The Collective Read Online Free Page B

“You’re fucking kidding!”
    Turcotte glared at her, clearly not liking the profanity from a subordinate agent.
    “I’m liking her even more,” Josh said.
    But Voss kept her gaze fixed on Turcotte. “Ironic, isn’t it, Ed?”
    “That’s one word for it,” he sniffed, then glanced at Chang. “Nala, run them through it, will you? Take them into the house and show them around. Then they can meet the rest of the folks they’ll be babysitting.”
    “You’re the boss,” Chang said, turning and starting up a brick path toward the house. She glanced back at Voss and Josh. “You two coming?”
    The sequence of events was off. Turcotte ought to have introduced them first and then sent Chang to give them the tour. Obviously, he wanted to warn the other lead investigators that the ICD Troubleshooters had arrived and to be on their best behavior—which in Turcotte’s terms might mean not sharing all the information. Voss knew this, and it pissed her off, but she had expected as much the moment she’d spotted him. In the end, it wouldn’t matter. She doubted the others would be foolish enough to go along with him when they knew it might cost them control of the case.
    Josh headed up the walk after Chang, but Voss took amoment to scan the property and the front of the house, trying to look like she was taking in the whole scene when in fact she just wanted a better look at the other investigators talking to Turcotte. Two of them—an attractive young Latino and a graying white guy—wore radios and guns on their hips, marking them as state police. She figured the tall black guy in the tailored shirt must be the officer from U.S. Special Operations Command that she’d been told would be in attendance—though why U.S. SOCOM had anyone at all responding to a murder case on U.S. soil, she had no idea. Each branch of the armed forces had its own special operations command, handling counterterrorism, special recon, unconventional warfare, and psych-ops, among other, similarly sneaky, badass tasks. U.S. SOCOM was the unified command, giving orders all across the top, so nobody stepped on one another’s toes, but all of their operations took place on foreign soil.
    The last guy was the one that bothered her most, though. He wore dark trousers and a red tie, hair perfectly in place despite the humidity, and looked like he never broke a sweat. His sleeves were turned up and she imagined he had left the jacket that went with his pants in the car, but he still looked like he would have been more at home in a corporate boardroom than at the site of a quadruple murder. He hung back from the others, listening to the conversation without contributing.
    Voss caught up with Chang and Josh at the door and followed them inside.
    “I assume I don’t have to tell you not to touch anything,” Chang said.
    Josh gave her a look that said maybe he didn’t like her so much anymore. “We’ve only been away from the Bureau for five months.”
    Chang paused in the foyer and smiled at him. “Yeah? How’s the new job?”
    “Better benefits, fewer people to answer to, and vast power to stomp on assholes who put their egos before their jobs,” Josh said.
    “Fun,” Chang replied.
    Jesus
, Voss thought.
Is she flirting with him?
She wasn’tjealous—or, at least, only a little. Josh was her best friend. They’d saved each other’s lives more than once and shared an intimacy that had never crossed the line into romance but sometimes danced right on the edge. Still, she was amazed at the effect Josh so often had on women other than his ex-wife. Yes, his eyes were startlingly blue and he had his gorgeous days, but there were better-looking guys.
    Okay, maybe a little jealous
.
    “Out of curiosity, Agent Chang, who’s the suit out there in the driveway?”
    Chang glanced around the foyer as though to orient herself. “Norris. Not sure if that’s his first or last name. He’s a consultant from Black Pine.”
    Voss was glad Chang didn’t