Free Internal Affairs by Jessica Andersen Page A

her wonder why the heck don’t-tell materials were coming through the ME’s office.
    Once the samples were sent off, Sara plowed through three routine cases while Stephen worked on the two dead agents. True to his word, the other ME had come in to work the cases, even though it was Saturday. On one level, Sara was beyond grateful that she didn’t haveto deal with those particular bodies, especially given her near certainty that Romo had been among the targets of the federal manhunt. On another level, though, she found herself wanting to be alone in the autopsy theater, wished she could turn off the relentlessly cheerful dance music Stephen liked to play while he worked.
    As soon as she finished with the third case, she stripped out of her protective gear, cleaned up and escaped to the peace and quiet of her office, not even bothering to be piqued when the door stuck. She had way bigger problems than that. Like a lover returned from the dead, and the very real possibility that the terrorists, or the cops, or both, were looking for him.
    Romo had insisted she carry the .22 when she went in to work. She’d agreed because she’d done the necessary paperwork to carry concealed, and was able to get the weapon through the heightened security measures that now surrounded the buildings that housed the BCCPD and ME’s office. And maybe it made her feel slightly safer, knowing she had a means of defense. But still, she hated the necessity, and couldn’t bear to imagine actually using the weapon on anything but gun range targets.
    Hopefully, I won’t have to, she thought morosely, then sighed, dug her fingers into her hair and muttered, “I hate this.”
    “Trouble?” a voice said from the doorway.
    Sara looked up quickly, gasping a little at the jolt of surprise. Cassie stood in the doorway, holding an official-looking folder. Tall and blond, with legs that went a mile and pinup-type curves, Cassie was a bombshell who cared little for her own looks, and wore a don’t-mess-with-me attitude that, according to Alyssa, anyway, had mellowed a fair bit in the years since her marriage to Seth.
    As far as Sara was concerned, if this was Cassie in mellow mode, she must’ve been a holy terror before. Sara loved Cassie as a friend, but was a little intimidated by her at the same time. Especially now, under the circumstances.
    “Hey!” Sara said, her voice cracking a little with the effort of trying to sound normal. Knowing the BCCPD’s top forensic evidence analyst missed little, she nodded to the folder, which was of the sort usually used to transmit results from one division of the task force to another. “I didn’t expect you to hand-deliver.”
    “A priority is a priority, especially these days,” Cassie said matter-of-factly. Her words were friendly enough, but behind them was a hard edge that was pure business. The members of the task force—and ancillary members like Sara herself—had all lost acquaintances in the attacks, most had lost friends. They were committed to doing whatever it took to break al-Jihad’s hold on the region and bring down his terror cells, including those potentially rooted within the BCCPD and FBI.
    Swallowing against a knot of guilt at deceiving a friend, Sara asked, “Did you find anything interesting?” She tensed with hope, because “interesting” could mean the DNA from the blood spatter was a match to someone other than the dead agents, or that the bullet traced to a non-PD weapon. “Interesting” could suggest Romo hadn’t killed either of the agents, that she wasn’t being an enormous idiot by keeping his secret.
    “Maybe,” Cassie said, her eyes narrowing slightly. “And the hand delivery was because your message made it sound urgent. Which leaves me wondering about the source of DNA samples that didn’t come from either of the bodies you’re not autopsying.” Her telling look went to the autopsy theater, where Stephen was hard at work on the dead agents, who hadn’t been