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

react? Stupid thought. He knew from what she’d said, the guy all but walked on water.
    He didn’t know what it was like to have a woman feel that way about him. Not even when he’d been married. A twinge of envy surprised him…but only for a moment. He knew better than to wish for the impossible. He wasn’t cut out for marriage. It didn’t work when you couldn’t pay as much attention to your partner as your job. And he loved his job. His ex had been right when she’d said he didn’t love her enough.
    What really frosted him was how the Sullivan woman idolized her supposedly dead husband and didn’t see what a scumbag he was. But he’d seen it over and over, women defending men who treated them like shit. Women who were duped into believing the treatment they got was somehow their fault.
    He didn’t see Jillian Sullivan as one of them, though. That was the rub. Hell, he didn’t know if the guy was dead or alive, didn’t know if the man’s wife knew something or nothing.
    And the only place he was going to see Jillian Sullivan again was in court. So, why was he even thinking about her?
    Adam continued shuffling through the papers, but his thoughts kept returning to the lady in red. It was obvious she liked the color, since every time he’d seen her, she’d worn something red. Even her car was red. But what he remembered most was the dress…which was stamped indelibly in his mind. Even now, he could see her walking toward him, her hips swaying seductively…music playing in the background.
    “Yo. You joining a band, Ringo, or is that pen workin’ a beat on its own?” Rico said, laughing.
    Adam glanced at the pen in his hand, stuck it in the holder on his desk. “Just thinking.”
    About how did a class act like Jillian Sullivan got mixed up with a guy like her maybe-not-dead husband? To be fair, he had no real proof that Jack Sullivan was involved in anything.
    Yet.
    It was still just a hunch, mostly because the sting Bryce had been working on was so sensitive, so high profile, even their own guys weren’t in on it. But since he’d been back on track, he’d pieced together enough information to know that the project involved SWBI—the Southwest Border Initiative—created to crack down on drugs coming into the U.S. from Mexico. What Bryce’s part was, he didn’t know, other than he’d been deep undercover.
    The photos Adam had received, which had come with a letter, were like manna from heaven, giving him the evidence he needed to move forward. All he needed now was for his vacation request to go through and for Gina, the unit’s administrative assistant, to type out the “gun letter” he’d sweet-talked her into doing for him. He might need it while he was traveling to prove he was a cop and that it was okay for him to carry in places guns weren’t allowed.
    Once all that was nailed down, he’d be on a plane to Costa Rica.
    He went back to the files on the Sullivan case and didn’t emerge until he’d read every word.
    He didn’t like the way the case stacked up.
    Jillian Sullivan had been right that he hadn’t checked her out before he’d headed to Chicago.
    After receiving the letter and the photos, he’d punched up Sullivan on the computer and, discovering the connection, had run the backgrounder on Jillian. But he was too eager to get on it to read thoroughly and had only skimmed the file for the basics—where she lived, where she worked, who she hung out with, relatives’ names and addresses, of which there’d been only one, her mother-in-law. All the easy stuff.
    He read his notes again. There were three strikes against her. Number one—four years ago she’d paid $300,000 cash for her house. Okay. Could’ve been the insurance money. Still, it was a hefty bit of insurance for a truck driver. Number two—she’d started three upscale hair salons after moving to Chicago, and all of them were doing exceptionally well. Number three—she was debt free. How the hell could a person