Bear Claw Lawman. Jessica Andersen

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СКАЧАТЬ connections have a pretty good track record so far.”

      Jenn’s cheeks heated, but she made herself concentrate on the ropes that had been used to bind the victim, photographing them from even more angles before cutting them free and bagging them. After a moment, she said, “You can say his name, you know. It’s not like I don’t see him around.”

      The dubious look Gigi shot her spoke volumes about just how bad Jenn had been at camouflaging her disbelief and unhappiness for those first couple of weeks after Nick dumped her. Or, at least, how bad she’d been at hiding it from Gigi and her other friends down in the crime lab. As far as anyone else knew—she hoped—it hadn’t been at all obvious that she had been hurting.

      She was damn good at making it look as if everything was okay, after all. And in the fine tradition of “fake it until you make it,” eventually the sting really had worn off.

      “I’m fine, really. I’m over it.” Jenn sealed a bag and signed her name on the first line of the label, starting the evidence chain. “It wasn’t even about him, really…it was everything.” She filed the bag in her kit, then rocked back on her bootie-covered heels to look over at her friend.

      She hadn’t really talked about the breakup, even with Gigi, partly because she’d needed to work it out for herself, and partly because she’d hoped it would quickly become old news.

      It didn’t seem to be, though—Gigi and the other analysts still looked at her with pity in their eyes every time Nick’s name came up or, worse, when they crossed paths. Which wasn’t that often, granted, but when they did, she knew that the others were watching her, waiting to see how she would react, as if she hadn’t been a hundred percent professional the last dozen times it had happened.

      Not that she was counting.

      “Everything?” Gigi nudged. Finished with the photographs, she was using a laser device to measure the room and the big pieces of furniture.

      Those details, along with the photos and other notes, would go into one of the computers back in the lab to make a rendering. It wasn’t quite the kind of high tech used by the crime scene shows on TV—those were largely a combination of science fiction and reality, anyway—but it was more than most local police departments could boast.

      Unfortunately, even the money Matt was funneling into the crime lab couldn’t force the case to break.

      Jenn hesitated, then shook her head and got back to work, donning fresh gloves and getting ready to start swabbing the gruesome stains on the chair. Odds were that it all belonged to the victim, but it was still worth doing the work. That was the name of the game with crime scene analysis: ninety-nine percent drudgery and one percent eureka.

      She worked methodically, swabbing each spot, retracting the swab into its sterile sheath and stoppering and labeling the tube, so if—or rather, when—the Investor made it into court, there wouldn’t be any chance of the evidence getting thrown out.

      Not this time, she thought grimly, all too aware that over the past month, the case had gotten very personal for her, both as a way to prove herself, and a way to make amends for some of her past mistakes. Including the one she’d made with Nick, letting herself get distracted from what was really important by something that they had both agreed from the very beginning would only be a passing thing.

      It wasn’t anybody’s fault but her own that she’d let herself forget that part.

      Aware that Gigi was waiting for an answer, Jenn finally said, “Nick wasn’t the first guy I’ve dated since Terry died…but he was the first one who made an impact. He was the first one I was excited to see, the first one I missed when we were apart, the first one—” She broke off. “Anyway, even though it’s been almost three years since Terry was killed, Nick was my rebound. I jumped in too far too fast, and clung too hard to something that wasn’t real, mostly because I was so damn excited to finally feel something.”

      “The thing between you and Nick was just a rebound, huh?” Gigi’s tone didn’t quite call her a liar. But it was close. “And now you’re over him. You sure about that?”

      “One hundred percent.” Not just because she needed to be, but because she was seeing him for who he really was these days. Over the past month, without the blinders of lust and admiration dimming her view, she had realized that the man she had known—the one she had thought she knew so intimately—was just one part of the real Nick Lang…and she wasn’t sure she liked the other parts of him.

      With her, he had been charming and courteous, but with an edge of wicked and earthy humor that had jibed with her own, along with a down-to-earth streak she’d loved. He’d made goofy faces at Amber, the K9 who’d taken up desk duty at the P.D., along with her injured human partner, Kelsey Meyers. He’d gone running in the rain with Jenn and he’d used her shampoo without caring that it made him smell like flowers. And when she’d gotten up in the middle of the night to pace or stare out into the darkness, when she came back to bed, he’d always stirred and reached for her in his sleep.

      She might not have known where he grew up or what kind of music he liked, but she had thought she knew what kind of man he was. That is, until she started watching him more objectively and realized that while he was sometimes the guy she’d gotten to know, he could also be any number of other guys, depending on the situation.

      With the other cops, he was a cop, which made sense. But she had also watched a couple of tapes of him interrogating some of the jailed militiamen. And what she’d seen had startled the heck out of her, because he hadn’t just been talking with them, he’d become one of them—not just with a few quick changes of clothing, but with his body language, his speech… . Even his face had been different, though she couldn’t have said how. More, she’d seen him do the same thing on other tapes, with witnesses. He’d been the perfect gentleman with a nervous grandmother and a midrange escort, but toughened up fast when facing a trio of teens who’d thought they were more badass than him and very quickly learned they were wrong.

      She’d watched the tapes in order to get a different context for her evidence, in the hopes of adding to the case. Instead, she had learned more than she’d really wanted to about Nick.

      He was a chameleon, the kind of guy who could slip into any situation and make himself indispensable. He’d even said as much, though not in so many words, when he’d told her that his greatest skill as an undercover agent was his ability to slip into any group, any situation. But what worked for busting drug rings

      really didn’t work for her.

      That wasn’t resentment talking, either, or an effort to make herself feel better about the breakup. If anything, it had made her feel worse to realize that she’d come very close to once again falling for a manipulator.

      Her instincts, it seemed, still sucked.

      “Anyway,” she said, realizing the conversation had lagged, though she’d kept swabbing at the bloodstains, capping and labeling the tubes with automatic precision, “I’m grateful for what happened, in a way. At least I know that part of me isn’t gone for good. Getting involved with Nick showed me that I can feel those feelings again. I’ll just have to make sure I use better judgment and next time around find myself someone who’s really available and not just passing through.”

      “Does that mean you’ll let me set you up?”

      Jenn winced. “Look, I’m sure the bird man is a great guy—”

      “He’s СКАЧАТЬ