Free Needing Nita by Norah Wilson

Chapter 1

    “So, what’s the story?”
    Nita Reynolds glanced up at her law partner, Brad Knopfler, who stood framed in her doorway, without really seeing him.
    Brain tumor . A couple of bad headaches, and now they said she had a tumor in her head. Just like her father. God, she’d only had that MRI because her mother had hounded her within an inch of her life to ask for it. Neuro-imaging was not the medical community’s usual first response to a complaint of migraine with aura, and she’d felt like a major hypochondriac even asking her doctor about it.
    “Nita?”
    She blinked. Shit . “Sorry, Brad, what was that?”
    Taking her question as an invitation, he crossed the plush carpet to settle in one of the leather armchairs opposite her desk. “Your meeting with the Crown Prosecutor this morning,” he prompted, loosening his tie and lounging back in the chair. “How’d it go?”
    Better than the visit with my doctor right after that.
    “Good.” When that came out as little more than a croak, she cleared her throat. “It was good. I talked her down from indictable to summary offence.”
    Brad lifted an eyebrow. “Good job. That’ll save your guy four or five years, if he’s convicted.”
    “Yeah, and there’s a pretty good chance he will be.”
    “Hey, are you okay, Nita? You look a little … I don’t know. Wiped.”
    Wiped? Try dying .
    She bit back on a bubble of laughter that threatened to erupt. Gawd, if she laughed now, she’d start crying.
    “You know what? I am tired.” She closed the file she’d been staring at for the past half hour. “I think I’m gonna play hooky and go home.”
    “Nita, Nita, Nita.” Brad shook his head sadly. “It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. That hardly qualifies. Hooky is when you call the office whilst tangled with your lover who is nibbling you in places that make your voice go husky, thereby lending you some credibility when you plead swine flu or bubonic plague or something.”
    At his words, a mental image sprang to life. Specifically, the image of Detective Craig Walker’s hulking length sprawled on her five hundred dollar Eygptian cotton sheets, and her own body sprawled atop his….
    Suddenly, her heart beat faster. And not at the mental image alone. She’d conjured it too often in these past few months for it to have that dramatic an effect. No, her heart beat faster at the idea taking root in her mind. The mind that could be lost to her all too soon, like her father’s was after his first surgery. But it wasn’t lost yet. She still had full mental capacity, full motor function. Full control of her life, at least for the immediate future.
    Time to put it to good use.
    She stood, smiling for the first time since leaving Dr. Woodbridge’s office. “You know what? You’re right again, Brad. You’re absolutely right.”
    Grabbing her purse, she strode out.
    ***
    Detective Craig Walker massaged his forehead as he listened to his aunt’s friend’s mother rant about the graffiti artist who’d been tagging abandoned buildings in her neighborhood in the decaying west end of Fredericton.
    “I’ll ask patrol to look into that, ma’am,” he interjected, when it appeared she was winding down. Unfortunately, that only served to rev her up, as she interpreted his response to mean the police department did not concern itself with vandalism. He switched the receiver to the other ear and slouched back in his chair, resigned to listening a while longer.
    Frankly, he’d driven through that neighborhood the other day and thought the graffiti was an improvement. And for once, he could actually approve the messages, which were clearly the work of environmental activists rather than the usual gang-related crap. Vegan environmental activists, judging by the two-buildings-wide Stop feeding cows; start feeding people message. But his favorite was the one with the beautiful, amazingly detailed rendition of the earth with the caption beneath Earth. Pass it on