thirty to ask me to get you into that house, right?”

For a long minute, she just studied him with those chocolate-brown eyes. But rather than copping to anything, Moreno said, “And what’s your gut on those pictures, hmm?”

Damn. For a detective who had botched the hell out of keeping Kylie safe, she sure was asking all the right questions to get him to cave.