Free PsyCop .1: Inside Out by Jordan Castillo Price

A year, four months and eight days before Maurice Taylor retired from the Chicago Police Department…
    “Honestly, Jacob. A meeting is a meeting. It’s nothing to get worked up over. Believe me.” Carolyn flipped down the passenger-side visor and gave her subdued peach lipstick a quick check. “Seriously. It’s like watching paint dry. Probably even more tedious than that.”
    “But this is a PsyCop meeting—my first one. That’s got to count for something. And if it’s so dull, why’d they keep the Stiffs in the dark for so long?”
    “Who knows? Maybe someone in brass just realized it can count toward your continuing education credits so it saves them the expense of paying for a class.”
    Jacob reached for the handle to open the car door, but he noticed Carolyn didn’t. He paused.
    “Did you talk to Keith?” She asked.
    The lie came to him first— I left a message. He’d never considered himself a liar, but the very first conversation he’d had with Carolyn was a real eye-opener. Over the past few months he’d been trying to mend his ways, but it was a work in progress. No doubt everyone lied—to spare people’s feelings, to avoid coming off like jerks. But everyone didn’t work with a telepath.
    “He’s still mad,” Jacob chose to say. That was true—and a strong enough assertion to divert Carolyn’s attention from the fact that he hadn’t admitted his reluctance to try to patch things up with Keith. It was over between them—Keith had made it pretty damn clear. He’d hung up his badge, but they still worked out at the same gym. They had the same friends. They were bound to run into each other sooner or later. No sense in being childish about the way things turned out. It was nobody’s fault.
    “I’d hate to be in your shoes,” she said. “It’s hard enough to deal with this job, let alone doing it while you’re trying to keep your personal life personal. It’s easier to just tell the truth. If people are going to find something to hate you about, they’ll manage to do it anyway, no matter how you try to paint yourself to satisfy them. But in this case, I don’t think telling the truth is an option.”
    “Sarge knows. You know.”
    “And I think you’d better leave it at that. Why should it be any of the other cops’ business who you sleep with?”
    Jacob waited with his hand on the door. They were in the car together at least an hour a day, sometimes more. Did she really need to analyze the ramifications of being gay and being on the force at that very moment—when Jacob was on the cusp of his first official inter-departmental PsyCop meeting?
    Evidently so. She had her phone out and was scrolling through her pictures. “If you’re positive that you’re not going to patch things up with Keith—”
    “I’m positive.”
    “—then my neighbor knows this guy.”
    “You’re trying to set me up?”
    “It’s not like that.”
    “Really?” She’d said as much, he figured, so she must have believed it was true. “Then what is it like?”
    “It’s just…meeting guys on the force is probably not your safest bet. He sent me a picture—take a look before you decide you’re not interested.”
    Jacob planted his elbow on the center arm rest and peered down at Carolyn’s phone while she scrolled. “Wait a minute.” He covered her hand with his before she could flip past—because a flash of color caught his eye, and because the sudden tension in her shoulders told him that scrolling past the picture that piqued his curiosity was exactly what she wanted to do.
    She shifted her grip and kept scrolling, to a shot of a guy with soul patch and arty tortoise-shell glasses. Handsome enough. If you liked that sort of thing.
    “Go back.”
    “Never mind that, this is Neil. He moved here from Boston last month.”
    Jacob supposed he wasn’t going to get his way until he heard her out. “Uh huh.”
    “He’s forty two. Just bought a brownstone in Lincoln Square. And he’s a