“Which the new fire wall you constructed took care of.”
“Well, of course.” He shrugged without modesty. “But the attempts on your life started almost immediately after that case. Makes me wonder if Castillo might have been telling the truth about LeCroix’s son being alive. About him maybe wanting revenge for you killing his father.”
“Enrique Castillo is a miserable self-serving child-trafficker. He blames me for his life sentence. Anything he’d say is suspect. And John LeCroix was hardly the last man I’ve been in contact with who wants me dead.” Although to be sure, the man had come a damn sight closer to succeeding than most.
Broodingly, he fingered the scar on his throat. He almost preferred LeCroix’s methods. At least he could fight back against an enemy he could see. He had a feeling he was going to run out of patience with this current game long before Jennings did.
Nate glanced up as Risa pushed into the office, then stared. “You look . . . tired,” he amended when her eyes slitted. “Late night last night?”
“I stayed up awhile working on the profile,” she said brusquely.
He had enough experience with female moods to gauge hers at a notch past dangerous. And enough wisdom to keep his mouth shut, accordingly.
She set her computer case on her desk and unzipped the side pocket to withdraw the file folder. Turning, she tossed it on his desk. “Keep in mind it’s an evolving document. It’ll change as we have more details on the case.”
“I’m familiar with profiles.” His tone was mild. He was becoming something of an expert of treading with caution. Living with Kristin recently was like serving as tiger bait. He never knew when one false move would have her pouncing.
The hell of it was, Tucker was starting to pick up on the undercurrents, and his behavior had taken a turn for the worse. Bedtime last night had surpassed battle status and taken on the elements of a full-fledged war. By the end of the night Kristin and her son were both in tears, and the old cravings had returned full force. Nate would have smoked a rolled-up newspaper if he could have figured a way to get nicotine in it first.
“There’s coffee.” He felt a need to point it out and hoped it’d have the same effect on her it’d had on him when he came in.
“Ah. Bless Darrell.” She got up and headed to the pot he’d filched from the staff room. He opened his mouth to warn her. Shut it again.
She poured a cup and carried it back to her desk before taking a healthy swallow. Her sputtering cough had him grinning. “It’s Darrell’s day off. Flo made this.”
She aimed a hard stared his way. “You might have told me that sooner.”
“I might have.” He hid his grin by tucking his head down and unrolling the map on his desk. “But you didn’t take as big a taste as I did and misery loves company.”
Risa grimaced and took another sip, more cautiously this time. “Well, if nothing else, it should clear the fog out of my head this morning.”
“And then some.”
“I took a look at the LUDs last night.”
He raised his brows. “I have a team combing through the phone records already. No calls to duplicate numbers have been placed or received.”
“Couldn’t sleep, remember?” Despite the words, her tone was slightly less caustic than it’d been earlier. Caffeine was a good jumpstart. And Flo’s coffee was high octane. “Did your guys mention that all three victims received a call from a public phone in the last month?”
He lifted a shoulder, unimpressed. “Informants use public phones all the time. They didn’t come from the same number.” Couldn’t have, or the detectives would have caught it.
“No.” She put her coffee down and took out a thick green binder. He recognized it as the one she was keeping her case file in. “But they did all come in on the same date. All within a half hour of each other, in fact.”
Letting the edges of the map roll back, he looked instead at the page in the binder she was indicating. “Okay, this one went out to Roland Parker and the number is identified as being located inside Hanley’s Market on the sixteen hundred block of Post. But fifteen minutes later someone placed a call from this number”—she riffled a few pages before finding her spot—“which is identified as a phone booth on the corner of Collins