“I know the shrinks said you could work the cases.” His arms crossed over his chest. Beside them, a uniform bent over and retched into the bushes. Great. So much for the preservation of the crime scene. Hyde’s gaze measured her as he continued, “But working them and surviving them are two different things.”
He’s waiting for me to break.
“Don’t worry about me.” Sam jerked her thumb over her shoulder even as she felt a trickle of sweat slide between her shoulder blades. “Worry about that poor man’s family.” The scent of death clogged her nostrils. Move. Oh, she wanted to get away. Wanted to run.
But she knew it wasn’t possible to run from death. Death could follow a person anywhere. He followed her even in her dreams.
“He fits the established pattern,” Sam said as she noticed that the crime scene guys were there, finally. Sam eased away, with Hyde shadowing her steps, as the techs came through to start working on the body. Hurry. Because she knew the poor man’s parents were inside. She’d seen the shift of the curtains, and she knew they were peeking out, staring at the remains of their son and blaming themselves.
“Jeremy Briar,” she murmured, “Twenty-two years old, the only son of Kathleen and Morgan Briar. Jeremy was last seen three days ago, in a dive right outside of the university, a place called The Core.” And then he’d just vanished.
“His father got the ransom call,” Hyde said, voice cool. “Twenty-four hours after Jeremy went missing.”
Samantha didn’t look back at the body. Bodies had never been her strong suit. She preferred to stay in the office and track her prey on the Net. But it wasn’t about staying safe anymore. Now, she had to prove she could handle the job. The shrink in charge of her case had understood when Sam explained that she didn’t want to hide behind a desk. So thanks to him, she was out here, shaking apart on the inside and realizing that Jeremy wasn’t that much younger than she was.
Your age doesn’t matter, not when death comes calling.
“Why didn’t the father pay?” Sam asked and shielded her eyes as she turned to look back up at the house. Freaking huge. Four houses could fit inside that one. The guy would’ve had the money to ransom his son.
“Seems Jeremy got in trouble with the law a few times, and he had a history of run-ins with bookies.” Hyde paused, then said, “Mr. Briar thought his son was trying to scam him.”
Oh, damn. The father hadn’t believed the call, and Jeremy had paid. “Do you think the vic went fast?” The question came out before she could bite it back. But she knew what it was like when a sadistic freak took his time with you and made you beg for death. “W-were most of the injuries postmortem?”
“No.” His answer was immediate.
Her eyes fell closed, just for a moment.
“I don’t want you working this case, Kennedy,” Hyde’s words snapped out.
Her eyes flew back open. “Sir, I can—”
But his dark stare glinted. “I don’t want you in the field, and I don’t really give a shit what the prick in psych said.” He closed in on her. “You’re not ready. You think I can’t see you shaking?”
Her breath caught. “I can do this.” Desperation edged the words.
“Maybe.” Hyde shook his head. “But I want you back in the office. Dante has point on this one. If he wants to use you, well—”
“Don’t do this,” Sam managed, choking back the lump in her throat. She’d been busting her ass to make sure that she still could work the detail. “I know my job. I know—”
“I know my people.” No expression crossed his dark face. He towered over her, cold and unfeeling. “And I know you aren’t ready.”
She wouldn’t crumble. Not here. Not in front of him. Not him. “You’re the one who sent me out on the Phoenix case.” The Phoenix investigation had been the last big case she’d worked, and Hyde had been the one to send her out on that arson case as backup. “If you didn’t think I was ready, you shouldn’t have sent me.”
“You don’t belong in the field, Agent Kennedy.”
She stumbled back and felt the jab right in her heart. “You don’t think I’m strong enough, do you?” It had always been there, right from the beginning. She wasn’t like the other agents. Sam knew that she didn’t have their experience or their hard edge. She’d just skated past her twenty-fourth birthday so yes, she was younger, but she’d passed the same exams, done the drills, and proven herself, dammit.
“I know you’re strong.”
His words had her blinking.
“The problem is that you don’t know that.”
Her lips parted but she didn’t speak.
“And you’re scared. So scared that if you came face-to-face with a perp, I don’t know what you’d do, Kennedy.”
Neither did she.
“We both know you haven’t worked best in the field.”
No, she’d always been better back at the office, surrounded by her computers. But she couldn’t stay with them forever, and there were times—like with the Watchman case—when she’d had to go into the field.
And the results hadn’t been pretty.
Her breath barely fluttered out. I can do this.
“Go back to the office,” he said again. “If Dante needs you…”
With an effort, she managed a slow nod. She’d been called to the scene today because the other SSD agents were working other cases. Proximity and availability. But Sam had also been called in because she knew this case. This case and the others like it that had occurred just weeks before Jeremy Briar’s disappearance.
She’d been the one to first notice the pattern. She always noticed the patterns.
Sam forced her back to straighten. “I’m not going to fail, Hyde.” That was all that she’d say because she wouldn’t beg. Not yet.
His dark eyes just watched her.
Forcing out a hard breath, refusing to let the stench get to her, she shouldered past him. She kept her chin up and didn’t so much as blink, not until she was back at her car.
Sam climbed in and slammed the door closed. She curled her raw palms around the steering wheel and blinked.
Two tears slid down her cheeks.
Dammit.
Didn’t he see? Without the job, she had nothing.
Sam wasn’t normally the type for casual sex. She was the kind of woman who went for commitment, romance, and candlelight.