Disarming Detective. Elizabeth Heiter

heading as far from Florida as possible. “California, actually.”

      “Too bad. Other than the recent murder, Oakville is a pretty nice place to visit.”

      Ella blinked, so surprised to hear real disappointment in his tone that she almost missed the part about the case. “Wait a minute. Murder? Not murders?” No wonder her boss hadn’t assigned an agent to create a profile. Well, this was going to be a quick dinner. At least she’d be able to put Logan’s mind at ease and hopefully point him in the right direction. One kill probably meant the perpetrator had been in the victim’s life.

      “Yeah, I know. One murder doesn’t make a serial killer. I get it.” He leaned forward. “But look at the file, okay? This isn’t a first kill. We got lucky, finding this body. There are more. I’m sure of it.”

      “Why?”

      “The kill was too perfect. I don’t think it was someone she knew, and the evidence is so slim. The fact that we even have a body—that we even know she’s dead—is a fluke. We don’t have a lot of murders in Oakville, but a killer just doesn’t get that good without practice.”

      Logan frowned. The attraction he’d been broadcasting since they’d arrived at the diner was still in his eyes, but now it was tempered, pushed behind a sudden seriousness telling her he’d do whatever it took to find this killer.

      Ella didn’t need to see him work to believe it. She knew he was a good detective. It was there in the doggedness of his stare, in the trust he put in his instincts, in the way he was chasing this lead with all he had.

      But she also saw this was more than just another case to him. He’d flown all this way for help, probably on his own dime. “You knew the victim, didn’t you?”

      “Jeez, you’re good. I didn’t know her well. But she was a friend of my sister’s. Visiting from out of state. She’d actually left for the airport and we assumed she was back home.” His lips tightened into a hard, thin line. “When all along, she was in Oakville. We found her in the marsh. Well, what was left of her anyway. We’ve got gators in the marshes, which is why I say we got lucky. Why I think there are more victims—because that’s a pretty genius way to destroy evidence.”

      Ella nodded, flipping open the file folder next to her sandwich. The sight that greeted her should have made her lose her appetite, but she’d long ago learned to eat while reviewing case files. “Doesn’t look like you had much to work with at the autopsy.”

      When she glanced up at Logan, he was carefully not looking at the photo and she reminded herself he knew the woman. She flipped past the autopsy photos, folded her hands under her chin and leaned toward him. “Why don’t you give me the highlights?”

      Logan raked a hand through his dark, close-cropped hair and she noticed the shadows under his eyes, the weariness lurking underneath those quick smiles.

      “The victim was Theresa Crowley. My sister’s age—twenty-five.”

      She must have looked surprised, because he said, “Yeah, Becky’s ten years younger than I am. My parents didn’t think they could have any more kids after me. Anyway, Theresa was a friend of Becky’s from college. She lived in Arkansas. Flew in to visit for a week. She left as scheduled and my sister assumed she was already home until we identified the body.”

      “Who found her?”

      “Local fisherman. He pulled out the remains and brought her in by boat.”

      Ella realized she was gaping as Logan continued, “Yeah, I know. Not great for evidence, but better than not having a body at all because the alligators finished her off.”

      “How long was she missing?”

      “She left for the airport early Sunday morning and her body was found Monday afternoon.”

      “Short window to run into a killer.”

      “Unless he’d already been stalking her,” Logan argued.

      “What makes you think it wasn’t someone she knew? Statistically, that’s much more likely.”

      “Yeah, believe me, I don’t run to the FBI every time we get a murder, whether or not I know the victim. But who did she know in Oakville? My sister and some of our family. That’s it. Her rental car turned up the next day, abandoned in a mall parking lot a few towns over, in the opposite direction from the airport.”

      Ella sighed and set down her milkshake. “Are you sure you should be on this case?”

      “Why? Because my family are obvious suspects?”

      Instead of agreeing, Ella said, “Because you knew her.”

      “Another detective on the force already cleared my family. It was pretty easy. We were at a town function at her time of death.”

      Ella stared at him, looking for any tiny twitch that would tell her he knew—or suspected—his family could be involved. All she saw was his determination to get her to help. And that heavy dose of attraction. Her heart rate picked up and she glanced down at her food before she gave anything away. “She have any obvious enemies?”

      “Stalker exes, that kind of thing? No.”

      “Sexual assault?”

      Logan shrugged. “My guess would be yes, but too much postmortem damage to tell for sure. She died from lack of oxygen, but there was no water in her lungs. She didn’t drown in that marsh. She was killed somewhere else.”

      “Okay—”

      “And she had burns on her body.”

      Ella felt her hands tense into fists. Hiding them under the table, she forced them to loosen. “What kind of burns?”

      “What were they made with? I don’t know. But she had several. On her arm, her back...” Fury pulsated in his voice. “Someone burned her on purpose.”

      Ella held back a string of curses. Burns were close enough to branding that those cases hit her hardest. She always wanted them and her boss, knowing why she’d joined the FBI six years ago, always passed them on to another agent.

      As much as she hated it, she understood that he was right. She made them too personal, and getting too close to a case meant making mistakes. Like Logan was in danger of doing right now.

      She gave him her best profiler stare, the one she’d learned from her boss—a legend in the Bureau. “I’m going to read this case file and give you my best insight. But I’m going to tell you something you already know. You’re too close to this case. You shouldn’t be on it.”

      It was hypocritical advice, given the very, very personal case file sitting in the trunk of her Bureau-issued car right now, and judging by his scowl, Logan didn’t seem any more inclined to follow it than she was.

      “I’m not handing this over to someone else, not when everyone seems to think it was a fluke. I’m not going to sit around and wait for the next body to show up before I investigate this. This was my sister’s friend and someone murdered her and tossed her in the marsh like garbage. I’m going to find this guy and make sure he pays.”

      Realization struck Ella. “You’re not supposed to be here, are you?”

      Logan let out a sound that was half laugh, half exasperation, but his face told her he was impressed. “Tell you what, profiler. Check out the file and tell me I’m wrong.” He gave her a smug look that said, “I dare you.”

      Ella nodded slowly. “Okay.” She skipped over the autopsy photos and started reading. The further she got in the file, the more she felt her mouth tug downward.

      When she looked back up at him, Logan raised his eyebrows. “Well?”

      “You’ve got good instincts, Greer.”

      Logan tapped his fingers heavily on the table. “I thought so.”

      She