The Edge of Sleep Read Free

guest.
    Becker looked at the coffee with some distaste. Clots of white artificial cream floated on the surface.
    They had not tried to fight the roar of the helicopter engine and had ridden in silence. When he spoke, it was the first time he had addressed her since their initial meeting.
    “Thanks for the ride,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to come here.”
    “I thought we could talk better here than on the side of a mountain,” Karen said.
    Becker sighed. “I thought I was retired.”
    “It probably just felt that way because you weren’t working. Actually, you’re on what’s called ‘indeterminate medical extension.’ I looked it up in your file.”
    Karen looked at the surface of her coffee as she stirred it. It was hard to meet his eyes after all these years. But he still looked straight at her most of the time. She remembered that. She remembered most of it, maybe all. Which didn’t necessarily mean that she was ready to deal with it again.
    “I wanted to make sure,” she continued.
    “Of what?”
    “That you were available.”
    “Silly me. I was actually convinced I was out of the business.”
    “Indeterminate medical ...”
    “Who determines when it’s determined? Me or the Bureau?”
    “It’s a mutual thing,” she said. “You can come back to work whenever you think you’re ready.”
    “Or?”
    “Or the Bureau can reinstate you.”
    “They can, huh?”
    “I mean, they can change your status.”
    He grinned. “Have you come to change my status, Karen? No one’s touched it in such a long time, I didn’t think I still had one.”
    “That’s not what I heard,” she said.
    “Is that in my file, too?”
    “There’s an unofficial file, too,” she said. “You know that.”
    “I seem to remember.”
    “They say you were living with a woman during the Roger Dyce business.”
    “I was.”
    “And?”
    He was looking squarely at her. Karen forced herself to keep her gaze on the bridge of his nose. It could give the impression that she was looking him in the eye; not that Becker would be fooled, of course.
    “What happened with you and ... ”
    “Cindi. With an i”
    “Cindi.” Karen squirmed in her seat, crossed her legs, looked away from him. She remembered clearly that he was wonderful to talk to when she was willing to be as honest as he was. It was only when she was being evasive or less than candid that it got uncomfortable. Becker had so little tolerance for doing things in a roundabout way. It always made him act as if he knew the joke and was just waiting for her to get to the punchline. It was the way he was acting now.
    He was going to make her ask again.
    “Are you still together?” she asked.
    “The file is out of date?” He sounded amused. “She found it rather difficult to live with me. I’m sure you can sympathize with that.”
    “Actually, you and I never really lived together,” Karen said.
    “Not actually.”
    Karen sighed. “Look, do we have to go into it?”
    “Not if you want to avoid it.”
    “I don’t want to avoid it ... I just don’t want to go into it. It’s very painful, all right?”
    “Sorry.” Becker changed the subject. “What are you now, second in command in Kidnapping?”
    “How did you know?”
    “I read your file.”
    “When?”
    “Most recently? Six months ago.”
    “They let you do that? While you’re on indeterminate?”
    Becker laughed. The pilot glanced in their direction.
    “They let me do all kinds of things, as long as I don’t ask officially. No one wants Hatcher to find my name on any request memos.”
    “Hatcher has nothing to do with Kidnapping,” Karen said.
    “I know. He keeps getting kicked upstairs. All he has to do is screw up one more case, blame it on somebody else, and he’ll make Deputy Director of the whole Bureau.”
    Karen let the Hatcher discussion die. It would only make her job more difficult if Becker got riled up about his former colleague.
    Becker swept all the magazines into a pile