Free PsyCop 4: Secrets by Jordan Castillo Price Page B

not…uh…weird about the floors.”
    “We?”

    She could figure it out by asking herself a si-no . Maybe she was even being frugal with the si-no s she asked herself. “Jacob and me. We bought this place together.”
    “That’s so fast,” she said. “I mean, congratulations.” I shrugged and led the way to the kitchenette. “I guess it’s fast. It just kinda happened.”
    “When did you move?”
    “Monday.”
    “You haven’t unpacked?”
    “Jacob’s been working.” I rinsed out the coffee pot and filled it with water.
    “You got a…um….” Lisa pointed to the side of her neck.
    Damn. The bite mark. I pretended not to care and got really busy making the coffee. I flicked the on button and turned back toward her. “So, not that it isn’t great to see you, but do you wanna tell me why you dropped everything and flew back here on the spur of the moment?”
    “I told you. I want to try Auracel. They won’t give it to me at PsyTrain.”
    “You already tried Auracel, remember? And it made you incredibly sick.” Auracel made everybody incredibly sick until they got used to it. But that was beside the point. “Why don’t you try explaining to me what’s turned you into such a head case about the si-no ?
    If you don’t want to do si-no , then just stop.” Lisa perched on one of the barstools and tucked her feet behind the rung. She clutched at her knees and rocked back and forth, eyes hidden behind the Paris Hilton sunglasses. I thought maybe she wasn’t going to answer me—and that maybe she really had turned into a whacked-out head case—but then she said, “Vic, do you believe in God?” Cripes. Could the conversation get any more broad or irrelevant? “I don’t know. What difference does it make?”
    “Nobody’s supposed to be infallible but God. The Pope, too, according to the Church. So what does that make the si-no ? What does that make me?”
    “The si-no isn’t infallible. It only works if something can be answered with a definite yes or no, right? I mean, sure, not everyone can do it. But it’s still just a…a skill. It’s like being able to tell if something’s big or small, red or blue. You happen to be able to see a lot more than most people.”
    Lisa’s shoulders slumped. “What if the si-no were just like regular sight, like vision? If you can see a kid’s running into the street, don’t you have a responsibility to tell his mother?”
    “Not necessarily.”

    “How can you say that?”
    “I’m not responsible for anyone else’s snot-nosed brat—people need to watch their own damn kids. And you’re not responsible for every hardship in the world. You’re responsible for you. Just you. That’s it.”
    “And that’s why you go around looking for ghosts—scary ones, bloody ones—so you can interrogate them and find their killers.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Take off those stupid sunglasses, will you?” Lisa slid the glasses off and set them on the counter. Her eyes looked squinty, the skin around them swollen, as if she’d been crying for days.
    “I don’t know why I do it,” I said. “They give me a paycheck. What else am I good for, anyway?”
    I poured Lisa some coffee. She took the cup from me and hugged it to her chest. “Vic, I don’t want the si-no .”
    “So stop.”
    “How can I? What if it saves lives?”
    “I don’t know what to tell you. Everybody dies eventually. Look at it this way: what if you never realized how powerful the si-no is? What if you were just a regular cop with a gun and a badge? Would you feel like you needed to solve every case on the board? In every precinct, every city? No. You’d do your job, and then you’d go home.” We drank coffee and listened to sirens in the background, cruisers by the sound of them, and we sat side by side and listened to the rise and fall of their wails. It hadn’t taken much effort to make Lisa forget about the Auracel. I had to wonder if she’d been after the meds at all, or if she’d