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A blonde woman sprinted into view, her face obscured by a dark blue ballcap. There was no logo on it from what Josie could see. A long ponytail poked through the opening in the back, swishing across her shoulders as she ran toward the brawling mass of people ahead. Her feet were clad in black ballet flats. An oversized gray sweatshirt fell to the middle of her thighs. If she had shorts on beneath it, they weren’t visible. Blood smeared and smudged her clothing and bare thighs. She didn’t look behind her, instead plunging into the crowd, aggressively muscling her way through to the other side. With so many fists and elbows flailing, cell phones held aloft filming, and bodies jostling to reach the overwhelmed guards, no one noticed her at all.

Emerging from the other side of the skirmish, she fell to her knees, hands breaking her fall. Then she jumped back up and ran, away from everything, disappearing from view. Josie rewound the footage. “Shirley, do you recognize this woman?”

Shirley leaned over Josie’s shoulder to watch the seventeen seconds in which the blonde appeared. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t.”

Josie rewound to when the blonde first came into view and pressed pause. “Do you know why Gina was outside the site?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Was she grabbing lunch?” Josie asked.

“No. She’d already gone out for lunch around noon, and she took her car for that. Oh, wait. When I saw her this morning, she said something about surveying the fencing to see if there were any places people could slip in. Maybe that’s what she was doing? Although…”

Trailing off, Shirley walked over to one of the windows and peered outside. “Her car’s not here.”

“But she did come back after lunch,” Josie clarified. “Could she have parked it elsewhere?”

Shirley turned back toward Josie, frowning. “I suppose.”

“What kind of car does Gina own?” As Shirley answered, Josie took out her phone. Dried white flakes of primer skidded across the screen as she punched in her passcode. She sent Brennan a text with the make and model of Gina’s car and instructions to have units search the area for it.

Josie beckoned Shirley closer and pointed to the blonde frozen on the computer screen. “I’m going to need stills of this woman. As many as you can get. Fast as you can. Text them to me.”

“Sure thing,” Shirley said. “I’ve got a tablet on the table over there. I can grab them from that. I’ll also get you copies of all the footage so you can take it with you.”

As she shuffled off to the other end of the trailer, Josie fast-forwarded to the point where the blonde fled the scene. Six seconds later, Gina Phelan followed the same path, staggering as though she was drunk. She wasn’t carrying a purse of any kind. Blood seeped from the two wounds in her abdomen, forming the streaks on her clothes that Josie had seen on her body. Her hands fumbled at her shirt, palms trying to stem the flow. It took her longer to reach the tussling throng. In the throes of their attack on the guards, the protestors on the fringe let Gina slip past without notice. She reached out, trying to touch the closest person, but soon she was swallowed up by the writhing bodies, batted around like a pinball until she collapsed.

That was when someone finally saw her.

The rest was just as Brennan had described. Josie closed out the footage and brought up the video from the east-facing camera even though she doubted it would offer much. As she watched, focused on the blonde and Gina Phelan, Josie lifted her hair and fanned the back of her neck. She was concentrating so hard that she didn’t hear the door to the trailer open and close.

Hot breath cascaded down her neck a moment before she heard Kyle Turner’s voice. “Quinn, is that paint?”

Josie jumped, making the chair creak. As the video concluded, she looked over her shoulder. He was directly behind her, his huge frame taking up an unreasonable amount of space. One of his fingers pointed at the nape of her neck.

Josie quickly let her hair fall. She kept her voice low. “None of your business. Also, you’re standing too close. Again.”

With a sigh, Turner stepped back, bumping into a filing cabinet. In an attempt to look cool and casual, he draped an arm over the top of it. Matching the volume of Josie’s voice so that Shirley wouldn’t overhear them, he said, “I thought we were getting along.”

Josie had warmed up to him somewhat, as nauseated as it made her to admit, even laughing at a joke he’d made during their last big case. He had, after all, saved her from being mauled by a dog and also from plummeting down the shaft of a crumbling stairwell. There were even a couple of times she’d swallowed her pride and asked him to do things for her and, in response, he wasn’t a raging asshole at all. She’d been shocked to find out that her sister had a connection to him, though both of them had been very close-lipped about it. Trinity would only say that the Kyle Turner she knew wasn’t anything like the douchebag who had joined the Denton PD. Josie often wondered if he was actually human, but she wouldn’t go so far as to say they were getting along.

“Debatable,” she told him. “Nice of you to show up, by the way.”

“Hey, I came in early,” Turner protested.

“You left your last shift early.”

She shouldn’t complain. He would be relieving her at midnight.

“Whatever.” His fingers drummed against his thigh as he shifted his attention to Shirley, whose back was to them.

Josie’s phone vibrated with the still photos she’d requested. As the pictures came in, she forwarded them to Brennan with a brief explanation. He replied before she’d even sent them all, promising to get units out to search for the mystery woman as well as have officers show her photos to the guards and protestors to find out whether anyone knew her or recognized her. Additional units would check with local residents and businesses.

The blonde was covered in blood, running away from a dying Gina Phelan, and she’d fled the scene without so much as glancing back. Either she had stabbed Gina Phelan, or she had seen the person who did. Maybe she, too, had been wounded. Regardless, she was the key to finding out what the hell happened.

Josie sent the last photo and looked up to see Turner’s eyes sweep slowly from Shirley’s thick, messy bun to the jeans hugging her ass.

Josie glared at him. Hard. She didn’t know whether to be glad or disturbed that he keyed in on it right away. It meant they’d officially worked together so often that they were developing an unspoken language. The thought was like a very sharp stone in her shoe. Or worse, plantar fasciitis. More painful and not fixed by taking off your shoe and shaking it.

What? Turner mouthed.

Josie gave him a look that she hoped he read as “You’re disgusting.”

Come on, sweetheart.

Josie narrowed her eyes then grinned triumphantly. She held her palm out, keeping it low in case Shirley turned around.

With a barely suppressed groan, Turner fished a dollar bill out of his jacket pocket and discreetly deposited it into her hand. It was all part of Noah’s behavior modification program. After Turner joined Denton PD, every third word out of his mouth whenever he addressed Josie was either “honey” or “sweetheart” and he insisted on calling Gretchen “Parker” rather than her actual name, Palmer, no matter how many times he was corrected. Now, whenever he screwed up, he owed them a dollar. It worked both ways. Whenever Josie or Gretchen called him a name to his face, they owed him a dollar. They all had jars on their desks like a bunch of damn kindergartners. Josie was certain that she and Gretchen had already collected at least two paychecks’ worth of Turner’s money, whereas his own sad jar only held two or three dollars from the times that Gretchen couldn’t contain herself. Apparently, nothing brought Gretchen more joy than calling Turner a jackass to his face.

Stop being a creep , Josie mouthed at him.

He rolled his eyes, stopping abruptly when Shirley turned to face them. What Josie was sure Turner thought of as a charming smile spread across his face. He offered his hand. “Shirley, always a pleasure to see you, though I wish it were under different circumstances. Detective Kyle Turner.”

To Josie’s surprise, Shirley smiled back and shook his hand, her eyes lingering on his face. “I remember you very well.”

Good lord.

Turner couldn’t resist shooting Josie a wink. A wink . Now her plantar fasciitis had plantar fasciitis. He often claimed that women flirted with him. No one ever believed him. Not that he was unattractive. In his mid-forties, he was actually quite handsome with a full head of dark unruly curls shot through with gray, a neatly trimmed beard, and deep-set blue eyes. He was over six feet, lean, and he always wore a suit like he was headed to court for testimony.

No, it wasn’t his physical appearance that made it impossible for Josie to see his appeal. It was the fact that he was so damn obnoxious.

“I found something on the footage,” Josie announced. “In case you’re interested.”