Justice for All Read Free Page B

Sloan said automatically. She wasn’t sure why her partner’s executive assistant couldn’t get that straight.
    While she waited, she put the top down on the Carrera and took a deep breath of the cool autumn air. The sun was bright, but it lacked heat. She should probably get her leather jacket out of the trunk, because she’d feel the chill in just her usual white T-shirt and blue jeans, but she didn’t bother. She wasn’t going far and she liked the freedom of the air blowing against her skin. She’d spent three days behind bars once and that was enough to make her hate any kind of confinement for the rest of her life. She pushed the thought away. All that was behind her.
    “Sloan?”
    “Hi, baby.”
    “This is a nice surprise,” Michael Lassiter said.
    Sloan got a little rush just hearing her speak. Michael not only had a kind of Lauren Bacall beauty, she had the voice to go with it. “I’m headed back to the office. Rebecca is out of the hospital.”
    “That’s wonderful news.”
    “How are you feeling?” Sloan asked. Michael had been injured herself not long before and was still only working half days at Innova, the design corporation she headed.
    “I’m fine.”
    “No migraines?” Sloan started the engine and let it idle while she talked.
    “Really, sweetheart. A little tired, maybe, but I’m all right.”
    “Don’t overdo, okay?”
    “I promise. I’ll see you at home in a little while.”
    “I might still be in the office when you arrive,” Sloan said. The cyberinvestigation company she’d founded with another ex-federal agent, Jason McBride, after she’d been falsely arrested and dismissed from her Justice position, occupied the third floor of a renovated warehouse in Old City. She’d been sharing her loft apartment on the floor above with Michael for the last two years. “Call me when you get home.”
    “Sloan,” Michael chided softly. “You know very well if you’re involved in something I won’t be able to drag you upstairs.”
    Laughing, Sloan gunned the Porsche across the lot and out onto the Benjamin Franklin Parkway heading east. “Baby, I want to see you. And being dragged away sounds like fun.”
    “Oh, I’m sure I can think of other fun things too.”
    “Can’t wait. See you soon.”
    Michael said good-bye and Sloan hung up, just barely managing not to ask again if Michael was sure she was all right. She had argued against her going back to her job so soon, but she understood the need to work. Until she’d fallen in love with Michael, all she’d had was work. Even now, when the hunt was on, the chase consumed her. Sometimes she couldn’t tell the difference between being the hunter and the hunted and all she could do was keep running through the complex labyrinth of cyberspace until she won or dropped. Only Michael had ever been able to call her back.

    *

    “Tell them no,” Sandy Sullivan mumbled, wrapping her slim arm around Dellon Mitchell’s narrow waist and tethering her with a leg across the thighs.
    “Work, babe,” Dell whispered, trying unsuccessfully to extricate herself from Sandy’s grip. Not that she really wanted to go anywhere. Sandy might be half her size, but she was curvy in all the right places and her skin was so smooth Dell could lose herself for hours just running her fingertips over every inch. Not that she could really last for hours without doing more than just touch her, but it felt that way sometimes. The only thing in the world that could get her out of bed with Sandy was a call to arms. The only thing she loved as much as Sandy was being a cop. She was the youngest member of the High Profile Crimes Unit and awakened daily hardly able to believe she was part of the team. She’d do anything to prove herself. “I gotta go, babe.”
    “Screw that, Dell. It’s your day off.” Sandy propped her head on her elbow, her short blond hair spiky and her eyes even sharper. “Even cops and whores get a day off.”
    “You’re not a