The Intelligence Unit Series

Addison sat back at her desk and closed her eyes, hoping that the slow-blink would somehow mystically produce the missing piece she'd been seeking for the past two days. But all it did was make her realize how gritty her eyes felt from an overabundance of screen time, and ugh, she needed something, here. They'd run through all the footage they could find for both the night Bishop had showed up at Chloe's with flowers and the night he'd allegedly followed her home. He'd already admitted to being there to give her flowers, so the fact that they had him on camera doing just that meant nothing. In fact, it actually strengthened his credibility because he'd told them the truth about it, albeit his own, storm-cloud-dense version. Despite an exhaustive search, they hadn't been able to turn up any footage that definitively put Bishop on Chloe's path home three nights ago. There were a few people who might have been him, including a figure standing across the street from her apartment building at the same time she'd arrived home. But none of them had good enough camera angles or clarity for a positive ID, and worse yet, there had been more than a half dozen spots that no cameras reached at all. So, either Chloe had been mistaken and Bishop really hadn't been anywhere near her that night, or he knew exactly where the cameras were and how to dodge them.

Addison was banking on door number two, which meant she needed to uncover some other way to prove that Bishop had been following Chloe, fast.

"Okay," she said to Maxwell, looking at the case board above Capelli's workstation for the trillionth time. "Run through this with me again so I can figure out what I'm missing."

If Maxwell were a lesser partner, he'd probably have pointed out that they'd done that four times today already and it was barely noon. He might also add that Isabella, Hollister, and Garza had caught a tip from Vice that a turf war was brewing between two rival gangs, one of whom was dealing heroin right smack in the other's territory, and that they'd gone out to investigate a possibly related homicide that was far more interesting than this case-that-wasn't-a-case.

But-bless his strong, silent, semi-grumpy heart-he simply shrugged his brick-wall shoulders and nodded. "Run it."

Taking a fortifying breath, Addison went through Chloe's account of the events, leaving nothing out. "For every one of Chloe's assertions, Bishop has a counter. She says the advances were unwanted; he says she never said so in those words, so he believed she was romantically interested. She says he followed her home and glared at her menacingly; he says it wasn't him. He was logged in to the server for the company where he works at the time Chloe was walking home, but there's no way to corroborate whether or not he was actually active without a warrant to access the company's servers, which we don't have and aren't going to get."

"Sorry." Capelli looked up from the monitor in front of him. "I'm not saying I couldn't hypothetically get to the information from this end. But without a warrant, anything I'd find wouldn't be admissible in court."

"And not worth the flak we'd get for flipping off the rules," Maxwell said.

Addison frowned. "Exactly. We can't positively ID any of the people on the street cams on Chloe's route home as Bishop, but we do have him on a street cam heading to the Italian restaurant near his apartment at twenty-hundred hours. But by then, Chloe was already home, calling us. So, in theory, he could have followed her."

"But it could have also been someone else. More reasonable doubt," Maxwell said. "He's where he said he was, even if the timeline doesn't quite fit."

"The only good thing I've got is that he doesn't appear to have been anywhere near Chloe since she called in the complaint," Addison said. Maxwell tilted his head. "Why do I sense a 'but' coming?"

"But just because she can't see him doesn't mean he isn't watching her," Capelli said. "Bishop knows Chloe made a complaint, which also means he knows we're watching him pretty closely to make sure he doesn't bother her again. If he's smart-and all indications are that he is he might be cyber stalking her or watching her from afar. Or both."

Addison's stomach twisted. Yep, that was exactly where her head had gone, although she hadn't dared say anything to Chloe other than to remain vigilant and not go anywhere alone.

"Aren't you just a ray of sunshine?" Maxwell asked, but Capelli simply looked at him.

"I deal in facts. Bishop could have backed off, yes. But he could also be up to a number of dangerous things online. Without access to his devices..."

"There's no way of knowing," Addison grumbled. "But come on. Doesn't this feel a little too"-she paused, searching for the right word-"I don't know. Neat to you guys?"

Maxwell sat back in his desk chair, his head tilted in thought. "I'm listening."

"|

I get that I don't have anything concrete to back this up," she said, mouthing "sorry" in Capelli's direction, because he hadn't been kidding about dealing in cold, hard facts like currency. "But Bishop's got a fast answer for everything, almost as if he thought them all out ahead of time. It makes the responses feel disingenuous. Plus, Chloe is absolutely adamant that he followed her home three nights ago. Not someone who might be him, or who looked like him. Definitely him." "He does know just what to say to create doubt," Maxwell agreed. "He'd probably be a defense attorney's wet dream."

"Either that, or he's innocent," Capelli said, flashing Addison a contrite look. "Devil's Advocate seems like a fitting phrase, here."

Frustration uncurled in Addison's chest. Technically, she knew they had no proof that Bishop had done anything out of line, and yes, right now, all signs pointed to him having gotten the message and moved on. But Addison had seen Chloe's eyes. Fear like that was raw and real, and Addison didn't just recognize it. She knew how it clung to a person's bones, how it paralyzed someone smaller, someone not in control. She knew that fear because she'd felt it herself, and she'd be damned if she'd let another bigger, meaner person get away with inflicting it, or worse, on another woman.

"I'm going to keep looking," Addison said. Capelli nodded, slipping his headset over his ears and turning back to his monitor, and she took a meditative breath to set her focus on the mountainous task in front of her.

"You know there's damn little here, right?" Maxwell said quietly. "We're probably going to have to let this one go."

Logically, she knew he was right, even if she hated the f**k out of it. But still, she said, "I've got to keep looking. Dempsey will go into orbit if I tell him we have to drop this case, and I'm not interested in arresting him for going after Bishop on his own." "Yeah, so about that. What's going on between you two, exactly?"

Maxwell's stare was dark and serious and Addison knew far better than to meet it head-on when she had to fracture the truth with him. "I'm not sure what you mean."

A frown joined Maxwell's stare. Shit. "How long have we been partners?"

"Five years," Addison said, grateful for a question she could answer with the whole truth.

"So you know I'm not a dumbass, then."

She tried on a fifty-watt smile, hoping she could kill the moment with kindness. "Of course you're not. You're a smartass, silly."

Maxwell shifted a blink-and-you'll-miss-it glance at Capelli, who was blissfully immersed in whatever was on his screen, before he leveled her with, "I saw you two leave the holiday party within two minutes of each other, after all that"-he waved a hand before settling on-"flirting. You want to try again?"

Addison gripped her good cheer like the security blanket it was. She should have known Maxwell had noticed the s****l tension force field that had surrounded her and Ryan that night. Still, her defenses gave up one last hurrah. "Are we really going to talk about our s*x lives right now?"

"You had s*x with Dempsey?" Maxwell asked, brows shooting upward, and just like that, she had to cave.

"Ugh, fine. Yes. Once." Ish. But come on, she had some decorum. The fact that they'd had s*x three times in one night wasn't on anyone's need-to-know list other than hers and Ryan's. "But it was two months ago, and it hasn't happened again. It won't happen again." Maxwell blinked, rebounding quicker than she thought he would. "He wasn't a d**k about it, was he?"

"What?" Addison shook her head, looking around the office to be absolutely sure they were still alone. "No. We both agreed it would be a one-off. Just blowing off steam in the moment, you know?" Except that she'd broken her cardinal rule and slept in his arms, then run before he'd woken up. Not that she was telling Maxwell that part.

"Oh." Maxwell's dark brows formed a V that said he was clearly locked in thought. "But you two seemed...I don't know. Good together. You don't want to give that a go? See if there's anything there?"

Addison laughed, stowing her feelings once and for all. "Aw. You're so cute now that you've put a ring on it with Frankie. I mean it. You're seeing hearts and flowers everywhere." She batted her lashes at him, which prompted him to give her the finger. "I'm not a relationship kind of girl. The thing with me and Dempsey is past-tense. Which is a good thing, because now I have to go tell him-and Chloe-that we have no case against Bishop."

"I can do it, if you think he'll get tetchy," Maxwell offered, but Addison shook her head.

"Nah. I started this one. I'll see it through." She didn't add that she'd been giving Ryan updates for the past two mornings, as thin as they'd been. "Chloe's pretty rattled. I want to break it to her gently."

"Do you really think Ryan's going to be a problem?" Maxwell asked.

With the way the sexy firefighter had set up camp in Addison's brain (and a few other parts of her anatomy that she didn't want to contemplate), there was pretty much no way Ryan wouldn't be a problem. But him going after Bishop would only make things more stressful for Chloe, not to mention, difficult for Ryan himself, since she was sure his captain would frown upon him getting arrested. She was going to have to find a way to break the news without him blowing a gasket. "I've got Ryan handled," Addison said.

Now all she had to do was hope she could put her money where her mouth was.