Неизвестный - 5. Justice Served

“It’s not about Frye.” Mitchell allowed herself to lean against Sandy while she caught her breath and swiped futilely at the sweat now beaded on her entire face. “I’m just not used to these crutches.”

“Yeah. And it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that you just got operated on yesterday morning and lost a couple of buckets of blood before that, either.” Sandy snorted in disgust. “Jesus, cops are such a pain in the ass.”

“Are you going to bitch at me the whole time I’m laid up?” Mitchell feigned distress, but she was grinning. She leaned back against the wall,

• 12 •

Justice Served

angling her body to take the weight off her leg while making room for Sandy to snuggle up against her.

“I don’t know,” Sandy replied, wrapping her arms around Mitchell’s waist before kissing her neck. They’d been lovers for less than a week, and Sandy couldn’t look at her without getting wet. “It depends on how long it takes you to get better. If it takes too long, I could get very cranky.”

“You think I won’t be able to take care of business?” Mitchell dipped her head, brought her mouth to Sandy’s, and ran her tongue lightly over the surface of Sandy’s bottom lip. Sandy moaned softly, and Mitchell’s heart rate skyrocketed. Oh man, now I will fall down.

With the heat of Sandy’s body warming her all the way through, she didn’t care a bit if they ended up in a heap on the ß oor. As she ß icked the tip of her tongue over the inside of Sandy’s lip, she snaked a hand beneath the back of Sandy’s tank top. She could practically span the entire width of her girlfriend’s small waist with one hand. “God, you feel good,” she muttered.

“I don’t think this activity is on the prescribed list of treatments for stab wounds,” a voice on the verge of laughter announced from behind them.

Mitchell, sliding her arm protectively around Sandy’s shoulders, jerked her head up. Her gaze met the laughing brown eyes of her surgeon, Ali Torveau. Mitchell blushed.

“Uh…morning.”

“Good,” Sandy grumbled, lifting her chin in Dr. Torveau’s direction. “Maybe Dell will listen to you.” Carefully, she disentangled herself from her girlfriend and moved away. “She won’t admit she’s about to keel over.”

“Sandy,” Mitchell complained with a sigh.

“It’s true, Dell.”

Torveau leaned against the wall in the stairwell and folded her arms across her chest, her eyes narrowing as she watched Mitchell maneuver down to the landing. “How do you feel?”

When Mitchell hesitated, Ali added, “And don’t try to snow me.”

“Uh…”

“That bad, huh?” Ali pushed away from the wall and eased over to Mitchell. Casually, she slipped her hand under Mitchell’s elbow.

“Come on. Let’s go back to your room and have a look.”

• 13 •

RADCLY fFE

Once Mitchell was back in bed, Ali collected disposable gloves and dressings from a cart in the hallway and prepared to change the dressing on Mitchell’s left thigh. She glanced sideways at Sandy, who was standing by the head of the bed, her hand on the police ofÞ cer’s shoulder. “You okay with this?”

“I’ve probably seen worse.”

Ali merely nodded. There was something in the young woman’s eyes that spoke of hard truth. A minute later, she had the bandage open and perused the row of sutures that extended for ten inches from the top of Mitchell’s midthigh down the inner surface. Carefully, she probed along both sides of the incision, then straightened. “The wound’s nice and clean. Let’s see how the artery is doing.” When she Þ nished palpating the pulses in Mitchell’s foot, she nodded with evident satisfaction. “Everything is in working order.”

“See. I knew that.” Mitchell’s voice was breathy with relief.

Sandy snorted again.

“However, your blood count this morning was lousy. If you were any older, I’d transfuse you. But I’d rather not unless it becomes a problem.” As she spoke, the surgeon rewrapped Mitchell’s thigh. “You feel crappy because you’re weak, and you’re not used to that.”

“When will I feel better?” Unconsciously, Mitchell had reached out for Sandy’s hand, and now she entwined her Þ ngers with Sandy’s much smaller ones. The strength in Sandy’s grasp was comforting, and she held on tightly.

“It will probably take several months for your counts to come back up to normal, but you should start feeling better day by day.” Ali smiled. “It just takes a little patience.”

“Oh yeah, she’s got lots of that.” Although her tone was laced with sarcasm, Sandy regarded Mitchell tenderly.

“It seems to be an occupational trait,” Ali replied. “If you’ve got someplace to stay where you won’t have to do too much walking, you can go today.”

“Okay! Yeah, we can make that work.” Mitchell looked to her girlfriend for conÞ rmation. “Right, San?”

Sandy sighed. “Yeah, yeah, rookie. If that’s what you want.”

The truth was, Sandy wanted Mitchell out of the hospital every bit as much as Mitchell wanted to go. The place scared her under the best

• 14 •

Justice Served

of circumstances, and seeing her normally strong and capable lover weak and in pain was scaring her even more.

Softly, she stroked Mitchell’s cheek. “We’ll Þ gure something out, baby.”

v

Dr. Catherine Rawlings pushed a stack of Þ le folders aside and reached for her phone. “Yes, Joyce?”

“Rebecca’s here,” her secretary announced, adding without needing to be asked, “and you’ve got thirty minutes before your Þ rst appointment.”

“Thanks. Tell her to come in.”

Catherine waited behind her desk for the simple pleasure of watching her lover cross the room. They had met in this room not quite half a year before, when Detective Sgt. Rebecca Frye had been in the midst of a harrowing serial-murder investigation. They had begun their joint involvement in the case as polite adversaries and ended as passionate lovers. As if the whirlwind onslaught of unexpected love had not been enough, Rebecca had nearly died from a gunshot wound, and both she and Catherine were still recovering, physically and emotionally. Even had she not nearly lost Rebecca, Catherine doubted that the pleasure of seeing her for the Þ rst time after they’d been apart would have been any less. Rebecca, more than any woman she had ever known, moved her in the deepest reaches of her being. She smiled as the door opened and her tall blond lover, slender in her trademark tailored dark suit and coolly beautiful, entered her ofÞ ce.

“Hey,” Rebecca said as she walked around the side of Catherine’s desk and leaned down to kiss her. “Got a few minutes?”

“Mmm. On your way to see Dellon?” Catherine replied.

“That too.” With an uncharacteristically self-conscious expression, Rebecca suddenly stepped back and slid her hands into the pockets of her trousers. “But I wanted to talk to you Þ rst. I…have some news.”

“Oh?” Regarding her with concern, Catherine rose, walked around her desk, and slid an arm around her lover’s waist. “Did something happen at your ungodly-early morning brieÞ ng with Captain Henry?”

“A lot,” Rebecca conceded. “We worked out a compromise to keep the team together so that we can Þ nish hunting down the leak in

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RADCLY fFE

the department and have a shot at breaking this prostitution network, or whatever the hell it is, wide open at the same time.”

“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” Catherine kept her voice neutral, a practice that was second nature to her from her many years of practicing psychiatry. She was still adjusting to the fact that her lover’s profession carried with it the daily risk of injury or even death.