Eternal. V.K. Forrest

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СКАЧАТЬ Duncan.” She looked him in the eye. “But this is my first with stolen body parts. Yours?”

      He seemed unable to tear his gaze from hers for a second, then looked away. “Yeah.”

      She’d gotten him on that one.

      He freed his hands from his pockets, walking around to the other side of the black, bloody soot ring that marked where Bobby’s body had lain. “There’s no point in speculating why the body parts were taken. Not until we have all the evidence.”

      It was easy for him to say. He didn’t understand what the decapitation meant to one of them.

      “You say you have photographs at the station, Chief?” Fia looked up at her uncle, who was beginning to pace now. “I imagine Special Agent Duncan would like to see them.”

      “Actually, I was able to get here in time to see the body before it was removed.”

      Fia glared at Sean who was wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. It was her turn to grit her teeth. You’ve got to tell me these things, Uncle Sean. I feel like I’m coming in way behind.

      “I see.” It sounded so lame. She cleared her throat. “Then why don’t we go to the station, so I can have a look at the photos.” She looked to Duncan. “It’s going to take us a full day to process this scene the way we’re going to want it processed, and we are going to need that print powder. The chief can put in an order as soon as we get to the station.” She looked to Sean. “The back door is locked now, correct?”

      “Course, Fee, what kind of fool do ye think—” Sean cut off the last of his sentence, tucking the handkerchief back into his pocket.

      She shifted her gaze to Duncan, slipping her camera into her pocket. What a mess. How was she going to do this? Investigate Bobby’s murder and keep Special Agent Duncan out of the town’s business? She couldn’t believe Uncle Bill had let the Baltimore office send an agent. But maybe Gair was right. Maybe because this was a federal building, they wouldn’t be able to keep the murder under wraps.

      Fia looked to her new so-called partner. “Care to go back to the station with me, Special Agent Duncan?”

      “We drove over in my car.” Sean gestured in the direction of the front door.

      He drove two and half blocks? Fia almost laughed aloud, though it really wasn’t that funny. Sean didn’t like to expend any more energy than absolutely necessary, except when it came to lifting a pint of ale.

      “He left his in the station parking lot,” Sean continued to ramble. Drives an unmarked Crown Vic. Nice car. V8 engine. How come you don’t get a Bureau car, Fee? Came in your own, didn’t you? I could hear the Beemer engine. Runnin’ a little rough, she is?”

      Fia turned away from her uncle, blinking to block his thoughts. If she wasn’t careful, she’d find herself wrapped up in a mental conversation involving maintenance schedules of BMWs built before 1998. Something he’d learned on the Speed Channel.

      “I think I’ll walk,” Duncan said. “Care to join me, Special Agent Kahill?” He waited.

      Apparently, he wasn’t going to give her a chance to speak with her uncle alone. Not yet, at least. She exhaled and started for the front lobby. “Meet you there, Chief.”

      Sean followed them outside, locking the front doors behind them. At the bottom of the steps, Fia ducked under the yellow tape and turned right on the sidewalk. A car passed. A cousin waved. She didn’t wave back.

      “Pretty weird. So many of you related in this town.” Duncan glanced in the direction of the passing car as he caught up with her. “Lot of Kahills to keep track of.”

      She stepped off the curb and started across the street without looking either way. She didn’t have to look. She could easily hear the cars two blocks over. “My family’s been here for a long time, Special Agent Duncan. We have a big family.” She shrugged. “So a lot of us have the same name.”

      The redhead made it somehow seem simpler than Glen sensed it was. Not that he was fortunate enough to be one of those agents with a sixth sense. But something was a little odd here; he just couldn’t put his finger on it.

      Maybe it was merely his imagination. His irritation. When he called his SAC back in Baltimore, Krackhow had made no bones about the fact that Special Agent Kahill would not be removed from the case. It was out of his hands, he had brusquely told Glen. The order came as a result of a request out of Senator Malley’s office. Case closed. If Glen wanted out, Krackhow would send over another agent.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ