Ann Peterson - Special Assignment

He shook his head. “She doesn’t need me.”

“Okay, maybe she doesn’t need you. But you can’t argue with the fact that right now, you need this case.”

The macho cop inside him wanted to say he didn’t need this case or any other. That he didn’t need anything…or anybody. But Mike knew that was a lie. He’d been struggling since he’d informed Internal Affairs about the Dirty Three. Struggling with guilt, with his damn conscience, with the fantasy of drinking his problems away. Last night proved that. The only thing that had kept him together was the job. And now that he didn’t have that, he didn’t have anything.

He looked past Evangeline and focused on Cassie. He’d been attracted to her curly auburn hair and sassy little body since he’d first laid eyes on her. But it was more than that. The whole act of talking to her, using his hands to form letters, watching her convey her thoughts with gestures and expressions…being around her took him back in time. Before the horrible mistake he’d made that summer day when he was seventeen. Before the guilt and self-loathing. She made him feel that he had a chance to rewrite the past.

And how could he pass up an opportunity like that?

“Who’s that?”

Cassie watched Angel’s black-lipsticked lips form the words between chews on her ever-present wad of gum. It was amazing the gum didn’t get caught on the silver ball piercing her tongue.

Cassie shrugged and brought her attention back to the copy machine Angel had managed to break for the third time this month. She had an important case to attend to, protocols to decipher, algorithms to test. She didn’t have time for fixing machines and speculating about the face on the reception area’s security monitor. Knowing Angel, she could be talking about the UPS man and had just forgotten what he looked like since the delivery he’d made the day before.

“I’d sure like to meet him. He’s hot.”

Not the UPS man. He was cute, but at five-foot-nothing and prematurely balding, Cassie doubted Angel would call him hot. Of course, if he traded in his brown shorts for black and threw in multiple piercings, who knew?

Angel grabbed Cassie’s arm, long black talons poking through her cotton sweater. “You got to look, Cass. Tell me what you think.”

Cassie sighed. There was no use ignoring Angel at times. The PPS receptionist was a force. A force that broke copy machines and had apparently decided Cassie was her buddy. Probably because Cassie didn’t talk back.

Abandoning the copier, Cassie stuck her head around the cubicle wall separating the copy/fax area from the rest of reception.

Mike Lawson peered from the security monitor. Purple bruises covered his jaw and crept up one cheek. One eye was ringed in black and purple like a cartoon cliché. And other than the purple and black and angry red scrapes, he was pale as the snowcaps on the mountains. He looked like the undead. No wonder Angel found him hot.

Not that Cassie did or anything.

She tried to ignore the warm tremor that danced in her stomach seemingly every time she saw the tall, dark and serious cop. There was only one explanation for his presence at PPS this morning. He must have decided to take Evangeline up on her job offer.

Great.

Evangeline wouldn’t be this concerned about a hearing technician deciphering a disk. William Leonard, or Lenny as everyone called him, the senior technician at PPS had worked on countless intricate cases and never once had Evangeline insisted he have a babysitter.

A flush of anger heated her cheeks. Would she never be allowed to show what she was capable of doing? Would well-meaning people always insist on coddling the deaf girl?

She glanced at Angel. She didn’t know what the receptionist was waiting for, but she hadn’t taken a step out of the copy area. She set the toner cartridge she was holding on a nearby countertop and turned to Angel, making her signs so simple and clear that even Angel could understand. Why don’t you greet him?

Angel shook her head hard, her black, spiked do so stiff with spray not a single hair moved. “Me?”

Angel picked the damnedest times to start being shy. It’s your job. You’re the receptionist.

“Oh, yeah, you’re right.” Angel ducked out of the printing and fax area and scampered to her desk.

As soon as Angel left, Cassie made her way down a short hall to the glassed-in area that protected the servers and most of the tech equipment at PPS from the dust and hustle of the offices and cubicles where the agents worked. She slipped behind a bank of servers.

She wasn’t ready to face Mike Lawson. Just one glimpse of him in the reception desk monitor made her feel as jittery as a teenage girl. Not the feeling she was after. This was the first case she’d worked on solo, the first time Evangeline had trusted her with something really big. She needed to prove she could do as good a job as any hearing person. A better job. And being around Mike Lawson, having him babysit her, didn’t make her feel exactly capable.

A gentle hand tapped her shoulder.

She whirled around to face Lenny, her brilliant coworker who all but ran the technology department. His fire-red hair stuck out in several spots, as if he’d slept at his desk last night instead of going home. Again. No one was as dedicated as Lenny.

“Who are you hiding from?” Lenny’s lips formed the words.

My bodyguard, she signed.

He gave her an odd look. Lenny might be brilliant, but he wasn’t as well versed in relating to humans as he was relating to computers. He probably thought she really was hiding from her bodyguard.

Well, wasn’t she?

She stepped out from behind the servers. Just kidding, she signed.

Lenny nodded as if he still didn’t understand. “It’s cool you have a bodyguard. I mean you work to protect other people’s bodies, it’s about time someone protects yours, right? You’re lucky.” He shrugged a skinny shoulder.

Lucky? Her fingers raced. I don’t want to be lucky. I want to be respected.

The grin fell from Lenny’s freckled face and he stared at her blankly.

She took a deep breath. Whenever she got upset, she signed too fast for anyone at PPS to keep up. Even poor Lenny the genius couldn’t keep track of her flying fingers. But she hated speaking out loud. Just the thought that other people could hear her voice and she couldn’t made her feel uncomfortably out of control.

She let out a sigh. Never mind. I’m just blowing off steam.

Lenny offered her an awkward smile, as if he still didn’t understand her but didn’t want to be rude enough to say so, and shuffled back to his workstation.

Cassie watched him go, guilt clamping down on her shoulders. Of course Lenny would think having a bodyguard was cool. He was working on sensitive projects, too, yet he had no bodyguard. Further evidence Evangeline was going out of her way to take care of the deaf girl.

The change in air flow alerted her to the open door. She glanced over to find herself face-to-face with Mike Lawson.

Angel was right. Even with the battered face and swollen eye, he was hot. A fact that only made this moment all the more awkward.

Don’t look so excited, he signed.

She gave him a frown.

Which way to the large conference room?

The briefing. Of course. She’d been so shaken about Mike Lawson’s appearance, she’d all but forgotten the case. Her first big case. Her chance to prove what she could do.

She marched to the conference room, feeling Mike’s presence behind her even though she couldn’t hear his footfalls on the terra-cotta tile. She pushed through the conference room’s double doors. The large conference table stretched in front of them, empty chairs ringing its circumference.