Zach looked up from where he was currently devouring the best sandwich he’d ever tasted and groaned at Shauna. “Tell me you can bring more of these.”

“Every day.” Ronan said. “Please say you’ll bring them every day.”

Zach and Ronan and a few of the other detectives in the squad had descended on Shauna the minute she’d come into the room with a box that smelled like heaven. There was no doubt it had contained food and he kind of liked that she didn’t bat an eye when they all started fighting for the wax-paper wrapped bundles.

“Please?” Zach pled around a mouthful of food. Okay, so he wasn’t the most gracious guy in the world and his manners sort of sucked. He was a cop. “I think it’s the seasoning that makes it so good. It’s like some magic combination of happy...” he struggled for the words... “happy goodness.”

Detective Jepsen walked up, peering in the box. “No one saved me one?”

There was a collective snort from the detectives. No one would save Jepsen anything. The man was an asshole of epic proportions. On the street, they’d have his back when he was in danger if for no other reason than he was a fellow cop. In a fight for sandwiches? Hell no.

Shauna shook her head, but her expression showed pleased pride. “It’s the bread. My brother makes it every morning.” She scrunched her face. “And the seasoning mix doesn’t hurt—that goes onto the turkey my other brother roasts several times a week—but there’s also the tapenade. I’m pretty sure it’s the tapenade that counts the most.”

“What’s tapenade?” Zach and Ronan asked in near unison.

“Olive spread.”

“I’m in love,” Zach said.

Shauna looked a little mortified and he grinned and winked at her before reaching for the bag of chips Jepsen had just tried to steal. Zach didn’t bother to assure her he’d been talking about being in love with the sandwich. He liked the way her cheeks heated at the mention of love.

He liked a hell of a lot of things about her. And he wasn’t too stupid to recognize that this time his feelings went past what he’d liked about her last time. It wasn’t just the way her eyes heated when she was passionate about something or the way her body filled out even the drabbest detective pants and blouse. It wasn’t the way his body hardened anytime he got within reach of her.

He was drawn to her mind, the way she worked the puzzles of a case. The way she genuinely cared about the people they were trying to protect, and those they could only hope to get justice for now. He was drawn to the way she could help them laugh when things got to be too heavy, and he would swear she seemed to calm him when he wanted to put his fist through a wall at some of the shit they were hearing and seeing on this case.

He liked everything he saw in her. Everything about being around her.

“I was thinking,” she said as she leaned back in his desk chair. He liked the way she looked sitting there.

Zach forced the other images from his mind. Ones of her sitting in his bed. Leaning back on the pillow, hair tousled and cheeks flushed. It was the last thing he needed to be thinking about at the moment.

Shauna continued, and he hoped that meant she couldn’t tell where his thoughts had been. “I know my team has been looking at the cold cases, but I think we need to take a look at them, too. There has to be a connection between the victims of thirty years ago and the ones we’re seeing now. I think we’ve been too focused on the crimes that are happening now.”

She seemed almost apologetic, as though she understood there were girls being murdered in the here and now and didn’t want to take the focus off them.

Ronan looked like he might argue, but Zach jumped in. “What did you guys find was the victimology in your cases?”

“It was very consistent in some ways. Not so in others. The girls were all between the ages of sixteen and seventeen. All were petite and blonde. That never varied. Nancy Cheever and Jill Porter were from working class families but in very different areas of town. They didn’t share the same school, friends, or any activities that we found. The third girl, Wendy Bridgeton, was from a wealthy family visiting the area. Her family lived in New York, but were visiting family. The last was Michelle Hankey and she was from a middle-class family. She lived a few minutes from where the Bridgeton girl was visiting family, but their areas were night and day. Moderate homes, compared to almost mansions in the area Wendy’s family lived in. The girls didn’t seem to have met at all, despite the proximity.”

Ronan frowned. “Our girls are two wealthy, one not; all seventeen; only one was blonde.”

“It really bothers me that the setting of the bodies is so different and he’s moved from blondes to a real mixed bag.” Shauna looked at the men and received nods. Candice Jordan had been the furthest from their victimology so far with darker skin and black hair.

“Maybe we need to head up to the cold case division and get our eyes on what they’re working on. See what they’re seeing,” Zach suggested. “It’s possible we need to pull the two investigations back together again to see what it is we’ve been missing here.”

It was clear from the looks on the faces of his partner and Shauna, they both agreed they were missing something. He just hoped like hell whatever that piece was, that they somehow managed to find it soon.

Zach’s cell buzzed with a text and he lifted it from his pocket to check the screen. He bit down on a curse and stood. Kate Sorino hadn’t come home after school and none of her friends had any idea where she was.

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