Free Karma Patrol by Kate Miller Page B

requested, glancing over at the bulletin board where they’d put the photos and notes from their investigation into the Forty-Eighth Street shooting. Their hastily assembled task force hadn’t gotten very far in trying to draw political connections between the Serbian national and the New York senator, and Luke suspected they’d been wasting their time looking for any sort of connection. If the shootings were random and the killer was a sniper whose goal was to terrorize the city, then he wouldn’t have cared who he killed. Any connections between the victims would be coincidence.
    If the killings were random, then Jade Bailey was either the luckiest photojournalist in the world or she’d had enough advance warning to flee the scene of the second shooting before it started.
    Luke Jackson didn’t believe in luck. He knew what he was going to be doing after the FBI took over the case.

    Thoroughly rattled by her brush with death, and rattled in a completely different way by her interaction with her soulmate, Jade decided to let Midtown West take care of itself for a few hours. She considered going home, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to face her tiny apartment after spending an hour in the equally tiny interrogation room at the police station. Instead, she headed toward Central Park. It was outside her catchment area, so she would feel a little less guilty about sitting down and people watching without interfering.
    She took a seat on an empty bench near Merchants’ Gate, curling her legs underneath her and feeling the tension start to drain out of her muscles as she finally relaxed. It had been a long day, even by her standards, and the sun was still up. She wasn’t sure how much more stress she could handle.
    As though Fate had heard the thought and decided to poke at her, her phone rang. She groaned as she dug through her purse, trying to decide who was going to add to her stress level now. Maybe it was Celia, calling to tell her Destiny Division had decided to have her fired for interfering with their investigation. It might even be her soulmate, trying to track her down so he could arrest her for conspiring with the shooter.
    The name flashing in the caller ID was both a surprise and a relief, and she accepted the call with pleasure.
    “Hey, Talli,” she greeted her baby sister, glancing at her watch reflexively. “Isn’t it the middle of the night where you are?”
    “We’re only six hours ahead,” Talli laughed, her voice tinny over the intercontinental connection. “I just got back from dinner. I’m heading out to a club with Pierre.”
    “Pierre, huh? Is he your Parisian flavor of the week?”
    “Hey, I won’t know if Karma Division approved my request for a permanent placement here until six months from now. I have to experience as many of the local flavors as I can in case I get recalled back home.”
    “I’m going to start calling you Baskin-Robbins,” Jade threatened.
    Talli snickered. “What about you, big sis? I’m guessing you haven’t sampled any of the local flavors up north.”
    Jade felt the silly grin spreading across her face but was powerless to stop it. “I found him, Talli. I found my soulmate.”
    There was a moment of silence and then a delighted shriek. “No
way
! Seriously? Is he cute? Oh my God, you waited like three decades for him to show up, he’d better be a total Adonis. Did he fall head over heels in love with you? Is he your love slave now?”
    “Actually, he tried to arrest me.”
    “Oh, very funny,” Talli laughed. “Is that some sort of kinky innuendo? Because I don’t want to know that much about my sister’s sex life.”
    “No, he really tried to arrest me,” Jade admitted. “He’s a cop, and he thinks I’m in league with a serial killer.”
    “Whoa.” The humor was gone from Talli’s voice. “Jade, are you serious?”
    “It’s not a big deal, Talli,” she said, surprised by her sister’s concern. “I was just in the wrong place at