Of course Glen didn’t want out. A decapitation in a federal building? Missing body parts? It was the kind of case most agents dreamed of their entire careers. Certainly more exciting than the identity-theft unit he’d been working in. But it still pissed him off that the redhead would be assigned to the case, out of her jurisdiction, just because somebody knew someone who knew someone else in Senator Buttinksky’s office. The Bureau his father had grown up in had been that way, àla J. Edgar, but this one wasn’t supposed to be. Things were supposed to have changed. Like bureaucracy ever really changed….
He had to hurry to keep up with her. Those long legs of hers covered a lot of real estate with each step. He couldn’t deny that she was one of the most strikingly beautiful women he had ever seen. She sure didn’t look like most G-men. Besides having a bombshell figure, she had that dark red hair that no way came out of a bottle. Her skin was pale, like many redheads, but so flawless it was like porcelain, with the tiniest sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her perfectly upturned nose. Her full lips seemed naturally red, but her eyes were what really drew him. They were the strangest color, pale blue with flecks of indigo. Eyes a man could lose himself in…if the woman wasn’t such a hard-ass, he reminded himself.
Special Agent Kahill was everything Glen despised in a female FBI agent, in any woman trying too hard to do a job society still saw as a man’s. Glen didn’t have a problem with female FBI agents, or cops, or even Navy SEALS, for that matter. He knew women who were better shots on the firing range than he was. Women with sharper intellects. What he had a problem with was the chip on the shoulder they always seemed to come with. It wasn’t enough for a woman like Fia Kahill to just do her job. She wanted to do it better than he did it, and she wanted to throw it in every man’s face. She didn’t want to be one of the boys; she wanted to be better than them.
He glanced at her, her face set with determination as she strode down the sidewalk. If they were stuck together on the case, he had to make the best of it.
He slid his hands into his pockets. “When I arrived, the body was just being removed. Chief Kahill said you had a local morgue.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Said the autopsy would be done here rather than in the state medical examiner’s office in Wilmington?”
“If that’s what Chief Kahill says.” She didn’t look at him.
It didn’t matter. The minute they’d stepped into the bright August sunlight, she covered those amazing blue eyes of hers with a pair of dark wraparound sunglasses.
“That just seems odd, doesn’t it? I would think an autopsy of this nature would go to the state medical examiner.”
“I can assure you Dr. Caldwell is fully qualified and licensed to perform the autopsy, Special Agent Duncan.”
She was using that curt tone with him again. It was really beginning to annoy him that she didn’t look at him when she spoke. “I’m not questioning the doctor’s credentials, Special Agent Kahill. I’m questioning procedure on a federal case.”
They had turned off the main street in town and were now approaching the police station. There were only two cars pulled up in front, his unmarked, and the chief’s old cruiser. All the other officers were, no doubt, out combing the streets for a head and a pair of feet right now.
She strode up the steps leading to the front door of the hometown police station that greeted “visitors” with a welcome sign. How many visitors did a police station get, he wondered.
“So call the state medical examiner’s office and verify it.” She pulled open the heavy door as if it was weightless.
Glen had to hold it as it swung back hard. All he could think about as he hurried to catch up with Fia Kahill was how thankful he would be to find this killer, and get the hell away from her and her weird little town.
Chapter 3
“Fia?”
She sat in the worn, gray, government-issue office chair in the rear of the police station. Every police station in America had a bull pen just like this one—wanted posters, a Heimlich maneuver instruction chart, a photo of the officers at last year’s annual Punkin’ Chunkin’, grinning and only slightly drunk, hung crookedly on the wall. There were a couple of desks, some file cabinets, an old copier on a microwave cart, and a coatrack that had seen better days.
She leaned forward, her chin resting on her closed hands, and stared at the eight-by-ten photographs, spread across the ancient gunmetal gray desk.
Hours had passed since she arrived in Clare Point. It seemed like years. Police officers had come and gone in the station, reporting to Sean in subdued voices. Before the shift change, a couple of the men and the lone female patrolman had ventured over to say hello. Everyone had the same information to offer. There was no sign of a severed head or feet, or suspicious persons or activity in the town.
Her gaze moved from one photo to the next. They were gruesome even to a seasoned agent, but she couldn’t stop studying them. She kept shifting her gaze, looking for something certain, something to help her, some sign. She told Duncan she was searching for clues. Told herself the same lie, but really, she was still staring at them out of disbelief.
The heat of
