In Pursuit of Justice Read Online Free Page A

she looked like she’d dropped twenty pounds off a frame that had always been lean. Her blue eyes were still the same, though—sparkling chips of ice, hard and penetrating. If anything, she looked more austerely handsome than before her injury, but Maggie sensed she was hurting. “Here—it won’t be doin’ you any good to get dehydrated before you’ve had a decent workout.”
    “Thanks.” Rebecca took a long pull before asking, “What’s new in the body shop?” She was referring to the crime scene investigations unit, or CSI, which was headed by Dee Flanagan, Maggie’s lover. It was not just the morgue—which, strictly speaking, was the purview of Andy Corcoran, the medical examiner—but rather an extensive evidence analysis lab that examined all physical material collected at a crime scene and from the bodies involved. What Flanagan and her techs turned up was often instrumental in pointing the detectives in the right direction to solve a crime and virtually essential for proving a case in court. Means, motive, and opportunity were no longer enough for a conviction. You needed cold, scientific evidence—prints, ballistics, chemistry, DNA, serology, toxicology—and anything else that would link a suspect to a crime.
    “Oh, every day it’s a surprise. People keep inventing new and different ways to kill themselves and others. We’ve been missin’ your company, though.”
    “Oh, I’ll bet.” Rebecca laughed. Dee Flanagan made it no secret that she didn’t like cops in her lab, “bothering her techs and messing with evidence,” as she so scathingly remarked, and she suffered their presence with very little patience. Like any good cop, Rebecca made it a point to review the forensic evidence herself, despite Flanagan’s protests. “I’m sure she’s been happy to have one less person bothering her.”
    “No,” Maggie said softly, smiling a fond smile that Rebecca had seen before when Dee was the topic of conversation. “You she’s been missin’.”
    “I’ll stop down in a day or two. As soon as I get back to work.”
    “You’re coming back soon, then?” Maggie tried to hide her surprise. Many officers injured a lot less severely than Rebecca took advantage of the disability premiums for as long as possible. But then she should have known that Frye wouldn’t be one to sit at home. Goin’ crazy, probably .
    “I’m seeing Captain Henry first thing Monday morning.”
    “Well then, you’d best get back to pumping that iron. You need a spot?”
    “No. I’m not pushing. Just easing back in.” In truth, she’d been about to quit when Maggie’d come along. Her chest was on fire, and even though she’d reduced her usual weights by half, she’d been struggling. What worried her the most, though, was how short of breath she got after ten minutes on the treadmill. Although the doctors had assured her that her lung—collapsed by the bullet that had entered between her third and fourth ribs, an inch above her heart—had not sustained any permanent damage, it felt like something wasn’t working right. And if she couldn’t run, she couldn’t work. “I’m doing okay.”
    “Right,” Maggie agreed. “Good to see you back, Rebecca.”
    Yes. It will be good to get back. All the way back . When she went into the locker room to shower, despite the pain and the fatigue, she felt more like herself than she had since the moment two months before when she’d come to in a sea of agony to find Catherine bending over her, terror in her eyes. All she needed now was to convince everyone else that she was fit for duty. She had a lot of unfinished business to attend to, and she couldn’t begin to take care of it until she had reclaimed her place in the world.

    *

    “Is something wrong?” Rebecca asked quietly. They were seated at a small candlelit table in the nook formed by floor-to-ceiling bay windows in DeCarlo’s, a very exclusive restaurant that occupied the ground floor of a century-old