LITMIR.BIZ

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the other girls for a change. The ones who were tall and pretty and knew how to flirt with boys, well enough to have gotten a date to the prom. Nothing scared high school boys away faster than a “brainiac,” apparently.

      So she’d reminded him. But was it a good thing that he remembered her, or bad?

      She tore her mind from those days long ago and refocused on her sister. Sarah planned on making a slight detour by Beth’s house, to make sure all was quiet.

      “What’s Joel doing now?”

      Nick’s question startled her. “Married with twin daughters, for starters. He teaches middle school in Denver.”

      “Sounds fun. And where’s your sister?” he asked as they reached the cruiser and went to their respective doors.

      At home, she hoped. Safe and sound. “She’s here in town.” What was Beth thinking, giving out her name and address the day after someone assaulted her? Didn’t she realize how fortunate it was that a group of students had happened by exactly when they did? Sarah got into the car and turned the key.

      “Unlock my door,” Nick called as he knocked on the passenger’s window.

      She hit the button, then offered a quick apology when he slid inside. “Well, that was a fun way to start the night, wasn’t it?”

      “Yeah,” he said. “That ought to keep our blood pumping for a few hours, anyway.” He asked a few more questions about Joel, but after that, it wasn’t long before he became the strong silent type once again.

      She wanted to keep him talking, but this being their first night of a four-week assignment, she decided to let him make conversation when he was comfortable doing so. She’d pushed enough for now.

      Nick had a rough road ahead, regaining his footing in the department after the charges that had been made against him. She could sympathize. While her reasons for leaving the FBI were nowhere as difficult to handle emotionally as what he had been through, she still couldn’t have walked back into the same team and pretended nothing had happened. In fact, she felt guilty leaving because they wouldn’t let her work undercover assignments. In time, she was sure she’d have the chance to commiserate with him. For now, they needed to let the wounds heal.

      Throughout the evening, they had little more than traffic stops to keep them awake. Finally, with an hour left in their shift, they returned to the station to complete their reports.

      Nick barely said a word as he worked at the desk across from hers. She looked up once to find him staring at her.

      “How’s it going?” he said immediately.

      He looked like the cat that had swallowed the canary. Sarah had the distinct feeling it wasn’t reports that were on his mind. “Okay, I suppose. I’m not sure how to explain the cuts on Turrow’s face.”

      “Self-defense. He was trying to escape.”

      She put her head in her hand. “There were four other officers between him and freedom. Would he really have run?”

      “You bet. He was ready to take each officer out, and dumb enough to think he could get away with it.” Nick walked around the desks and looked at what she’d written. “It happened faster than that. I barely took two steps before you’d taken him down. It was a natural reaction to a violent prisoner resisting arrest. Erase that sentence about your reasoning through it.”

      “But I did reason through it.”

      “You have ten years experience, Sarah.” He said her name with an edge of discomfort. “It’s instinct to defend yourself and the other officers. You’re trained to react to the opposition. Don’t doubt yourself. That can’t be any different on the streets than it was in the Bureau. There were enough officers around to verify that he’d elbowed you twice.”

      “You saw that?” Why had he been watching her, and not paying more attention to his own prisoner?

      “You are my trainee. It’s my responsibility to keep my eye on you,” he said with a straight face.

      So much for her high school dreams of a hometown boy finally noticing her, she thought. Sarah highlighted the sentence and hit the delete button, wishing it were as easy to erase her own mistakes.

      FIVE

      Nick reflected on his first night back on the job as he drove up the canyon west of town in the Colorado foothills. Officer Roberts wasn’t far from his mind. It was difficult enough that his trainee was a former federal agent, but that it was brainiac Sarah Roberts made the assignment pure agony. Even though he knew it could be worse—he could be training a young rookie fresh out of the academy—he now regretted the day he’d accepted a field training officer assignment. That seemed a lifetime ago….

      Before fellow officers had accused him of selling evidence to their drug ring.

      Before his fiancée had walked off, worried that the scandal would ruin her journalism career.

      Before his honor had been assaulted from every direction.

      “I’m not sure how much more You think I can handle, God, but it might be time we have another discussion. Bringing an FBI agent to the department is one thing, but making my former high school crush my trainee is a really low blow.”

      As Nick pulled into the gravel driveway of the custom-built log home, his black Labrador greeted him from behind the six-foot chain link fence. She ambled toward the gate, her tail wagging and cheeks lifted in a smile. “Morning, Lexee.”

      She yipped a greeting, stretching her lanky body.

      “You ready to go inside?” Though the dog had a door of her own into the garage, he opened the gate and brought her in through the main entrance with him.

      The dog ran across the room, fetched a stuffed animal and attacked him with her toy. He couldn’t help but smile. “You don’t care what kind of night I had, do you?” he said as he tossed the toy down the hall for their early morning ritual. He filled a glass with orange juice and sat on the sofa to catch up with the news and baseball scores on his digital television recorder. The dog toy dropped at his feet and Lexee smiled at him again, eagerly awaiting the next toss. “You don’t want to hear me complain about my cute new partner, do you?”

      Lexee cocked her head to one side, as if to say, “Of course I do.” Then she flung the toy at him and crouched, ready for him to throw it again.

      The phone rang, and Nick jumped. He figured it had to be one of his brothers calling to see how his first night back on patrol went. He checked the I.D. display to be sure it wasn’t someone else calling at three in the morning.

      “Hey, Garrett, what’s up?”

      “That’s what I was going to ask you,” his younger brother said. “I’m taking a break while it’s quiet. Sounds like you had a fun evening. It’s deader than a doornail now. Man, I’d have loved to have been in your boots!”

      Nick smiled, thankful that he could share the peculiar sense of humor of the law enforcement officer with his family. What was bad to most people was great to a cop. “Yeah, it was a good evening. I suppose you also know that I finally made it as a field training officer,” he said, waiting to see if his brother had heard that, too.

      “Did you get the FBI agent?”

      “Ten-four,” he said with a chuckle. “What’s worse, she went to high school here. I played basketball with her twin brother. We used to call her the brainiac. I guess I’m not done being investigated, after all.”

      “Get over that already, Nick. If they didn’t trust you they would have come up with some reason to can you. I hear she whipped the bank robber. What’s her name again?” his brother asked.

      “Sarah Roberts. And yes, she has some pretty amazing defensive moves. She’s the shortest trainee with long dark hair…”

      “Yeah,”

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