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“I also asked for them to pull security footage from the bar and surrounding area.”

“Thanks,” I said absentmindedly. “Where is Rain? Have you heard from her? She should be here by now.”

Jameson stood and pulled out his phone. “Nothing from her. Maybe she got hung up on that floater longer than she expected?”

“Then why isn’t she responding?” I moved around the body for a different angle. “Think she’d let us put a GPS tracker on her?” Jameson let out a surprised scoff. “What? Her ex is still out there and has me on edge. I don’t like her being alone when we don’t know where the fuck he is.”

“I agree, but she’s a grown woman and can handle herself. But please, by all means, ask her if we can chip her. I want to see how that goes down.”

I shot him the bird at the restrained laughter in his voice. “Not a chip, just an app for her phone. A way for me to track her movements when she’s not around one of us.”

“Yeah, that sounds so much better,” he chuckled. “Savage said she heard a woman call out. That’s why she came to intervene. Maybe she was mistaken, because I don’t see anyone else.”

I nodded while processing the new information. “Do you think this is the work of our unsub and she’s suddenly ditched her signature?”

“The only way she’d do that is if she’s spiraling, and we’re fucked if she is. That means the murders will be closer together, and she might even ditch the surveillance piece and start targeting any man she sees as a threat. Although it would benefit us.”

“How?” I mused, not seeing any upside to a woman this angry losing all sense of control and structure.

“That means she’ll make a mistake. Leave evidence behind or maybe even get caught in the act, like tonight, maybe. We’ll know more once we pull this guy’s background. If he has any kind of sexual deviance on his record, then he might be victim number six.”

“Please don’t tell me you’ve touched my body.”

I spun around at Rain’s voice, sucking in a breath as she emerged from the shadowed alley. Dressed in a knee-length pencil skirt, high heels, and a loose Kelly green blouse that brought out the green in her hazel eyes, she looked fucking gorgeous.

“Which body are we talking about?” Jameson jokingly mused.

“Ha ha,” she scoffed. Pausing beside me, she shot me a questioning look. “What?”

“Nothing. You just look….” I stopped and cleared my throat. Telling her I wanted to jerk up that skirt and fuck her from behind as her palms scraped the brick building was completely inappropriate considering we were at a crime scene.

“Fuckableis the word he’s looking for,” Jameson said, voice low so only we three could hear. “And I agree. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a skirt.”

“But you’ve seen me in far less,” she said with a smirk.

“Yeah, but this”—he waved a hand up and down her delectable body—“is very sexy. Put a pair of thick-rimmed glasses on and you could fulfill my naughty librarian fantasy.”

Her head tipped back with a laugh. “I’ll see what I can do when we get home.”

Home.

That one word coming from her lips had hope filling my chest. It was too soon to feel this way, but I’d fantasized about it for so damn long that maybe it wasn’t. Whatever this was between us had been building for longer than a week, and I’d just finally gotten the chance to act on it.

“I’ll go out on a limb and say COD is head trauma,” Rain mused as she popped on a pair of latex gloves. “But I’ll know for sure after the autopsy. Beth said—”

“Beth?” I cut in.

“Detective Savage. I saw her when I arrived and stopped to talk for a few minutes. She’s shaken up by what she saw.”

“Can’t blame her,” Jameson said, gesturing to the man at his feet. “I’ve seen a lot of crime scenes, and this one makes my stomach turn. Seeing someone’s head cracked open like a broken egg with the brain matter—”

I held up a hand. “Please stop so one day in the future I can eat eggs again. Can you check for any other wounds, Rain?”

She nodded and opened his shirt. Nothing looked bruised or damaged except for the marks where Detective Savage attempted CPR.

“Any chance he has a wallet on him?” I asked.

“Are you asking me to search another man’s pants?”

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