Strong, Sleek and Sinful - By Lorie O'Clare Page 0,149
after being tossed out of a car.”
“Tossed out of a car?” Gracie asked, standing when the medics walked over to them with a gurney.
“Why would she die up alongside a building like this?” Perry stood as well, facing Gracie and watching her chew her lower lip and study his face. It was as if he could see her brain churning, struggling to come up with a believable answer that might impress him.
“Well, maybe she couldn’t walk very well from her injuries and started walking alongside the building, using it to hold her up.”
“Good.” Perry nodded. Maybe Gracie wasn’t as self-centered and cold to the line of work she was in as she first appeared. “If your theory is right, though, with the amount of blood covering her body, if she walked along the building there would be blood on the bricks. Have you checked?”
“No. Do you think I should?”
“Yup. If your theory is right, it would tell us which direction she came from. If there aren’t any blood trails on the wall, then my theory might be right.” He decided Gracie had a pretty smile, although he missed the glow that Kylie would get in her eyes when challenged.
“I’ll check,” Gracie said, as if she’d just decided she would do so. “If I’m right, though, you have to take me out for a drink,” she added, winking at him. She didn’t take his comments as instruction but almost as a game.
“We’ll see,” he said, watching when she again walked to her case and pulled out what she needed to search for blood samples on the brick wall. “What was this picture you mentioned?”
Gracie stood over Lanie’s body, facing the wall. She looked over her shoulder, grinning at him, her gaze traveling down his body shamelessly, and the sparkle he had missed in her eyes when he challenged her was there now as blatant interest brought out color in her cheeks.
She licked her lips and arched her back slightly, reminding him of a hungry feline, or possibly a feline in heat. “I’ve already tagged it as evidence,” she said, and turned from the wall and walked up until she stood close enough that she needed to tilt her head to look at his face. “It was a picture of another girl. It looked like it was taken with a camera phone possibly and blown up and printed. But I think I’ve seen the girl in the picture before down at the station. You might know her.”
Taking his arm, Gracie wrapped hers around his and escorted him to Goddard’s patrol car. Perry freed himself, frustrated with her unprofessional behavior, and the curious look Goddard gave him when he and Gracie rounded the car to the trunk.
“Where is that picture?” Gracie asked Goddard. “The one the girl had in her hand?”
“You didn’t see it already?” Goddard frowned at Perry but then sifted through the evidence bags and pulled out a piece of typing paper in a bag with a picture printed on it. Then grabbing his flashlight, he turned on the beam and handed the picture to Perry.
If the thing were alive it would have bitten off his hand. Perry gawked at the picture, his stomach churning so furiously while bile moved to his throat. He stared, his hand shaking, at the picture of Dani, taken in the dark, with her staring slightly above the camera, as if possibly she didn’t know the shot had been taken. Over the picture, written in block letters with a red marker, it said: Guess who is next?
“Fucking son of a bitch,” Perry roared, needing to hit something worse than he’d ever needed to before.
“What’s wrong?” Gracie asked, once again touching his arm.
He didn’t try to prevent her from touching him this time. If she wanted to mess with his boiling outrage, that was her own stupidity at work.
“It’s a goddamn picture of my niece,” he roared, turning from both of them and staring at the dark parking lot. It took him a minute to register what he saw, but he did a double take on the car turning in the parking lot and heading toward the exit.
It was Kylie’s hybrid.
Chapter 25
“Okay, I think we’re ready.” Paul walked around the conference desk and looked at the recorder in the middle of the oblong table. “Next time you want to record something, though, let me know. I can hook you up with much better equipment than this.”
“It was a consensual recording. I wasn’t worried about trying to determine