Free Skin Deep by Kimberly Kincaid

sister. They’d definitely seemed like a couple, so the news wasn’t exactly earth-shaking.
    “The angle of the photos made recognition software pretty useless, and the images don’t match any online databases the RPD can access,” Isabella said, closing the empty desk drawer and opening the one above it. Damn. More nada. “Whoever took them knows what the hell he’s doing.”
    “Or she,” Walker pointed out, and okay, she’d give him this. He didn’t have two left feet when it came to the investigation dance.
    Still. “While it’s possible our guy might not be a guy, sex crimes are overwhelmingly male on female. Especially when it comes to forced prostitution.”
    He lifted his chin in a brief nod of concession. “Have you got anything to go on other than the stuff that was in the lock box?”
    Isabella hesitated. Sharing case details on unsolved crimes was a strict don’t-even-think-about-it for anyone in the intelligence unit. But this wasn’t technically a case, and what’s more, she was pretty fucking desperate to make it one. She and Walker might not like each other, but he clearly wasn’t an idiot. How much damage could a little disclosure do?
    She said, “No, and even the evidence I’ve got is running me into a wall. The rope is the most popular brand sold, available at any hardware store or mega-center. There weren’t any useable fingerprints on the lock box, the photos or the jewelry, which were all women’s earrings, none of them valuable or uniquely identifiable.”
    Walker propped his forearms over his denim-covered thighs, his dark brows tucked in obvious thought. “How about the desk, or the closet doors? Could you get prints off that, maybe?”
    If only . “I’d need a crime scene unit to process the place in order to find out, which I can’t do without an open investigation. Even then, any prints they’d find in the room would be circumstantial. Who knows how many squatters might’ve been in and out of here in the last five months. Getting from the furniture to the photos is a pretty giant leap.”
    “So you’re stuck with whatever you can get to lead you out of this room.”
    “Pretty much.” Isabella’s eyes narrowed on the pizza box splayed open over the top of the desk, a spark of hope kicking at her pulse. “Hold on a second.” She pressed to standing, flipping the box closed, and halle-freaking-lujah, finally the ball had bounced in her direction.
    “What?” Kellan asked, dropping his gaze as he stood. “Three Brothers Pizza. Isn’t that the place down by the pier?”
    “There are a couple of locations around Remington, but yeah, the one by the pier is the closest. This might be a little thin, but I know someone who works there.” She didn’t add that the ‘someone’ was a mouthy former junkie turned CI. The less Walker knew about Carmen, the better.
    If his expression was anything to go by, he didn’t need to know more to think Isabella was nuts. “Tying prints from the desk to whoever took those pictures is thin, Moreno. Tying a pizza box to the guy? That’s anorexic.”
    Isabella knew he was right. If she went to Sinclair with a pizza box that might have belonged to a suspect, he’d laugh her right out of the intelligence office, and give her what-for over returning to the scene without permission while he was at it. But flimsy or not, the pizza box was more than she’d had when she’d walked into the room, so she borrowed Kellan’s cross-armed stance as she fixed him with her very best stare.
    “Maybe. But if you think for a second I’m going to back down just because my only lead is a shot in the dark, then clearly, you don’t know me as well as you thought you did.”

5
    K ellan sat back on his bar stool at the Crooked Angel, a beer in his hand and his brain waging an epic battle with his dick. Which wouldn’t necessarily be the worst thing in the world if the topic of said battle wasn’t Isabella Moreno and his downstairs head wasn’t