Tanner let out a curse. “Did you find out about them because of the footage the killer sent you?”
“No, that’s new. Both victims were found by civilians. One in some woods off the highway about ten miles south of town. The other, Shelby Durrant, was found on the north side of town in a restaurant that had been closed for renovations.”
“You know her?” Bree asked.
Whitaker shrugged. “Not very well, but we grew up near each other. She was ten years younger than me, so I never actually hung out with her. She was just one of the neighborhood kids, you know? She was still chained in that damn box when they found her.”
He cleared his throat. Bree and Tanner both gave Whitaker a minute to collect himself.
“Any connection between the victims?” Tanner asked.
“Nothing that we’ve found so far. Both were female, about five foot three, roughly a hundred pounds. Shelby was twenty-two, an African American college student at Dallas Nursing Institute. Victim number two was in her midforties, Caucasian, married, with no kids. Her name was Kelly Quinn. She worked as a bank teller. Nothing we’ve been able to find ties them together in any way.”
“What do you need me to do?” Bree asked.
Whitaker looked at his watch as they pulled up in front of the Dallas police station. “That’s going to become very obvious in about twenty-two minutes.”
As they got out of the car she looked over at Tanner, but he just shrugged. Evidently he didn’t know any more than her. Twenty-two minutes was oddly specific.
Whitaker signed them in at the front counter of the station and led them past a number of uniformed officers’ desks to the back section of the building, where it was much quieter.
He opened a door leading out of those offices and everything changed.
People were buzzing around everywhere. This was obviously command central for the case. Multiple pictures of the two dead women hung on a large bulletin board. Some of them were from when they were alive. The others, definitely more painful to look at, were the bodies in those boxes Whitaker had told them about.
Dead.
They kept moving past the pictures into a large conference room. The entire back wall was made out of screens and had a half dozen computer terminals sitting right in front of them. At least ten people were surrounding the terminals.
Everybody was talking at once, vying to be heard.Thiswas the situation Whitaker wanted her to work in? Even being in the general vicinity of this many strangers already had her cringing.
Her discomfort didn’t get any better a few seconds later when a gorgeous blonde wearing jeans and a thin sweater—detective badge clipped on her belt—walked over to them.
“Whit,” the beautiful woman said in, of course, a gorgeous smoky voice to match her perfect face and body. “Glad you’re back. It’s almost time.”
The woman turned to Bree and Tanner, offering her hand. “Captain Dempsey, Miss Daniels, I’m Penelope Brickman, lead detective on this case. Thanks so much for coming.”
Tanner shook her hand. “Hope we can help. Please, call me Tanner. Especially since I’m not here in any sort of official capacity.”
Bree force herself to shake the woman’s hand too. “Bree, please.”
She was a little bit proud of herself for saying something appropriate rather than shoving all five feet eight inches of the woman’s gorgeousness into a closet far away from Tanner.
“Did you catch them up?” Penelope asked Whitaker.
“Mostly. The footage... I figured that was just something they had to see for themselves.”
Penelope nodded. “Yeah, explaining wouldn’t do much good.”
“How often does the footage arrive?” Bree asked. “Is it live or prerecorded? I’m assuming it’s been rerouted through multiple channels or you wouldn’t need me here.”
“I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not any sort of computer expert.” Penelope gave them both a rueful smile. “I can get around and do the basics with computers, but I tend more toward old-fashioned methods of solving crime and police work. Hitting the pavement and talking to people.”
“I’m the same,” Tanner said. “People tend to give up their secrets a lot more easily—”
“—than machines.” They both finished together, then smiled.
Bree barely refrained from rolling her eyes. These two should just go get married and make a bunch of crime-fighting babies together. Babies, of course, who would never deign to touch the keys of a computer.
