on a case that involved homicides that were eerily similar to her cousin’s.
“And just what way did you mean them?” he asked her. His smile only grew wider.
Luke leaned back in his chair and his eyes slowly passed over her, taking careful measure of every attractive inch. No doubt about it. She was the best-looking woman he had seen in a long time. The annoyed expression on her face just made her that much more of a challenge as far as he was concerned.
“Word has it that you’re working on a case that might involve a serial killer killing young, dark-haired women.” Frankie kept her voice neutral, professional. She couldn’t afford to have O’Bannon suspect just how important this case was to her.
Luke shrugged. “You know how rumors fly around the precinct...”
Although his voice trailed off, his eyes never left her face. It wasn’t difficult to see that this case was important to her. Why? She didn’t remind him of a reporter, searching for an in. And she definitely wasn’t part of Sean Cavanaugh’s CSI unit. He knew every face in his uncle’s department, both the day and the night shift.
“Don’t toy with me, O’Bannon.”
The corners of his mouth curved deeper as he leaned slightly forward. “Is that a dare?”
This was getting her absolutely nowhere and it was just wasting time. Given the man’s reputation, she should have known better than to approach O’Bannon directly with anything.
“Maybe I’d be better off going to Lt. Handel with this,” Frankie said, already turning on her heel. Handel’s office was in the back.
“Wait,” Luke called after her.
Frankie spared the detective a cold glance over her shoulder. “Why?”
“Well, for one thing, you’ll wind up talking to yourself,” he pointed out. “The lieutenant’s not in his office.”
Was he playing her? She was tempted to look in the general direction of the lieutenant’s glass-paneled office, but she refrained. For now, she gave O’Bannon the benefit of the doubt. She actually did need the man on her side, which meant that she had to build up some sort of rapport.
“Where is he?” she asked him, trying to control her impatience.
“At a meeting with the new chief of police,” Luke replied, referring to his cousin, Shaw Cavanaugh, who had recently assumed the position after the previous chief had suffered a heart attack in his sleep and died. “No telling when he’ll be back.” He watched the woman when she reluctantly turned around again to face him. “So you might as well finish filling me in on why you’re asking questions about my case.”
“Because I think I might have...stumbled across another victim,” Frankie said.
She could see that she had gotten O’Bannon’s attention. His whole countenance grew more alert.
“And by ‘stumbled across,’ you mean...?” He waited for her to fill in the blank.
Frankie knew she needed to keep this as close to the truth as possible. It was a trick she had learned a long time ago. The closer to the truth something was, the easier it was to keep track of the things she said about it.
Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have felt the need to play games like this. However, if it became known that she was Kristin’s cousin, then it went without saying that she wouldn’t be allowed to work on the case.
And she intended to work the case, no matter what. Even if it wound up costing her her job. With luck, it wouldn’t come to that.
Frankie framed her answer carefully. O’Bannon’s reputation as a ladies’ man wasn’t the only reputation he had. The man was sharp. “The victim’s roommate called me when she found the body.”
“And why would she do that?” he asked, his voice low, probing.
Frankie took a small, unobtrusive breath. “Because I was the first one she thought of when she came home to find the victim on the floor, unresponsive. I met her in an adult education course,” she threw in, hoping that would answer any stray questions O’Bannon might have about her association with the roommate.
It didn’t.
“What kind of a course?” he asked, appearing to be mildly interested.
“A boring one,” Frankie answered crisply. “Can we please get on with this?” she pressed.
“All right,” he obliged. “What makes you think this dead woman you ‘stumbled across,’” he said, using her own words, “is one of my serial killer’s victims? Was she stabbed? Or shot at close range?” Luke fired the questions at her in staccato fashion.
Frankie’s eyes narrowed. “Your serial killer’s victims are all women in their twenties, not men. And your serial killer doesn’t stab or shoot his victims,” she concluded.
Luke leaned back in his chair, never taking his eyes off her. “I’m impressed. You’ve done your homework on me.”
“Correction,” she retorted. “I’ve done my homework on your case. And since I think the woman I found is another one of your killer’s victims, I thought we could work together to find this piece of filth before he kills anyone else.”
“So you are with the police department.” Until this moment, he hadn’t been sure about that.
“Major Crimes,” she informed him.
“And why would Major Crimes be interested in having one of their own work with me on this case?” he asked.
“Turns out that Debra Evans, one of the victims, is the niece of one of the state’s senators,” she replied.
“You really have done your homework on this case,” he said, duly impressed. “Well, I have no objections to you throwing your lot in with mine, but just to play by the rules, we’re going to have to clear it with Lt. Handel when he gets back.”
From what she’d learned, O’Bannon wasn’t one who really cared about playing by the rules unless it suited him. But she wasn’t about to say that and risk getting on the man’s bad side. She really needed to work this case. She owed it to Kristin.
“I assumed as much,” Frankie replied.
He flashed another broad grin at her. “That’s what I like. Someone who’s on their toes. I take it that you have the victim’s name.”
“Kristin Andrews,” she replied. “She is—was—” Frankie corrected herself, doing her best not to let O’Bannon see that having to refer to her cousin in the past tense really bothered her “—twenty-five and she was a nurse working at Aurora General.”
“You are thorough,” Luke said. He was beginning to see past her good looks and was taking stock of her as a detective. “Any theory about her cause of death?” he asked, curious to see if there were similarities to his killer’s victims and the one that this knockout on two shapely legs was bringing him.
“There was a syringe in her arm,” Frankie replied, every word burning on her tongue.
“So you think it was a drug overdose,” Luke concluded.
“No, I think it was made to look like a drug overdose,” Frankie replied tersely, correcting him.
“And you know this how?” he asked.
He was leaning back in his chair again, studying the brunette with the piled-up, impossibly sexy hair that seemed to be falling every which way and yet somehow remained in place. Whenever possible, Luke was always open to accommodating pretty women, but not at the expense of his job. That always came first, as did the victims he had sworn an oath to do right by.
“Her roommate told me that Kristin, the victim, had had a painkiller problem dating years back to a knee injury she’d sustained in high school, playing soccer.”