Olivia jerked her arm from his grasp.
“You called the Fourth Precinct chief?” Who’d filtered the request down through Sawyer Kincaid and on to Jim and her. She hated anyone who felt they were entitled enough to break the rules of standard police procedure whenever it suited them. She could do the low, threatening voice, too. “You know, we have real work to do, Mr. Knight. KCPD is not at your beck and call to dig up sidebars for whatever story you’re working on.”
“Trust me, Detective, there is nothing more real to me than finding Dani’s killer. If your people won’t do it, I will.”
Her people? Cops? Like her friends and father and grandfather and brothers? The same men and women who’d solved her own mother’s brutal slaying two decades earlier? This guy was bashing them?
And then something else he said registered, cooling the defensive anger that had flashed through her veins. The woman I loved.
She empathized with the kind of senseless violence, anger and grief Gabriel Knight had suffered more than he knew. It only took one deep breath, one thought of her mother’s smiling face, to remember her sensitivity training. “Every victim believes the death of his or her loved one is our most important case. I’m sorry for your loss. But if the department hasn’t made enough progress on Ms. Reese’s death to suit you, it’s only because there haven’t been any substantial leads. Not because we’ve given up.”
“This is a lead. There has to be a connection to Kober. Find it.”
“I promise you, if we get new information on your fiancée’s death, we’ll look into it.”
“Coming from you, that’s not terribly reassuring.”
Bristling at the dig that felt inexplicably personal, coming from a man she’d never met, Olivia gestured toward the yellow tape. She bit down on the urge to demand an explanation and invited him to walk beside her. “We never give up on a case. Ever. But some take longer to solve than others. It’s a matter of prioritization. We review cases every day and try to focus our time, money and manpower where it can do the most good.”
“You’re preaching departmental protocol, Detective Watson. And that’s not a good enough answer.” He stopped at the outer door, dipping his head slightly as he faced her one more time. “You find out who killed Kober, and I guarantee you’ll find a lead on Dani’s murderer. It may even be the same man who committed both crimes.”
With that warning, he ducked beneath the tape and stalked away. Olivia shook her head at the uniformed officer’s questioning look about whether or not he needed to stop Knight before he pushed his way through the gathering of onlookers and got on the elevator.
She was still processing the oddly charged and cryptic encounter when she felt a tap at her elbow. She nodded to Jim and he lifted the crime scene tape for her to exit in front of him. “You know who you were talking to, don’t you?”
“Yeah. He said his name was Gabriel Knight. He’s a reporter.”
“Not just any reporter.” They stepped onto the elevator and Jim pushed the button for the ground floor. “Gabe Knight writes the Crime Beat column for the Kansas City Journal.”
Her instincts about men must still be out of whack after dumping Marcus. Otherwise, she’d have pieced together the name with the clues he’d dropped.
“He’s the guy who wrote all those editorials about KCPD not being able to catch the Rose Red Rapist?” And when the task force did finally catch the creep and put him on trial, there hadn’t been one word of praise or apology, merely a recitation of facts and something like, “About damn time.” Olivia groaned at her ineptitude as she walked out with Jim. Somehow she felt as if she’d betrayed her brethren cops by even having a conversation with the department’s most outspoken critic. “And I was nice to him. Well, I was civil. He thinks Kober’s murder is related to the unsolved death of his fiancée a few years back. Danielle Reese? He’s the one who got us invited to the crime scene.”
They circled the gathering of television cameras and reporters on their way to her SUV. She felt Knight’s blue eyes following her from the crowd awaiting the press conference as they crossed the street, but studiously ignored the urge to meet his watchful gaze.
“He probably approached you because he thought you’d be softhearted and sympathetic to his cause.” She glared at Jim over the hood of the car before they both climbed in. “Clearly, he doesn’t know you very well.”
Okay, so Jim’s dry wit could make her laugh, too, just like her brothers’ teasing guff usually did.
Olivia’s smile faded as they fastened their seat belts. “He’s poking his nose into our crime scene, trying to get the scoop on the rest of the press—and then he turns around and criticizes us for not catching every last bad guy, or doing it fast enough to suit his idealistic timetable? That just sticks in my craw.”
She looked through the windshield to glare at the presumptuous Mr. Knight. But those smug blue eyes were nowhere to be seen. Even with a second search among the reporters gathered in front of the building, she didn’t spot his rich, coal-black hair. “That son of a...” Had that self-important buttinsky snuck back inside the building? Un-uh. Not on her watch.
Olivia pulled her keys from the ignition and opened her door. “Can you get a ride with somebody? I’m going to have a couple more words with Mr. Knight.”
Jim climbed out on the opposite side. “Do you need me to go with you?”
“No, I can handle him.” As soon as he’d closed his door, she hit the locks and hurried around the hood of the car.
“Olivia, we’re a team, remember? I’ve got your back.”
“I know.”
“How come I don’t quite believe you mean that?”
Olivia stopped midcharge. Marcus Brower had supposedly had her back, too. And while her former partner had never once let her down out on the streets, his betrayal behind closed doors would probably always taint her ability to trust a man who wasn’t family again.
But Jim Parker didn’t deserve to be blown off because some other guy was a two-timing jackass she’d put her career on hold for. “Sorry. You and I are still in the getting-to-know-you phase, I suppose. Sometimes, people like Gabriel Knight don’t take a woman cop seriously. I need him to understand that when I tell him to go away and let us handle things, I mean it.”
Seemingly satisfied with the apology and that much of an explanation, Jim nodded and pulled out his cell phone. “The man’s a cool customer from what I hear. Don’t let him rile that Irish blood of yours.”
“Too late for that. Say, maybe you can pull out the file on Dani Reese’s murder so I can get up to speed on whatever it is Knight is blaming us for. See if we can find that connection to Kober he claims, too.” She waved goodbye as Jim placed his call. “I’ll catch up with you back at HQ.”
“Roger that.” She heard an amused voice behind her as she darted across the street. “Good luck, Mr. Knight.”
“Are you deaf or stupid, Mr. Knight?” Gabe halted on the seventh floor’s concrete landing at Olivia Watson’s voice. “I’ll bet it’s neither one. You’re just too damn arrogant to think that the rules apply to you, aren’t you?”
It was the husky undertones coloring that voice, not the words themselves, that turned him to face the detective.
She glared at him from the bottom of the stairs, her chest subtly expanding and contracting beneath that trim leather jacket. It hadn’t taken the police as long as he’d expected to notice him sneaking through to the back stairs and chase him up six flights of steel and concrete. This one was smart. Determined.