Disarming Detective Read Free

suspected—his family could be involved. All she saw was his determination to get her to help. And that heavy dose of attraction. Her heart rate picked up and she glanced down at her food before she gave anything away. “She have any obvious enemies?”
    “Stalker exes, that kind of thing? No.”
    “Sexual assault?”
    Logan shrugged. “My guess would be yes, but too much postmortem damage to tell for sure. She died from lack of oxygen, but there was no water in her lungs. She didn’t drown in that marsh. She was killed somewhere else.”
    “Okay—”
    “And she had burns on her body.”
    Ella felt her hands tense into fists. Hiding them under the table, she forced them to loosen. “What kind of burns?”
    “What were they made with? I don’t know. But she had several. On her arm, her back...” Fury pulsated in his voice. “Someone burned her on purpose.”
    Ella held back a string of curses. Burns were close enough to branding that those cases hit her hardest. She always wanted them and her boss, knowing why she’d joined the FBI six years ago, always passed them on to another agent.
    As much as she hated it, she understood that he was right. She made them too personal, and getting too close to a case meant making mistakes. Like Logan was in danger of doing right now.
    She gave him her best profiler stare, the one she’d learned from her boss—a legend in the Bureau. “I’m going to read this case file and give you my best insight. But I’m going to tell you something you already know. You’re too close to this case. You shouldn’t be on it.”
    It was hypocritical advice, given the very, very personal case file sitting in the trunk of her Bureau-issued car right now, and judging by his scowl, Logan didn’t seem any more inclined to follow it than she was.
    “I’m not handing this over to someone else, not when everyone seems to think it was a fluke. I’m not going to sit around and wait for the next body to show up before I investigate this. This was my sister’s friend and someone murdered her and tossed her in the marsh like garbage. I’m going to find this guy and make sure he pays.”
    Realization struck Ella. “You’re not supposed to be here, are you?”
    Logan let out a sound that was half laugh, half exasperation, but his face told her he was impressed. “Tell you what, profiler. Check out the file and tell me I’m wrong.” He gave her a smug look that said, “I dare you.”
    Ella nodded slowly. “Okay.” She skipped over the autopsy photos and started reading. The further she got in the file, the more she felt her mouth tug downward.
    When she looked back up at him, Logan raised his eyebrows. “Well?”
    “You’ve got good instincts, Greer.”
    Logan tapped his fingers heavily on the table. “I thought so.”
    She had just flipped the file back to the beginning when he suggested, this time sounding completely serious, “Maybe you and your friends could vacation on some Florida beaches instead.”
    “No.” The word came out more harshly than she’d intended, so she covered up her instant reaction by tilting her head and offering him an exaggerated coy smile. “Are you trying to solve a case here or get into my pants, Greer?”
    He blinked and leaned back, but just as quickly sat forward with a full-wattage version of the smile he’d been laying on her all night. “Is it too much to hope for both?”
    A short burst of laughter escaped her lips as desire zinged through her body. “Probably.” She turned back to the file and all humor and lust instantly fled.
    She lifted the page closer, squinting at one of the close-ups underneath the main autopsy photo, and her entire body suddenly felt as though it had been submerged in ice. The blood left her head so fast she actually swayed in her seat.
    From a great distance, she heard Logan saying, “Whoa. Are you okay?” and before she knew it, he was squeezed in next to her in the booth, his hand on her back like fire against