The moment hit Angus square center. With him. His team. Okay. They trusted him and were willing to continue working with him. It meant something. Hell, it meant everything. They had to get to work and fast. “Wolfe, please get lattes. Nari, head to your meeting and see what you can do.”
The two moved toward the elevator.
Angus zeroed in on the most immediate necessities. “Brigid? Get everything onto USB drives and scrub any personal information about the team. Dana, same thing with your records.” He nodded at Malcolm West and Raider Tanaka. “Wrap up any case files you can and leave the open cases with any notes we’ve compiled.” He gestured to Jethro. “Let’s take a look at this crime scene, while you’re here.” Without waiting for an answer, he skirted the bank of desks and headed back into the case room, nearly overcome by the loyalty of his team.
“Where’s Kat?” Jethro asked Raider before following Angus.
“The kitten is hanging out with Pippa at West’s place,” Raider said.
Angus pulled out a chair at the large conference table and dropped into it, facing the board of death.
Jethro entered the room and drew the nearest chair, whistling at the scene on the board. “I take it that’s our victim from last night?” He glanced at the papers and manila files spread across the table.
Angus nodded. “Yep.”
“No note?” Jethro asked.
“Haven’t found one.” Angus steepled his fingers beneath his chin. There wasn’t a note. The victim wasn’t blond. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that Lassiter was just fucking with him. He pushed papers out of the way to reveal one of the photos that he’d taken on his phone the previous night. “This tattoo was placed on the back of her hand.”
Jethro slid the picture closer with one finger. “Looks like Roscoe.”
“Yep.” Didn’t mean it was Roscoe, though.
Jethro leaned back in his chair. “Was the tattoo recent?”
“Looked like it, but I don’t have access to the lab to ask,” Angus said, his skin crawling with irritation.
Jethro cleared his throat. “Well, that’s not the only interesting connection, right?”
Angus’s chest heated. “I’m aware.”
“Is she?”
“I don’t know.” Angus ground the palm of his hand into his left eye, where a migraine was rapidly approaching. “The victim looks Chinese, and she’s petite, like Nari. It’s hard to miss that fact, especially with the German shepherd tattoo on the woman’s hand.”
“Could be a coincidence,” Jethro said.
Which Angus didn’t believe in, unfortunately. “Perhaps.”
“Are you shagging the psychiatrist?” Jethro asked.
Angus coughed, his ears heating. “Of course not. She’s a shrink, for crap’s sake. You know how I feel about shrinks.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I wouldn’t even think of getting close to somebody with Lassiter on the loose. If he is on the loose, that is.” Bile swirled in Angus’s gut at the thought.
Jethro rocked back on his heels. “There’s enough tension between you and Nari that I can feel it across a room. Anybody watching you would see it, too. Although I’m still of a mind that Lassiter is deceased and rotting in hell.”
Enough of that conversation. Angus turned to face his old friend. “There’s a suspect in custody. Don’t you have connections with Metro?”
Jethro leaned over to read Angus’s notes. “I consulted on a case a year ago and I’d like to think I was supremely helpful. What do you want?”
“I want to interview the guy they have in custody,” Angus said instantly. “Just a quick in and out. Think you can make that happen?”
Jethro sighed. “I’ll call in the favor, if it’s possible, on one condition.”
Angus held up a hand, his heart thundering. “If the suspect did kill the woman in the alley, I’ll drop the case. I’ll never ask you to consult again, and you can go back to your college and pretend that you’re a normal professor studying philosophy and all that shit.” Although he knew better than anybody that Jethro would never be able to outrun the past. None of them would.
