Free In Pursuit of Justice by Radclyffe Page A

“How long have you been here?”
    “Not long—fifteen minutes, maybe. Joyce said that you had an 8:30, so I figured you’d be done about now.” She linked the fingers of her left hand through Catherine’s. She was right-handed and needed to keep her gun hand free on the street.
    “You could have waited inside.”
    “I didn’t want to run into a patient. Besides, it’s nice out here.” They began to walk. “Drive you home?”
    “Mmm, yes. My car’s in the parking garage. I can leave it if you bring me in tomorrow. Can you stay tonight?” Needing to ask was hard, but this was new territory for both of them. She didn’t want to make assumptions.
    “I have to go in early. There’s a meeting in the morning.”
    “Ah, so you’ve seen your captain.” I see you’re already wearing your gun again. I knew it would be soon, but did it have to be this fast? Of course, there are some things that you police always do quickly. You work nonstop when a case is new and the blood is still fresh; you interrogate people before the tears have dried and they’re emotionally the most vulnerable; you bury your dead and move on before the ground is cold. You ignore your own pain, at least you try to, until something inside you breaks or turns to stone.
    Catherine thought about her new patient, the young officer who was trying so hard not to acknowledge the pain and terror and abandonment she must have felt walking down that dark alley with no one at her back. Her heart twisted, but her voice was steady. “You’re working again, then?”
    Rebecca leaned down to unlock the Vette. “Not quite. He put me on a desk. Have you eaten?”
    “Uh…lunch.” She was relieved at the idea of a desk assignment and then reminded herself that the reprieve was temporary at best. “Doing what?”
    “Feel like Thai?” Rebecca pulled away from the curb and reached for her cell phone at Catherine’s affirming nod. “There’s a menu in the door. Just call out what you want,” she added, punching in numbers from memory. She relayed the order, then drove in silence, watching the traffic, the people on the sidewalks, the city teeming with life.
    Catherine rested her hand on Rebecca’s thigh and, when it became apparent that Rebecca wasn’t going to answer, asked again, “What kind of desk assignment?”
    “I got a half-assed briefing of sorts this afternoon.” Her jaw tight, Rebecca replayed the conversation with Sloan in her mind. Finally, she continued grimly, “I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to be doing. I’ll find out in the morning—at another briefing. Bare bones—it’s a task force to ferret out the important players in a porn ring. One that uses kids, apparently. There’s some kind of Internet angle and that’s what got the feds involved. I don’t have the details yet. It’s the usual federal need-to-know bullshit, which means that probably no one knows anything.”
    “Why a task force?”
    “To make the job twice as complicated and three times slower.” Rebecca shrugged. “The feds are involved, but they can’t really operate effectively on a local level—not one-on-one. They’re bureaucrats—they don’t have any street contacts.”
    “But you do,” Catherine said slowly. No wonder she’s not more upset .
    “Yes.” Rebecca smiled for the first time. “I do.”
    “How come I get the feeling that this isn’t such a desk job after all?”
    Rebecca pulled to the curb and turned in the seat, stretching her arm behind Catherine’s shoulders, her fingertips resting on the bare skin at the base of her neck. “It’s the fastest way for me to get back to work, and the captain didn’t give me much choice. And I do know this territory. Four months ago, Jeff and I busted two prostitution houses that were dealing children. We bagged a handful of pushers and pimps, but we knew at the time it was just the tip of the iceberg. We were never able to figure a way inside the network. Everything we tried