Free Roll the Dice by Mimi Barbour Page B

Flint-hard Kai
interrupted, and his positive tone spelled trouble.
    Cory swung his head in Kai's direction. You have as much invested in
getting this guy as we do. But, we play by the rules and follow procedures.
It’s how we’ve always worked and this case is no different.” He swung away and
wriggled his fingers. “On the other hand, I don’t much care how hard you push
those rules. Got it?”
    “Yes boss!” Aurora answered first. Then Kai echoed her answer before they
left the room.
    Once back into their own small office, coffee cups in hand, they sat at
their desks across from each other. Neither looked at the other and it had been
this way since they’d arrived this morning.
    Aurora opened her computer and brought up the e-mail the office
secretary had sent to everyone who was working on the case. Loaded into a
special file, each page from the journal was scanned and added in order of
place and date. She pushed the print button on two copies, one for her and Kai,
then sipped the vile coffee they brewed in-house.
    Once we get the info, we can organize the victims and pay some home
visits.   Maggie, our old secretary
trained Linda well and she’s already gotten the addresses added for each
person. At least those she could find. They’re working on getting the others.
But we have lots to start on now.”
    Kai sipped with enjoyment. “Humm. Good coffee—”
    Aurora choked on the sip she’d just taken. “You’re kidding, right?”
    “What do you think?”
    With his eyebrow raised, and the sideways smirk on his face, she really
couldn’t tell.   “I don’t want to know.
If you said you liked it, I’d have to report you to PEAP.”
    His look said he didn’t understand and she added. “Psych assistance.”
    He laughed…and she swung around to hide the shock. My good lord, he’s delicious!
    The beep on the copy machine warned her to get her mind back on the job
so she wouldn’t embarrass herself.
    “Do you want to split up on these names or work together?”
    Cory thought about the options and realized that many of the women would
refuse to talk to him because he was a guy. But they’d open to a female officer
much easier. “I’ll stick with you. Two of us doing the questioning will work
better I think. You okay with that?”
    “Sure. Tell you the truth; I kinda suspected it’ll be a lot smoother for
me than you.”
    “Yeah! I came to the same conclusion. You ready?”
    The first two names on the list were young women living in crappy
apartments near the strip. Both knew the ropes and had grown a thick skin from
seeing and doing too much in their short lives. They answered the questions
with a bored attitude that personally hurt Aurora. She knew these girls had
accepted their ordeal. Just another fucked-up scenario in their screwed up
lives.
    The next place they pulled up to was a home, well loved, and so was the
girl. She was younger than the other two, in her late teens. Her demeanour
showed clearly that Rhondo's torture had damaged her mentally. These poor folks
had been working hard for months to undo the destruction that one animal had managed
to accomplish in a few terror-filled hours.  
    While Aurora questioned the girl, dealing with her tears, her
self-recriminations, Kai talked to Mrs. Wright, the mother.
    “Can you tell me how you found her? It says here that she called from a
payphone on West Sahara?”
    “She said he’d dumped her from the vehicle onto the side of a road, and
she’d crawled to the phone. Only reason we found her was she’d recognized the
Golf club in the distance. That bastard had left her almost naked, ripped and
bleeding…” The sobbing cut into her monologue and after he handed over the
tissues he’d thoughtfully collected for his pocket, Kai waited patiently.
    “I’m sorry. Every time I picture her looking that way, it brings the
nightmare back. My daughter had it all, straight A’s in her classes, more
friends than she had time for and a life planned