Rapid Fire by Jessica Andersen

then sent Thorne to protect her. There was a certain irony to
that. Maya figured she might even find it amusing in a few months, once the
Mastermind was caught, IA cleared her to return to the force and Thorne went
back to wherever he’d come from.
     
    In other
words, once life was back to normal.
     
    Thorne
prowled the first floor, from the kitchen to the sitting area and the bath,
then up the stairs to her master bedroom, office and spare room. She tried to
remember whether she’d made the bed that morning, then told herself it didn’t
matter worth a damn. She wasn’t trying to impress anyone.
     
    “All
clear,” he reported minutes later as he descended the stairs, reholstering his
weapon as he walked.
     
    “You
should get back to the meeting, then.” She held the door open in invitation,
but he stood his ground, measuring her with his mismatched eyes.
     
    “I’d like
to get your input on this,” he said finally. “Your notes tell me that you’ve
got insight into this guy, and what happened today proves that he’s set his
sights on you.”
     
    She
frowned, immediately on the defensive. “Why the turnaround? Not twenty minutes
ago, the chief ordered me to stay the hell away from the case. Now you’re
inviting me back on? It doesn’t wash.”
     
    Besides,
as much as she wanted to be back in, as much as she longed for the teamwork and
the sense of belonging, she didn’t want to work with Thorne.
     
    That
would be a bad idea. A really, really bad idea.
     
    “I’m not
asking you to be a formal member of the team, or even a civilian consultant,”
Thorne said slowly, as though he was testing out the concept for himself.
“However, I’d like to be kept in the loop if you’re going off on your own, and
I’d like the opportunity to run things by you when I have a question.”
     
    But he
wouldn’t meet her eyes, and his tense shoulders and jaw screamed of reluctance.
He didn’t want to work with her. Ergo, he’d been ordered to extend the offer,
and it didn’t take a genius to figure who or why.
     
    Chief
Parry wanted someone to babysit her.
     
    Thorne was
under orders to keep her away from the Henkes case. She’d bet on it.
     
    Maya
crossed her arms tighter, wishing she could tell Thorne to go to hell. But
common sense wouldn’t let her. In reality, this might be her only chance to get
back into the game, and she might even be able to convince him to listen to her
theories.
     
    Whatever
she and Thorne had—or hadn’t—shared, he was an outsider in Bear Claw, just like
her. They weren’t bound by Henkes’s politics or popularity. Maybe, just maybe
she could get him on her side.
     
    She
didn’t want to work with him, didn’t want to be near him and feel the shameful
memories or the burn of an attraction she’d thought had died years ago. Didn’t
want to risk the temptation, or the possibility of sliding back into old,
destructive patterns. But at the same time, she’d be damned if she let the
Mastermind take more innocent lives, damned if she let him drop another cloak
of fear across Bear Claw City.
     
    Was her
own comfort level more important than the innocents she was sworn to protect?
     
    Of course
not.
     
    “Okay.”
Maya uncrossed her arms and hooked her thumbs over her green lizard belt. “But
on one condition.”
     
    Thorne
regarded her, eyes unreadable. “Which is?”
     
    “You give
me the opportunity to present my case against Wexton Henkes. You have to
listen, really listen without any of the preconceived notions the chief and the
other locals bring to the table.”
     
    “And if I
don’t buy into your theory?”
     
    Maya felt
a spurt of relief, of victory laced with the knowledge that she was riding the
fine edge between success and disaster. “We’ll cope with that if and when it
happens. Do we have a deal?”
     
    She held
out her hand to shake on it, only then realizing the foolishness of the move.
But before she could pull back, he said, “Yes, we’ve