The Girl Next Door (Shadow Agents 6)

Gabrielle had just stumbled into an extremely dangerous situation. Now he’d have to do some serious recon in order to keep her out of the cross fire.

* * *

IT WASN’T HER first dead body.

Gabrielle Harper stood behind the patrol car, her gaze on the apartment building. The cops had rolled in quickly after her call then they’d pushed her out.

They hadn’t needed to push her so far. She knew better than to contaminate the scene. They didn’t have to worry about her destroying evidence.

Not my first dead body. But the sight of Lockwood’s slit throat had still made nausea rise within her.

“Tell me again,” Detective Lane Carmichael said as he leaned back against the patrol car and studied her with an assessing gaze, “just why you were at Keith Lockwood’s house in the middle of the night?”

A crowd had already gathered.

Her gaze slid away from Lane’s and toward the apartment’s entrance. The body was being wheeled out through the double doors. Lockwood had been zipped up in a black bag. Bagged, tagged and taken away.

She swallowed.

“Gabrielle.”

The snap of her name jerked her attention back to Lane. His suit was wrinkled, his dark hair was tousled and his face was set in grim, I’m-sure-not-pleased-with-you lines.

That was typically the way Lane looked at her. Even when they’d been dating—briefly—he’d often given her that same look.

She worked the crime beat in Washington, D.C., covering stories for the Inquisitor—both the paper and its online subscriber base. Since Lane was a homicide detective, their paths crossed plenty.

That crossing had been good when they were dating.

Now that they weren’t—not so good.

“Lockwood called me,” she began.

“Dead men don’t make phone calls.” His arms were crossed over his chest—his interrogation stance. “The ME estimates that he’s been dead for over seven hours. Try again.”

Seven hours. She filed that helpful detail away for later. “He called me around eight a.m. The guy left a voice message for me, saying he had some info to share about a story I’d covered.”

Lane’s head tilted. “Just what story would that be?”

Gabrielle pushed back her hair. It was summer in D.C., and she was sweating. “The unsolved murder of Kylie Archer.” A woman whose body had been discovered in her apartment months ago. Kylie’s throat had been slit.

Just like Lockwood’s.

Even in the summer heat goose bumps rose on her arms.

“I need everything you’ve got on Lockwood, Gabby,” Lane told her, his voice grim. “Everything.”

But she could only shake her head. The body had been loaded into the coroner’s van. Uniforms began to walk back into the apartment building. “I don’t have anything to give you. He called me. Left a message for me to meet him at this address after midnight. He mentioned Kylie’s name and said he had more information for me.” She was trying to cooperate, didn’t Lane get that? “I’d just run a piece on the web, highlighting Kylie’s unsolved murder, so I figured that Lockwood had seen it and he had a lead to share with me.”

Once a month, she featured an unsolved crime in her column. Thanks to those features, she’d helped close three cold cases.

Lane should thank her for that help.

His glare said he wouldn’t be thanking her anytime soon.

“What if the killer had still been inside that apartment?” he demanded. “What if he’d come at you with that knife?”

She had mace in her bag. Not much as a weapon, but it was something. “No one was there when I arrived.”