In Pursuit of Justice by Radclyffe Read Free Book Online

teasing, but she leveled her eyes at the woman in the understated elegant jade suit. “That’s a cop’s trick.”
    They were only two feet apart, but the air between them was thick enough to walk on. It was a distance that if left unbridged would grow, and Rebecca had reached out. Catherine dropped her briefcase and stepped across the gulf, sliding her arms around the tall blond’s waist.
    “I’m trying to get used to the fact that things will be different now.”
    Rebecca put her hands on Catherine’s hips, under the edge of her jacket, and kissed her softly. A moment later, she said firmly, “No. They won’t.”
    “Call me later?”
    “Count on it.”

    *

    At 7:10 a.m., she walked into the squad room and sensed the knot of uncertainty and unease in her stomach loosening. Everything looked, and smelled, the same. Same shabby mismatched desks fronting each other in randomly placed pairs, same sickly institutional green paint on the walls, same worn gray tiles on the floor. The odor of stale smoke, old coffee grounds, and honest sweat permeated the air. She couldn’t help but feel a wave of relief when she saw that her desk was exactly as she had left it. Her mug was there in the middle of a stained blotter, a pile of dog-eared file folders balanced precariously in one corner, and the phone was angled precisely the way she always placed it when she was working. Even the rumpled hulk of a man seated at the desk opposite hers looked exactly the same. Fiftyish, gray-haired and balding, forty pounds over his fighting weight—stereotypical flat foot right out of Ed McBain.
    “Is that your only suit, Watts?” she asked as she shed her jacket to the back of her chair.
    William Watts looked up at the sound of the deep, cutting voice, his expression impassive but his eyes quick and sharp as they took her in. Thin, still pale, and edgy. Not too bad, considering . He smiled, but it didn’t show on his face. Not much did. “What, did I miss the memo about the dress code?”
    “Yeah, the one that recommends the laundry for that suit every few months.”
    He grunted, watching her slide open the bottom left hand drawer of her desk and place the empty holster carefully inside. She didn’t look right without it, but she still looked damn good to him. He was relieved to find that he could look at her and not see the river of blood spreading over her chest. For a few weeks, especially while she was in the ICU, he’d been afraid he’d never stop seeing it.
    “How come the cap didn’t say anything about you coming back?”
    “Because he doesn’t know it yet.”
    Her smile was thin, and there was a new hardness in her eyes. He’d thought her tough before; now she was stone. Maybe that’s what it took to come back after what she’d been through. He didn’t really want to know. “Well, if it will get me off these goddamned cold cases, I’ll go in with you.”
    She studied him, a big part of her wanting to dislike him still. Mostly because he was sitting in Jeff’s chair, and Jeff Cruz, her partner of six years, was dead. But Watts, in his typical roundabout way, had just offered to back her up with the captain. He’d had her back once before, when it really counted. When it had been the only thing that mattered more to her than the job. When it had been Catherine’s life. But right now, she needed to stand alone. To prove that she still could.
    “I can handle it.”
    “Right,” he replied uninterestedly, reaching for another file on another old case that hadn’t been solved and never would be.
    “Thanks, Watts.”
    When he glanced up in surprise, all he got was her retreating back, but he smiled anyhow.

    *

    “Come in.”
    “Morning, Captain.”
    Captain John Henry looked up from the stack of departmental reports he’d been perusing as the door to his small office closed, and he registered the identity of the unmistakable voice he hadn’t heard for weeks. “Frye.”
    They eyed one another for a few