Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
At the Police Academy, I discovered I was lousy at the parts of policing that required gentle, tactful diplomacy and other people skills I’d missed out on learning. But I excelled at unarmed combat, and my obsessive brain meant I’d follow up every last lead until I finally made progress. I eventually made detective and threw myself into my work, even picking up a few commendations.
But what nobody saw was that I was achingly lonely. Those walls I’d built around myself in the group home left me unable to trust, unable to make friends, and I didn’t know how to dismantle them. I became known for always being the last one still working. Partly, it was my obsessive brain: I couldn’t quit until I’d caught my target. But partly, I was burying myself in my work because I didn’t want to come home to an empty apartment.
Then my success caught the attention of Carrie Blake, head of the FBI New York office, and she encouraged me to join. For the first time, I felt like I’d found a home. An agent named Sam Calahan took me under his wing, and for years, I worked with him, Kate, and Hailey. They accepted my weirdness and became my friends.
But one by one, they all found love and moved on. First, Kate met Mason and moved to Alaska. Then, even perpetual bachelor Calahan fell in love with the mathematician and hacker, Yolanda. I could feel my new found family disintegrating, and I was terrified of being the last one left. So when a position opened up at the Chicago office, I transferred. And now here I was: burying myself in my work because it was all I knew how to do. I’d found a friend in Caroline, but her kids meant she didn’t exactly have time to go for after-work cocktails.
And it wasn’t like I was going to meet a guy. Even before the fire, I wasn’t much to look at. I don’t have the curves men love: hell, I’ve barely got anything up top. If a man is interested in me, he gets scared off as soon as he finds out I’m an FBI agent, let alone when he learns that I can kick his ass in a fight. And if by some miracle we do get to a second date, I have to gently tell him about my leg. Do you know what it’s like to dig up the courage to reveal something like that to someone you really like...and then have him stop calling you? After it happened three times in a row, I just stopped dating.
Plus, there was my obsessive nature. Sure, if I did have friends and romance, I’d cut back on work a little. But I’m always going to be pushing myself and working late, and no halfway normal guy is going to be okay with that. Sometimes, I think the only man I could be with is someone who understands. Another workaholic, someone as obsessive as I am. And where the hell am I going to find someone like that?
7
GENNADIY
July
I pushed the pedal to the floor. The turbocharger whined as it sucked in air, and then unleashed it in a melodious roar that shook the windows of the downtown stores around me. The car surged forward, and a smile played across my lips. My brother Radimir likes his big Mercedes, but I’ve always loved my BMW. When we were teenagers in Moscow, living on scraps, I used to see the oligarchs driving past in their shining BMWs and dream of owning one. Now I have one, and on a summer day like today, blasting down North Michigan Avenue while it’s still empty of traffic, there’s no better feeling in the world.
Except—I checked my rear-view mirror and my knuckles whitened on the steering wheel—I couldn’t relax and enjoy it because Alison was there, following me in an unmarked car. Silky black hair secured in an efficient little bun at the back of her head, blouse tight over her small, high breasts. She was wearing the blue blouse today, the one that matched her eyes.
I shook my head in irritation. She was better at this than any cop I’d ever known. She stuck to me like glue, even when I was up before dawn or rolling home in the early hours. She couldn’t be doing all this for a paltry government salary. What was driving her?
I sighed and turned into an underground parking garage. A few moments later, I was strolling through Conroy Mall. It’s just your standard shopping mall: clothes and home furnishings, piped music, and coffee shops...and weirdly, it’s one of my favorite places to go. I’ve never been able to figure out why.
I’d managed to lose Alison briefly as I left the parking garage, and for a brief, glorious moment, I thought I’d slipped away for good. Then I saw her reflection in a cookware shop’s window, and my shoulders slumped in disappointment. She must have gone to the security office and tracked me down on the cameras. I glared at her in the glass as I pretended to adjust my collar, my eyes running down those long, graceful legs. Why does she never wear skirts?