“Make yourself at home,” she muttered, following him into the kitchen but making it to the refrigerator before he did.
“Thank you,” he said, his expression still dark and unreadable when she shot him a quick glance to see if there was any apparent sarcasm. He appeared to take her offer seriously.
“I haven’t had a chance to go shopping lately,” she began, telling herself there was no reason to apologize for not being a good hostess. He’d invited himself over. “It’s water or juice.”
“What kind of juice?”
“Apple.”
“Sounds good.”
Ash poured two glasses of apple juice and turned, feeling as if her kitchen had shrunk with him standing in the middle of it. Handing him his glass, she moved around him to the table.
“So what was it you didn’t want to go on the record as saying?” she asked.
“Did you investigate the deaths of Mary Harcourt or Daphne Sullivan?” he asked, holding his glass to his mouth but not sipping from it.
“I did Mary, but not Daphne.” She ached to know what he knew about all three deaths. Three girls being killed by a date-rape drug in the past week was definitely a pattern.
“Maybe you should look at all three deaths a bit closer.”
“Why? Do you think they’re connected?” she asked.
For the first time since she’d met him, he smiled. And holy crap! Dimples appeared in his cheeks and his teeth were straight. Bad Boy FBI man had an all-American good boy look about him, as well. Maybe she shouldn’t have let him in her home. Lawman or not, Chase Reed looked dangerous as hell; maybe not in the way of a criminal would, but if he had seduction on his mind, she was in serious danger— of losing.
Or would it be
winning?
“I’m not trying to insult you as a cop,” he offered, crossing his arms over all that brawn and muscle. “You don’t know me, but if you did, you’d gather the same impression you’re probably getting right now. I’m a purebred asshole.”
“I’ll remember that.” Keep it on the case, she told herself, making it a mantra and fighting not to smile back at him and get sucked into the sensual magnetism that he’d just turned up a notch. “Okay. Three girls have been murdered. Obviously they’re connected in more than one way. Tell me what you know and then we’ll see if I know anything you don’t.”
“I don’t know anything you don’t.” Apparently he wanted to prove the asshole claim. “But there was something you didn’t notice last night. I was watching you.”
“I know you were.” That just slipped out. She opted to sit down, which only created a bit of distance between them. But picking up her pen, which was still on the pad where she’d written his number, she started clicking it, staring at the way she’d written his name above his number. Chase— a rather unique yet fitting name for this man hovering over her.
“Did you notice any jewelry?”
She shot him a pensive look, and he cocked one eyebrow, as if willing her to remember the scene. When she’d first spotted him, stepping over the yellow tape as if he had permission, he’d squatted down next to the victim and looked at her wrist.
Ash hated missing something at a crime scene and later having the obvious pointed out to her. Call it her damnable pride, but she really got off on solving a case without anyone’s help. She struggled with the image, fighting to remember what he did when he reached for her wrist.
“That’s it. You remember,” he encouraged, his soft baritone too damned seductive.
It snapped her out of her concentration and she glared at him. Ash didn’t realize she’d been brainstorming, staring at him the entire time. He probably saw her face twist in an effort to remember what had been in front of her the entire time. But then it hit her; when he’d walked up to her and Charlie Madison he’d told them he couldn’t get a good look at her bracelet from the other side of the crime tape.
“What was it about her bracelet that impressed you?” she asked, ignoring his words of encouragement.
“The other two girls were wearing the same bracelet.”
She stared at him, searching her memory for details about Mary. She’d been in a bar and grill in the downtown area, not too far from Club Toro. Mary had looked like one of the hippies, a college girl, which was proven when her backpack was found where she’d been sitting before she collapsed and died. Mindy, on the other hand, was decked out in a mini skirt, wearing lots of makeup. Danny’s type of girl. The two women were young, both early twenties, but the two were very different types. She remembered that Mary wore diamond stud earrings because they’d reminded her of ones her grandmother had given her when she’d turned sixteen.
“Mary and Mindy were nothing alike,” she told Chase.
“You’re right. All three women were very different in where they hung out, how they dressed, giving every indication that the same man wouldn’t be attracted to all of them. Yet they all had the exact same bracelet on.”
“It couldn’t be the exact same bracelet,” she pointed out.