by Radclyffe
“No,” Rebecca replied. “I don’t.”
“But Clark does,” Sloan murmured, filling in the blanks.
“Darling, what is this all about?” Michael asked quietly. “Who is George Beecher?”
“No one.”
“No one who someone thinks you might want to ki—” As if a sudden realization had struck, Michael faltered and looked from Sloan to Rebecca. “Is this the person who might have had something to do with my accident?”
“That’s right.” Rebecca was curious as to just how much Michael knew. Although she believed Sloan innocent, she was too much a cop not to examine all the evidence from every angle.
“Sloan would never have done anything to him,” Michael said with absolute conviction.
“Why do you say that?” Rebecca asked.
“Because she promised me she wouldn’t.”
Watts laughed. “That will certainly go a long ways in court.”
Michael turned solemn eyes to his. “If you don’t understand why that matters, then you don’t know Sloan very well, Detective Watts.”
Watts blushed and actually ducked his head. “Sorry, ma’am.”
At that moment, Mitchell returned in black chinos and a navy shirt. “I’ll head downstairs, Lieutenant.”
“Good,” Rebecca said. “Watts, go with her and take Sloan. Make sure you document everything that Mitchell does.” She turned to Sloan. “You don’t touch anything down there. If there’s even the possibility that you’ve altered the data, none of it will help us. All I want you to do is walk them through as much as you can remember of what you did and when.”
Sloan nodded. “Okay.” She kissed Michael, murmured something that none of the others could hear, and followed Mitchell and Watts to the elevator.
“I’m sorry to have upset you, Michael,” Rebecca said.
Michael sank onto the sofa. “I understand.”
Sandy leaned close. “You okay? How about I get some tea?”
“That would be lovely. Thank you,” Michael replied gratefully, giving Sandy a small smile. Then, to Rebecca, she added, “Thank you for being so patient with her. I know you’re trying to help her.”
“I’m trying to do my job,” Rebecca rejoined. “If I thought she were guilty, I would do the same.”
“Yes, I know. And so does Sloan.” Michael shook her head. “She’ll realize you’re on her side when she’s feeling less threatened.”
“Don’t you mean pissed off?”
“Oh, that’s part of it, to be sure. But it’s coming from something far more serious. She was betrayed, Rebecca, by someone she loved. Abandoned by the system she believed in. Incarcerated by those she thought she could trust.” Michael sighed. “She keeps expecting it to happen again.”
“It won’t,” Rebecca said empathically. “You’ll never betray her. And I won’t let anyone make her a scapegoat. I promise that no one will touch her.”
“You didn’t say ‘if she’s innocent.’”
“I didn’t need to.”
“Thank you, Rebecca.”
“I’d better go—I want to catch that waitress at the diner. And I really am sorry to have put you through this.”
Michael shook her head. “No, you needn’t apologize. Not when you’re helping Sloan.”
“Thanks.” Rebecca turned and started for the elevator. She stopped as Sandy approached with two mugs of tea. “Anything?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll call you later.”
Sandy shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”
*
When Rebecca left, Sandy returned to her spot on the sofa by Michael’s side, tea in hand. “Maybe you should go back to bed.”
“I can’t. I want to be here when Sloan comes back upstairs.”
“It could take a while.” Sandy didn’t add that if Sloan ended up downtown for questioning, it could take all day. “And you look kind of…tired.”
“I’m all right. I don’t do very well yet when I haven’t had enough sleep, that’s all.” Michael sipped the tea absently, her attention fixed on the elevator doors, willing them to open and Sloan to appear. “I can’t believe she has to go through this again.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Proving her innocence.” Michael closed her eyes, both hands clenched tightly around the mug on her lap. “God, it makes me so angry.”
“Frye is a great cop. She’ll figure this out.”
“I hope so, because I can’t stand to see her hurt like this.”
“They’re not so tough, are they,” Sandy said. “They just kinda want you to think they are.”
Michael took Sandy’s hand, needing the comfort and the connection. “Sometimes I think the more tender the heart, the more easily it’s broken.”
“Yeah,” Sandy whispered, remembering Dell’s tears on her breast. “You got that right.”
Chapter Nineteen
Friday
The elevator doors slid open a few minutes before 8:00 a.m. Mitchell exited, followed by Sloan. Mitchell headed directly down the hall toward the guest bedroom and disappeared. When Michael started to get up from the sofa, Sloan shook her head.
“No, stay there.” Quickly, she crossed the width of the living room and settled beside Michael, extending an arm to pull Michael into the curve of her body. She kissed Michael’s forehead and then leaned her head back with a sigh. “How do you feel?”
Michael nestled her cheek against Sloan’s shoulder, one arm wrapped around her waist. “Tired. No headache. I’m all right.” She lifted her chin to kiss the undersurface of Sloan’s jaw. “What happened downstairs? Is everything…cleared up now?”
Lids partially closed, Sloan stared at the exposed pipes overhead, idly following the branching pathways as they disappeared into walls and behind the high ceiling. When she worked at the computer, her mind’s eye saw the same pathways, highways of data, streaming within and between way stations in the network—a cyberuniverse as real to her as the concrete and stone that made up her physical world. “Mitchell’s done dicking around inside my system. She got everything there is to get.”
“Will it be enough?” Michael asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” Sloan admitted with a sigh. “It’ll depend on what the crime scene unit turns up—time of death will make a big difference. Rebecca will know later today.” She didn’t add that even if the time of death placed her at home with Michael, she had only her lover’s word as an alibi. Not exactly ironclad.
“It’s ridiculous for anyone to think that you murdered that man.”
Sloan laughed softly and kissed Michael’s forehead again. “Baby, everyone knows I wanted that guy dead. And every cop—federal, state, or city—knows that the most likely suspect usually turns out to be the guilty party.” She stroked Michael’s arm, as much to comfort herself as her lover. “In this case, I’m the prime suspect. Christ,” she muttered disdainfully, “even I can’t blame Clark for going after me. I’d do the same in his shoes.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Michael said vehemently. “You wouldn’t because you don’t take the easy way out. You do what’s right, not what’s expedient.”
“I’m not that noble, baby,” Sloan murmured. She buried her face in Michael’s hair, and some of her tension eased. Michael was the calm at the eye of her storm. She was the one fixed point in the swirling tide of Sloan’s anger and pain. “It feels so good when you hold me.”
With surprising strength, Michael rose, keeping her arm around Sloan’s waist and drawing her upward. “Let’s go back to bed. You haven’t had any sleep, and I need very much to have you in my arms.”
“Okay,” Sloan whispered, wanting nothing more than to lay down her shields and shelter in the protective circle of Michael’s embrace. “Yeah, I’d like that too.”
*
“So, is everything okay now?” Sandy asked as she sat on the side of the bed watching Mitchell shed her clothes.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Mitchell ball
ed up her shirt and threw it on the floor by Sandy’s suitcase. “Man, this sucks.” Shirtless, she stalked across the room and flopped on the bed next to Sandy. Legs dangling over the side, she ran her fingers down the center of Sandy’s back. “I don’t know how the lieutenant did it this morning. The way she went after Sloan, like she didn’t even know her. I…fuck…I’m going to be a lousy detective.”
Sandy turned, her eyes sparking with indignation. “That’s bullshit. Frye’s been doing it a long time. And besides,” Sandy said dismissively, “Frye is ice. There’s no one like her.”
Mitchell thought back to the one time she and Rebecca had leveled with one another—when she’d confessed her love for Sandy, and Rebecca had admitted to the panic that had nearly crippled her when Catherine had been in danger. Mitchell had an inkling of the depth of emotion that Rebecca Frye never revealed and despaired that she would ever be able to control her own passions anywhere near as well. “She’s the best. But she still has feelings.”
“Yeah,” Sandy admitted, “I know. But you still can’t expect to be her, rookie. Not yet.” She feathered her fingers through Mitchell’s hair. “Besides, I like you a whole lot better than Frye.”
“I kept praying I’d find something that would clear Sloan.” Mitchell turned on her side and pulled Sandy down beside her. She kissed her on the mouth, then tilted her forehead to Sandy’s with a weary sigh. “I don’t think that’s how I’m supposed to be feeling when I’m gathering evidence.”
“Baby…” Sandy played her fingertips across Mitchell’s lips, then drew them away and traced her tongue in their place before kissing her again. “You’re supposed to feel the way you feel.”
“How come you make me feel so good?”
“’Cause you’re so easy.”
Mitchell laughed, sliding her hand under Sandy’s T-shirt. Sandy’s skin was soft and warm, her breasts free beneath the loose cotton. Sweeping her fingertips rhythmically across Sandy’s nipples, Mitchell asked softly, “Oh yeah?” She kept up the teasing strokes, intermittently squeezing the rapidly hardening nipples, watching Sandy’s eyes cloud with pleasure. “Easy, huh?”
“Dell,” Sandy murmured as she grasped Mitchell’s wrist. “Stop that.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Mitchell eased over on top of Sandy, pressing one thigh hard and high between Sandy’s legs. “You’re hot. I can feel you right through my pants.”
Sandy fisted both hands in Mitchell’s hair and yanked her head up and away from her breast, where Mitchell had just settled her mouth. “You’ve got that thing. We have to get ready.”
Redirecting her mouth toward the soft, warm, wonderful flesh, Mitchell muttered, “There’s plenty of time.” As if to drive her point home, she caught Sandy’s nipple between her teeth at the same time as she slid her fingers beneath the edge of the pale blue wisp of material between Sandy’s legs. She sucked the tight nipple into her mouth as she sank her fingers into Sandy’s depths.
Sandy arched her back and screamed.
“That’s it, baby, that’s it. Oh, yeah, you feel so good.” Mitchell was half out of her mind with the wild pleasure of possessing Sandy so completely and the indescribable comfort of just being inside her. When Sandy pumped upward into her palm and simultaneously lifted a knee into Mitchell’s crotch, she felt herself unexpectedly teetering on the edge. “Oh fuck, I’m gonna come.”
“Do it with me, baby,” Sandy sobbed, hips thrashing with the first convulsive wave. “Oh, Dell…oh, here I come.”
Mitchell squeezed her eyes tight and tried to keep her rhythm, but everything was tearing loose inside her. She was aching and soaring and crumbling all at once. Shuddering, she pressed her lips to Sandy’s temple and whispered, “I love you.”
Lost in sensation, Sandy could only cling to her desperately, unable to answer. Her body, open and undefended, spoke for her.
*
Catherine stood by the bureau in her bedroom, still in her robe. She’d showered an hour earlier but, since she’d taken the morning off from work, had not yet dressed. “There’s coffee for you on the bedside table.”
“Thanks.”
Leaning her hips against the dresser, Catherine sipped from her own mug and studied her lover’s carefully guarded face. Rebecca had said nothing since she’d walked in a half hour previously, placed her weapon on the top shelf of the closet, stripped off her clothes, and gone directly into the shower. Catherine supposed that cops had rules about this sort of thing—questions she should not ask, secrets she should not know. Like all rules, those dictums probably served a purpose. And like all absolutes, they often failed in the face of individual human circumstances. True or not, she did not care. What she cared about was the critical connection between herself and her lover. “Was it bad?”
“Typical homicide.” Naked, Rebecca swallowed coffee, unmindful of the temperature.
Typical homicide. Well, that’s something to ponder another day. Catherine placed her mug on the dresser. “Can you tell me why they called you out in the middle of the night? I thought lieutenants got special dispensation around that sort of thing.”
Rebecca turned to face her.
“This is the part where I’m supposed to let you in, isn’t it?”
Catherine smiled. “Am I being particularly unsubtle this morning, or are you just reading me frighteningly well?”
“Frighteningly?” Rebecca put down her coffee and circled the bed to Catherine. She put her arms around her and kissed her. “It’s what you want, isn’t it? For me to know what you need?”
“How long have you known that?”
“From the beginning.” Rebecca reached between them and loosed the tie on Catherine’s robe. With one hand she parted the silk fabric until their bodies touched, skin on skin. “I’ve just never been sure I could do it.”
“You’re not supposed to do it all by yourself,” Catherine murmured. She placed her palm in the center of Rebecca’s chest, then moved her fingers over the scars. It was a gesture that had become automatic, almost essential, as if she could physically connect to Rebecca’s heart. “I’m supposed to help you by telling you. I want to know where you go when you leave here, what you do, what others do to you. I want to know what you feel, what hurts you, what makes you feel satisfied.”
“You,” Rebecca said thickly, her hands moving over Catherine’s back, the curve of her hips, the soft weight of her breasts. “You make me satisfied. You make me happy.” She brushed her mouth over Catherine’s lips, a fleeting, nearly fragile, kiss. “You fill me up.”
Catherine’s body quickened as her heart soared. “When you say these things, when you touch me this way, all I want is to lie down with you and have you touch me everywhere.”
“Sounds just right to me.” Rebecca shifted a thigh between Catherine’s legs and kissed her again. She gave a surprised grunt when Catherine pushed her gently away. “What?”
“Talk first.”
Rebecca raised a brow. “That’s blackmail.”
Catherine nodded, feeling the heat in her face and the tight pebbling of her nipples, knowing that her excitement was apparent to her lover. Her words were breathy as her chest lifted unevenly, passion already rampant in her depths. “Besides, we have somewhere important to be.”
With a look of regret, Rebecca kissed her once more and then stepped away. “I’ll tell you while we dress.”
“All right.”
“The dead man’s name is George Beecher.”
As Rebecca outlined the facts, leaving out the brutal details, she and Catherine moved around one another opening drawers, slipping into clothes, adding their individual accoutrements—watch and earrings, gun and badge. By the time Rebecca related her visit to Sloan’s loft, they were completely dressed. She turned from the mirror to face Catherine, tightening the knot in her tie. “Michael was shaken. Sloan was pissed. It wasn’t pleasant.”
Catherine had never seen Rebecca in her dress uniform before. The formal jacket and striped trousers,
the gleaming buttons, the badge perfectly placed just above the spot the bullet had struck. She was beautiful. Catherine had mixed feelings about Rebecca’s profession, especially having almost lost her to it. But in that moment, the only thing she felt was pride. “I’m sorry you had to question Sloan that way, but I’m glad it was you and no one else. I’m sure you’ll straighten this out for her.” She kissed her softly. “You look very handsome. I’m very proud of you.”
“Thank you.” Rebecca reached for Catherine’s hand. “I need you by my side, you know. I…count on it.”
“And I need you.” Catherine took Rebecca’s other hand and met her eyes. “Please won’t you marry me?”
Rebecca took a deep breath and then the corner of her mouth lifted into a grin. “I don’t want a big wedding.”
“Absolutely not.” Catherine laughed, her voice ringing with joy. “Just a few friends, and William, of course.”
Rebecca made a choking sound. “Watts? No fucking way.”
“Well, we have plenty of time to discuss that.” Catherine kissed her again, a long, contented kiss that promised more. Then she linked her arm through Rebecca’s. “Now let’s go celebrate your promotion, Lieutenant.”
*
“Oh man,” Mitchell breathed, stopping in midmotion, her eyes huge.
“What?” Sandy said defensively.
“You look…” Mitchell swallowed, at a loss for words.
“Your mouth is open, Dell. You look dumb.” Sandy flushed, pleased. The navy Dolce & Gabbana pants had wide legs and a flat front and sat low on her hips. An elegant silver pinstripe accented the tailored suit, and she wore the one-button, fitted jacket closed over just her silk bra, revealing the barest suggestion of cleavage. The Manolo Blahnik heels gave her several inches in height, and she liked the new perspective. Michael had said it was a sexy, low-key, professional look, acceptable for daytime. From the expression on Mitchell’s face, she’d been right about the sexy part. When Mitchell took a step toward her, Sandy held out one arm, palm up. “Do not come near me. You’ll mess me up.”