Free After Midnight by Kathy Clark

brought him to his next conflict. He found it impossible to believe that the woman who had sat across from him and almost made him cry with her own tears could possibly turn tricks. There was a classiness and intelligence about her that just wouldn’t conform to his image of a prostitute, no matter how desperate she was. He had a feeling that she would always be resourceful enough to find a way to survive without selling her soul or her body. From what she had told him about her family, she was one determined young woman to be able to break away on her own like that.
    It didn’t take him long to find her father on the Internet. There were hundreds of pages of results. Sam refined his search to the governor’s family. It took another half hour of opening and closing dozens of sites with details about every part of the governor’s life, both political and personal, to finally find a picture of the governor’s only child.
    Sam clicked on the photo and blew it up so he could study it carefully. The governor and a stunning blond woman wearing what had to be a designer wedding gown stood smiling with their arms around each other. The caption explained it was Governor Connors and his bride, Bethany, on their wedding day and his daughter, Katherine. Sam looked closely at the young girl. She stood next to her father, but a couple of steps away, as if she wanted to ease out of the frame and not be included in the photo. The date at the top said the article was nine years old, and since the girl looked to be in her early teens, that would make the age right. But even before he did the math, he knew it was Kate.
    Although she was much younger, already the promise of beauty and elegance was stamped on her features. She was tall for her age, an issue that probably caused her some discomfort in school because she must have towered over most of the boys. Apparently she had taken after her father, who was well over six feet tall. Sam recalled that when he himself had stood next to her, she was only a few inches shorter than his six foot one. In the photo, the expression on her face reflected her total disinterest in the ceremony and a hint of resentment at the woman who was probably only a few years older than the girl and was now her stepmother. Clearly, Kate had wanted to be anywhere but there.
    Further searches confirmed her years at the University of Texas and her graduation summa cum laude with a degree in mass communications. After that she seemed to drop off the radar.
    Sam read several later articles about the governor, but none made even the slightest mention of a daughter. But his political ambition was clear. This was a man who had the White House on his GPS.
    The photo proved that at least that part of her story was correct. It wasn’t beyond possibility that she had fallen on such hard times that, in desperation, she had taken to the streets. But Sam’s cop intuition was wavering. The needle on his mental compass, which had once been firmly pointing north, was spinning wildly and, against all logic, beginning to point south.
    And even though he usually hated to be proven wrong, this time he wasn’t disappointed. From the first moment he saw her, he had known she didn’t belong on the streets. It had been disheartening to think that Colfax had claimed another victim, especially one who was as hot as Kate.
    Sam leaned back, a little startled by the path of his thoughts. The evening had gone well—so well that he was looking forward to having an excuse to see her again. She had been tense at first, but once she relaxed, she had a really nice smile, warm and genuine.
    An exhausted yawn reminded him it was almost two in the morning. He flipped off his monitor and shut down his computer. Tomorrow he would go to the station and find out how she could come in without revealing her identity to the world. That would provide a legitimate excuse to spend a little more time with her. He wanted to pursue her claim that she had been