L.A.P.D. Special Investigations Series, Boxed Set: The Deceived, The Taken & The Silent by LINDA STYLE Read Free Book Online Page A

little different, yet the part was on the same side…a cowlick in the same place. Not particularly unusual, was it? She picked up the second photo, and her stomach lurched.
    The little boy looked so much like the man in the photo, and the man looked so much like Rob, it was uncanny. And the man was smiling. This man was happy with his family. Very happy. So, it couldn’t be Rob.
    Yet nothing…absolutely nothing in the photos said definitively, this is not Rob.
    She was about to set the photo down when she noticed a sliver of something on the man’s arm just below the line where his short sleeves ended. Was it? A shiver of knowing crawled up her spine. Heart pounding, she glanced at the man’s other arm. The sleeve edge. Relief flooded her limbs. It was just the sleeve edge. That’s all it was.
    Ramsey was saying something to her, but suddenly she couldn’t hear a word over the roaring in her ears. She pulled herself ramrod straight and slapped the photo down on the table in front of her.
    “Well, that served no purpose.” She glanced at her watch. “And I’d better leave now or I’m going to be late.”
    She shoved to her feet, and the chair scraped noisily against the wood floorboards as she pushed it back, her legs as wobbly as noodles.
    “Thank you for meeting me, Detective Ramsey.”
    And with that, she turned and fled.
    ***
    Monday morning, back in L.A. at the house, Ramsey nudged open the Special Investigations unit door with one foot, then shouldered it the rest of the way. He crossed to his desk and set down the coffee and the egg-and-cheese-filled tacquito he’d picked up for breakfast on the way to work, then circled the desk to sit.
    “Any luck?” Sam Houston, also known as Tex, asked from his corner of the room.
    “Me, have luck?” Adam responded around a mouthful of tacquito. “How’re you doin’, Tex?”
    “Good as can be expected.” Tex waited a second before he added, “Considerin’.”
    Tex wasn’t fond of his current gig—working on a cold case.
    “Yo.” Rico Santini charged into the room, his face lit up as if he’d just been promoted. “Wait till you see this.”
    He dumped a pile of papers on Adam’s desk, nearly spilling the coffee. “Hey, kid, take it easy. That’s my lifeline.” Adam rescued his coffee and cuffed Rico on the shoulder. “Your enthusiasm so early in the morning isn’t shared by everyone.”
    Tex grunted in agreement. “Some of us take a little longer to get started.”
    At fifty-five, Houston was the oldest detective in their unit. Adam fell in the middle at thirty-five, as did Jordan St. James and Luke Coltrane. Rico Santini, a mere twenty-seven, was the baby.
    “Where’s everyone?” Adam asked, nodding toward Jordan and Luke’s empty desks.
    “DB near the bus station.”
    Jordan and Luke had been partners for only a short time and were such total opposites, the old timers had taken bets on how long it would take before one asked for a new partner or a transfer. But, so far, the two seemed to get along better than anyone in the unit. Surprised the hell out of Adam.
    “And the captain?”
    “Some big meeting with Chief MacGuire.”
    Adam doused his breakfast with more hot sauce, stuffed the rest of the tortilla into his mouth and washed it down with scalding coffee. He picked up one of the papers Santini had dropped on him.
    “What am I looking for?”
    The kid’s dark eyes shone as he rolled his chair to Adam’s desk. “You tell me. That’s the whole purpose of this.”
    No rush on getting this stuff back? The Sullivan case was nearly five years old, and he doubted anything he read would require quick action on his part. After he got the body exhumed, and if the information turned out as he suspected, then there might be a need for speed.
    “Nope. It’s old stuff,” Rico said, then shoved off to roll back to his own desk.
    A rogue thought sideswiped Adam. If the guy in the photo turned out to be Sullivan, how would the “widow”