Strong, Sleek and Sinful - By Lorie O'Clare Page 0,41
on my computer. I teased him about getting rusty with his detective skills and he got all bent out of shape.”
Perry stared at her, focusing on one dark curl that twisted down the middle of her forehead. Rad was at his computer, too, when he returned to his den after getting a beer. Turning his attention to his monitor, he remembered the Chief asking him about who he was chatting with.
“Maybe he was just trying to find out who knew how to chat online.” Goddard laughed.
Perry looked at Goddard, musing over the possibility. Rad wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about chatting online. But it was a very big issue with this case. What if Rad was taking on this case himself?
Perry scowled, staring across the room but not focusing on anything while he pondered the possibility. It pissed him off. This was a big case, high profile. That wasn’t why he had asked for it. Perry had seen the pattern and wanted the creep off the streets. Every day he was allowed to chat with girls online was one more day that a teenager might lose her life. Rad didn’t strike Perry as a media chaser. He wasn’t out to earn brownie points. But if he took this case himself, that meant he didn’t feel anyone in his department was competent enough to handle it.
That possibility irritated Perry even more. Everyone chatted around him, allowing the conversation to jump from topic to topic. Perry didn’t pay any attention to any of them and it didn’t appear to bother them that he ignored their bantering and jokes. He wanted to know why Rad had taken the case, and he wanted to know why the Chief felt no one else could handle it. Perry wasn’t a conceited man, but damn it to hell. He could find the perp faster than Rad could. And maybe it was time to prove that he could, in spite of not being specifically assigned the case.
If anyone said good-bye when he stood and left the “pit,” he didn’t notice. Heading out to the copy room, Perry used the computer in there to pull up the files on Brown, Wright, and even Maura Reynolds, who had disappeared three months before. Her case matched the profile of the other two. He copied their files and then headed home. It was time to do some snooping online, and for that he’d use his own computer. The only way to catch this guy was to play in the perp’s territory.
While at it, he would figure out what Rad was all about. But the more he pondered that matter, the more determined he got to dig deep into this case and show the Chief he was the man for the job.
Chapter 8
Kylie entered the FBI field office in Kansas City Monday morning. She wore comfortable jeans and a sleeveless blouse, and although they were not an extreme variation from the wardrobe she’d donned over the past few days and made a habit of wearing every time she worked an online predator case, it had felt good to wear her everyday clothes over the weekend.
After spending time in Dallas at her apartment, clearing her head of the case for a day or so while taking care of matters at home, she hurried into the field office, grabbing coffee and listening while a couple secretaries complained about Monday mornings sucking.
It had been good having lunch with her mother, chatting about things that were important to her. Deirdre Donovan, who went by “Dee,” was aging before Kylie’s eyes. Suddenly it seemed more important than it had in years past to give her mother more attention, to consent to conversations about Kylie’s sister, and maybe to consider there was still mending to do. Kylie was more than willing to accept that her relationship with her parents was strained, but accepting that her relationship with her dead sister needed to be repaired, as her mother put it, was something Kylie hadn’t considered.
She sure never thought she blamed her sister for dying. But when her mother accused Kylie of chasing after all of these online predators because she wanted to punish a man who’d never been caught, or possibly because deep inside Kylie believed the man who had killed Karen might be one of the men she arrested, that brought her pause. She didn’t like hearing that she was chasing ghosts and that nothing she did would ever bring Karen back. And it bugged the crap out of