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CHAPTER SIX

Cami walked to the elevator feeling as if she had leaden weights attached to her feet. This all felt as if it was spiraling out of control. She hadn’t signed up for this—or had she? She had a horrible feeling that every single detail of her new job and her responsibilities would all have been listed in the documents she’d just scrawled her signature over so fearlessly.

From now on, she was bound by the rules she resented, because she associated law enforcement protocol with her bullying, policeman father.

Practically the only thing that kept her calm, strangely, was thinking about those women and that killer. Let Connor drag her all around the country looking at dead bodies. He was just doing it out of spite, to try to get her fired and put in jail.

She’d have to go along with it, but in her mind, she was turning over scenarios. Trying to work out who this killer was and why. To work out ways to catch him. Surely, if she tried hard enough, she could find a way.

For now, though, she had to get through this.

The elevator pinged. They were at the ground floor, but instead of heading directly to the exit, Connor veered right.

“Come this way,” he snapped.

Cami followed him as he headed down a side corridor that led to a small room, like a utility room. She could see shelves filled with equipment inside. A man who looked about forty years old walked over.

“Connor,” he said with a smile. “What do you need?”

Curiously, he glanced at Cami, as if her appearance was unusual and surprising in this environment. Yet again, she felt herself bristle inwardly.

“We need some clothing.” He glanced at her. “A jacket. And a hat.” His voice was filled with disapproval as he took in her hair.

She was going to have to wear an FBI jacket? And have her hair crushed down under the blue baseball cap he was now handing her? Cami felt incredulous about this. It felt like all her identity was being smothered.

“Sure. Anything else? Shirts?”

“Not necessary,” he snapped, and Cami realized intuitively that it was because he didn’t think she’d last more than the next few minutes.

He literally did not think she was going to be here for long enough to need anything more than a jacket and hat for the trip to the pathologist’s office. That was the clear message that Cami was getting.

She put the hat on her head and pulled on the new-smelling jacket without a word.

Then they headed for the parking lot, where Connor’s car was waiting—or at any rate, his work vehicle. Cami now saw, as she got into in the front seat, that there was a radio inside and a few extra gadgets on the dash. So, she guessed this was an FBI unmarked vehicle that he was using.

“At the pathologist, we will be speaking to the coroner who did the autopsies on the two victims,” he said as he drove out. “We’ll hopefully get information that will tell us more about the killer, the time of death, and maybe some other details.”

Cami bit her lip. The autopsies. She was going to have to see the women’s bodies. And the thought immediately made her feel sick. Thoughts of Jenna flared in her mind. Her biggest fear was that her sister had died and that her body had never been traced back to her family. That she’d ended up an anonymous and unidentified corpse in a morgue.

Cami stared out of the window, looking at the cityscape flashing by and feeling more and more lost.

“I don’t need to do this,” Cami said. “You’re just making me because you think it will put me off.”

Connor gave a joyless nod. “You deserve to be in jail.”

“Well, I’m not,” Cami flashed back. “I’m helping you.”

“You are not the caliber of person to work on a murder investigation, even as an assistant. I can tell that. I knew that from the time I saw you,” he stated baldly. “There’s normally a selection process and rigorous training to become an investigator. Still more to be an FBI agent. It weeds out unsuitable people. Like you.

“What?” Cami asked, feeling offended. “Unsuitable?”

“You’re too young. Way too immature. You’re too anti-establishment.”

His critical words cut like knives, and before Cami could get her thoughts together to respond, he plowed on. “Fraser had a good idea in seeking IT talent. He just picked the wrong person. But that’s okay. Before long, you’ll cave under the pressure. You don’t have what it takes. And I’m not going to go easy on you. The opposite. You don’t deserve to be here. The sooner you’re gone, the better. I want to work with somebody who can drive this case forward with me.”

He sounded threatening.

“Good luck finding all that with IT ability thrown in,” she shot back at him, feeling scathed by his words.


Tags: Blake Pierce Mystery