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more considerate than she’d given the burly detective credit for being. “You didn’t have to do that, but I appreciate it. I’ll do my best to get done before daylight, so we can both get someplace warm.”
    And so she could find some time to herself to remember that Nick was just a cop she worked with, a streetwise pain in the posterior she frequently butted heads with—not the man who had suddenly blipped onto her sexual-awareness radar with his big shoulders and blue eyes and surprising consideration.
    “Sounds like a temporary truce to me.”
    Annie nodded her agreement, savoring the cold slap of wind on her face that brought her thoughts back into focus. She bent closer to the bricks as the bare spot took shape. It was a handprint, dotted with a few weeping trickles of blood. There was another handprint, another smear of red, climbing up the wall to where the falling snow clung to the bricks above the Dumpster and covered up the rest of the pattern. “This has been moved. Our vic got to her feet and pulled herself up along the wall here. And...something else.”
    Nick waited for Annie’s nod before putting his shoulder to the Dumpster and shoving it aside a couple of feet. Then the beam from his flashlight joined hers. “That second handprint’s bigger. Looks like a scuffle to me. Two people fell against the wall—caught themselves. But this can’t be where she was killed. There isn’t enough blood.”
    “That blood pool is farther back in the alley. She had her head bashed in back by where the alleys cross, beyond any line of sight from the street—with the brick I bagged up in my kit, I’m guessing. These are something different.” With her sterile gloves still in place, she tested one crimson spot with her fingertip. “The drops here aren’t as tacky. They’ve been here longer. This may be the initial attack site.”
    “Where he first abducted her and hauled her away to a secondary location to rape her.” Nick’s shoulder nudged hers as he came in for a closer look. “Maybe this one got a look at her attacker, and they struggled. Could that be our perp’s handprint?”
    Nudging him back out of her way, Annie focused the camera hanging around her neck and snapped a photograph. “I doubt we’ll get any fingerprints from our unsub—the lines are blurred enough that I’m sure both were wearing gloves. Wait a minute.”
    “Did you see something?”
    Before Nick could finish his question, Annie grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand in front of the prints on the wall. “Hold that right there.”
    Before he could voice another question, she’d snapped another picture.
    “Now take your glove off and hold it up there.”
    She didn’t miss the dubious arching of his brow, but Nick did as she asked. “And my hand is photogenic because?”
    “It’s a comparison shot.” Next, she photographed her own hand in front of the bloody prints on the wall before stooping down to pull a tape measure from her kit. “The smaller prints are about the size of my hand, so I’m guessing they belong to the victim. We can verify that once I talk with the medical examiner. But the other print is considerably larger.”
    “Man-size hands.” Nick regloved and stepped to the side, clearing out of her work space. “The rapist’s?”
    “Possibly.” She recorded the exact measurements in her notebook and stuffed it back into her coat pocket. “It’s something we can compare if we find handprints at other locations, or we bring a suspect into custody.”
    “That’s not much.”
    Annie refused to be so pessimistic. “It’s more than we had a few minutes ago.”
    “So why bring Rachel Dunbar back here to kill her? He could have done it in the privacy of whatever hellhole he takes his victims to.” The beam of Nick’s flashlight followed her as Annie pulled a swab and Luminol from her kit to verify that the spatter and smears on the wall were blood. “Leaving the body here feels like he’s showing off