Linda Poitevin - Sins of the Lost

“He said as he lazed on the couch,” she retorted, walking between him and the newscast he’d been watching, headed for the counter. She indicated the television with a lift of her chin. “More good news?”

Joly thumbed the remote control, and the screen went blank. Linking fingers behind his head, he leaned back. “Earthquakes in the Middle East, a massive hurricane that hit more Caribbean countries than I knew existed, flooding in Australia, and a volcanic eruption off the coast of Japan. Oh, and pregnant women lining up by the thousands to demand DNA tests for this virus they still can’t identify. Shall I continue?”

There was more?

“I’m good, thanks,” she told Joly.

“I know this stuff happens all the time, but I swear it’s getting worse,” he muttered. “It’s like somebody hit the self-destruct button on the bloody planet. So I heard Roberts called you in on our thing this morning. What did you think?”

“I thought it looked like someone got killed.”

“You know what I mean.”

She did, but she wasn’t going to answer. Not after that speech from Roberts. She took down a mug from the cupboard and reached for the coffeepot. Joly heaved himself off the couch with a grunt. Joining her at the counter, he held out his own cup, and she poured for them both. Her colleague leaned back against the counter, one ankle crossed over the other, and stared down into his coffee while she stirred cream and sugar into hers. The silence moved beyond a lapse in conversation to being obviously deliberate.

She dropped the spoon into the sink with a clatter. “If you’re waiting for me to—”

“It’s not about the case.”

“What, then?” she asked, settling against the counter beside him.

“Nothing, really.” Joly shrugged. He slurped at the coffee from under his handlebar mustache. “It’s just . . . Vancouver. What the hell happened out there, Jarvis?”

“You’ve read the report.”

“I have,” he agreed. “I’ve also got a cousin who’s married to one of their emergency response members.”

Hell. Sometimes the thin blue line was a little too thick for comfort.

“He won’t talk about what he saw that night—”

Good.

“—but that Sunday he got up and went to church.”

Alex flashed him a look and found him studying the floor at his feet.

“Garth is—was—the staunchest atheist I’ve ever met in my life,” he said. “Our discussions on the issue of faith rarely end well, at least according to my wife, and now he’s going to church and taking his kids to Sunday school. My cousin is freaked. So I repeat: what the hell happened out there?”

She wondered how he would react if she told him. Just blurted out the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the—

“Your career is hanging by a thread,” Roberts’s voice echoed in her memory.

She scowled at her coffee. Hell, who was she kidding? Even without Robert’s warning, she’d become so adept at keeping secrets at this point that she wasn’t sure she knew how to let them go.

Bastion poked his head into the room. “Meeting’s in two minutes,” he said, then gave Alex a nod. “Good to have you back, Jarvis.”

Alex detached herself from the counter.

“You haven’t answered me,” Joly said.

She turned when she reached the door. “You know what happened, Joly? Shit happened. A lot of it.”

Joly’s mustache twitched. “What kind of answer is that?”

“The only one you’re getting.”

Alex took a place against the wall in the conference room, returning various greetings. She’d wondered how it might be, coming back after all that had gone down, but apart from Joly’s questions . . .

She watched the subject of her thoughts take a seat beside his partner at the table. Abrams leaned in to ask Joly something, Joly responded, and both men looked across the room at her. She lifted a brow, and they turned away. Right. So Joly wasn’t the only one with questions.

Roberts came into the room and dropped a stack of files on the conference room table. The resounding thud silenced conversation.

“All right, people, listen up. Those of you who have been following the news will know that this pregnancy virus has the nut-jobs crawling out of the woodwork. Attacks on women have more than doubled across the country. The demand for DNA testing—and abortions—has gone beyond the capacity to provide those services. Ob-gyns are canceling appointments and refusing to handle anything but straight-up deliveries. Every emergency ward, medical lab, and private clinic in the city has hired security guards, and we are fielding dozens of calls a day to those locations. This means we are stretched seriously thin.”

Roberts pushed back his suit jacket to rest hands on hips. “As of today, all leave is canceled until further notice. You’ll have your regular time off but nothing more. If you’re looking for overtime, see me after the meeting. You can have as much as you want. If you’re not looking for overtime, you’re about to get more than you bargained for. From this moment forward, you will do the bulk of your paperwork in your cars. You will have your radios on at all times, and if you hear a call for backup in your vicinity, you will respond forthwith. I do not want to see you in this office unless you’re picking something up or dropping it off. Are we clear?”

Heads around the room nodded.

“Good. Now these”—Roberts slapped his hand on the files—“are the sixty-seven files we currently have open. I want them updated before you go home tonight. All of them. If there is nothing new to add and the case has nothing to do with the current state of affairs in our city, put a note on it to that effect and pass it to Detective Jarvis—”

Alex abandoned her study of the wall behind her supervisor. “Me? But—”

“—who will be on desk duty until we find her a partner,” Roberts finished. “Class dismissed. Jarvis, stay.”

The others cleared the room, Joly taking the stack of files with him for distribution except for one their supervisor had set aside. The door closed. Roberts settled into a chair. With a nod, he indicated another, but Alex paced the edge of the room instead, coming to a halt in the far corner.

“Seriously, Staff? Desk duty?”

“My hands are tied where policy is concerned, Detective, especially when my decision to allow you to return at all is under scrutiny.”

“I thought you’d taken care of that.”

“So did I. Bell went to the chief, the little—” Roberts broke off and scrubbed a hand over his short-cropped hair. He sighed. “It’s not ideal, and it’s certainly not my preference, but it’s how it has to be for now. And frankly, it might not be a bad thing to have your eyes on all the files right now.”

He slid the file he’d held back from the pile toward her. “That came in from Alberta’s RCMP this morning.”

Alex stared at it, then stepped out of the corner and walked back to join him. She flipped open the folder and scanned the single page inside. “Militia? In Canada? Seriously?”

“End of the world nutcases,” he corrected. “They’re claiming the pregnancies and the recent rash of natural disasters are a sign of God’s wrath. They’ve barricaded themselves into a compound outside Morinville, north of Edmonton. The news crews are going insane.”

She could just imagine.

“We’ve had three similar reports out of the States,” Roberts added. “Tech crime units across the continent are monitoring dozens of other groups that look to be moving in the same direction. I want you reviewing every file that comes through this office for the same reason.”

Threading her fingers through her hair, Alex stared at the file. She understood the need for consistency, but to be cooped up in the office with all hell breaking loose in the world? She couldn’t do it.