Tactical Advantage (7 page)

“No—”

“You know as well as I do that sometimes things happen that are beyond any one officer’s control.” Julia shushed Annie’s protest and gently chided both men. “Instead of debating who’s to blame for Miss Hermann’s injuries, I’d be more worried about the two fake cops and what they said or did that convinced the legitimate officers it was safe to abandon their post.”

Nick glanced back at the nurse. “I’m already working on that, ma’am.”

Mac seemed to accept his wife’s words more easily than Nick’s or Annie’s explanations and apologies. “I don’t see the need for any kind of reprimand. Or restriction of duty. Yet.” He pointed a finger at Nick. “But you keep an eye on her.”

Nick’s thick chest expanded with a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”

Mac defused some of the tension between the two men by switching from supervisor to CSI mode. He dropped the camera into an evidence bag and scrawled his name on its chain-of-custody sheet. He brought it over for Annie to sign, as well. “I’ll get this to the lab myself so we can get the pictures processed. I’ll check it for the perp’s prints, too.”

“He was wearing gloves,” Annie warned him. “I remember seeing black from head to toe—ski mask, hood, black parka, gloves—you won’t find any identifiers.”

Her boss was nothing if not thorough. “I’ll check it anyway. There could be trace. In the meantime, you get some rest.” He turned to Nick. “You keep me in the loop on anything you find regarding Annie’s assault. And you—” he dipped his sandy-blond head to kiss his wife “—I’ll see at home.”

Julia nodded, smiling up at her husband. “Happy New Year.”

After Mac left, Nick picked up his jacket and shrugged into it. He pulled a charcoal-gray knitted scarf from his pocket and headed toward the curtain blocking them from the other E.R. bays while Annie turned her attention to Julia.

The nurse handed her papers and imparted some quick medical info. “The doctor left you this prescription for antibiotics, but with your tetanus shot current, there’s really nothing you need to do except get some rest. If you develop a severe headache, double vision, nausea—anything that comes on suddenly and lingers or concerns you—call your personal physician immediately or come back to the E.R. Check in with your doctor in a week to ten days about removing the stitches. The information’s all here if you have any questions. Do you have a ride home?”

Annie’s mouth opened, but she didn’t get a chance to speak.

“Yes, she does.”

Annie swung around. Nick Fensom hadn’t left. The crackle of electricity that blazed in those cobalt eyes hadn’t gone, either.

He was daring her to argue with him. “I’m taking her home.”

“All right, then. Off to the next patient.” Julia gathered her instruments and computer pad. “Oh, and be careful about brushing your hair—those stitches will be pretty tender for a few days.”

“I’ll remember. Thank you.”

With a friendly smile, the nurse left. There was no avoiding the burly detective now.

“I thought you’d gone.” Nick’s only response was to pick up Annie’s black, knee-length coat off the chair beside him. “You don’t have to take care of me.”

He shook the coat open and held it up for her to put on. “Then you don’t know me.”

Maybe it was the bump on her head and exhaustion from being up all night, or maybe it was the unexpected glimpses of chivalry beneath Nick’s thorny exterior that made her surrender to the cryptic promise she heard in his voice. Feeling too physically drained and off her mental game to put up any kind of fight, she simply nodded and turned to slide her arms into the lined wool sleeves.

If his hands lingered a moment to add another layer of warmth against her shoulders, Annie couldn’t be sure. Nick pulled away as quickly as she’d imagined the tender gesture, muttering a choice word under his breath as he turned toward the sound of raised voices coming from the waiting room. Annie followed him out into the hallway where the commotion grew louder with every step.

He paused for a moment before turning the corner to the E.R.’s check-in desk. “Ah, nuts. Brace yourself.”

“For what?” What she’d thought was an argument she could now tell were several excited people, all talking at once. “What is that?”

“My family.” Nick squared his shoulders and moved forward again. “Mom. Dad.”

“Nicky!” The group of people clamoring at the receptionist’s counter turned as one and swarmed him. “Are you all right?”

The dark-haired man who answered to
Dad
reached him first. “George got a call that you were going to the E.R. Are you hurt?”

Butted aside by the flow of people surrounding Nick, Annie retreated to the wall to watch nearly a dozen concerned visitors hug him, squeeze his shoulder or shake his hand.

“I’m fine.” Nick leaned in to kiss his mother’s cheek. “In one piece. I promise.”

His mother clutched her hand to her heart. “Thank God it was a false alarm.”

“Then why are we at the hospital?” That was the silver-haired man in the dark green stadium coat.

“I had to bring a coworker in,” Nick explained.

A petite woman with striking white hair went pale. “Not Spencer.”

Nick chuckled. “Don’t worry, Grandma, he’s fine, too.”

“Then who got hurt?”

“Annie...” Nick nudged aside a younger version of
himself—a brother, no doubt—and spotted her shrinking away from the chaos. “Annie?”

“Oh, my goodness, look at her.” At Grandma’s pitying gasp, the swarm shifted course and moved toward Annie.

“I’m Connie.”

The white-haired woman was quickly joined by Nick’s mother. “Poor dear. I’m Trudy Fensom. Noah, get her a chair.”

One of the brothers darted away. “I’m on it.”

“What a bummer to spend your New Year’s Eve in the hospital,” a sister added, extending a hand to introduce herself. “I’m Natalie.”

The family resemblance was strong in the Fensom family—dark hair, stocky shapes—the subtleties of maintaining a polite distance completely forgotten in their sudden concern for her. “I’m fine. Really.”

“Come on, guys.” Nick shouldered his way through to Annie’s side. “Give her some room to breathe.”

There were lots of introductions, strong handshakes and friendly greetings. She gave a quick rundown on what a criminologist did. And no, she’d never had stitches before. Did the bruise forming beneath the edge of the bandage really hurt? And then they were regaling her with past injuries, comparing if one sister’s broken arm from a skiing mishap had hurt more than one brother’s broken leg from a football collision.

In the span of a mere few minutes, there were conversations over conversations, and Annie lost track of more than one. She might have gotten the two brothers switched around. The names all started with N, right? Well, no, the mom’s name was Trudy. The silver-haired man was Nicolas, Senior—but Nick’s dad was Clay and Nick was the Junior. Or maybe Clay was a middle name and, oh heck.

“We haven’t met.” Annie startled at the hand on her elbow. She turned to see a distinguished-looking man in a cashmere sweater whose sharp gray eyes seemed faintly familiar. He pulled her a few steps away from the chaos and smiled. “I’m George Madigan. Nick’s mother is my sister.”

Annie snapped to attention. She wiped her palm on the black wool of her coat before shaking his hand. “Deputy Commissioner Madigan?”

“Guilty as charged.” She glanced over her shoulder. Nick was taking the opportunity to herd his family to a less congested location out of the path of hospital staff for this early morning meet-and-greet. “You’re Annabelle Hermann.”

It was a statement, not a question.

Really? Nick was related to one of KCPD’s top-ranking cops? He could have pulled rank if CSI Supervisor Taylor had threatened him with a reprimand. And what connections did she have? Who was looking out for her in all of tonight’s mess? Her eyes narrowed as she turned back to one of the department’s senior command officers. “Am I in trouble?”

“Not at all. I oversee the budget for the task force among other things, so I’m familiar with all your names. But this isn’t an official visit.” He nodded toward the retreating group. “We all happened to be at Nick’s house when my assistant called with the Dispatch report about an officer being hurt.”

“And you thought it was Nick.” That explained the crowd of Fensoms. “That must have scared you guys. I’m sorry.”

“It’s a hazard of being a cop, Annabelle. My ex-wife couldn’t handle the risks involved, but Trudy’s side of the family seems to take it all in stride.”

That, they did. En masse.

“It’s Annie, sir.” The nerves that tightened her chest eased a little. The deputy commissioner’s presence was just an uncomfortable coincidence, not a checkup on her inability to protect a crime scene. “No one calls me Annabelle anymore. Not since my folks passed.”

“You lost them both?”

“Yes, sir. A car accident ten years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” He switched the coat he carried to the opposite arm and abruptly changed topics. “I’m assuming your assault is related to the Rose Red Rapist investigation and I’ll see a report on my desk in the next few days?”

Maybe this was some kind of off-duty check on the task force’s progress, or lack thereof, with tonight’s setback, after all. Annie wasn’t sure exactly how the task force reports filtered up to the administrative offices of KCPD, but she was certain she’d be little more than a footnote at the next precinct chiefs’ meeting with the commissioner. She’d better explain herself now. “I believe someone wanted to destroy evidence on the case, and I happened to be in the way of what he was after.”

“Do you think it was our perp coming back to clean up the crime scene?”

“The Rose Red Rapist?” Would the man who’d been terrorizing the women of Kansas City for months now actually be bold enough to return to the scene of his crime? And possibly impersonate a cop to do it? The man they were after had been an enigma for so long, she’d just assumed he’d remain an anonymous threat in the shadows, and not risk any dealings with the authorities, whether perfectly disguised or not. “I don’t know. I suppose it’s a possibility, but I hate to speculate without more proof.”

Which they no longer had. Annie wilted inside her coat.

“And all the evidence from Rachel Dunbar’s murder is gone?”

“Everything but the body. And Mac talked to the M.E. who said her body had been—” she swallowed the bile the mere thought conjured “—sterilized like the previous victims.”

“So we won’t get much there,” he concluded.

“No, sir. I did manage to save the pictures I took of the scene. Supervisor Taylor is processing those back at the lab.”

“I see. Well, I’m glad your injuries weren’t more serious.” Just like that, George Madigan switched back to the friendly uncle again. “You have all your departmental insurance information?”

“Yes, sir. They took care of that when I checked in.”

He smiled. “Good. And if you’re a friend of Nick, it’s Uncle George. When we’re off duty, of course.”

“Sir?” She wasn’t a friend of Nick’s, and she couldn’t call the deputy commissioner by his first name.

He winked one of those gray eyes and laughed. “We’ll work on that, shall we?”

When he crooked his elbow to escort her down the hallway, inviting her to rejoin the rest of Nick’s chatty, outgoing family, Annie hesitated. If she couldn’t handle Nick or his uncle one-on-one without her guard fully in place, then no way could she handle them all at once. Her breath caught in her chest and she buried her hands in the pockets of her coat and...

Her fingertips brushed against a pair of small plastic cylinders in the depths of her right pocket. Annie’s toes curled inside her boots. The blood samples she’d taken off the alley wall were in her pocket. She still had evidence! The vials hadn’t been in her kit, but technically, they’d never been out of her possession. A wave of reviving energy whooshed through her veins. Two small swabs of cotton weren’t much to go on, but they were a whole lot more than she’d had a few seconds ago. She needed to call Mac Taylor and let him know they still had trace.

“Are you all right?” the deputy commissioner asked.

“Yes, I’m...” Annie pulled her hand from his arm and reached for her phone. She patted nothing but nubby wool. Where was her bag? “Excuse me a minute, um...” Annie frowned an apology. She couldn’t bring herself to call him
Uncle George,
but she could drop the
sir.
“I forgot my purse. Excuse me.”

Without waiting for a dismissal or a goodbye, she hurried back down the hallway into the exam bay where she’d gotten her stitches. Through the door, through the curtain—the friendly chatter of Fensom voices faded into white noise as she turned to retrieve her bag from the chair. Her lips buzzed with a big sigh of relief as she wrapped her hands around the pink paisley canvas and looped the long strap over her neck and shoulder.

And then she realized she wasn’t alone.

Chapter Four

“They can be a bit much, can’t they?”

Annie whirled around at the young voice. She grabbed on to the back of the chair and pressed her fingers to her temple as the room continued to spin.
Damn this bump on the head anyway.

She squeezed her eyes shut, then blinked them open to bring the teenaged girl texting on her phone into focus. The dark brown color of her ponytail and the lavender hand-knit scarf wrapped inside the collar of her coat matched the colorful gathering of similar hand-knit scarves—lovingly made Christmas presents for each member of Nick’s family, she’d guess—out in the waiting room. “You’re part of Detective Fensom’s family, too?”

The girl glanced up from the cell screen she was watching. “Nell Fensom. I’m Nick’s baby sister. Guess you already met Natalie and Nadine.”

“Nate and Noah, too. I’m Annie Hermann. I work with your brother.” Annie barely noted familiar blue eyes before the young woman turned her attention back to the phone. Her thumbs flew over the mini-keyboard. “Must be someone important this early in the morning.”

“My boyfriend. Nicky KO’d seeing Jordan in person last night, so we’re keeping in touch this way.”

Although curiosity made her wonder why Nick didn’t approve of his sister’s relationship, Annie was anxious to get to her own phone and call Mac. She waited politely for the pretty teen to finish her texting and leave the room. “There sure are a lot of you.”

“I guess. Three boys, three girls, Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle George. Plenty of cousins, too.” Nell typed in
X
’s and
O
’s, hit Send and closed her phone before finally turning to Annie. “How many are in your family?”

Just me.
Unless she counted the cats. But it was always so disheartening to share that. “I don’t have any brothers or sisters,” she answered, telling the truth without telling everything about her sad, small life.

Nell’s blue eyes widened. “You have your own bedroom?”

As an only child, privacy had never been an issue for Annie. “I have my own apartment.”

“Sweet.” Nell made a scoffing noise. “You’re lucky. Believe me, having five big brothers and sisters can be a pain in the—”

“There you are.” Nick barged into the tiny room. “Thought we’d scared you off and you were sneaking out the back way.” His apologetic grin deepened into a frown when he saw Annie’s company. “Nell, what are you doing in here?”

“Apparently not getting any privacy, am I.” She rolled her eyes and sauntered past her brother. “Because this isn’t a real emergency, can we go home now?”

Nick stopped his sister with a hand on her arm. “Why? Is Garza there waiting for you?”

“No.” Nell twisted her arm free. “You scared him off.”

Her phone beeped an alert and Nick’s frown flattened into a grim line. “Are you talking to him?”

“Bye-bye.” She waved her fingers over her shoulder, opening her phone as she waltzed into the hallway.

“Nell, you don’t know how dangerous...” Nick took a step after her, but his legs locked up and his shoulders stiffened like concrete inside his jacket. Annie watched him rein in the frustration or anger or whatever emotion he was feeling before he turned back around. He swiped a hand over his dark hair, leaving it in a spiky disarray that matched the turbulence in his eyes and made her fingers itch to smooth it back into place. “Sorry about that.”

“For what?” Annie puzzled at the emotions buffeting him. “She likes a boy—big brother doesn’t. She seems like a normal teenager to me.”

“If that’s normal, I’m never having kids.”

“You mean the large and in-charge Nick Fensom doesn’t have the patience to deal with a teenager?”

“A saint doesn’t have the patience to deal with that one. She’s smart-mouthed and defiant—”

“And probably just as hardheaded as you.” Annie wasn’t sure where this defense of a girl she’d just met was coming from. Maybe it was just in her nature to argue with Nick. Or maybe some part of her could understand Nell’s frustration in dealing with such an overprotective man. “She’s probably trying to find her place in your family. I’d think it’d be easy to get overlooked with all those people. I’m guessing that having a boyfriend makes her feel special.”

“What evidence are you analyzing now?” Nick taunted, drawing his shoulders back. “You’ve known her for all of two minutes. Nell’s place is at home, not sneaking out to meet her gangbanger boyfriend.”

Maybe Nick was right to be concerned. “He’s in a gang?”

“She claims he’s not anymore. But the kid’s still got the look. He’s got the car. He’s got the 7 tat.”

She’d worked plenty of crime scenes thanks to the 7th Street Snakes. The Latino gang was especially adept at jacking cars and selling drugs and dealing ruthlessly with anyone who stood in their way. “Have you checked this boy out? Does he know Nell’s big brother is a cop?”

“He knows. Look, about the Garza kid...”

“That’s her boyfriend?”

Nick nodded, then took a quick breath, as if he was about to say something more. But then he pressed his lips together and waved her toward the hallway. “Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

Annie tightened her grip around the strap of her purse. Although she understood Nick’s concern about a 7 gang member dating his sister, she didn’t like this acute awareness about all things Nick that seemed to have developed since the New Year had started. At least, she wasn’t comfortable being so attuned to the man she’d called a pain in the posterior just a few hours earlier. Telephoning Mac offered the perfect excuse to make a polite escape from any more Fensom encounters. “You’d better go check on Nell. Besides, your family is waiting for you, and I need to make a phone call. I managed to save a couple of blood swabs from the Dunbar murder scene and I need to get them to Mac. Why don’t you drive me to my car back at the crime scene instead? Then I can take the swabs to the lab to start processing them.”

“You rescued some evidence?”

“Yes. From the bloody handprints. So it’s important I get there sooner rather than later, and I don’t want to inconvenience you any further.” She gestured toward the door, meaning it with all sincerity when she said, “You have obligations.”

Nick was already shaking his head. “Nurse Taylor said because of that concussion you weren’t to get behind the wheel of a car for twenty-four hours. I’ll take you to the lab. Then I’ll drive you home and pick you up for work tomorrow morning.”

“It’s out of your way. I’ll just call a cab.”

“Out of my way? You don’t even know where I live.”

“Do you know where
I
live?” Why wouldn’t he go away and leave her alone until she could get her head on straight? This stupid bump and stitches were messing with the logic that normally got her through her dealings with Nick. “It could take a while to run the tests. You’ve got all your family here, including the deputy commissioner. KCPD is already short-staffed. It’s a holiday—”

“Did George say something to scare you? Threaten you with some kind of reprimand?” Hunching down, Nick’s gaze drilled into hers. “He throws his weight around sometimes, but I’ll straighten him out if he upset you.”

“You don’t ‘straighten out’ the deputy commissioner, even if he is a relative.” Annie threw up her hands, desperate to have Nick understand just how uncomfortable this change in his behavior made her feel. She liked knowing where she stood with people—what they expected of her—what she could expect from them. Who was her friend? Who was her enemy? Who could she count on, and who was going to walk away when she needed him most? She could cope with independence and being alone. But she wasn’t going to make a friend, or make something more, and then be crushed again. And she certainly wasn’t about to put her trust in someone as confusing and unpredictable as Nick Fensom. “I’m tired and I want to go home, but I have work I need to get done first and I need my car to do that. If you really want to help, just do what I ask. If not, leave me alone so I can take care of what needs to be done myself.”

“I’m trying to do the right thing here. I...” Just as another argument started, Nick pulled back. His chest, already far too broad and way too close, expanded with a deep breath. And then, before the instinct to put some space between them fully registered, he reached out to brush a curl away from the bandage on her forehead. A tiny shock of electricity sparked from his skin to hers at the unexpected caress and Annie’s determination to get away short-circuited. “It’s my fault you got hurt, so let me do this, okay?” His voice had dropped to a husky, mesmerizing pitch. “Let me play chauffeur for a day or two to make amends.”

Her eyes locked onto Nick’s as he studied the delicate movement of his fingertip, curling into a tendril of hair and pulling it gently away from her temple to tuck it behind her ear. He snickered when the tendril kinked back out of place and he determinedly repeated the effort.

He was touching her. Again. Ever so tenderly and...she liked it. Any urge to argue, to escape, vanished. She was back in that alley, with him rubbing her fingers and sheltering her from the cold wind, and her thinking just how masculine and protective and interesting the most incomprehensible man on the planet had suddenly become.

“It’s nobody’s fault...except for that...faceless creep with the big hands.” Oh, great. Was that her voice stuttering through a whispered reassurance? “Mac and your uncle both planted the idea in my head that he could have been the rapist himself.”

“Do you think it was that Rose Red bastard?”

He traced his fingertip around the shell of her ear, and a riot of goose bumps blossomed on the surface of her skin. Annie felt herself leaning into the caress. “I don’t know. Even if we can get DNA or a blood type from the samples, there’s nothing on file to compare them to. But maybe there’s an accomplice we can identify. If those fake cops are the ones cleaning up after the rapist, then—”

“—we could bring them in and get them to turn on whoever hired them.”

“We need to get something on this guy. Anything I can salvage from the crime scene helps, right?”

It was one reason the task force had been formed—after more than a dozen suspected rapes in almost as many years, the Rose Red Rapist had yet to leave any trace that could help identify him beyond the token rose he left with his victims. And the women he attacked from behind with a blow to the head could only describe a mask and a voice and the smell of the cleaning solutions he washed them with afterward. Nick understood how important even the smallest piece of evidence could be. “All the more reason I should have been there to protect you.”

“If their goal was to retrieve something the rapist left behind, chances are they would have come back whether you were with me or not.”

“Nobody comes after me. If I was there, you’d have been safe. We’d finally have something we could work with on this case.”

“Don’t be so arrogant.” Annie reached up to wind her fingers around Nick’s wrist. She found the warm beat of his pulse and pressed the pad of her thumb against it, wanting to soothe the guilt that tightened his features. “He was twice your size. Both of those men could have come back and outnumbered—”

“
Nobody
messes with me.” The terse statement left no room for reasonable argument. “Or the things I care about.”

Their hands froze in unison—his cupping the side of her face, hers clinging to the solid strength of his arm.

He cared about her? Annie couldn’t quite process that. In the months they’d worked together, she and Nick had never done anything but argue. He was all about instincts and street connections—she was all about factual proof. Oil and water were never going to mix. She was still getting used to the idea that she found Nick attractive. Caring couldn’t enter the picture yet.

Perhaps feeling the same sudden awkwardness she felt at this growing intimacy, Nick pulled away at the same time she did. But as she clung to the strap of her purse across her chest, Nick glanced over his shoulder toward the hallway behind him. Annie forced her brain to make proper sense of Nick’s words and actions.
She
wasn’t the one Nick cared about. Nick was worried about the investigation. And possibly his sister. “Is Nell in real danger?”

“He hasn’t hurt her yet, or gotten her involved in anything illegal. But that doesn’t mean he won’t.” Swagger returned to his posture and the contentious edge returned to his voice. “She says I’m overprotective. I don’t know anything else but being a cop, and the guy I saw with his hands all over her raises every red flag in my book.” He muttered a swearword before dialing his emotions back a notch. “Annie...I was on the phone with a friend of mine from the gang squad, checking up on this kid, when I heard you yelling for help. You and I are supposed to be on the same team, and I wasn’t even working the case with you. I let you down. I should have known something was hinky when Galbreath and Foster didn’t come back. I should have checked it out. On any other day I would have, but my head was somewhere else.”

“You were worried about your sister. If I were in your place, I’d have been distracted, too.”

“Don’t make excuses for me.”

“I don’t make excuses. I look for explanations. There are always reasons why things happen the way they do—if we look hard enough.” So his concern wasn’t personal. The touching was all about guilt. And she’d been an idiot thinking for even one moment that there was some kind of personal connection here. Suddenly, logical arguments were easy to find. “We didn’t know about the fake cops. We had no reason to suspect there was any danger. You didn’t let me down.” Nick was shaking his head, ready with more ammunition to make his point and accept the blame. “You chased the guy away before he could steal my camera or find the swabs in my pocket. You drove me to the hospital before I lost too much blood and got me the stitches I need so I won’t be nicknamed Scarface.”

“Scarface.” Nick laughed and the atmosphere between them changed again. “That’d be a shame.” He fought once more with the stubborn curl, brushing his finger across her skin. “It’s a pretty face. I’d hate to see anything happen to it.”

Pretty?
Annie couldn’t keep up anymore. Was he teasing? Flirting? Was this man her friend? Her enemy? A coworker? Something more? She had to ask. “What’s going on between us here, Nick? I’m confused, and I don’t like it when I don’t have answers.”