Free Best Laid Plans by Allison Brennan Page A

divorce and needs to work or he’ll fall apart. Even Kenzie, who’s admittedly my favorite, can’t take a day off—that’s why she still puts in time with the National Guard, it gives her the excuse to continually work out and do something on the weekends.
    “I work eight to five, five days a week, and take my on-call weekend once a month,” Barry continued. “That’s what I’m paid to do. I’ll work longer if necessary, like today when we were called in at five in the morning on a Saturday, but I always give one hundred percent when I’m on duty. Then I turn it off when I go home. Go out with friends. A girl, if I have one. Watch a ball game. I coach my nephew’s Little League team in the spring—we just finished our season last week and I already miss it. But I’ve been an FBI agent for nineteen years, and I plan to put in my time, retire at fifty-seven, and not have high blood pressure, a head full of violence, or a drinking problem. So my advice is, find a way to turn it off before it turns you inside out.”
    Barry hadn’t spoken that many words to her all day. In fact, he hadn’t said that many words to her in all the months they’d worked in the same office. At first she didn’t know what to say. Barry turned back to his BlackBerry.
    “You’re right,” she said momentarily, when he wasn’t looking at her. “But it’s not easy to turn it off.”
    “You have a boyfriend. Go do something fun tonight. Take tomorrow and go on a picnic before the heat gets unbearable.”
    “We’re not working tomorrow?”
    “It’s Sunday. We’re not going to get much done. We’re not going to get lab results, we’re not going to be able to interview anyone potentially involved, and since we don’t have a cause of death or a photo of the girl who was with Worthington, what do you suggest we do? We need to give HWI time to put together their files and forensics time to do their job.”
    He was right. But the problem was, she couldn’t just stop. She needed to work, because when she didn’t work, she made work. She could research HWI, run a background on Harper Worthington and his wife, learn more about the business, the campaign, how they met—anything that might help her understand why Harper Worthington sought out a young prostitute. If not for sex, why? And who was this girl? Why was she there? Was she working for someone and if so, who? Why did someone want him dead? Why would he fly in just for a meeting? Did he know he was meeting a prostitute or was he expecting someone else? She would be dreaming about the case whether she wanted to or not.
    Lucy recognized that she wasn’t normal. She hadn’t been normal since she was eighteen. Maybe not since she was seven when her nephew was murdered and her family grieved so deeply it changed all of their lives. She’d had a rather idyllic childhood—they weren’t rich, but they were close, for the most part. Until her oldest sister moved away after Justin’s murder, and Jack enlisted in the army and didn’t come home for years because of a major fight with their father. And one by one, her brothers and sisters left home. And then when she was eighteen her own life changed irrevocably. She couldn’t go back to the girl she’d been, just like she had never been able to reclaim her innocence. In the back of her mind she felt compelled to save others. To stop those who would prey on the innocent, stop those who recruit young women into the sex trade, stop those who hurt children, who abuse people who can’t defend themselves. She didn’t know who this young prostitute was, but Lucy wanted to help her.
    Maybe Lucy couldn’t relax on weekends because she somehow felt she didn’t deserve to have fun.
    Sean had changed that—he gave her a deep joy she hadn’t thought she’d ever experience. But it was like she was waiting for something bad to happen to destroy the one thing that made her happy.
    What did that say about her? That she was going to waste