Jacob pushed to his feet, resigned. He waved Doug’s last laugh away and walked from the room. He could have fought Doug on it, but both of them knew that he wouldn’t. Not only was he only a Lieutenant II to Doug’s Captain III, meaning he was outranked, but they both knew that he’d roll over dead before he let any other man stay the night at Lola’s house for what could be weeks on end.
Worse, he knew that the protection was necessary. Not that Doug wasn’t having fun, because it was very clear he was, but both of them knew that if Lola’s incident had involved the same perp, then she almost certainly needed full-time protection. Killers like the one that they were tracing were obsessive, often becoming more infatuated with a target the more unobtainable they became. Which is why he hadn’t put up a real fight when Doug had suggested it.
Liar.
As much as he wanted to deny it, he knew that he would have suggested protection for Lola anyway…but stay overs, as rare as they were, were something performed either by rookies in minor cases or by the FBI in cases not dissimilar to the one they were working on. He knew that. But this wasn’t just couch duty. It was couch duty for Lola Michaels and the idea of someone else spending all that time with her had made him itchy.
“Fuck.” He stepped out onto the sunlit street, just as his cellphone rang, and Doug’s name flashed on the screen. He sighed. “Yeah?”
“Sorry, I know that you just left but the Coroner finished the autopsy for our Jane Doe.”
“And?”
“Her hyoid bone was broken.”
“What?” He felt confused for a moment. The hyoid bone was situated at the root of a person’s tongue, between the lower jaw and the cartilage of the larynx. It wasn’t very often that the bone broke in cases of strangulation, especially in victims so young.
“COD is still asphyxiation, but the Coroner thinks that she was essentially partially hung from behind, causing the hyoid to break.”
“Meaning the bastard most likely picked her up from behind using the rope to pull her off her feet?” Jacob felt his blood heat in anger and clenched his fist at his side. He wanted to punch something until his knuckles were bloody. What kind of a sick fuck hurt and killed a woman so much smaller than himself that he could lift her off her feet by her neck?
Doug sighed. “Yeah. Coroner puts him at male and over six-foot to have been able to physically hang someone of Jane Doe’s height and weight.”
“Well, that helps, I guess,” Jacob said, turning towards his car. “We’re looking for a six-foot male in Southern California—and that’s if he hasn’t already lit out.”
“Hey, Jake.” Doug paused mid-sentence. “I know that I’m giving you a hard time…but I genuinely am worried about that little girl. I’ve never dealt with anything quite like this. I mean…I had to send a ten-year-old into foster care after telling him that his mother was dead.” He sighed again. “I’m not cut out for a fourth death on this one. And the order’s coming from above, so even if I said you didn’t have to be the one to do it, someone else would have to.”
“I get it, Doug,” Jacob replied. The truth was that he did understand why the district attorney was pulling all the strings to protect Lola Michaels. “Just on physical strength alone…those girls didn't stand a chance.”
“I think that’s it, you know. All the homicides that I’ve worked on have been…motivated. Still fucked up and wrong, but the motives were there. This…this makes me want to plug the asshole myself.”
“I understand.” Jacob kicked his shoe on the lip of the curb, a repetitive thwack that helped him contain the fluttering disquiet that had settled in his stomach. “I feel the same way.”
“But I need you to know that I’m not only putting you on the Michaels girl’s couch to torture you. I’m genuinely scared for her and you’re someone I trust implicitly. Someone that I know can handle himself.”
“I know.” Jacob hopped into his SUV. “And I’d have been the first to volunteer if it had been any other woman.”
Doug chuckled. “Well, let me know how things go?”
“Yeah,” Jacob replied drily. “One thing before you go. Did you say that social services picked up the kid? Selma Holt’s boy?”
“Yeah, he has no next of kin. Grandparents are both dead and the father was never on the birth certificate. I wanted to take him home myself, but you know how Social gets with stuff like that.”
“Sure. I’ll pop over and see what I can find out. I mean, she must have had friends who’d take the kid in, right?”
“According to Burns and Williams, she worked like a cart-horse. Left the boy, ah,” he rifled through some paperwork, “Jordan, with a neighbor while she worked at night.”
“Okay. Could you send me the contact at Social Services?”
“Yup. It’s Kimberly Kripps.”
“Oh, great. I have her details already.” Jacob thought back to the case that he and Kimi Kripps had worked on together. It had been a kidnapping, a disgruntled father who’d spirited his three-year-old daughter out of Social Services' care. They’d found him within four hours, his little girl unscathed, but Jake remembered Kimi’s fierce determination to find the child.
He remembered Kimi distinctly because, well, it was hard for a flesh and blood male not too, but he respected her because of the way that she’d held herself together during those four hours, the way she’d used all of her resources to help them track the man. She was one tough lady, and Jake found himself glad that she was Jordan Holt’s caseworker.
“Thanks for all the help, Jake.” Doug’s voice pulled him back.
“No problem.” Jacob hung up and started his car, eager to be away from the Northeast Station and the terrible secrets it held. He wanted to get back to his desk, to his routine. He wanted to start his own project folder for the case so that he could keep all of his jumbled thoughts in order. He also wanted to distract himself as much as possible from the fact that he’d essentially been coerced into guarding the one woman he couldn’t seem to think straight around.
Pulling out of the station, he turned his car back towards Central, glanced briefly at his phone. With a single resigned shrug, he pressed call on Lola’s contact details, dialing the number he’d saved from McConnell’s incident report.
The phone rang twice before she answered with a breathy, “Hello?”
“Hi, Lola…it’s Jacob.”
“Oh.” She paused for a moment, clearly surprised by the fact that he’d called. “Hi!”
“Were you running?” he asked, distracted by her heavy breathing and, if he had to admit it, remembering the sound of her breath hitching in her throat when they’d kissed. The thought made him clench his jaw to stop himself from groaning.
“No, I was doing this exercise video. Have you ever heard of Tae Bo?”
“Like Billy Blanks?” he asked, confused for a moment before a very vivid picture of her all sweaty in a pair of tiny shorts and a sports bra made him go instantly hard.
“Yeah, exactly,” she went on, ignorant to the fact that he had stopped breathing. Thank God. “I found this old DVD set that I had when I was in college and, well…I’m doing Tae Bo in my living room.”