A noise had his head jerking up and his hand going for the gun next to his seat, but he relaxed when he saw Scarlett knocking on the passenger window. He unlocked the doors, and she slid in, wearing a tactical vest over her T-shirt, her jacket draped over her arm.

‘Sorry I took so long.’ Her skin was flushed, a light sheen of sweat on her face.

‘Were you running?’

She tossed the jacket in the back seat. ‘Just a little. Didn’t want you to worry about me.’

He poked at the thick, padded bulletproof vest. ‘Where were you hiding this?’

‘I wasn’t. Lynda gave it to me, just in case someone takes a potshot at me too.’

He frowned. ‘You should have been wearing this when we went into and out of the hospital. Why weren’t you?’

‘I left mine at home after we . . .’ She shrugged, a blush coloring her cheeks. ‘After we had sex on my sofa. I think I was pretty rattled.’

‘Don’t get that rattled,’ he said, angry with himself for not noticing. ‘Why don’t you wear Kevlar under your clothes like I do?’

‘A, because it itches; b, because none of my clothes will hide a vest; c, because they make me roast, and d, because I didn’t promise my mother I would. I’d rather wear the vests over my clothes. Besides, you’re the target, not me.’

‘Promise me,’ he said fiercely. ‘Promise me you’ll wear one.’

She met his eyes, growing serious. ‘I promise. Until this guy is caught, I promise.’

‘We’ll renegotiate after this guy is caught,’ he muttered.

She smiled at him. ‘You can start the engine anytime,’ she said, pointing at the keys he’d left dangling in the ignition. ‘In fact, why didn’t you keep the AC going? You could’ve roasted too.’

‘I served two tours in the Gulf,’ he reminded her dryly, closing his laptop and laying it on the floorboard behind his seat. He started the car. ‘I can take a little heat.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘So can I, Mr Macho, but I choose not to.’ She cranked up the AC and leaned her face into the air. ‘Did you finish with the list?’

‘Yes. I emailed it to you.’

‘Must have been after I left my desk.’ She settled into the seat and checked her phone while he drove them out of the garage and on to the street that led from the city to her house on the hill. ‘I got it.’ She took a few minutes to scan it, tapped her screen, then put the phone in one of the pockets of the vest. ‘I forwarded it to Isenberg. She’ll get it to whoever’s doing the analysis.’

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. ‘I thought you weren’t going to your desk.’

She made a face. ‘Isenberg called me while I was in Ballistics. Deacon and Agent Coppola had just come back from your apartment building, and Adam Kimble, the detective who was leading the search for Mila and Erica, had just come back from the field. We did a mini-debrief. I got away as soon as I could.’

‘And?’

‘And the security tapes showed the killer leaving about five minutes after he entered with Phillip and shot the security guard.’

‘What time was that?’

‘Forty minutes after eight.’

‘Shit. He left only a minute or two before I got there. I may have seen him. Phillip said he was big and African-American.’

‘The camera didn’t capture his face. He had a ski mask hidden under his cap and pulled it down as he entered the lobby. He was also wearing gloves. The only skin we saw was around the perimeter of the mask’s eye holes. His skin was darker than Caucasian, but that’s all we can say.’

‘We’ll ask Phillip more when he wakes up,’ Marcus said firmly.

‘We will,’ she agreed with a hard nod. ‘When the shooter came out of your apartment, he went down the stairs, made sure the coast was clear in the lobby and then slipped out the front door. He had a towel wrapped around his arm and the knife still sticking out, just like Phillip told you.’

‘He didn’t want his blood spurting everywhere.’

‘But the towel had already soaked through. Phillip got that blade deep.’

Marcus thought of Edgar and Phillip, both fighting for their lives. ‘Good,’ he said coldly.

‘I agree. Agent Coppola talked to everyone in the building. Nobody saw or heard anything. He must have used a silencer.’

Marcus frowned. ‘Silencers for the Ruger are hard to come by. He may have had it custom made.’ His frown grew deeper. ‘But he didn’t use one in the alley. Why?’

‘Good question. But he did use a silencer on his rifle when he shot at you and Agent Spangler in back of the Anders house.’

There was a thoughtful quality in her voice that made him look at her. ‘What?’

‘The surgeon said that the shooter shot Phillip three times. Arm, side and abdomen. Arm was a through and through, but Coppola and Deacon didn’t find the bullet, just the casings. The surgeon said the shooter dug the bullet out of Phillip’s side and tried to dig the one out of his abdomen but gave up.’

‘Because the shooter was bleeding too. He didn’t want the bullets found. He left bullets behind at the alley and didn’t want the ones in Phillip connected through ballistics. The gun he used on me and Agent Spangler this afternoon was a rifle, so there wouldn’t have been a match anyway.’ He frowned harder. ‘But that doesn’t make sense. Why would he go to the trouble of digging the bullets out? He has to know that we know he’s the same guy.’

‘Do we?’ she countered. ‘Tala knew her attacker. I saw it in her eyes.’

‘So did I,’ he murmured. ‘When I watched the video later. So you’re thinking maybe it’s not the same shooter? Maybe the two aren’t related?’

‘But someone wants us to think that they are.’ She shrugged. ‘We’ll know soon enough. The ballistics tech was on her way in to do the test. They don’t usually work nights, but for something like this they get called in.’

‘You mean because a federal agent was killed,’ he said flatly.

‘No,’ she said forcefully. ‘Because we have a human trafficking murderer out on the streets. Nobody’s complaining about the extra hours.’

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘It’s all right.’ She slid her hand over his thigh and squeezed. Comforting him again, he thought. ‘Some of the time that’s true. But not this time.’

‘Why did the search team come back in?’

She sighed. ‘They lost the scent. Looks like Mila and Erica hitched a ride. We got their visa pictures and those of the husband and son from Immigration and have distributed them to all the officers on patrol now, and they’ll be passed out at the shift meeting in the morning. Officers are being told to approach the women with care and to show them photos of the husband and son and one that Children’s Services took of Malaya. Isenberg had her clerk caption all three photos with “They’re alive and safe” in both English and Tagalog.’

‘Hopefully that helps. I just hope they don’t go under. We might never find them.’

‘I know,’ she murmured, sounding troubled.

He stopped at a red light and turned to study her profile. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I just keep thinking about how none of this fits. It doesn’t make sense and it’s giving me a headache.’ She pointed at the traffic light. ‘It’s green.’

He turned his attention back to the road. ‘Wait till the ballistic report comes back,’ he suggested. ‘At least you’ll know if the same gun was used on Tala and Phillip.’

‘You’re right,’ she said quietly, but he could tell she hadn’t let it go.

Neither had he. He kept rerunning the events at his apartment building through his mind. ‘I’m trying to remember if I saw anyone that matched Phillip’s description of his attacker, but I’m coming up empty.’

‘Deacon is good at helping people remember things,’ she said, surprising him.

‘Deacon? How?’

‘He’s been trained to do hypnotism to calm you down, help you find things your mind’s filed in weird places. I watched him do it the first time with Faith nine months ago. Since then he’s helped three other victims recall things they either couldn’t remember or were afraid to. Don’t worry,’ she said when he grimaced. ‘He won’t make you cluck like a chicken. It’s just a relaxation technique.’