car as something he wore, the twenty-first-century equivalent of a knight’s armor.
She’d eat carefully. Got to keep that armor shiny.
Three more cars ahead of her. Lily propped her laptop against the steering wheel and was filling out an online form when her phone buzzed like an electric razor—the ring tone she used for calls forwarded from her official number.
Turned out to be Deacon calling. He’d heard from the DA, who wanted to change their meet to eight thirty at the jail so she could be present when Lily interviewed Meacham. Lily told him it was no problem, though her interview was getting pretty damned crowded. Meacham’s attorney from the public defender’s office would be there, too.
She supposed she ought to be glad Halo’s police chief wasn’t attending. Meacham had lived—and killed—outside the city limits, so the case belonged to the sheriff’s department.
Cities and states divvied up authority differently. Most FBI agents were attached to a local or regional office; they needed to know the chains of command for the various state, county, and city agencies in their areas. They didn’t have to know how things were done in all fifty states.
Lily did. As a special agent attached to the Unit, she could be sent anywhere in the nation. Her boss had assured her he would assign her cases as near San Diego as possible whenever he could, because where she went, Rule had to go, too. That was the downside of the mate bond. It was currently allowing them a couple hundred miles of separation, but it was a capricious son of a bitch. She could wake up tomorrow and find she had to remain within fifty miles of him, maybe. Or ten. Or one.
Admittedly, one mile was unlikely. Rule said the bond was that rigid only when it first formed. But neither of them knew the rules, dammit. No one seemed to know the rules, or even if there were any. They didn’t know when, why, or if the bond might suddenly constrict, so they generally stayed pretty close.
Rule shrugged it off. She didn’t understand that—he wasn’t exactly a laissez-faire kind of guy—but the mate bond’s variable proximity clause didn’t bug him the way it did her. “Why worry about it?” he’d said recently. “I don’t get upset when gravity keeps me from floating off whenever I feel like it.”
“But gravity’s a constant! It doesn’t suddenly drag me down twice as hard. I know what to expect with gravity.”
“Maybe the mate bond is constant, too, and it’s our experience of it that varies.”
Since it was her unpredictable experience of the bond that drove her crazy, that didn’t help much. At the moment, though, that aspect of the mate bond wasn’t giving her trouble. It was another variable that fretted at her.
Memory.
It’s normal to forget a name now and then, she assured herself as she accepted the sack and a lidded cup from the kid at the drive-up window. People forgot names all the time.
But to forget the name of the alleged perp? She’d never done that. “Meacham,” she muttered as she pulled out of the parking area. “Roy Don Meacham. Now quit being paranoid.”
She was downing coffee when her purse buzzed. She set her cup in the cup holder, dug her phone out of her purse, checked caller ID and the time, and flipped the phone open. “Hey, there. I didn’t expect to hear from you for another hour or two, given the time difference.”
Abel Karonski grunted. “Explain that to Ida. The woman doesn’t sleep herself, so she’s fuzzy on the concept.”
Ida Rheinhart was Ruben’s secretary and the terror of every agent in the Unit. Lily grinned and looked for a spot to pull over. “Cynna swears that Ida lairs up beneath her desk at night.”
“Lairs, yes. Sleeps, no. How else could she be at her desk calling me at five o’clock in the damned morning?”
“It’s seven here. Hang on a sec—I need to park this thing, or my eggs will get cold while I juggle the phone.”
“Eggs. You’ve got
She’d eat carefully. Got to keep that armor shiny.
Three more cars ahead of her. Lily propped her laptop against the steering wheel and was filling out an online form when her phone buzzed like an electric razor—the ring tone she used for calls forwarded from her official number.
Turned out to be Deacon calling. He’d heard from the DA, who wanted to change their meet to eight thirty at the jail so she could be present when Lily interviewed Meacham. Lily told him it was no problem, though her interview was getting pretty damned crowded. Meacham’s attorney from the public defender’s office would be there, too.
She supposed she ought to be glad Halo’s police chief wasn’t attending. Meacham had lived—and killed—outside the city limits, so the case belonged to the sheriff’s department.
Cities and states divvied up authority differently. Most FBI agents were attached to a local or regional office; they needed to know the chains of command for the various state, county, and city agencies in their areas. They didn’t have to know how things were done in all fifty states.
Lily did. As a special agent attached to the Unit, she could be sent anywhere in the nation. Her boss had assured her he would assign her cases as near San Diego as possible whenever he could, because where she went, Rule had to go, too. That was the downside of the mate bond. It was currently allowing them a couple hundred miles of separation, but it was a capricious son of a bitch. She could wake up tomorrow and find she had to remain within fifty miles of him, maybe. Or ten. Or one.
Admittedly, one mile was unlikely. Rule said the bond was that rigid only when it first formed. But neither of them knew the rules, dammit. No one seemed to know the rules, or even if there were any. They didn’t know when, why, or if the bond might suddenly constrict, so they generally stayed pretty close.
Rule shrugged it off. She didn’t understand that—he wasn’t exactly a laissez-faire kind of guy—but the mate bond’s variable proximity clause didn’t bug him the way it did her. “Why worry about it?” he’d said recently. “I don’t get upset when gravity keeps me from floating off whenever I feel like it.”
“But gravity’s a constant! It doesn’t suddenly drag me down twice as hard. I know what to expect with gravity.”
“Maybe the mate bond is constant, too, and it’s our experience of it that varies.”
Since it was her unpredictable experience of the bond that drove her crazy, that didn’t help much. At the moment, though, that aspect of the mate bond wasn’t giving her trouble. It was another variable that fretted at her.
Memory.
It’s normal to forget a name now and then, she assured herself as she accepted the sack and a lidded cup from the kid at the drive-up window. People forgot names all the time.
But to forget the name of the alleged perp? She’d never done that. “Meacham,” she muttered as she pulled out of the parking area. “Roy Don Meacham. Now quit being paranoid.”
She was downing coffee when her purse buzzed. She set her cup in the cup holder, dug her phone out of her purse, checked caller ID and the time, and flipped the phone open. “Hey, there. I didn’t expect to hear from you for another hour or two, given the time difference.”
Abel Karonski grunted. “Explain that to Ida. The woman doesn’t sleep herself, so she’s fuzzy on the concept.”
Ida Rheinhart was Ruben’s secretary and the terror of every agent in the Unit. Lily grinned and looked for a spot to pull over. “Cynna swears that Ida lairs up beneath her desk at night.”
“Lairs, yes. Sleeps, no. How else could she be at her desk calling me at five o’clock in the damned morning?”
“It’s seven here. Hang on a sec—I need to park this thing, or my eggs will get cold while I juggle the phone.”
“Eggs. You’ve got
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