Tough Justice Series Box Set: Parts 1-8. Carla Cassidy

      “Did you see anyone else on the trail?”

      He shook his head. “No, it was just me...and her.” His face took on a new paleness and he looked as if he might puke. “I’ve never seen a dead body before. God, I don’t think I’ll ever get this out of my head.”

      She spoke to him a few minutes longer, and then, after getting his contact information, she let him go. She didn’t believe he was the perp. Her gut told her he was just some luckless guy who had happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

      By that time the medical examiner had arrived, and she joined Nick who stood several feet away to let Dr. Herman Boze do his job.

      “You okay?” Nick asked her.

      Lara looked at him in surprise. “I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

      “You keep rubbing your arm. Did you bump it or something?”

      Lara realized she was rubbing her arm. Over and over again...obsessively...compulsively. She quickly stopped and stared at the stamp on the victim’s cheek. She could just blow Nick off, tell him she’d bumped it and leave it at that, but instead she opted for a little bit of honesty.

      “When I was undercover I was tattooed with that same insignia on my arm. The actual tattooing wasn’t so bad, but getting it removed was a long, extremely painful process.”

      “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Nick said softly. There was genuine empathy in his voice and in his dark eyes.

      “Yeah, well that was then and this is now,” she replied with a forced toughness in her tone. The last thing she wanted to do was reveal any weakness to anyone, especially her new partner. She didn’t want or need empathy from anyone. What she needed was answers.

      It was close to noon by the time the body had been removed and the area had been thoroughly searched by the officers on scene. Dr. Boze’s initial assessment was that she had been stabbed twice in the heart, and her body temperature indicated that her time of death was around six-thirty or so that morning. He’d have more information for them after he conducted a complete autopsy.

      “Did you drive here?” Lara asked Nick as everyone began to disperse from the area.

      “Yeah, why?”

      “I took a cab. Can I catch a ride with you back to headquarters?” Lara asked.

      “Sure,” he agreed.

      Minutes later they were in his car and headed back to check in on what the team had found out about the new victim. Lara was quiet, still haunted by the vision of the stamp on the young woman’s face.

      * * *

      When they arrived, only Mei and Ty were at their cubicles working on their computers. Victoria was probably in her office. Cass would be in her tech room where dozens of computer monitors lined the walls.

      The area was set up like a pod, with the large open center area holding cubicles that were the agents’ work spaces, and Cass’s room, Victoria’s office, several conference rooms and a break room shooting out like arms from an octopus.

      Xander came out of the break room, a coffee cup in his hand. “What’s up?”

      “We need a meeting,” Lara said.

      Nick knocked on Victoria’s door, and when she answered he requested the team get together in the conference room to discuss the morning activity and share information that everyone had dug up on the latest murder.

      It didn’t take long for everyone to be seated at the conference table. Nick and Lara filled them in on what they had discovered.

      “What were you able to find out about the victim?” Lara asked Cass.

      “She was twenty-three, a grad student at Columbia and lived in an apartment nearby. No criminal record of any kind, and according to the social media I checked, she was a vegan and had a long-term relationship with a boyfriend named William Goldman who works as an investment banker.” Cass looked up from her laptop. “So far she’s clean as a whistle, and it’s hard to believe she’d have anything to do with that scumbag Dunst or any of his creep acquaintances.”

      “Mei and I have already interviewed William Goldman,” Ty said. “We met him at his office at the Winthrop Investment Group. He told us that they had been dating for four years, and he appeared genuinely devastated by her murder, said he’d told her time and time again that she shouldn’t run alone in the park at that time of the morning. But she thought he was just being a ‘worrywart’—his phrase.”

      “He told us he left his apartment building at around six-forty-five this morning to go to work. Apparently he’s hungry and driven and even works on Saturdays. The doorman at his place confirmed his time of leaving the apartment,” Mei added.

      Lara frowned thoughtfully. “There’s no way he could have gone to Central Park, killed his girlfriend at six-thirty and then gotten back to his apartment, cleaned up and dressed for a day of work by six-forty-five.”

      “And the doorman was on duty all evening the night before and swears William didn’t leave the building at all until he left for work this morning,” Mei replied.

      “Apparently William is a creature of habit. He works six days a week, spends most of his evenings with his girlfriend in his apartment and then on the weekends they go out to dinner on Saturday nights. We went over his whereabouts for the last two weeks, and nothing unusual jumped out at us. We’ll continue to work to confirm his movements in the days and weeks before the murder, but I’d say he’s pretty well cleared off the suspect list,” Ty said.

      “I not only didn’t find anything to connect her to Dunst. I also didn’t find any connection to the Moretti organization on any level,” Cass added.

      “Then why was her face marked with the same stamp that was found in Dunst’s pocket?” Nick asked and looked around the table.

      “And who murdered her? She has to have some sort of connection to Dunst or Moretti. Otherwise none of this makes any sense,” Ty added.

      “Nothing has made sense since I went out on that ledge to talk Dunst down yesterday morning,” Lara replied. Had it only been yesterday? It felt like a lifetime ago that she’d been talking to Sean Dunst while an unusually cold September breeze blew through her to chill her bones.

      Xander had been silent throughout the conversation, occasionally sipping coffee from a black-and-gold ceramic mug. He set his mug down and leaned forward.

      “Why are we all wasting our time digging into the vic’s background and chasing down alibis for her boyfriend or anyone else? We all know why she was killed. It was because her name was Lara. Moretti now knows that Lara is FBI and busted him, and now he’s playing with her. He’s having some fun at her expense.” Xander leaned back in his chair and took another sip from his cup.

      Lara shot a quick glance at Nick, who was sending a death glare at Xander. “Yeah, right, that’s hilarious,” Nick said, his deep voice sounding oddly strained.

      “I don’t understand,” Lara said, her eyes still on Nick. “I thought her name was L-A-U-R-A.” She hadn’t seen the vic’s ID, only Nick had looked at it.

      Xander shook his head. “Her name was L-A-R-A. Just like yours.”

      “I didn’t want that information to cloud your mind while we did the initial investigation,” Nick replied, his gaze not quite meeting Lara’s.

      Wrong answer. Lara averted her gaze from him as a fiery anger lit inside her. How could she trust a partner who kept things from her? He’d just committed his first sin against her—withholding information. If he thought she would tolerate crap like that, then he was sadly mistaken.

      “But Dunst was killed before Lara’s face was splashed all over the news,” Mei exclaimed. “Dunst had to have known Lara was in New York before that.”

      Xander