Kansas City Christmas. Julie Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ jewelry was a testament to her late mother, who’d loved to decorate and celebrate the holidays in a big way. Her parents had been gone for fifteen years, her family fractured. But over the years, she’d grown closer to Eli and Jillian than they’d ever been as children. Now, instead of missing her parents, she paid homage to them by maintaining some of their happiest—and goofiest—traditions. Touching the pin and feeling a loving smile from somewhere in Heaven, Holly grabbed her purse and gloves and headed for the exit.

      If she was lucky, the streets would be cleared, the traffic would be light and she could get home to her apartment and get some decent sleep before she had to report for work again in the morning.

      She had just pulled one glove on when her cell phone rang. Surely Eli wasn’t calling for another round of how she and Jillian couldn’t survive without big brother in the house. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out her phone. The same familiar word instead of a number stared back at her.

       Unnamed.

      “Okay, fella.” Breathing out a weary sigh, Holly opened the phone. “Hello?”

      Nothing. But the connection was live. She could hear the faint hiss of shallow breathing in the background.

      “Hey. I know you’re there. You have the wrong number. You need to stop calling me.” More silence. Not even so much as a suggestive or crude message if that was his intent. Just…someone listening. “Who is this?”

       Click.

      She jerked the phone from her ear as if the soft disconnect had been a zap of static electricity.

      What the hell kind of psych game was this? Holly snapped the phone shut and dropped it into her purse as she pushed open the door to the main hallway. “Idiot.”

      A blur of white lunged at her from around the corner. “Gotcha!”

      Holly yelped, automatically punching at the man who’d startled her while her heart was already thumping in her chest. “Damn it, Rick!”

      Guffaws of deep-pitched laughter faded into a wide toothy grin on Rick Temple’s clean-shaven face. “Oh, that one was priceless. If you could see your expression.” He rubbed at a spot on his shoulder. “But you’ve got a mean punch, Doc.”

      Talk about idiots. How one man could know so much about forensic science and yet beans about interacting with people in a mature, normal way eluded her. “What are you, in junior high? Sorry about the bruise, but startling the crap out of me is not funny.”

      “Depends on your perspective.”

      Holly flashed a grin that was more of a sneer than sincere. “You’re a grown man. One of these days you’re going to have to start acting like one. These practical jokes are hard on my blood pressure.”

      “Oh, but you make it too easy, lady. Walking around all serious, focused all the time. I’ve got to lighten you up.”

      “Giving me gray hairs isn’t the kind of lightness I find amusing.”

      “You’re not that old, Doc. You’ve got to start having some fun.” At least he had the decency to retrieve the glove she’d dropped. She knew him to be thirty-two years old, but the grin he still wore looked two decades younger as he handed over the glove. “Think of these little encounters as my way of keeping you on your toes.”

      Did he think she wasn’t doing her job? The corrupted evidence files she’d been trying to re-create made her prickle a little more defensively than usual. Not for the first time, she wondered how much of Rick’s teasing was really a warped sense of humor and how much might be resentment that she’d gotten the supervisory job that they’d both applied for. It might be wise for her to remind him who was in charge. “You know, Rick, if you weren’t as good at your job as you are, I might have to write you up for your…personality quirks. If any of your jokes interfere with anyone’s ability to do their job…”

      “Oh, good one, Doc. Flatter me and call me out, all in the same sentence.” He pulled back the front of his lab coat and shoved his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans. “I just wanted to catch you before you left and let you know that the preliminary report on that bullet I’m processing doesn’t look promising. I’ve been able to break it down into its components, and maybe even tell you how they’re decomposing so quickly. But pull a manufacturer’s name off it? Even at a microscopic level, I haven’t been able to pull anything substantive off the casing.”

      Good. Fortunately, he could be serious when he talked about work. “Any luck with the caliber?”

      “I’m guessing a thirty-five mil. I should be able to give you something definitive by the morning.”

      Holly was breathing normally now. Her smile was genuine. And another possibility regarding the mysterious shadow had presented itself. “Thanks, Rick. Say, were you down in the basement a few minutes ago, trying to catch me with your update? I was on the phone, but you could have come in.”

      “No.” As her humor returned, his faded. “I just now came down from the ballistics lab. Are you checking on me every moment of every shift now? Or do you just miss working side by side with me?”

      “We still have plenty of opportunities to work together. I thought someone might be looking for me, that’s all. Thanks. I’ll look forward to that full report.”

      “First thing in the morning, I promise. You headed out?”

      She nodded. “I’m done for the night. See you at seven?”

      “I’ll be here.”

      “Good night.”

      “Boo.” He flashed his hands in her face, startling her slightly. “Too easy. Just too damn easy.” Rick’s chuckle disappeared with him into the men’s locker room.

      Shaking her head, Holly pulled on her remaining glove and turned toward the exit to the parking garage.

      Nine nights out of ten, Holly enjoyed working the late shift. With a few juvenile colleague exceptions, she preferred the quiet and solitude of the nighttime hours. Dealing with fewer people meant she could concentrate on her work. Dissecting bodies and processing biological evidence tended to have an isolating effect in the first place, but the calm and quiet and focus on the job were what allowed her to deal with crime scenes that could often be gruesome, and victims who were always some form of tragic. Having to deal with the victim’s family or witnesses on top of the crime itself could be draining.

      Yet tonight she couldn’t seem to settle inside her skin.

      Holly pushed open the thick steel door that led from the lab building into the attached parking garage. The heels of her boots grated against the concrete as she strode to her car, the abrasive grinding of soles and grit echoing off the walls of the garage. There was an edginess crawling through her veins, and despite knowing she’d be reporting to help with a double-shift in the morning, she was beginning to think she wasn’t going to be getting much sleep tonight.

      She didn’t know if it was the unexplained shadow or the pesky anonymous phone calls that had her so off-kilter. Maybe it was Rick’s eternal pleasure at getting a rise out of her or the conversation she’d had with Eli. No doubt it was a combination of all those things that made her so uneasy.

      Lengthening СКАЧАТЬ