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My guess? Joy killings.
Someone with money. Rich people are sick fucks. All of them.
“I want you two on the scene as soon as possible. I’ll reassign any of your outstanding cases that might impact your time on this one,” Ashcroft says.
I grab the pictures and the case files to read in the car while Devan drives to the scene, knowing better than to argue with Ashcroft that we can handle our cases. There are too many at this point for us to give our full attention to one in particular. If the captain wants us on this, then we’ve got to prioritize.
“I might have a lead on this one,” I offer, dragging open the passenger side door.
Devan says nothing until he has the key in the ignition and the engine to the old car gunning. “Care to share with the class, L?”
The way the girls are cut up, slashed, and their connections to the coke ring all remind me of my dark boy. He does like to play with knives, after all. And he has definite ties to the ring through his association with Broderick Stevens.
All of which I tell Devan on the way to our new scene.
“You’re sure about that?” Devan asks as we arrive. “You sure it’s not just because of what happened between you guys at the Velvet Underground?”
I freeze, my hand on the seatbelt. “Have you been following me?” I demand.
My partner unfolds himself from the driver’s seat, slamming his door behind him before he walks around to my side and wrenches mine open. He bends until we’re face to face.
“I told you,” he replies. His voice is serious, deadly. “You’re the only one I trust to have my back. You understand that, right? Which means you’ve got to trust me to have yours.”
My gaze drops to the area just beneath the collar of his shirt to the quarter-sized scar where the bullet had gone through his chest instead of mine. Aimed for my head but he’s tall enough that it hit him near his collar bone and narrowly missed his heart.
I swallow back a sudden lump. “I do. I do trust you. But you don’t have to worry—”
He cuts me off. “When you went radio silent two years ago and I found you about to blow your fucking brains out, yeah, I’m going to worry, Layla. So I know where you go. You’re a creature of habit whether you want to be or not.”
I shiver. Devan never uses my first name. I’m alwaysLto him, or Sinclair when I’ve pissed him off enough that he’s not fucking around anymore.
“I know your history and I know you were staking out some dude there.”
My instinct is to rip him a new asshole, or give him another scar to match the one he got for me. I do neither of those things because the look in his brown eyes is so damn earnest, a part of me I can’t afford to allow to melt begins to do so anyway.
“Nothing is going on there,” I assure him. “Blackwell is a bad dude. I went to follow him for another possible lead and maybe it’s a good thing, because now we have a direction to investigate for this case.”
“Fine. I just know this is bothering you.” Devan reaches out to still my hand before I can unfasten my seat belt. Not a sexual thing, but very much a big brother thing. He knows I have no one. We’re the same age, give or take a few months, but he wants me to be safe. He cares.
“Your girlfriend won’t like you holding my hand,” I tease to take away the tension in my chest. Not from sex. From emotion.
“My girlfriend, as you call her, worries about you just as much as I do. Especially since you’ve blown her off for dinner the last two times she’s asked,” Devan chides.
“I’m fine, okay? I’ll let you know if there’s a problem. But I think we need to consider Blackwell for this crime.”
Devan only shrugs. “We’ll see. I think it’s best if you keep away from the club for a while. Take the heat off of yourself while we investigate.”
He means stay away from Blackwell.
“We’ll see,” I repeat smugly.
We head to the scene of the crime, and it’s not exactly the killing calm that is keeping my hands from shaking but a kissing cousin of it. It’s a matter of turning off those pesky emotions and focusing on the little details, the pieces of the puzzle that it’s up to me to fit together. The body is only that: a body. The former hooker is nothing but a sack of meat while I look for any patterns, any similarities to bring me back to a central point: What links her to the others?
The same slice marks across her chest, done from a left-handed angle. The blade is more than likely the same size as the one that made the other wounds but I won’t know for certain until our tech has a chance to study them.
Devan stands at my side for the first few minutes with his pen scribbling quickly across his notepad. Standing so much taller than me, he has literally a different angle on the scene. We make a good team.
“Hey,” I tell him after some time has passed and we’ve made our preliminary examination. “I’m going to the club. Are you okay taking the notes back to Captain?”
