Tactical Advantage Read Online Free PDF Page B

get four coffees and give them some time out of the cold.”
    She’d like to dive into a bath-sized pot of hot coffee right about now. Including her in the drink run was an unexpected consideration that took the edge off the defensive hackles Nick’s presence inevitably raised in her. “I suppose they’ve been out here longer than either one of us. They’ve earned the break.”
    Still, sterile plastic gloves were no match for hours of working in the wintry night, photographing potential evidence, digging through bags of garbage and cataloguing everything she’d found thus far. The bag she’d been fighting with refused to open for her stiff fingers. The knees of her jeans where she kneeled had soaked through to the skin, and the tendrils of hair sticking out from beneath her stocking cap had kinked around her face and stuck to her cheeks with the precipitation in the air.
    Meanwhile, other than the puffs of warm breath that clouded the air around his head, Detective Fensom looked solid and warm and vexingly unaffected by the dropping temperature.
    As if reading her condemning thoughts, Nick turned the banter back to the job. The beam of his flashlight joined hers to better illuminate her work. “What do you have there?”
    “I found the victim’s purse.” Giving up on the paper sack for now, Annie lifted the camera hanging from her neck and snapped a picture of the beaded evening bag wedged between the rear wheel of the Dumpster and the alley’s brick wall. Then she picked up the bag and opened it. “Clearly, this wasn’t a robbery.” She pulled out three neatly folded twenties and a credit card. A driver’s license, five business cards, a comb and lipstick rounded out the contents. Annie read the name on the license and business cards. “Rachel Dunbar. Twenty-seven years old. She was an investment analyst.”
    “A successful professional woman. That fits the victim profile of the women the Rose Red Rapist targets.”
    Annie returned the contents to the purse and picked up the evidence bag again. Juggling the purse, the bag and her flashlight with her frozen hands proved to be a challenge, but it didn’t stop her mind from speculating. “Why is there no phone here? I wonder if she had a cell phone in her coat or if the killer took it from her. I can’t imagine a woman going out at night on her own without a cell.”
    “When I check in with Spencer, I can ask if the phone was on the body. I’m guessing her attacker took it from her, though,” Nick speculated. “It keeps her helpless, at his mercy. Our unsub is all about control and dominance over the women he assaults. He obviously can’t have her calling 9-1-1.”
    Frowning, Annie nodded toward the bag already tucked into her evidence kit. “So he takes the phone, but leaves the brick he killed her with? I always thought our guy was smarter than that. It doesn’t make sense.”
    “Let’s gather the evidence first and analyze it later.” Nick knelt beside her, the bulk of his shoulders and chest blocking the wind as he plucked the sack from her fingers and opened it for her. Annie’s fingers were still shaking as she jotted down the time and date and signed the sealed bag. He dropped the sack inside her kit and reached for her hands. “I need to get you out of the cold, too. How much more do you have to do?”
    Annie’s mouth opened in surprise as he tucked her flashlight into the CSI vest she wore over her coat, and pulled off his leather gloves to capture her fingers between his palms. “What are you doing?”
    He peeled off her latex gloves next. “What does it look like?”
    Gasping at his firm, yet light, touch, Annie was stunned into silence. Nick Fensom had never touched her before, other than an accidental brush of contact as they passed each other in a crowded room or handed off a file folder at a meeting. And now he was holding her hands and instilling warmth as if he had some proprietary claim to do so.
    The gentle massage of