Free Before I Sleep by Rachel Lee

years ago. It didn't matter anymore. Not at all. Right? Right.
    “I'm at work, too,” she said, her voice tight. “But this
is
about work. About
your
work. I want to talk to you,
Detective.
”
    He remembered that edge in her voice. In or out of the courtroom, it cowed most people. “About what? Is it urgent?” And then he realized she had just cowed
him.
He swore silently. He was making futile gasps of resistance. Christ!
    “I need to talk to you. Privately. About police business. And face it, Seamus, you're the only
honest
cop I know.”
    He wondered if her mouth had finally gotten her into serious trouble. Curiosity, of which he had always had entirely too much, reared its head. “Okay. When?” And there went number six or seven of his nine lives, he thought with resignation.
    “Here, if you want. At the station. I don't go on the air for a couple of hours, but I've got some stuff to do.”
    Neutral territory, he thought. She wanted to talk to him about as much as he wanted to talk to her. The realization didn't ease his queasiness any. Taking her home the other night when she was drunk had managed somehow to make five years ago seem like only yesterday. His body, he thought, craved hers the way addicts craved cocaine. That's all it was, a craving. A physical addiction. He didn't actually care about her anymore, he just wanted her.
    And that was something he was sure he could deal with.
    Feeling better suddenly, he said, “Sure. Give me thirty minutes. I've got some paperwork to take care of first.”
    “Great. And Seamus … thanks.”
    Thanks?
Carissa Stover didn't thank people for anything. She asked for it, then accepted it as her due. And for some reason he didn't like the idea that the years might have changed her. It renewed his uneasiness.
    “Hot date?” Gil asked when he hung up.
    “No. Business.” He was being short, but he didn't want to get into it.
    “Was that Carey Stover? Didn't you used to date her?”
    Seamus's eyes suddenly felt hot in his head, and he wondered if flames were leaping out of them as he looked stonily at his partner. “Ancient history.”
    “Right,” said Gil. He let the subtext hang in the air between them.
    The hell of working with Gil Garcia, Seamus thought as he started to write his report, was the way the guy could crawl into his head.
    He wondered if it was too late to pull up the drawbridge, close the windows, and lock the doors.
    He had the feeling it already was.

C HAPTER 5
    18 Days
    C arissa was holed up in an empty recording booth with papers scattered all around her, giving a damn good imitation of being deep in preparation for her show. She still had to figure out the thrust of another monologue on the Otis case to kick off with tonight, but she didn't have a foggy idea what tack she wanted to take. Right now, waiting for Seamus to arrive, she didn't seem to be able to think about anything at all except the reason she had called him.
    The back of her neck was tingling, and hadn't stopped since she'd talked to Evan Sinclair at the Prosecutor's Office about a story Ed Ulrich had mentioned to her. The harder she had tried to shake the feeling, the more persistent it had become. Finally, she had called Seamus, even though she knew full well what he was going to say about this.
    Finally the half hour was up, and she went out to the lobby to see if he was there. His car was just pulling into the parking lot under leaden skies. Gray, wispy fingers were reaching groundward from the rapidly moving clouds, almost touching the tops of the palm trees at the entrance to the parking lot. The palm fronds and the live oaks around the edge of the lot were being tossed by the strong wind looking silvery in the strange greenish light.
    Tornado weather.
    “Looks nasty out there,” Becky Hadlov remarked.
    “I love this kind of weather.” It was a pleasant change from the burning sun and baking heat of this time of year, as long as she didn't have to drive in it.
    “You