Isabella looked at the five-inch stack of paperwork at her elbow, and seriously, how had all her police reports become a mini Mount Everest in the span of only half a work week?
Maybe because you’re trying to juggle your regular cases with getting prepped for this illegal drugs/forced prostitution/bad-man-doing-very-bad-things party you’re not supposed to be going to in T-minus forty-eight hours, and oh by the way, don’t forget trying to forget the galactically furious firefighter you haven’t heard a single peep from since you dropped him off at his car five nights ago.
Well. At least that explained the size of her backlog.
“Burning the midnight oil, huh Moreno?”
The sound of Sinclair’s voice coming from the entryway to his office bumped Isabella back to the reality of the precinct, and she worked up a smile as she tamped down her thoughts. “Nah. It’s only”—she paused to throw a glance at the clock on the wall beside her, doing her best to keep her surprise to herself, because damn, when had it gotten so late?—“ten-thirty. Plus, you’re still here.”
“That’s because I live here.” He ran a hand over his crew cut with a smile even though Isabella knew he was only thirty percent kidding. Sinclair had been divorced three times over, and his daughter, January, was only five years younger than Isabella herself. He might have an apartment a hop-skip away from the police station, but he was as much of a fixture in the Thirty-Third as the handcuffs and holding cells. Not that she was too far behind.
“Everyone else took off for the Crooked Angel a good three hours ago,” Sinclair continued, leaning one shoulder against the doorframe leading to his office. “You didn’t feel like taking a breather too?”
“And miss out on all this glamour?” She pointed to Mount McPaperwork. “Not a chance.”
“Ah. Well, I got the final report from the fire marshal on that blaze over on Glendale earlier today.”
Isabella’s pulse tripped, but she managed a nice, steady, “Did you?” in reply. Although she’d given the women in the photos no less than a thousand thoughts over the last five days, she’d been meticulous about avoiding mention of the case that wasn’t a case (yet) with Sinclair. The more she kept off the table, the less she had to swerve around.
Not to mention, the less he had to suspect.
“Mmm.” Pushing off the industrial gray doorframe, Sinclair crossed the room and pulled out the spare chair next to her desk. The metal feet scraped over the linoleum as he turned the thing around backwards and sat down, his eyes never leaving her face. “The cause of the fire was bad electrical, just like Bridges said. The fire marshal ruled it an accident and condemned the house, so the insurance adjusters and the property owner will take things from here. Thought you’d want to know.”
Surprise lifted her brows. “And what makes you think that?”
“Because you’ve had the evidence box containing the photos, the rope, and the jewelry under your desk for the last week even though the FBI passed on opening an investigation.”
Well shit. Of all the clutter on all the desks in the thousand-square-foot office space allotted to intelligence, her boss just had to have eagle eyes for the one thing she’d hoped no one would notice. God, she was going to have to play this just right in order to reroute Sinclair’s attention.
Isabella pushed back from her desk, her chair sounding off in a geriatric squeal as she threw a haphazard glance at the box in question. “Oh, yeah. Guess I forgot to bring it back downstairs to the evidence locker after I worked up that report for Peterson last week.”
Again, Sinclair’s gaze didn’t move. “You want to try again, only without the bullshit this time?”
She forced herself not to react despite the all-out rampage of her heartbeat in her chest. If she dodged the topic completely now that he’d thrown it front and center, every last one of Sinclair’s red flags would start waving in the wind, and anyway, as much as she didn’t want him to know she’d been doing some personally motivated freelancing, she didn’t want to dodge the topic at all.
“Fine. I know Peterson passed, but I still think there’s a case here. Something about these photos…” Isabella dropped her stare to the box again, to the plain, ordinary white cardboard that held the suggestion of terrible things, and something twisted deep inside of her. “I get that there’s only circumstantial evidence to go on right now. But I’m telling you. Someone is hurting these women.”