LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER ONE

      SOME days you just weren’t meant to get out of bed. For Sebastian Walker today was one of those days. His first day on call as a police negotiator in a new city, a new state, and he’d hit the ground running. He was supposed to be spending the day putting his riverside apartment to rights. But his pager hadn’t co-operated.

      Thank God it wasn’t a full-time gig.

      He navigated past the multitude of half-opened boxes that sat strewn all over his floors and seemed to be multiplying in every room. After a year in far-flung foreign hotspots he craved the familiarity of his things but today obviously wasn’t going to be the day to get reacquainted.

      He swallowed the last of his toast as he knotted his gun-metal grey tie. His pager bleeped again as he shut his front door on the mess.

       I’m coming. I’m coming.

      ‘What have we got?’ Sebastian asked fifteen minutes later, after approaching the hive of police activity and flashing his credentials to the officer in charge.

      ‘Jumper. With a gun. Her name’s Noelene. She won’t say anything else. Refuses to talk to us. Says she’ll only talk to Callie Duncan.’

      Sebastian heard the cluster of groans around him as he strapped on the bulletproof vest he was handed. ‘Who’s Callie Duncan?’

      A pain-in-the-butt community mental health worker.’

      Sebastian nodded. ‘Okay. Let’s get her in here while I have a little chat with Noelene.’

      ‘Callie, call for you on line one.’

      Geraldine Russell, head social worker and director of the Jambalyn Community Centre held out the receiver and placed it in the crook of Callie’s shoulder as she watched her colleague juggle a stack of charts in one hand and her pager in the other.

      Callie shrugged her shoulder high so the phone fitted snugly against her ear. ‘Yo’, she said.

      Gerri watched her friend nod a couple of times and then say, ‘I’ll be there in fifteen.’

      Callie dropped her shoulder and Gerri hung up the phone. She raised an elegantly groomed eyebrow. ‘Be where in fifteen?’

      ‘Grey St Bridge. They think Noelene Sykes is going to jump. She’s asking for me,’ she said casually as she dumped the charts on her overflowing desk, knowing Gerri was going to go ballistic.

      ‘Oh, no.’ Gerri’s impressive bosom shook with the vigorous shake of her head.

      Callie grinned. Gerri was a large Aboriginal woman whose statuesque presence carried an undeniable authority. Not many people crossed her and only the exceedingly foolish couldn’t see beyond the dramatic tribal-print flowing caftans she wore to the savvy, street-wise operator beneath.

      ‘It’s Noelene, Gerri. Noelene. As if Noelene’s going to jump off a bridge. There’s obviously been some mis-communication. She’s asking for me.’

      ‘No. Not that bridge. Not today.’

      Callie smiled at her friend and colleague of ten years, knowing she was just trying to protect her. ‘Yes.’

      ‘I’ll go. I’ll do it.’

      Callie shook her head. ‘She wants me.’

      ‘No’.

      Callie picked up her keys. ‘I’ll be fine.’

      ‘Callie Duncan, you walk out of those doors and I’m firing you.’

      Callie grinned over her shoulder. ‘Ha! Promises, promises.’ They both knew they were chronically understaffed and they needed all the good people they could get.

      And Callie Duncan was very, very good at her job.

      Callie snorted and placed her hands on her hips, staring down the insistent male whose name she’d already forgotten in her haste to get to Noelene. She didn’t care if he was a cop or, for that matter, so damn sexy he could have been in the movies.

      He was in her way—that was all that

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