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Connor paid the bill, and a minute later, she was walking with him to the car. She felt intrigued by this case already, wondering if her hunch was right, and that software had been used.

But then, Connor’s phone rang. He spoke for a moment and nodded, muttering a few words of agreement before cutting the call.

“We’ll have to be quick, but we’ve had some luck here,” he said. “The second murder scene is still open. Police and witnesses are there. We’ll go past the office, pick up the file, then head straight to the scene. There might be more clues to be found.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Connor glanced at Cami in concern as he gave her the news that the murder scene was still open and active. Would that be too much for her to handle, so soon after Ethan’s shocking death?

He thought she looked drained, pale, as if the whole tragedy with Ethan, combined with her work for her final exams, was stripping her all the way to the bone. And there was something else, as well, that he’d noticed while they ate. It was nagging at his mind, triggering instincts that were well honed from years of detective work.

He suspected she was holding back about something.

"Cami—" he began, planning to ask about it.

"What?" she replied.

Then Connor changed his mind. He decided to give her a chance. Maybe she'd open up when she felt ready. Now wasn't the time to pressure her, not when a new case was looming.

"You sure you're up for this? Crime scenes, autopsy rooms?" he queried, changing his own mind at the last moment.

"Yes," she said. "I don't feel as scared as I did last time. And nowhere near as bad as I was the first time."

He felt a flash of approval. She'd come a long way since that first case, where she'd been resentful, and he'd been distrustful, and things between them had ranged from strained, snappish interactions to full scale fights. He hadn’t thought she was a responsible person at all. He’d believed her to be a rogue wild card who would cause far more problems than she was able to add value, but he’d been proven wrong.

He knew now that she thought he had been a domineering, narrow minded father figure seeking to crush and control her as she was forced into her role with the FBI, and that he was looking for an excuse to send her to jail as the alternative. She’d since come to realize more about him and who he really was too.

He guessed he'd also come a long way in his own understanding of the IT world and the skills it took to explore it.

“That’s good,” he said.

“Is that all?” she asked. The way she glanced at him told him that she was curious about what he'd been planning to say. Cami was whip smart. She’d guessed that he'd changed his mind at the last moment.

“That’s it,” he said. “Just checking.”

As soon as the time was right, he planned to ask her more.

As Connor drove, with loose ends now uppermost in his mind, he remembered that Ethan had also had issues that he hadn't told Connor.

There had been something going on in Ethan's life that Connor had never known about. He’d seen the signs. Ethan had come close to telling him something, a month ago, but he’d shut down, and Connor hadn’t pushed it.

Now, he was wondering if Kieran's visit to Cami had been purely to comfort her, or whether there had been something on that subject shared. Had their issues been overlapping? Was Cami now caught up in whatever Ethan had been dealing with?

He felt a surge of anger as he thought that whatever this issue was, it might have caused the death of a damned good agent and a very special human being. But the fact that Ethan had said nothing to Connor also told him that this hadn't been a minor issue, and that it also hadn’t been simple.

If so, at least he now had the duration of the case to figure out how to approach this. Connor didn't like these kinds of secrets, and he suspected they'd gotten Ethan killed. He'd been worried about Ethan for a while, and he'd been suspecting that Cami was holding something back.

Only now did he wonder if those two somethings were connected.

He hadn't wanted to get her involved in this case, but she'd practically jumped at the chance, and what she'd said about the facial recognition could be an important new angle.

He looked at her now as she stared out of the window of the car, her face set in a thoughtful expression. He could see that the case was already shaping up to be complicated and convoluted. Cami's help might be exactly what they needed.

They arrived at the FBI Boston offices. Connor parked in his basement bay, and they headed upstairs in the elevator, went through security in the lobby, then hustled to his offices to get the final briefings and the printouts on both cases. The second crime scene was nearby, a short drive away, so this detour wouldn’t waste too much time.

Quickly, he took down the case file from the shelf in his small, functional office and printed out the pages that had just been sent through. There was little in the way of personal items in Connor’s workspace—he made sure to keep his work life strictly separated. He found it was easier mentally and emotionally to have those barriers up.

But what he did have was a photo of his girlfriend, the interior designer who'd recently relocated to Boston to be with him now that Connor had realized this move was, at least, semi-permanent.

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