Internal Affairs. Jessica Andersen

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СКАЧАТЬ and Alyssa pairing up with their husbands, while Chelsea and Sara hung together.

      It wasn’t the same these days with Chelsea gone into the FBI training program on the East Coast, though. Sara had tried going out with the others, and had felt like a fifth wheel. Chelsea had been the glue holding them together. Without her, it felt as if the rest of them were trying too hard. Even when Chelsea and Fax came back to the city, they were most often there on task force business, maybe with a little wedding planning snuck in on the side.

      Things had changed. The others had moved on, leaving Sara behind.

      Summoning a smile, she waved Stephen away. “Go on, get moving. You wouldn’t want to keep your women waiting.”

      But he didn’t move. Instead, he gave her a long, intense look. “I’ll do the agents when they come in, if you’d like. I can be here tomorrow morning, assuming they release the bodies that early.”

      He was talking about the manhunt, the men who’d died. She closed her eyes, feeling guilty over the stab of relief brought by the offer. “Have they announced the names?”

      “Not yet.”

      She nodded, knowing that even though she hadn’t been paying attention to the reports, the knowledge of the deaths, and the echoes it brought, had permeated her. “I’ll let you know.” Which was as close as she was going to get to confessing that she couldn’t handle how close the terrorists were hitting, and how much it bothered her that things seemed to be ramping up rather than settling down these days. It was hard not to wonder where it would all stop, and how many would die in the attack most of the task force members thought was imminent.

      Her mother and father were in rare agreement that she should give notice and get the hell out of Bear Claw Creek. Sara had seriously considered the option…for about thirty seconds before coming to the realization that she couldn’t do it. This was her home; she wasn’t giving up on it. And what was more, she wasn’t walking away from her job or her remaining staff members.

      This was her department, damn it. She might be going down, but she was going down fighting.

      After another long look, Stephen headed out. Telling herself she appreciated his concern, that it didn’t make her feel even lonelier than she had before, Sara completed the necessary paperwork on the cases she’d autopsied so far that day, then suited back up and returned to work.

      She processed three more routine cases over the remainder of the day and did her best to tune out the news bulletins when she passed through the break room, or got near Della’s desk, where the fiftysomething admin assistant had a police band radio turned low. Still, Sara couldn’t avoid knowing that the senior agents had called off the op, that the search dogs had followed two different trails ascribed to the terrorists, both of which had dead-ended in vehicle tracks heading for the main roads.

      It seemed that the op had been a quick scramble into the state forest, based on intel that several of al-Jihad’s people were holed up in a remote cabin, strategizing. Sara didn’t want to know but couldn’t help hearing that the two agents had lost their lives in pursuit of a small knot of men who appeared to have been carrying bodies, while a lone man had escaped in the opposite direction, and vanished into the wind. She didn’t want to know that the cabin had been stripped bare, and had burst into flames within minutes of the terrorists’ escape, torched by a hidden incendiary device.

      As usual, al-Jihad’s people had been well prepared. Sara wasn’t sure what the op had aimed to do, or what the terrorists had planned or accomplished in the forest, but she knew the names of the dead men now, whether she wanted to or not. Both FBI agents, they weren’t among her friends or acquaintances, but they’d had their own friends and families, their own loved ones who’d been cruelly left behind. More bereaved to add to the list that had grown over the past ten months.

      Sadness beat through Sara as she kept working, starting another case because it wasn’t as though she had any pressing reason to go home, Friday night or not.

      Della and Bradley clocked out around five-thirty and left arm in arm. Bradley had been mooning after Della—who was a good decade his senior and the mother of two grown children—for as long as he’d been working there. Sara smiled, her heart warming at seeing them so obviously together, though she found herself wondering how she’d missed that change in relationship status. Then she had to remind herself not to dwell on the fact that everyone around her seemed to be pairing up these days. Everyone but her.

      Biting back a sigh, she got back to work. By the time she called it a night, around 7:00 p.m., her shoulders, back and neck were burning from the strain. She would’ve killed for a massage, or at least an hour in a whirlpool, but she couldn’t bring herself to hit the gym this late on a Friday.

      There was a fine line between being single and being pathetic.

      Consoling herself with the thought of a long, hot bath, she collected her hybrid from the parking lot, which was located between the BCCPD’s main station house and the connected building that held the ME’s office.

      The twenty-minute drive home was an easy one, and the sight of the small stone-faced house eased something inside her, even in the darkness.

      She’d fallen in love with the place on her first drive through the city. The cottagelike house had been way out of her budget, but she’d taken an uncharacteristic leap and bought it on an adjustable mortgage, then switched over to a fixed loan as soon as she was able to afford the higher payments. These days she was managing the expenses, though there wasn’t much left over at the end of the month for extras or savings. She didn’t regret the purchase for a second, though. It was her home, plain and simple.

      The house was easily big enough for two people—hell, for a small family—but she’d resisted the option of taking on a roommate because she liked to keep her space the way she liked it, with none of the rapid changes she’d endured during childhood. The one person she’d shared her home with—albeit for only a few months—had fit into her world so seamlessly, despite their obvious differences, that she’d thought it would last. It hadn’t, of course. And the final words between them had been angry ones.

      “Stop it,” she told herself as she parked the hybrid near the house, then gathered her bag and coat to head for the kitchen door.

      She didn’t know why her ex was so much in her mind lately, but enough was enough. He wasn’t coming back, and they hadn’t been together for the year prior to the prison riot that had taken his life. His death had been tragic, but it didn’t magically erase his sins, didn’t erase his betrayal. Not by a long shot.

      Muttering under her breath, she fished in her bag for her keys, unlocked the door and let herself through. Two steps into the kitchen, with the door swinging shut at her back, she stopped dead as the smell of blood tickled her nostrils. It was a familiar odor, of course, but it wasn’t one that belonged in her house.

      She stayed frozen for a moment, adrenaline kicking her heart into overdrive.

      Logic said she should get out of the house, get somewhere safe and call for help. But something she couldn’t name—anger at the growing suspicion that an intruder had broken in, maybe, or a complete and utter lapse of her usual good judgment—had her flicking on the lights and moving farther into the house.

      She didn’t see anything out of place in her pretty kitchen, but the back of her neck prickled, warning her that someone had been there who shouldn’t have been. Holding her breath, she eased through the doorway connecting the kitchen to the living room. And froze in horror.

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