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  Clearing his throat, Bryce asked, “How long will it take you to get dressed?”

  What time was it? She looked at her watch. It was a little after four in the morning. “Are you taking me back to the ball, Fairy Godmother?” she quipped.

  “No, I’m taking you to a crime scene,” he told her crisply. He saw that got her attention instantly. “Apparently there’s been another break-in—and this time the home owners came back unexpectedly and walked in on the thieves.”

  She had already started to go back upstairs to get dressed but she froze when Bryce said the home owners had surprised the thieves.

  She had a bad feeling about this.

  Turning around to look at Bryce, she asked, “Was anyone hurt?”

  “The home owner, Jacob Williams, had a gun,” he told her. “Williams said he thought he winged one of the thieves. We’ve got the CSI unit over there right now, going over everything to see if they can find any trace of blood.”

  Snapping out of her trance, trying to reassure herself that it wasn’t her brother who had gotten shot, Scottie ran up the rest of the stairs two at a time.

  “Give me five minutes,” she called down.

  “Five minutes?” Bryce echoed skeptically. “Okay, sure, but no woman in the history of the world has ever been ready in five minutes. It’s physically impossible to get dressed that fast and be ready to leave in under twenty-five—” The last word dribbled out of his mouth as he looked at her. “You’re back. And dressed.” Had it even taken her five minutes?

  “Let’s go,” Scottie ordered, hurrying past him as she went to the front door.

  He could only stare in amazement at how fast she had put on her jeans and pullover. “How did you manage to do that?” he asked.

  She supposed she could understand his surprise. Most women—hell, most people—needed more time than she’d taken.

  Taking pity on him, she explained. “Growing up, I had a mother who got punchy when she was high—and by punchy, I mean she punched. Getting dressed and getting out of the apartment really fast was just something I picked up while trying to survive. Damn,” she muttered.

  For once he understood. She was annoyed with herself, not him.

  “You’re ticked off because you’re sharing again, aren’t you?” he asked with a dry laugh. “I have that effect on people. Don’t worry,” he told her, “I won’t tell anyone.”

  She turned to look at him as she put her house key into her bag, but he wasn’t grinning. He looked perfectly serious as he made her what amounted to a promise.

  “My upbringing isn’t exactly something I’m proud of,” she told him.

  “You should be,” he told her as they got into his car. “You survived it and turned out pretty damn well. Somebody else might not have.”

  “Yeah,” she murmured dismissively, fastening her seat belt.

  Scottie deliberately steered the conversation away from herself. “What do we know so far?” she asked, wanting to get as many details about this latest break-in as possible.

  “Just that the couple was going away for an extended weekend but the wife suddenly felt sick so they turned around and came back home again. They obviously weren’t expected. According to the officer taking their statement, everything outside looked just the way it had when they’d left it. There were no signs of a forced break-in, no strange vehicle parked in the street. According to Williams, there was even a flyer still hanging undisturbed on his doorknob.”

  Mention of a flyer instantly grabbed her attention and had her completely alert. She’d forgotten about that detail. Placing a plastic flyer touting the services of a computer expert was something Ethan had come up with. If the thieves drove by and found it handing on the doorknob, undisturbed, they knew they were safe to go in.

  “What kind of a flyer?” she asked.

  This was what she was asking about? He thought it rather odd—unless there was more to this than she was letting on.

  Shrugging, Bryce said, “Just an average flyer. It was coated in plastic I guess. How the hell should I know?” And then he slanted a look at her, more convinced than ever that there was more to this. Scottie didn’t talk just to hear herself talk.

  “Why?” he asked. “Is it important?”

  There was no point in trying to pretend that it wasn’t, Scottie thought. Not after her reaction. She used to be better at masking her emotions. Now she was becoming unglued.

  “It might be,” she answered vaguely.

  “C’mon, you don’t bolt upright like that when you hear me say that there was a flyer hanging on the doorknob because it’s nothing. Now, level with me, Scottie. What does that flyer have to do with all these break-ins? How does it tie in?”

  She paused for a long moment, debating just how much to say, how much to leave out.

  “Remember when I said yesterday that you could tell me anything?” Bryce asked.

  “Yes?” she answered warily.

  “Well, I think I’m going to have to insist on it right after we talk to the victims and take down their statements,” he told her.

  She tried to stall until she could work through this whole thing and decide just what she could tell him and what she couldn’t. “I already said that after I check a few things out, I’ll tell you,” she reminded him.

  She was hedging and he knew it. “Okay, but just remember, I can’t help you if you don’t help me and I really do want to help you, Scottie.”

  Not half as much as I want to help Ethan, Scottie thought. But she knew he was right.

  “Okay,” she said quietly. “After we take down the statements,” she repeated, “then we’ll have that conversation you seem so intent on having.”

  “It’s for everyone’s own good, Scottie,” he told her. “Everyone’s.”

  She only wished he was right.

  Chapter 14

  The latest break-in victims, Jacob and Mandy Williams, a fifty-ish couple, both appeared to be rather shaken when she and Bryce arrived to take their statements. As they walked up to the stylish house, it seemed to Scottie that every single light was on in the house.

  “My guess is that they’re probably trying to feel safe and on top of the situation,” Bryce commented, noticing the look on his partner’s face.

  “Good luck with that,” Scottie murmured. She was trying not to be overly obvious as she scanned the immediate area. She was both searching for, and hoping not to find, any sign of a trail of blood on the ground.

  “You looking for something?” Bryce asked her just before they walked into the two-story house.

  “Clues,” was all she said.

  “Crime scene unit’s already here,” he reminded her.

  “Yes, I know,” she responded, wondering if the unit, headed by Sean Cavanaugh, had found anything incriminating.

  She let Bryce handle the introductions as they met with the victims, using the time to get herself under control. Her partner was savvy and she knew he’d pick up on the fact that she was acting freaked out in any manner. That wasn’t going to do her, Ethan or the Williamses any good.

  Hold it together, Scottie. Hold it together. She silently repeated the order like a mantra while she offered the couple a sympathetic smile.

  As if on cue, she held up her identification when Bryce said her name, then waited until he paused before asking the question that was foremost on her mind.

  “And you think you shot one of the thieves?” she asked Jacob Williams.

  Bryce looked at her sharply, but she ignored him. Her attention was totally focused on Jacob Williams, waiting for his answer.

  Williams, only slightly taller than the woman asking the question, nodded. “Well, I shot at him and the thief made a noise. So, yeah, I think I hit the dirty scum.”

  Her pulse accelerated bu
t she kept her voice steady. “Where were you standing at the time?”

  “Here. In the house. I don’t know,” Williams snapped, sounding progressively more irritated as he spoke. “When Mandy and I came in, I saw these people trying to get out the back patio door. I grabbed my gun out of the drawer in the living room desk and I aimed it at them. I yelled ‘Stop.’ They didn’t. So I shot at the closest one. One of your people took my gun,” he complained.

  “Standard procedure, sir,” Bryce assured the home owner. “You’ll get it back after they finish processing it.”

  Maybe Williams had missed when he shot at the thieves, Scottie thought, praying she was right as she tried to be inconspicuous, looking at the floor. “Do you know what they took?”

  Williams shook his head. “We haven’t had time to look,” he answered, including his wife in the answer, “but I didn’t see them carrying anything.”

  Scottie watched as Mandy Williams threaded her hand through her husband’s in mute support. Both had really been shaken up, she thought again, not that she could blame them.

  “You said ‘them.’ How many thieves did you see?” Her question was addressed to both of the victims.

  “Two—no, three,” Williams corrected himself. He glanced toward his wife for confirmation. Mandy Williams nodded her head.

  Scottie’s heart was in her throat as she asked, “Could you recognize them if you saw them again?”

  Williams was clearly frustrated. “No, it was dark. All I can say is that one of them was a large, husky man.”

  “I think one of them was a woman,” Williams’s wife volunteered. “Either that, or it was a man with a really great shape.”

  She glanced from Williams to his wife. “And you’re sure that you didn’t get a good look at any of them?” Scottie pressed.

  Williams looked as if a lightbulb had suddenly gone off over his head. “No, but I’ve got motion-activated cameras mounted by the front door and over the patio. They have to be on that. You’re welcome to look at the footage,” he told them.

  Bryce nodded. “Thanks, we’ll have our techs at the crime scene lab take a look at them, see if they can make out any images.”

  Knowing the way Ethan operated, Scottie was fairly certain her brother had disabled any cameras on the premises before the thieves ever got there, but she kept that to herself.

  “When you were giving your statement to the police officer, you said something about the flyer on your front doorknob not being disturbed,” Scottie reminded Williams. Mentally she crossed her fingers. “You didn’t throw it out, did you?”

  “No, it’s right here,” Williams told her, crossing the room to where he had tossed the flyer when he and his wife had entered the house.

  He was about to pick it up but Scottie got to it ahead of him. Politely edging him out of the way, she used a handkerchief to pick up the flyer.

  “Is it important?” Williams asked her uncertainly.

  “Everything’s important in this kind of an investigation,” Scottie told the victim, deliberately keeping her answer vague.

  Glancing at it, her heart froze. She was right. The flyer was for a computer tech.

  Ethan was involved.

  * * *

  “Well, I think we’ve got everything we need,” Bryce told the couple after he had asked them several more questions. Taking his card out of his wallet, he handed it to Williams. “Here’s my card with both my cell phone and my number at the precinct. Give me a call as soon as you look through your things—even if you find that nothing was taken,” he added.

  Williams nodded, closing his hand over the card. “I’ll do that.” He exchanged glances with his wife. “I don’t expect either one of us to get any sleep tonight, anyway. Is it okay if I call you early in the morning?” he asked.

  “Absolutely,” Bryce told him. “Anytime. One way or another, we’ll be in touch again,” he promised. Looking at Scottie, he indicated that he was ready to go unless she had something else she wanted to ask.

  Scottie was more than ready to leave. Still holding the flyer with her handkerchief, she fell into step beside him. Bryce was examining the flyer and she assumed he was trying to figure out why she was holding it the way she was.

  “You think the perp’s fingerprints are on it?” he asked her once they had left the house.

  “There’s an outside chance there might be,” she told him.

  He caught the inflection in her voice. “You say that as if you don’t think there are. The way you talked about it, I got the impression that you think one of the thieves hung this on the doorknob.”

  “Yes, I do.” She knew he was waiting for more. Resigned, she gave him another morsel. “Wearing gloves.” She hadn’t expected him to react the way he did.

  “You know something.”

  She weighed her options. Lying was only going to get her in trouble, and she needed him on her side—for Ethan if not for herself.

  “Possibly,” she said to qualify her response. “I want to show this to the other victims, see if any of them remembers seeing it hung on their doorknobs.” She saw the impatience in his eyes. He’d humored her up until now, she needed a little more slack. “Look, this is a long shot and I don’t want to say anything until I have more information. Please,” she added.

  This was important to her, Bryce thought. And personal. He didn’t like being kept in the dark, but he also knew what it meant to be following a hunch—if that was what she was doing.

  “Okay,” Bryce finally agreed. “But you and I are having a heart-to-heart by the end of the day—and your part had better be good,” he warned.

  That all depends on your definition of good, Scottie thought uneasily.

  Offering him a barely slight smile, she said, “Thank you.”

  He didn’t want her thanking him, he wanted her being honest with him. “We’ll see,” he answered.

  * * *

  One by one he and Scottie made the rounds, going to all the other victims. Scottie showed each of them the flyer, now safely sealed in a plastic bag.

  Each of the break-in victims recalled seeing a flyer hanging on the doorknob when they returned home, although a couple of them weren’t sure if it had been like the one they were being shown.

  Scottie grew progressively quieter with each identification. That fact wasn’t lost on Bryce.

  “Now are you going to tell me what this is all about?” he asked after they had seen their last break-in victims and were driving back to the precinct.

  It was Sunday so the crime lab itself was technically closed, but because of the latest break-in, there was a full team presently there, examining the latest batch of potential clues that had been bagged and tagged. Bryce wanted to drop off the surveillance cameras as well as the flyer.

  Most of all, he wanted answers and he felt that he had been patient long enough.

  “Well?” he persisted. When she didn’t say anything, he pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the engine. “I’m waiting, Scottie.”

  Scottie knew that she had run out of options and ways to stall. And at this point she was ready to admit that she needed help in locating her brother, no matter what kind of situation—good or bad—he had gotten himself into. She had a feeling that the people he had thrown his lot in with were definitely dangerous.

  Taking a breath, she said, “I think I might know who one of the thieves is.”

  “‘Might know’?” Bryce repeated. “And just how’s that possible?”

  She looked down at the sealed flyer she had on her lap. “Because of the MO that was used.”

  “The flyer?” he guessed uncertainly.

  “The flyer,” she confirmed.

  “Okay,” he said gamely. “Walk me through this. Exactly how does it work?”

  Every wo
rd cost her, but she’d rather see her brother in prison than possibly dead and, if she was right, the people he was mixed up with would eliminate him in a heartbeat if something went wrong.

  “Flyers get distributed throughout the neighborhood, including the potential target’s house. The thieves drive by later in the day or evening. If the flyer hasn’t been moved—they make their move.”

  “Sounds like a pretty haphazard way to operate,” he speculated.

  “Not if you’ve hacked into the target’s cell phones and their emails so you can track their activities. That’s how they knew that the Williamses would be out of town for three days—or were supposed to be,” she amended. “Same thing for the others.”

  It was beginning to sound more plausible, Bryce thought. “You said you thought you might know who was pulling off these break-ins.” His eyes met hers. “I assume you have a name.”

  Damn it, Ethan, why did you put me in this spot? Scottie set her jaw grimly. “Yes, I do.”

  “And that is?”

  “It might not be him,” Scottie told her partner, hedging. “It’s his MO—or was, once upon a time,” she admitted. “But it could be someone else. I mean, coincidences do happen.”

  He was trying his best to be understanding, but his patience was quickly growing thin. “Scottie, you’re stalling.”

  She sighed. “That obvious, huh?”

  “Yes, it is,” he answered solemnly. “A better question is why are you stalling?” He looked at her. They were just getting to the point where he felt comfortable working with her, but not if she was lying to him. “Who are you protecting? A former lover?”

  Scottie’s eyes widened and she almost choked. “No. Oh, Lord, no.”

  “Then who? Who do you know who hung those flyers on potential victims’ doorknobs and then hacked into their cell phones and their emails?”

  “It’s the other way around. First he hacked, then he made up the flyers to hang on doorknobs.” She knew she was grasping at straws, but she wanted Bryce to have a clear picture of the way the jobs were pulled off.