Shield of Justice by Radclyffe Read Free Book Online Page A

menus, promising to send the sommelier immediately.
    “Do you come here often?” Catherine asked, more than curious about the special service they were receiving. They had been seated without delay, despite several parties waiting ahead of them.
    Rebecca shrugged uncomfortably. “Not for a long time. But whenever I do, Anthony insists on waiting on me himself.”
    She’s embarrassed
, Catherine thought, intrigued. She waited, knowing there was more.
    “His daughter disappeared a few years ago,” Rebecca continued in a low voice, remembering the run-down rooming house and the frightened teenage girls inside. When she looked at Catherine, she couldn’t quite disguise the pain of the memory. After so many girls in so many squalid squats, the sorrow had become a dark ache in her eyes. “She was fifteen years old, working on her back for a pimp who had promised her the excitement a girl her age longs for. What he gave her was a needle in the arm and a beating if she didn’t earn enough.”
    She hesitated, wondering how to describe the rest. She didn’t know how to explain what she felt when she found Anthony’s youngest daughter strung out on smack and turning tricks for twenty dollars a pop—anger so intense that she forgot she was a cop. Her overwhelming need to stop the waste and the abuse blinded her to the consequences of what she was doing. She’d been on the verge of beating the young pimp with her bare hands and, if Jeff hadn’t interceded, she probably would have done serious damage. She was grateful now that Jeff had stopped her, but the rage still seethed, fueled by her daily witness of the devastation of lives and the destruction of dreams.
    “I brought her home,” she finished, keeping the anguish to herself, refusing to acknowledge it. That was the price she paid to maintain her sanity, even though people who couldn’t see past her cop’s eyes had accused her of being cold and uncaring.
    Catherine, though, so sensitive to the sounds of silence, caught glimpses of Rebecca’s secret tears in the expressive planes of her face and the ever-changing depths of her dark blue eyes. She ached for the young girl who had nearly been lost but even more for the detective who had found her.
    “You returned his child. To him, that would be life’s greatest gift. He’s trying to thank you without making you uncomfortable,” Catherine said softly. Rebecca winced, and Catherine continued lightly, “You’ll just have to tough it out, Detective. I don’t imagine he’s going to stop.”
    Rebecca heard the gentle mocking in Catherine’s voice and caught the glimmer of a smile on her full lips. The knot of anger in her chest loosened, and her tension miraculously dissipated. She broke into a grin that brought a flash of brilliance to her eyes and a youthful energy to her face. “Well, Doctor…if that’s your professional opinion…”
    “It is,” Catherine responded, rewarded by the light in Rebecca’s eyes.
She’s even more beautiful when she smiles.
    Never could Catherine remember being moved so deeply, so quickly, by anyone, and the force of her response was frightening. She listened to the pain of others every day, and although she cared, she could distance herself in order ultimately to help. But it had been different with Rebecca from the first moment she had seen her.
I hardly know her. Why do I want so badly to take the sadness from her eyes?
    Rebecca startled Catherine from her reverie with the words, “Then it’s
my
professional opinion that we should enjoy dinner. No more business tonight.”
    Catherine agreed happily and, after following the detective’s suggestion to try the house special, settled back contentedly with a glass of wine. Over the course of the delicious meal, she found herself telling Rebecca about her life.
    “I’m an only child. My father was a college professor and my mother a doctor, also a psychiatrist,” Catherine said, thinking about the estate on which she had