Kellan mopped the linoleum in the hallway outside Station Seventeen’s common room for the second time in ten hours. Not that the floor had gotten particularly dirty since he’d clocked in for his shift at oh-seven-hundred that morning, or that he’d done a less-than-stellar job the first time around—if the Army had taught him anything, it was how to keep his shit spic ‘n span. But engine had been surprisingly light on calls today, and if Kellan was left idle, he’d have far too much time to focus on the fact that the woman he was marrying in four days had spent the last twenty-four hours tirelessly trying to catch the criminal who had raped and murdered her cousin.

Crap. Maybe the floors in the bunk room needed to be mopped, too. Just for giggles.

“Hey, there you are!” January called out, her heels clicking over the mostly dry floor at the far end of the hallway. “I’ve got someone who’s been looking for you.”

Kellan managed a laugh past his confusion. “Don’t get me wrong, J. I like Finn as much as the next person, but he’s your boyfriend. I’m pretty sure that means he’s here to see you.”

January grinned at the tall, dark-haired guy who had been making his way down the hall next to her, and okay, yeah. Kellan might be a little pot/kettle when it came to being decidedly un-single, but January was a total goner for the hockey player who had moved back to Remington to join the hometown team after taking home the Cup last spring.

“You’re right about that,” Finn said, moving to the side to reveal a serious but still smiling Isabella, who’d been walking quietly behind him. “But your visitor is prettier than I am, and I think you’ll be happier to see her than me.”

Kellan ditched his mop and bucket in favor of a grin of his own as he met the trio just shy of the common room. “No offense, dude, but you’re not wrong,” he said to Finn before turning toward Isabella. “Hey. I didn’t know you were coming out.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t call to give you a heads up,” Isabella said, letting Kellan fold her into a quick embrace. “This case has kept me running all day. Oh hell,” she added, scrunching up her nose and brows at the sound of an alert chiming from her cell phone. “I totally forgot I was supposed to stop by the florist and confirm the order and delivery details for the wedding. Ugh, and they’re only open for another half an hour.”

January hooked a thumb over the shoulder of her bright red sweater. “Finn and I are on our way out. Do you want us to do it?”

Isabella looked as relieved as Kellan felt. They might have been slow today, but he couldn’t risk leaving his engine-mates down a man, even for a pre-wedding errand as big as this one. No matter how much he wanted to make her life easier while she worked this case.

“Oh my God, could you?” Isabella asked. “The deposit is already paid, so all you’d have to do is make sure they’ve got the order right and that it will arrive on time.”

“Sure. Just email me all the details.” January held up her cell phone a minute after Isabella tapped out the particulars, a victorious smile on her face. “Annnd, got it.”

“Thanks, you guys,” Kellan said, but Finn just waved him off with a laugh.

“I seem to recall a certain fundraiser you helped us coordinate not that long ago. Seriously, don’t even worry about it. We’ve got this. See you two crazy kids at the wedding.”

Kellan waited until the couple had made their way through the double doors leading out of the front of the fire house before returning his attention to Isabella. “So, how’s the case going?”

“Slow,” she said, following Kellan a handful of steps farther down the hall and dropping her voice, presumably to keep their conversation as private as possible. “Capelli had to do a lot of work to clean up the photo from the neighborhood watch lady, and it took longer than we expected.”

Well, shit. “I thought it was better than the ones from the city cam.”

“It is,” Isabella agreed. “Just not by a whole lot, and the facial recognition programs take time even when the pictures are perfect, so it’s still running. The good news is, he feels pretty confident that now the photo is clear enough to get a hit if there’s a match in the DB.”

“Pretty confident?” Kellan asked, and it earned him a smile—a small one, but he’d take it.

“I believe the statistic he used was ninety-seven-point-nine percent.”

Now Kellan smiled, too. “That sounds like Capelli. How about the electric company? Any luck there?”

“Good news and bad.” She tugged a hand through her hair, and damn, he wished he could do something to erase some of the weariness from her eyes. “The bad is that the man in the photo doesn’t work for them. The manager said he’d never seen the guy in his life, and there was no maintenance scheduled for that neighborhood—emergency or otherwise—on the evening Brittany was kidnapped.”

“Yeah, that isn’t great news.” It would’ve been a huge break if this guy had been easy to track down, and Kellan had known it—which meant Isabella and the rest of her team must’ve really known it. Still, no matter how careful this guy was, he also wasn’t invisible. “Do you think you’ll find anything in the truck, maybe?”

Her tiny smile went for round two. “There’s the good news. That truck was used on a call the morning of Brittany’s disappearance, but it was marked as being returned to the lot at three PM that afternoon. Our guy obviously stole it on the down-low, but that’s a lot of trouble to go to just to blend in to a neighborhood where he didn’t belong.”

“You think he used it to kidnap Brittany.” Kellan’s gut twisted. The only thing worse than a sick son of a bitch was a smart, sick son of a bitch.

“We do.” Isabella nodded. “Especially since he returned it to the lot before the morning shift started the next day. The thing was never even marked missing.”

“Christ, he really does want to stay under the radar.”

“Yeah, well, CSU is combing the truck right now. Unfortunately, it’s gone on a few calls this week, so we don’t want to get our hopes up too high. But anything we can get at this point would be a gift. The team went through all the footage and recanvassed the neighborhood today, too. But between waiting for the photo software to find a match and the crime scene unit to find something in the truck, we’re kind of at a standstill right now. Sinclair booted all of us for an hour so we could get something to eat and take a brain break.”

Kellan couldn’t help it. He knew she was tough, but this had to be raking her over a giant bed of red-hot emotional coals. “How are you holding up?”

“I’ve had way more Red Bull than is probably prudent,” she said, managing a soft laugh that faded far too quickly. “But I just want to catch this guy. If we can match his DNA to the profile in Marisol’s case…”

“What if you can’t?”

Fuck, he hated the question, let alone the look of hurt it sent over her face. But he’d promised to have her back, and that meant looking out for her emotionally as well as physically.

“Look, I’m not saying it would be from lack of effort,” Kellan said. “Clearly, you’re busting your ass on the case. But you yourself said the evidence connecting this crime to Marisol’s murder is speculative at best. I just don’t want it to send you down a dark road if Brittany’s killer doesn’t turn out to be the same guy who murdered your cousin.”

For a second, Isabella just looked at him, her eyes glinting with uncertainty and fear and about a thousand other things in the fluorescent light spilling down from overhead, and shit. Shit! He should’ve kept his frigging mouth shut.

But then she let out an exhale and slipped between his arms. “I don’t want that to happen, either. I have personal ties to this case, and that’s not something I can avoid or ignore.”

She let the silence settle in for a breath, then another before pulling back to pin him with a stare. “But even if Marisol’s killer is never found, Brittany deserves justice. I owe it to her to find the man who hurt her, and I owe it to the women in this city to keep them safer. I want to find the monster who murdered my cousin.” Her voice didn’t waver despite her whisper-soft tone, and God, she was the strongest person Kellan had ever known. “But if this guy isn’t him, I’ll be okay.”

“Okay.”

“You believe me?” Isabella asked, and Kellan laughed, because it was either that or give in to his raging worry, and right now, she needed him to trust her.

“Should I not?”

“No, I just…you’re a little protective of me, is all. I’m not saying I mind,” she added, lifting a hand for emphasis. “I’m protective of you right back. I just thought that after everything we went through last year, you might be harder to convince.”

Kellan’s heart squeezed, rattling faster beneath his long-sleeved RFD T-shirt, but still, he forked over the truth. “It’s because of everything we went through last year that I believe you,” he said, pulling her close. “Yes, I worry about you, and hell yes, I want you to find Marisol’s killer, but above all, I trust you. If you say you need help, I’ll be here to help you. If you say you’re good, I believe you’re good.”

“What did I do to deserve you?” Isabella asked, her lips parting in the first genuine smile he’d seen from her in days.

Kellan kissed her before answering. “For starters, you kind of saved me from being tortured and stabbed to death by a complete sociopath.”

“You kind of saved me right back by living through it, you know.”

“Let’s call it square and get married. What do you say?”

“Deal.”

He held her close, letting her lean on him literally and maybe even figuratively until a soft buzz made them both jump.

“Ah, that’s me,” Isabella said, sliding her hand into the back pocket of her jeans to retrieve her cell phone. Her eyes widened as she read the message on the screen, her body kicking into motion less than a heartbeat later. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.”

“Is everything okay?” Kellan asked, hoping like hell there had been a break in the case rather than another murder.

Lucky for him, his Christmas wish came early as she answered with a determined nod.

“Not only did Capelli get a hit on our guy, but CSU just found Brittany’s hair in the back of that utility truck. Which means everything is fucking stellar, because with those two leads, we just might catch this bastard after all.”

* * *

Despite her best efforts to stay both rational and calm, Isabella destroyed her personal land-speed record between Station Seventeen and the Thirty-Third. She flashed her badge at the desk sergeant, her heart climbing the back of her throat as she swiped her ID card and hustled her way first through the metal detectors, then up the stairs leading to the intelligence office.

“What’ve we got?” she asked Capelli, shouldering her way out of her leather jacket on her way past the threshold.

“A definite match.” He pointed to the crime scene board, and if he was shocked to see her back so soon after he’d texted her with the update, he didn’t show it. “Gerald McManus, age forty-one. Currently an auditor for a large tech company in Memphis.”

“Tennessee?” Can’t say she’d seen that coming.

“Looks like it,” Sinclair said, entering the otherwise empty work space from the hallway leading to his office. He’d been equal opportunity about sending them all out for some down time. Of course, Isabella wasn’t really shocked that he and Capelli had—judging by the pair of empty takeout cartons peeking out of the trash can—stayed behind to monitor things while the rest of them refueled.

She ordered her confusion into questions, starting with, “Then how did he pop in our database?”

“It seems Gerald used to be a Remington resident,” Capelli said. “I had to reach pretty far into the DMV’s database, and he’s obviously older now, but the photo on his old driver’s license is a match. He’s our fake utility worker.”

With a few keystrokes, the DMV photo of a definitely younger McManus appeared next to the enhanced cell phone image their neighborhood watch lady had taken, and wait… “How much older?”

Capelli hesitated, but only long enough to send a lightning-fast glance at Sinclair, who lifted his chin in the barest nod. “Twelve years.”

Oh…God. “So, this guy lived here twelve years ago. When Marisol disappeared.”

Isabella flattened her damp palms over her desk, trying to let the coolness of the metal anchor her as she pulled in a slow, deep breath. She couldn’t jump to conclusions. She couldn’t.

No matter how much her heart was screaming at her to find this guy and drag him to the precinct by his teeth to find out if he’d murdered her cousin.

“I’m still piecing everything together,” Capelli said. “But yes. According to the DMV, not only did McManus live in Remington when Marisol disappeared, but the address listed on his Remington driver’s license is a block away from where Brittany Martin was last seen.”

“Moreno,” Sinclair said quietly, but she shook her head, adamant.

“Are you telling me this man, who strongly appears to have stolen a utility vehicle in which our murder victim’s hair was found and been the last person to see her alive, also lived on the route my cousin was walking when she was kidnapped, raped, and strangled to death?”

Sinclair’s nod barely registered past the dizzying whoosh of her pulse in her veins. “Yes. I just got off the phone with the lead tech at the crime scene unit. They’ll have to run more extensive DNA tests to reach federal standards for scientific certainty, but as of right now, the three strands of long blond hair that were found in the back of the utility truck are a preliminary match to Brittany Martin.”

“Uh, Sarge?” Capelli said, his shoulders hitting the back of his desk chair with a thump. “You’re going to want to see this.”

“What?” Isabella asked, her adrenal gland pumping at maximum capacity as Sinclair read whatever was on Capelli’s laptop screen, his shoulders snapping together beneath his plaid button-down.

“Call everybody back here and get ready to go for a ride. The address on McManus’s old driver’s license is a brownstone currently belonging to a Pauline McManus.”

Isabella’s lungs turned to sand. “Pauline McManus? Is that…”

“His mother. And chances are, if he’s visiting from out of town, he’s at her place right now.”