Free Manhunt in the Wild West by Jessica Andersen

Claw hosted its own take on Oktoberfest, designed to kick off the ski season. “I forgot.”
    “You’ve had a few other things on your mind,” Sara said wryly, then continued, “In addition to his media campaign, Proudfoot is also doing a Riverdance-worthy two-step, simultaneously taking credit for our successes, while making sure everyone knows it was the former mayor’s hires who either messed up or were actively engaged in criminal behavior.”
    “What a prince.”
    “Yeah, well.” Sara’s shoulders slumped. “Unfortunately in this case he’s not the only one thinking along those lines. I’m expecting another invasion from Infernal Affairs any minute.”
    Taking that as a hint, Chelsea said, “I’ll go look busy, then. Catch you later, and don’t let IA get you down.”
    She had a feeling that it wasn’t IA in general, but rather one particular internal investigator who got on Sara’s nerves, but she’d learned early on not to ask about Sara’s combative relationship with Romo Sampson. That was one of the few topics pretty much guaranteed to put her friend in a bad mood.
    It took a while, but eventually Chelsea managed to get back into the swing of her work. She cranked through several routine cases with minimal fuss, labeling and packaging the samples that would be sent out to an off-site lab for testing, and preparing the bodies for release to their families.
    She worked efficiently, but compassionately, handling the dead with as much respect as possible under the circumstances, knowing that her work helped bring closure, if not always comfort.
    All the while, she was thinking about what had happened two days earlier and the night before. She was definitely feeling more settled than she had the previous afternoon; it helped immeasurably to know—or to at least think she knew—that Fax wasn’t the sort of man the media had portrayed him to be.
    She wasn’t naive enough to think he wasn’t capable of doing what they said he had. He was capable of all that and more. But her instincts said he’d been telling the truth about Jane Doe, his allegiance to the U.S. and his hatred of terrorists.
    After so many years of reading about them, she’d finally met an actual spy. Under the circumstances, it seemed silly to find that exciting, yet her excitement built through the course of the day, thinking of him and of the kiss they’d shared.
    Then it came to quitting time and reality returned with a crash, warning her that the excitement had been nothing more than her mind’s way of not dealing with the fear, of not thinking about what she planned to do that night.
    She was putting her career on the line for a guy who’d escaped from the ARX Supermax and taken three convicted terrorists with him. A man who claimed to be one of the good guys, but didn’t have a damn thing he could show her to back it up.
    Suddenly, the psych ward didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.
    Dressed in another snazzy wool coat—this one a deep burgundy that flared at the hem—Sara paused outside Chelsea’s cubbyhole office and said, “You want to get something to eat, maybe hang out for a while?”
    Nerves skimmed just beneath the surface, flowing alongside guilt at lying to a friend, but even in her preoccupied state, Chelsea could see that Sara looked done-in. She shook her head. “We both know you’re hoping I’ll say ‘no thanks, I’m good.’ So I’ll say it. No thanks, I’m good.”
    Sara scrubbed a hand across her face. “It’s that obvious? Sorry.”
    “You’ve had a rough few days. We all have. It’s only natural to want some alone time when you’ve got half the city breathing down your neck.”
    “I’m here if you need me, though.”
    “I know.” Chelsea rose and moved around the desk so she could press her cheek to Sara’s. “Same goes.”
    After Sara left, Chelsea fiddled around for a few minutes longer, then started closing up the morgue for the night, powering down the computers and