Clean Burn by Karen Sandler Read Free Book Online

I squelched the memory like I would a lit match, blowing it out, mentally grinding it into the dirt. I had to keep that flame dead cold, or it would burn me as surely as a glowing match tip.

CHAPTER 4
     
    Rule number one of police work – never get naked with your partner. If that’s not the number one rule, it should be, especially if said partner is married.
    Ken Heinz and I ignored the physical signals zinging between us for the first four years of our partnership. At first we were too busy hating each other’s guts as new partners. I thought I knew everything, had no respect for the eight years Ken had on me with the department. To Ken, I was not only an idiot, I was a dangerous idiot, too stupid to know when I was putting myself in peril. I didn’t do much to change his mind about that during our time together, but I at least curbed the urge to display those self-destructive tendencies.
    Once detestation segued into grudging acceptance, hormones started their ugly dance. The attraction blindsided me – I usually hooked up with men from the bottom of the barrel with souls as sick as mine. Ken was actually a pretty nice guy. But a married nice guy, which was probably what got my twisted psyche worked up.
    I liked to tell myself it had just been physical between us. The sex had been phenomenal, even though it had only lasted a couple of months. But I would have laid down my life for that man, on and off the job. I couldn’t say that about any of the sleazeballs I’d played mattress tag with in the years since Ken left.
    For two months, the nightmares vanished. I put away the matches. The sounds and sights of fire engines barely raised an antenna. I let myself believe that Ken had healed me.
    Then his wife Tara arrived home early from a trip to her mother’s in Petaluma. And there we were, violating Ken’s marital vows on the living room sofa.
    After the disaster of that one desperate call to Ken, I shut him out. Barely spoke to him as we worked, avoided him completely during our off hours. The final blow, I requested a change of partner, taking on a rookie when I despised rookies. After three weeks of the cold shoulder from me, Ken had applied for a job with Greenville county sheriff’s department. A month after that, he was gone, Tara with him.
    I pulled into the sheriff’s office parking lot the second time that day, still marveling at the novelty of driving up to the low, brick building voluntarily and in my own set of wheels. A refreshing change from two-plus decades ago, when my usual mode of transport was the back seat of the sheriff’s car, with my wrists jammed behind me in cuffs.
    Ken waited for me by the entrance, got to enjoy the sight of me grimacing as I unfolded my leg from the car, then hobbling along those first ten, twenty feet until the worst of the knots released. Considering the animosity he still harbored toward me, I’m sure he was enjoying every excruciating step I took.
    He pulled the glass door open for me. “How’s the leg?”
    I sucked in a breath. “Functioning. Most days it doesn’t hurt like hell.” Except like now, when a white-hot knife blade was slashing its way through my calf as I followed him past the receptionist.
    “I thought about calling you when I heard.”
    “Just as well you didn’t. I wasn’t in a frame of mind to talk to anyone.” Besides which, his wife Tara was probably checking their phone records.
    He waited while the deputy wanded me. The metal detector went wild when the young woman waved it over my left calf.
    I hiked up my jeans to show her the scars. “Bionic leg,” I explained. I had a card from my doctor I used when going through airport security, but with Ken’s blessing I didn’t need to produce it.
    We continued on through a door labeled “No Admittance” and down a long hallway carpeted with mushroom gray indoor-outdoor. Ken’s office was the last one on the left, his name on an engraved plastic placard by the door.
    “I bought a