“You know what’s really scary?” Rebecca said quietly, wondering if she’d ever be able to take a full breath again. Her chest was so tight, and it had nothing to do with getting shot.

“What?”

“I know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes,” Catherine whispered, her voice thick with so many feelings, and her skin still raw with the aftermath of passion, “I know that you do.”

“How hungry are you?” Rebecca asked, gathering Catherine’s breast into her palm, rolling the nipple under her thumb.

“Starving,” Catherine replied, tilting her head to catch a full lower lip between her teeth. And I never even knew it.

“Are you going to eat that?”

Catherine studied the last shrimp in Szechwan sauce. It looked inviting. “I want it, but I think I’m full.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Rebecca commented as she quickly captured it with her chopsticks. “There’s no time to waste then.”

They were sitting naked on the bed, the Times stacked at the foot and open containers of food, paper plates and napkins between them. It was dark outside Catherine’s bedroom windows, and they’d turned on the shaded bedside reading lamp.

Catherine watched Rebecca deftly manipulating the slim slivers of wood, remembering the way those fingers had felt on her skin. “You’re going in tomorrow, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Does your Captain know you’re coming?”

“Not yet.” Rebecca’s smile was thin. “He’d probably refuse to see me until after I did the thing with Whitaker.”

“The department psychologist.”

“Uh huh.”

“But you are going to, right?”

“No choice. There’s been a lot of bad press the last few years—reports of excessive use of force, vigilantism, escalating suicide rates among the ranks, and a million other things. So now, anything involving an officer, whether it’s a complaint or an officer-involved shooting or even sometimes just drawing your weapon, can land you in counseling.”

“But with you there’s reason,” Catherine offered gently, knowing that no officer wanted to be reminded of their vulnerability or of the fact that emotions were one thing outside their control.

“Maybe.” The silence grew heavy between them, and finally Rebecca asked, “What is it?”

“I’m worried about you,” Catherine confessed.

“Don’t be. I feel fine. I’ll be fine.”

“Good.” Her fears would make little sense to Rebecca, for whom life was so much more black and white. Cops like her did not fear possibilities, because only the facts mattered. Reality for her detective was defined by events, not eventualities. “Just—be careful.”

What an inadequate request. Don’t get hurt. Don’t get killed. Don’t leave me now, not after touching me like this.

“I’ll do everything by the book. I promise.” She’d seen the uncertainty in Catherine’s eyes, and it killed her to know she’d put it there. She’d keep her word, too. As much as she could, and still do what she had to do.

CHAPTER FIVE

IT HAD BEEN more than two months since Catherine had last watched Rebecca’s transformation from the woman she had held through the night into the cop. Oh, the cop was always there, whether on duty or not—surfacing for an instant in the sharp appraisal of a stranger who approached on the street or evident in the fleeting shadows that marred her clear gaze when some memory momentarily escaped her ironclad control—but never so much as when Detective Sergeant Rebecca Frye began the morning routine of pulling on a crisp, starched shirt and creased tailored trousers, shrugged into the fitted leather shoulder holster, and slid the case that held the gold shield into the breast pocket of her blazer. As she assembled the symbols of her identity, Rebecca’s expression became more remote, her carriage more guarded, and her eyes more distant. It was a frightening thing to witness when what you needed most were the things she hid away.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Rebecca remarked, watching Catherine gather her briefcase, beeper, and cell phone from the small table just inside the front foyer. They’d showered separately, and when she’d joined Catherine in the kitchen, they’d barely had time for a cup of coffee and toast. Nevertheless, there was a discomfiture in Catherine’s face that wasn’t usually there.

“Am I?” Catherine smiled, realizing that she had indeed been preoccupied. “I suppose I am. You would make a good psychiatrist, Detective.”

“And you’re doing that shrink thing again—avoid and divert. Ask a question, change the subject.” Her tone was teasing, but she watched the woman in the understatedly elegant jade suit assiduously. “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 unbreached 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 she walked into the squad room and sensed the ever-present knot of uncertainty and unease in her stomach begin to loosen. 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 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 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 was dead. He had just offered to back her up. He’d done that 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. “I can handle it.”

“Right,” he replied, 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 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 several months. “Frye.”

They eyed one another for a moment, taking stock. They’d worked together for six years, they respected one another, and they took nothing for granted. She stood in front of his desk as relaxed as she ever got, which was to say, hands loose at her sides but muscles coiled and set to spring. He leaned back in the leather chair, his one concession to comfort, with his summer-weight blended gabardine jacket on, tie tightly knotted beneath a snowy white collar, his handsome mahogany features inscrutable. He placed his pen on the desktop.

“I take you have something to say?”

“Yes, sir. I’m ready to work.”

He sighed. “Sit down, Sergeant.”

She did, crossing one calf over the opposite knee, her hands motionless on the armrest. The last time she’d sat in this room, she’d come perilously close to insubordination and had nearly torpedoed her career. Catherine had been sitting beside her, and Henry had asked the psychiatrist to put her own life in danger. Rebecca had disagreed—vocally and repeatedly. She still didn’t know why he hadn’t slapped her down that day, but had put her in charge of the operation instead. The one time she’d seen him since had been in the hospital, when she’d awakened to find him sitting nearby. She vaguely remembered him saying that she’d done the department proud.

“I don’t suppose you remember that there are protocols for this situation.” Frye was his best detective, but she didn’t always play by the rules, at least not the bureaucratic ones. Most effective cops didn’t. But there were some rules he couldn’t bend.

“I know that,” she replied. “I was just hoping to speed up the process.” She waited a beat, then added, “And I wanted to check out the lay of the land.”