“I’ll have to pay her back next time I see her.”
Kellan laughed. Isabella was nothing if not true to form. “Kylie thought you might say that too. She told me to tell you, and I quote, ‘After all you did to find that asshole Burton, don’t even think about paying me back for these.’”
Pressing a smile between her lips, Isabella set the bags in an out-of-the-way spot and moved back through the kitchen. “Your sister’s kind of a badass,” she said, pointing toward the cabinets with her brows up in wordless question. At his nod, she unearthed two plates, repeating the process with the drawer below to add silverware. “Kylie’s safe, right?”
“Are you kidding?” They might have a truckload of shit to worry about with DuPree still on the loose, but thankfully, his sister’s safety was a no-brainer. “Like you said, she’s kind of a badass. Anyway, Devon’s even more protective of her than I am, and that’s saying something.”
“Good.” Her brown eyes turned serious in the soft overhead light of his kitchen as she kicked into work mode. “DuPree’s been quiet since he shook things up at my apartment, but after today, I’m sure he won’t stay that way.”
Isabella proceeded to fill him in on the case details as he dished up two double-portions of lasagna and led her to the tiny table in his breakfast nook. His shock that Angel’s death had been ruled a homicide turned into anger at the lack of evidence to connect it to DuPree, and damn, between the confirmation that they were up against some top-notch security with this Shadow hacker and the fact that DuPree clearly knew how to outsmart everyone in his path, the intelligence unit definitely had their work cut out for them.
“So Sinclair didn’t get anywhere with this bastard at all?” Kellan asked, stacking his empty plate on top of Isabella’s and bringing both to the kitchen sink a few steps away.
Isabella shook her head, following him to the counter. “Sinclair didn’t even get in the door,” she corrected. “He got dead silence at the Metropolitan, and when he tried DuPree’s office, the receptionist kept telling him the bastard was ‘unavailable.’ We can’t even be sure he was in either place.”
“Damn. How about a search warrant for the penthouse?” Not even DuPree would be able to snake around that.
“Unfortunately, the State’s Attorney can’t use anything we turned up at that party to get search warrants for DuPree’s penthouse or surveillance equipment,” Isabella said with a frown. “The conversations you and I had with both Danny and Angel can’t be corroborated, plus we didn’t have a warrant to be in the penthouse to begin with. If a judge finds out we went to that party before an active investigation was opened on top of that…”
Fuck. “You’ll get laughed right out of the courthouse.”
“Exactly.”
Kellan blew out a slow breath. “And you didn’t get anywhere with the canvas out in North Point?”
Isabella shook her head, dark hair spilling over her shoulders. “Hollister and I knocked on every door in that damned neighborhood today. Not one person can put DuPree or anyone on his payroll at the scene of Angel’s murder, and Hale and Maxwell came up empty on Danny Marcus’s end too. There’s no trace of this guy anywhere near these crimes. DuPree might as well be a ghost.”
Finishing with the dishes, Kellan led her to the living room, parking himself next to her on the couch and saying the only thing he could think of. “I’m sorry.”
To his surprise, she simply nodded. “Thanks. It’s not all a loss, though. Just because we can’t use what you and I saw at the party to indict doesn’t mean the intel doesn’t help the investigation. We know DuPree is forcing these women into prostitution, and we know how he operates. We just have to keep digging to find a way to prove what we know. And once we do that…
“You’ll have enough to tie him to the parties and the murders,” Kellan finished. He sat back against the couch cushions, looking at Isabella in the last of the evening light filtering in through the picture windows. She met his stare, holding on to it for just a minute before smiling and shocking the hell out of him.
“So tell me something about you.”
His brows shot upward, and God, would she ever stop being both the opposite of what he expected and exactly what he wanted all at once? “You want to know something about me?”