Isabella’s heart had taken up permanent residence in her windpipe. But despite the fact that she knew it was going to earn her the gold-star spot on Sinclair’s shit list, she still sat in the chair across from his desk, ready and willing to tell him everything she’d done on her lunch break, then ask point-blank for his help.

She’d learned last year to rely on her team. All the time. Every time.

No exceptions.

Sinclair listened carefully as she spilled the story of retracing Brittany’s steps, then heading down to the Nineteenth and offering to help Barton and Weiss with the details of Marisol’s case. The muscle in his jaw started twitching when she got to the whole ‘yes, I know you told me to stay far away from this investigation’ part of things, and when she got to Barton’s reaction to her offer, she was pretty certain the thing might spontaneously combust. But it wasn’t until she relayed the detective’s less-than-polite dismissal that Sinclair lifted a hand to stop her.

“I think I’ve heard enough.” He sat back in his desk chair, examining her with that steel-tipped stare that said he was measuring his words with a truckload of care. “When this case popped up, I knew it was going to be a pothole for you.”

“I’m fine,” she argued, nodding in concession a second later when Sinclair hit her with a high-level frown. “Okay, so I did do a little looking around after you told me not to, and I get why you didn’t want me to do it. But I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t freelance, and I damn sure didn’t interfere in Barton and Weiss’s investigation. I learned my lesson last year, Sarge. I rely on my team. And right now, I’m asking for help.”

“You didn’t interfere,” he allowed. “But you did poke around after I told you not to. And you took Walker on your little fact-finding mission.”

Sinclair lifted his chin at his office door. Not wanting to leave even though he’d known her conversation with Sinclair had to be private—a case was a case, whether it was hers or not—Kellan had parked himself on the other side of the wood and glass.

Isabella exhaled slowly. “To be fair, Kellan and I took a walk in a public place on our own time, and we were never in any danger. The trip to the Nineteenth was a peace offering. I only wanted to tell them what I know about Marisol’s case. Nothing more. But that said, yes. You’re right. I didn’t drop it after you told me to.”

A heartbeat slid into two, then two more before he said, “In this case, your instincts were on target. Barton’s been an ass since the academy, and he’s clearly not investigating Brittany Martin’s rape and murder properly if he’s dismissing the possible connections with Marisol’s case so quickly. I can let Captain Foster know I’ve got concerns and that intelligence is happy to handle the job...”

“But?”

“But you are getting married in five days, and this is going to be a brutal case, even if it’s not tied to Marisol’s murder, which it damn well might be. I need you to be absolutely sure you’re good here, Moreno. No bravado. No bullshit. Just you.”

Although part of her was tempted to answer with a knee-jerk “I’m fine”, she didn’t. She measured the facts. Considered her emotions. Then answered truthfully.

“I’m absolutely sure I’m good here, Sam. This case deserves justice, and I think we’re the team to get it.”

“Okay.” Sinclair reached for the phone on his desk without hesitating. “Let me make a call.”

Relief whooshed through Isabella’s chest, followed quickly by a hard shot of gratitude. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me. We stand up for our own around here. Now why don’t you get everyone up to speed while I take care of the legalities? We’ve got a killer to catch.”

* * *

Ninety minutes later, the intelligence office looked like a two-ton evidence box had thrown up all over it. Isabella had done exactly as Sinclair had asked, giving the team a concise yet thorough rundown of both Marisol’s cold case and Brittany Martin’s active one as soon as she’d beelined out of his office. They’d all jumped into action the second Sinclair had gotten off the phone with Captain Foster down at RPD headquarters, and even though it skirted the boundaries of the rules, Sinclair had let Kellan stick around for the briefing since he already knew the details of the case anyway.

“Okay, people.” Sinclair’s gravelly voice had them all looking up from their work stations. “Give me what you’ve got and let’s get a plan in place to nail this son of a bitch.”

Isabella frowned. Better to get the shit news out of the way first. “CSU turned up damn little in the basement where Brittany’s body was found. No DNA, no fibers or fingerprints that can be unequivocally linked to her assault. There’s also no evidence to point to where she’d been kept for the three days she was missing.” She knew, because she and Hollister had scoured the reports from cover to cover in search of some.

“The ME’s report isn’t much better,” Hale said apologetically. “No DNA or other physical evidence that would ID the killer or connect the two crimes, although there are pretty striking similarities in terms of the murders, proper. The official cause of death for both women is strangulation. Both had their hands bound pre-mortem with nylon rope”—she paused for only the briefest of seconds before adding—“and from the ligature marks on the victims’ necks, it looks like they were both asphyxiated manually.”

“Jesus,” Kellan whispered under his breath, and even though Isabella’s gut had pitched at the report, too, she had to stay strong. Focused.

“Did you get anything off the surveillance footage?” she asked Capelli, who pushed up his glasses and gestured to the six-screen array of monitors on the wall over his desk, which now had a video image displayed on the bottom center screen.

“I haven’t been able to go through all of it yet, but I did manage to catch Brittany walking by the mini-mart a half a block from the library at seventeen-oh-six. This is from their private security camera.” He hit play, slowing the footage enough to clearly show the fourteen-year-old passing in front of the store.

Isabella metered the breath that had just threatened to spackle itself to her lungs. Junior varsity track jacket, bright blue backpack with reflective stripes on either side, dark blond braid, earbuds firmly in place…God, she was barely more than a kid.

“That’s definitely her,” Garza said, pointing to the photo of Brittany he’d pulled from her Facebook page and posted on their digital crime scene board at the back of the office.

Capelli nodded. “The mini-mart is well-lit and their security system is better than most, so I got lucky enough to grab a good visual. The second camera angle keeps eyes on her for another ten, maybe twelve feet. She pops up again on the city cam on the next block, but that image is a lot harder to make out.”

“I don’t mean to ask a dumb question,” Kellan piped up from his seat beside Isabella and Hollister. “But what’s the point of having a city cam if you can’t see the surveillance video?”

“Actually, that’s quite a logical question,” Capelli said. “Unfortunately for us, it’s got an equally logical answer. The equipment is placed in the most optimal spot for a good visual day or night, but that doesn’t make it foolproof. Usually, there’s a pretty decent view of the street and sidewalk from this one. Except…” A few clacks brought up a semi-distorted shot of Brittany from a lot farther away than the first. “The blinking holiday lights on all the brownstones here threw around a lot of weird shadows. This is the last image we have of Brittany. The security cam from the florist two blocks from here doesn’t show her at all, and she should’ve passed right by the shop on her way home.”

“So she was kidnapped within these two blocks,” Maxwell said, ever to the point.

Capelli hesitated, but only for a microsecond before he agreed, “Yes. That’s definitely the strongest hypothesis.”

“Okay.” Sinclair lasered a stare in Capelli’s direction. “Then let’s see all we can see from this footage.”

“You got it.”

Isabella’s heart thundered, her pulse pressing against her eardrums in a wild thump-thump she was certain everyone in the room could hear. Capelli made the keystroke to start the video, slowing it down to half-time, and Isabella watched as Brittany moved, frame by frame, through the last normal moments of her life.

“Wait.” Adrenaline shoved the word out of her mouth. “There. She stops to talk to someone.” Okay, so stops was a bit of a stretch. But Brittany definitely appeared to have said something to the shadowy figure passing by her on the street.

“Looks like a passing hello. Friendly neighborhood like that, it could be nothing,” Hollister said. He wasn’t trying to be a jerk, or to discredit what Isabella had noticed, she knew. They had to try to rule something out before they could attempt to rule it in, and in a case like this, with so little evidence to go on, they needed checks and balances more than ever.

“Could be,” Sinclair agreed, although he—along with everyone else in the unit—leaned in more closely to watch as Capelli went back a handful of frames to slow-mo the exchange. The footage showed Brittany, looking up at something the passing figure said to her and replying before continuing on her way out of the frame.

Capelli backtracked again, then froze the video on the best angle of the guy. “Looks like a maintenance tech from the electric company.”

Between the barely visible logo on the man’s baseball hat and the coveralls he was wearing, the logic leap seemed sound. A thought perked at the back of Isabella’s brain, drawing her brows downward.

“There don’t appear to be any power outages on this block. Every brownstone in the shot has lights blazing, to the point that they’re messing with the footage. It doesn’t make any sense that the electric company would do routine maintenance after business hours. Which begs the question…”

“What was this guy doing there?” Hale finished.

“He might have been finishing up a call.” Garza gestured to the utility vehicle parked just inside the frame. “His truck is right there.”

Sinclair’s expression suggested he was about as convinced as Isabella about the likelihood of that being the case. “Even if he is on the up and up, he looks like the last person to see our vic alive. Capelli, can you get a license plate or vehicle number off that truck?”

His frown was answer enough. “I can try, but it’s pretty far from the city cam. Factoring in the angle and the lighting, the odds are less than one percent I’ll be able to grab anything we can use. Same goes for facial recognition.”

“Try anyway for both.” Sinclair swung a look across the office. “Maxwell, call the power company and see if there were any outages reported or routine maintenance calls scheduled on that block within four hours of Brittany Martin’s disappearance, along with who responded. Hale, you and Garza go over the rest of the footage to see if anything unusual pops within an hour on either side of this clip. Moreno, I want you and Hollister with boots on the ground. Canvass that entire area, especially the brownstones on that block. If any of those residents or business owners saw something even the slightest bit hinky, I want to know about it.”

“I might be able to help with that.”

Isabella’s heart stuttered at the unfamiliar male voice sounding off from the door of the intelligence office, then sped even faster as she paired the words with their speaker.

“Detective Weiss?”

“Moreno,” he said, giving up a clipped nod before shifting his gaze. “Sinclair. Thought you might need these.”

Isabella blinked, belatedly realizing that Weiss held a manila file folder between his fingers. “And those are?”

“My case notes on the canvass Barton and I did the day Brittany Martin’s body was found.”

The beat of silence that followed might as well have been a mortar blast. “You want to help us?”

“I want the bastard who raped and murdered that kid to rot in jail,” Weiss corrected. “Make no mistake, I don’t like being yanked from a case any more than you do.” He gave his frown a second to sink in before adding, “That doesn’t mean I don’t want justice for what was done to that girl, though. These notes haven’t been put into the system yet, and there’s something in there you’re going to want to see.”

“You going to keep us in suspense, here?” Kellan asked, making the detective’s brows lift.

“I’ll let you have that one, since my partner was an ass to Moreno. But that’s your only shot.” He waited until Kellan nodded in concession before continuing. “The day Brittany Martin’s body was found, we spoke to a woman who lives in one of the brownstones, a Pamela Markowski. Head of the neighborhood watch.” Weiss flipped the file folder open and passed it to Hollister, who happened to be closest.

“Whoa. Fifty-four calls to the cops this year?”

“Mmm hmm. She takes her position very seriously. She didn’t see Brittany the night she disappeared,” Weiss said, snapping the thread of hope that had just unwound in Isabella’s belly. “But she was pretty vocal about a guy from the power company who parked in front of her building and loitered for nearly forty minutes without doing, and I quote, ‘anything other than wasting air’.”

“Sounds like our guy,” Garza said.

“Also sounds like he’s got some explaining to do.” Sinclair looked at Weiss. “Ms. Markowski wouldn’t happen to have caught a license plate or ID number on this truck, would she?”

Detective Weiss smiled, rekindling Isabella’s hope in full force as he lifted his cell phone and said, “I can do you one better. Not only did she write down both the plate and the truck’s ID number, but she snapped a photo of the guy.”