“I’ll call Captain Morales.” Eve picked up the phone on Caine’s desk.
As she dialed, Caine motioned to the rest of his team to follow him out into the hallway.
Once assembled, he looked at each of them.
“Someone needs to go with Eve into San Antonio to talk with the family. The right questions need to be asked, and I have no faith in the human police to ask them.”
Lyra sniffed. “Don’t look at me. I still have those symbols to decipher. I think I’m really close.”
Caine moved his gaze to Jace. The man’s face was so stern, his eyes so fierce, that Caine didn’t even bother to ask.
Kellen raised his hand. “I’ll go with her.” He grinned. “She’s just the type of distraction I need.”
“Not likely, Kel. You’re a lab man, not a field man. You’d scare the residents of San Antonio.” Sighing, Caine shook his head. “Save it. I’ll go. You’re all acting like juveniles out on the playground.”
Jace snorted. “Hey, you’re the boss. You’re the one that’s supposed to be the professional and set an example for the rest of us.”
“You had better have made some progress on the hair and fiber analysis when I get back,” Caine remarked, then marched back into his office.
Eve had just hung up the phone and glanced at him as he neared the desk. She looked harried, strands of hair framing her face. He noticed that she didn’t try to tuck them back behind her ears. Obviously, she was too preoccupied to worry about it. A slight twitch at her right cheek beside her lips indicated nervous tension. He could just imagine what her captain had said to her about one of them coming into San Antonio to question some humans.
“He’s sending someone to meet us at the east entrance.” She lowered her gaze, and tapped a finger on his desk. “They’ll escort us to the Crawford residence where Detective Salinas will meet us.”
He nodded. He hadn’t expected anything less. He was actually surprised that they were allowing any of them to enter San Antonio. It had been over ten years since he’d been in the city.
“I’m surprised.” He lifted his brow with an unasked question.
“I told the captain that the case couldn’t possibly be solved without you…without your questions, I mean—” she cleared her throat “—that only an Otherworlder would be able to ask the right questions to get the answers we need to solve Lillian’s murder.”
“What’s this Detective Salinas like? Do you know him?”
She nodded but refused to meet his gaze. Was she hiding something? “He’s all right.
Fairly straight up.”
Caine stiffened. Was that hurt he heard in her voice? Possibly anger? He wasn’t as sensitive to sound as Jace, but he could decipher a lot in the way people spoke, and the words they used to communicate. He had extraordinary sensory perception. And right now, it was telling him that there was obviously some history between Eve and Detective Salinas. Romantic history, he assumed by the way her cheeks turned pink when she spoke about him.
“Is there going to be a problem working with him? Is your past history going to interfere with this investigation?”
Her head snapped up and the color of her eyes darkened. It was obvious he had hit a nerve. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m assuming you’ve had some sort of relationship with the detective. Is it going to be an issue working with him? We can’t afford any more liabilities on this case.”
Standing, Eve straightened her shoulders and glared at him. “First of all, it’s none of your business if I’ve had a relationship with this man or not. You are not my boss, thank God for that.” She rounded the desk and stood directly in front of him, her hands on her hips.
He could feel her anger float off her like heat waves. He could almost taste it in the air on the tip of his tongue. “Secondly, I am not a liability. The biggest problem with this case is the hostility here. I sense it with your team—and now with you.”
Without waiting for him to comment, she stormed out of his office.
That went well. Caine rubbed a hand over his mouth. He supposed he deserved that for assuming any impropriety on Eve’s part. It was just that they didn’t need any more problems on this case. He didn’t believe in engaging in anything romantic with coworkers. Nothing good ever came out of it. It was difficult enough without making things more complicated with strained working relationships.
Ha! Talk about strained working relationships! Just having Eve here had put enough tension on his team, and on him, to break a tightrope. He could feel the high level of anxiety from both his people and from Eve. It was so palpable he felt like he was walking in quicksand.
Jace popped his head through the doorway. “What did you do to the human? She looks like she could rip the universe a new black hole…with her teeth even.”
“I probably owe her an apology.” He sighed. “Did you happen to see where she went?”
“Women’s washroom. I heard some definite banging going on in there.” As quick as Jace was there, he was gone.