Taking in a deep breath, Morgan decided to start over. “So tell me, what brings you here—specifically to Major Crimes as well as to me?”
“I came to you,” she told him, “because I thought you might be able to help me.”
He felt as if he was inching his way across a thin layer of quicksand, about to sink in and go under at any second. “Help you do what?”
“Help me find whoever it is who’s trying to kill me and why,” she told him without any fanfare.
Morgan stared at her. It took a second for her words to sink in.
There was nothing run-of-the-mill about this woman, he couldn’t help thinking. “Maybe you better start from the beginning,” he suggested.
“Maybe I should,” Krys agreed. Aware that the man who had brought her in here was still hovering around, straining to overhear what she was saying to Morgan, she tactfully asked the detective, “Is there someplace where we can go to talk?”
Chapter 2
His curiosity officially aroused, Morgan rose to his feet. “Why don’t we go to the conference room? It’s bound to be quieter there than it is in here.”
“That sounds good to me,” Krys replied with a nod. “Lead the way.”
Fredericks snapped to attention the moment he saw his partner and the woman beginning to leave.
“You need any backup, Cavanaugh?” Fredericks volunteered eagerly. He never took his eyes off Morgan’s visitor. “All you need to do is ask,” the man reminded his partner with a wide grin.
“No, I think I can handle this,” Morgan assured the detective. He passed the older man as he went to the rear of the squad room, where both the conference and the interrogation rooms were located.
Fredericks gazed almost longingly at the blonde as she walked by.
“Well, let me know if you can’t,” he called after Morgan. “I’ll be right here, waiting.”
Krys smiled at the older man as she walked behind Morgan to the conference room. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Overhearing her, Fredericks seemed to visibly buck up at the words.
Morgan said nothing until they had reached the conference room. After waiting for Nik’s look-alike to cross the threshold, he closed the door behind her, and then gestured toward the chairs surrounding the lone table in the room.
“Why don’t you take a seat?” he told the woman, leaving the choice open to her.
Once she did, he took one of the chairs positioned on the opposite side of the table, facing hers. Lacing his fingers together before him, Morgan looked at her for a long moment, doing his best to read her. Was she overreacting to whatever had happened to her, or was this on the level?
Or, at the very least, did she believe this to be on the level?
“All right, why don’t you tell me just what makes you think that someone is trying to kill you?” he asked Krys. “Were you recently threatened by someone, or did you do anything that might have gotten someone angry enough to take a permanent shot at you?”
Considering the nature of the situation, Morgan asked the question so calmly and rationally that Krys found herself laughing.
“Did I say something funny, Ms. Kowalski?” Morgan asked.
“Sorry, you had to be there,” she told him, stifling another laugh.
“Unless one of us is having an out-of-body experience, I am there—or rather ‘here,’” Morgan pointed out.
Krys took in another deep breath before explaining why she had decided that, for once, she would bring this to the police. “The first thing I want you to understand is that if it wasn’t for Nik, I wouldn’t be here.”
Morgan nodded his head, feeling as if they were going around in circles. “You already said that. Nik was the one who told you to come to me.”
“No, Nik didn’t say anything of the kind,” Krys corrected him. “What she did say to me was that you worked out of the Major Crimes Division. I drew my own conclusion as to whether or not you could handle this case. But that’s not what I meant.”
“All right,” Morgan said gamely, “just what did you mean?”
She supposed that she wasn’t being very clear. For possibly the first time in her life, her brain felt addled. She would have to spell it out for him, slowly, so she wouldn’t wind up tripping over her tongue. “Nik and I look alike—”
“We’ve already established that,” Morgan reminded her.
Something about this handsome detective rubbed her the wrong way. She would have thought that the matter would be crystal clear to a police detective, but obviously, she’d given the man too much credit.
Krys enunciated her words carefully. “I’m worried that if we don’t find whoever is trying to kill me by the time Nik does come back from her honeymoon, that person might wind up shooting or even killing Nik, thinking that she’s me.” To her relief, Krys saw a light dawning in the detective’s green eyes.
Finally!
“Now do you understand?” she asked, anticipating an affirmative response.
“Yes, I do,” Morgan answered. He felt that the woman was talking down to him, but for the time being, he let that go. Technically, she was now family and as such he had to cut her a little slack—but it wasn’t easy. Patience was not his long suit. “So let’s go back to what I just asked you and I’ll rephrase the question.” Morgan used the simplest terms he could think of. “To the best of your knowledge, have you ticked anyone off recently?”
She had been so wrapped in what she was doing for so long, it was hard for her to conceive of the fact that there were people outside of the world of investigative journalism who knew nothing about her reputation.
With that in mind, Krys started from scratch.
“I’m an investigative journalist,” she told Morgan. “And lately, what that seems to mean is that I—tick people off for a living.”
Morgan
