Free Rapid Fire by Jessica Andersen

to be Henkes.
     
    Though
she tried like hell to ignore it, the logic spooled through her mind. If Henkes
proved to be the Mastermind, she’d eventually be considered a hero for shooting
him. At the very least, she’d be back on the force. But the flip side was also
true.
     
    If Henkes
wasn’t the Mastermind, she was finished as a cop.
     
     
     
    AFTER SHE
REPORTED HER STRANGE phone call to the chief and gave him permission to tap her
phone lines, Maya yielded to pressure and spent the night in the guest room of
the house Tucker and Alissa had bought together just after their engagement.
     
    She would
rather have slept at home, but the Mastermind had shown himself too capable of
breaching even the most airtight security.
     
    She woke
after dawn, sat up in bed and groaned at the pull of sore muscles and bruised
spots. Once she was dressed and more or less ready to face the day, she
stumbled downstairs only to find that the house was empty. Warm coffee awaited
her, along with a note in Alissa’s flowing script. We’ve gone to the station.
Stay here. I’ll be in touch when I can.
     
    Maya
cursed at the sense that she’d gone from house arrest in her own home to house
arrest in her friend’s home, but her grumble trailed off when she glanced
around the rest of the first floor, which she’d been too tired to scope out the
night before.
     
    Apparently,
the wedding preparations were in full swing. Half-assembled decorations were
piled on the table, glittering with Alissa’s chosen green-and-silver color
scheme. Boxes stacked beneath the table held glass globes that would be filled
with green beads and flowers, to act as centerpieces, and a wipe board leaning
up against the wall held a seating chart drawn with the precision of a crime
scene sketch.
     
    The
wedding was—Maya thought quickly—two months away. Where had the time gone? And
why hadn’t she helped more? Sure, she’d been fitted for her pretty bridesmaid’s
dress, and she’d made some of the initial arrangements, but in the past few
months, nothing.

     
    The
realization made her feel even more shut out, more isolated. Her friendships
with Alissa and Cassie were based on shared experiences, shared jobs.
     
    What
would happen if they didn’t have such things in common anymore?
     
    The sound
of a vehicle pulling into the driveway beside the kitchen yanked Maya from her
thoughts and sent a spurt of adrenaline through her system. When she recognized
Thorne’s Interceptor, the adrenaline edged toward something hotter, something
more complicated.
     
    She
watched him emerge from the car and stride to the kitchen door, and the sight
of his semi-familiar face—all hard angles and uncompromising lines in place of
the blurred detachment she remembered from before—gathered a hard, hot ball of
wanting in her midsection.
     
    “Bad
idea.” She pressed a hand to her jittering stomach. “Really bad idea.”
     
    But that
didn’t stop her from opening the door before he knocked, and it didn’t stop the
buzz of pleasure when he tipped down his dark shades and nodded to her shirt.
“Nice.”
     
    She was
still wearing yesterday’s jeans, but the blue shirt had been a write-off. She’d
scrounged through Alissa’s drawers for something that was clingy enough not to
hang on her smaller frame, and had wound up with a pale yellow tank top that
was far too revealing, so she’d thrown a washed silk blouse over the tank, and
tied the tails at her waist. She’d told herself the effect was business casual,
but the flare of heat in Thorne’s eyes told her she’d misjudged.
     
    Or else
she’d lied to herself and dressed to impress a man with just the sort of past
she was trying to outrun. A man who could very well turn out to be the chief’s
choice for her successor.
     
    A man who
threatened her on too many levels.
     
    His eyes
flicked from her shirt to the house beyond her. “Someone getting married?”
     
    “Alissa
and Tucker,” she said, grateful