1 Blood Price Read Free Page A

the more loaded topic of their disagreement. A shortage of things to fight about had never been one of their problems. “Well, it wasn’t just sex to me, Detective!”
    They were both yelling now.
    “Did I say it was just sex?” He spread his arms wide, his voice booming off the tiled walls of the subway station. “It was great sex, okay? It was terrific sex! It was . . . What?”
    PC West, his fair skin deeply crimson, jumped. “You’re blocking the body,” he stammered.
    Growling an inaudible curse, Celluci jerked back against the wall.
    As the gurney rolled by, the contents of the fluorescent orange bag lolling a little from side to side, Vicki curled her hands into fists and contemplated planting one right on Mike Celluci’s classically handsome nose. Why did she let him affect her like this? He had a definite knack for poking through carefully constructed shields and stirring up emotions she thought she had under control. Damn him anyway. It didn’t help that, this time, he was right. A corner of her mouth twitched up. At least they were talking again. . . .
    When the gurney had passed, she straightened her fingers, laid her hand on Celluci’s arm and said, “Next time, I’ll do it by the book.”
    It was as close to an apology as she was able to make and he knew it.
    “Why start now.” He sighed. “Look, about leaving the force; you’re not blind, Vicki, you could have stayed. . . .”
    “Celluci. . . .” She ground his name through clenched teeth. He always pushed it just that one comment too far.
    “Never mind.” He reached out and pushed her glasses up her nose. “Want a lift downtown?”
    She glanced down at her ruined coat. “Why not.”
    As they followed the gurney up the stairs, he punched her lightly on the arm. “Nice fighting with you again.”
    She surrendered—the last eight months had been a punitive victory at best—and grinned. “I missed you, too.”

    The Monday papers had the murder spread across page one. The tabloid even had a color photograph of the gurney being rolled out of the station, the body bag an obscene splotch of color amid the dark blues and grays. Vicki tossed the paper onto the growing “to be recycled” pile to the left of her desk and chewed on a thumbnail. Celluci’s theory, which he’d grudgingly passed on while they drove downtown, involved PCPs and some sort of strap-on claws.
    “Like that guy in the movie.”
    “That was a glove with razor blades, Celluci.”
    “Whatever.”
    Vicki didn’t buy it and she knew Mike didn’t really either, it was just the best model he could come up with until he had more facts. His final answer often bore no resemblance to the theory he’d started with, he just hated working from zero. She preferred to let the facts fall into the void and see what they piled up to look like. Trouble was, this time they just kept right on falling. She needed more facts.
    Her hand was halfway to the phone before she remembered and pulled it back. This had nothing to do with her any longer. She’d given her statement and that was as far as her involvement went.
    She took off her glasses and scrubbed at one lens with a fold of her sweatshirt. The edges of her world blurred until it looked as if she were staring down a foggy tunnel; a wide tunnel, more than adequate for day to day living. So far, she’d lost about a third of her peripheral vision. So far. It could only get worse.
    The glasses corrected only the nearsightedness. Nothing could correct the rest.
    “Okay, this one’s Celluci’s. Fine. I have a job of my own to do,” she told herself firmly. “One I can do.” One she’d better do. Her savings wouldn’t last forever and so far her caseload had been embarrassingly light, her vision forcing her to turn down more than one potential client.
    Teeth gritted, she pulled the massive Toronto white pages onto her lap. With luck, the F. Chan she was looking for, inheritor of a tidy sum of money from a dead uncle in Hong