“Is there any way to verify that?”

“No. Michael was asleep.”

“What about a time stamp on the security cameras?”

Sloan shook her head. “The internal cameras are turned off when we’re home.”

Mitchell spoke up quietly. “There should be a record of when you logged on the system downstairs.”

“Circumstantial,” Sloan replied. “Doesn’t prove it was me.”

“It’s corroboration,” Rebecca said. “There are only a limited number of other people who it might’ve been.” She scrutinized Michael, then Sandy and Mitchell. “The only real possibility is Mitchell.”

“Dell was with me from one thirty on,” Sandy said immediately.

“Did either of you hear Sloan leave?” Watts asked.

Mitchell shook her head. Sandy replied, “We were talking, and then we were…busy.”

Watts snorted.

“So we wouldn’t have noticed,” Sandy added sweetly as Mitchell blushed.

Watts looked glum. “Perfect.”

“All right.” Rebecca made a notation in her notebook. “You were

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with Michael all night. Went to the ofÞ ces just after two.” She turned to Mitchell. “I want you to secure the computer logs. No one touches the system until you’re done.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mitchell said smartly. “I’ll get dressed and get right on it.”

When Sloan opened her mouth to protest, Michael said softly,

“Let Rebecca help you, darling.”

Sloan reached for Michael’s hand, nodding silently.

“You weren’t here when we arrived at four Þ fty-Þ ve,” Rebecca stated. “There was no answer. Where were you?”

“I went for a walk after a couple of hours of scanning the data.”

Rebecca stared at her, and Sloan held her gaze unß inchingly.

Finally, Rebecca said, “At four in the morning?”

Sloan shrugged. “I was awake. I was restless. I went for a walk.”

“I don’t suppose you have any way of proving that?” Watts interjected.

“Not real…” Sloan slid her hand into the front pocket of her jeans and extracted a crumpled slip of white paper. “I bought a cup of coffee at the diner at Third and Market around ten minutes to Þ ve.”

“Christ, she couldn’t have been any closer to the scene and not tripped over one of us,” Watts muttered.

Rebecca took the offered receipt, smoothed it out, and noted the time and date in her notebook. She then placed it carefully in the breast pocket of her shirt. “Is someone there going to remember you?”

“The waitress. Jenny. She knows me.”

Watts looked skeptical. “She’s a…what? Friend?”

Sloan gave him a withering look. “Acquaintance.”

“There’s nothing between the two of you that might bring her veriÞ cation of your alibi into question?” Rebecca asked as discreetly as she could.

“No. Nothing. I’ve never even seen her outside of the diner.”

“Good,” Rebecca muttered.

“Look,” Sloan said irritably. “I’ve told you where I was. Now tell me what’s going on.”

“George Beecher was murdered about three blocks from here sometime in the last six hours,” Rebecca informed her, watching Sloan’s face intently. As she had anticipated, Sloan’s expression never changed,

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Justice Served

but her violet eyes darkened to nearly black. Rebecca was convinced she hadn’t known.

“And you think I did it?” Sloan’s voice was cool, her posture relaxed.

“No,” Rebecca replied. “I don’t.”

“But Clark does,” Sloan murmured, Þ lling in the blanks.

“Darling, what is this all about?” Michael asked quietly. “Who is George Beecher?”

“No one.”

“No one who someone thinks you might want to ki—” As if a sudden realization had struck, Michael faltered and looked from Sloan to Rebecca. “Is this the person who might have had something to do with my accident?”

“That’s right.” Rebecca was curious as to just how much Michael knew. Although she believed Sloan innocent, she was too much a cop not to examine all the evidence from every angle.

“Sloan would never have done anything to him,” Michael said with absolute conviction.

“Why do you say that?” Rebecca asked.

“Because she promised me she wouldn’t.”

Watts laughed. “That will certainly go a long ways in court.”

Michael turned solemn eyes to his. “If you don’t understand why that matters, then you don’t know Sloan very well, Detective Watts.”

Watts blushed and actually ducked his head. “Sorry, ma’am.”

At that moment, Mitchell returned in black chinos and a navy shirt. “I’ll head downstairs, Lieutenant.”

“Good,” Rebecca said. “Watts, go with her and take Sloan. Make sure you document everything that Mitchell does.” She turned to Sloan.

“You don’t touch anything down there. If there’s even the possibility that you’ve altered the data, none of it will help us. All I want you to do is walk them through as much as you can remember of what you did and when.”

Sloan nodded. “Okay.” She kissed Michael, murmured something that none of the others could hear, and followed Mitchell and Watts to the elevator.

“I’m sorry to have upset you, Michael,” Rebecca said.

Michael sank onto the sofa. “I understand.”

Sandy leaned close. “You okay? How about I get some tea?”

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RADCLY fFE

“That would be lovely. Thank you,” Michael replied gratefully, giving Sandy a small smile. Then, to Rebecca, she added, “Thank you for being so patient with her. I know you’re trying to help her.”

“I’m trying to do my job,” Rebecca rejoined. “If I thought she were guilty, I would do the same.”

“Yes, I know. And so does Sloan.” Michael shook her head. “She’ll realize you’re on her side when she’s feeling less threatened.”

“Don’t you mean pissed off?”

“Oh, that’s part of it, to be sure. But it’s coming from something far more serious. She was betrayed, Rebecca, by someone she loved.

Abandoned by the system she believed in. Incarcerated by those she thought she could trust.” Michael sighed. “She keeps expecting it to happen again.”

“It won’t,” Rebecca said empathically. “You’ll never betray her.

And I won’t let anyone make her a scapegoat. I promise that no one will touch her.”

“You didn’t say ‘if she’s innocent.’”

“I didn’t need to.”

“Thank you, Rebecca.”

“I’d better go—I want to catch that waitress at the diner. And I really am sorry to have put you through this.”

Michael shook her head. “No, you needn’t apologize. Not when you’re helping Sloan.”

“Thanks.” Rebecca turned and started for the elevator. She stopped as Sandy approached with two mugs of tea. “Anything?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll call you later.”

Sandy shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”

v

When Rebecca left, Sandy returned to her spot on the sofa by Michael’s side, tea in hand. “Maybe you should go back to bed.”

“I can’t. I want to be here when Sloan comes back upstairs.”

“It could take a while.” Sandy didn’t add that if Sloan ended up downtown for questioning, it could take all day. “And you look kind of…tired.”

“I’m all right. I don’t do very well yet when I haven’t had enough

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Justice Served

sleep, that’s all.” Michael sipped the tea absently, her attention Þ xed on the elevator doors, willing them to open and Sloan to appear. “I can’t believe she has to go through this again.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Proving her innocence.” Michael closed her eyes, both hands clenched tightly around the mug on her lap. “God, it makes me so angry.”

“Frye is a great cop. She’ll Þ gure this out.”

“I hope so, because I can’t stand to see her hurt like this.”

“They’re not so tough, are they,” Sandy said. “They just kinda want you to think they are.”

Michael took Sandy’s hand, needing the comfort and the connection. “Sometimes I think the more tender the heart, the more easily it’s broken.”

“Yeah,” Sandy whispered, remembering Dell’s tears on her breast.

“You got that right.”

• 163 •

• 164 •

Justice Served

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Friday

The elevator doors slid open a few minutes before 8:00 a.m.

Mitchell exited, followed by Sloan. Mitchell headed directly down the hall toward the guest bedroom and disappeared. When Michael started to get up from the sofa, Sloan shook her head.

“No, stay there.” Quickly, she crossed the width of the living room and settled beside Michael, extending an arm to pull Michael into the curve of her body. She kissed Michael’s forehead and then leaned her head back with a sigh. “How do you feel?”

Michael nestled her cheek against Sloan’s shoulder, one arm wrapped around her waist. “Tired. No headache. I’m all right.” She lifted her chin to kiss the undersurface of Sloan’s jaw. “What happened downstairs? Is everything…cleared up now?”

Lids partially closed, Sloan stared at the exposed pipes overhead, idly following the branching pathways as they disappeared into walls and behind the high ceiling. When she worked at the computer, her mind’s eye saw the same pathways, highways of data, streaming within and between way stations in the network—a cyberuniverse as real to her as the concrete and stone that made up her physical world. “Mitchell’s done dicking around inside my system. She got everything there is to get.”

“Will it be enough?” Michael asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Sloan admitted with a sigh. “It’ll depend on what the crime scene unit turns up—time of death will make a big difference.

Rebecca will know later today.” She didn’t add that even if the time of death placed her at home with Michael, she had only her lover’s word as an alibi. Not exactly ironclad.

“It’s ridiculous for anyone to think that you murdered that man.”