Twisted Read Free Page A

his suit jacket. He hadn’t even broken a sweat.
    He lifted a brow at her. “Not bad, Officer.”
    Okay, he was definitely a cop. DEA? Immigration? FBI? And suddenly it hit her. She knew exactly who he was and why he was here.
    The corner of his mouth curved up, and she felt a surge of annoyance.
    “You have a permit to carry a concealed handgun?” she asked, although she knew the answer.
    He sighed and reached into his jacket. He pulled out a leather folio and flipped it open.
    “Special Agent Mark Wolfe, FBI.”
    Allison sat in the interview room, running through the surveillance video for the fourth time. It didn’t get any less embarrassing with each viewing.
    Distracted police detective walks into a store, failing to notice the car parked out front with its engine running. Detective shops for groceries. Detective interrupts robbery-in-progress armed with kitten chow instead of a gun.
    She watched the surveillance cam bird’s-eye view once again, as Mark Wolfe burst out from behind thebeer display to kick the gun from the perp’s hand the instant before it could have gone off.
    She shuddered. A fraction of a second later and she might not be sitting here, all because she’d neglected to follow her most basic training. She watched herself cuff the perp, and even the grainy recording didn’t hide her shaking hands.
    Disgusted, Allison ejected the disk from the player and slipped it into an evidence bag. She dropped it into a brown accordion file already fat with paperwork. She’d spent two tedious hours booking Steven P. Irby, thirty-three, for aggravated robbery and resisting arrest, and another two completing the reports. Now she was exhausted, cranky, and in dire need of a hot shower.
    Allison went back to her desk, where she locked her case file in a drawer for tomorrow. The bullpen was empty, but she spotted a fellow detective from the Crimes Against Persons squad coming out of the break room.
    “Heard about Sal’s,” Jonah Macon said. “You all right?”
    “Fine.”
    He glanced at her cheek, and his frown told her she had a bruise where Irby’s elbow had landed. “The fed already left, I take it?”
    “Slipped out right after Sean took his statement,” she told him.
    “That was fast.”
    “Said he had a plane to catch.”
    “Bet he missed it.”
    Allison pictured Mark Wolfe leaning against the patrol car as he gave his statement. Cool. Composed. He’d watched her from across the parking lot with thosebrown-black eyes, and she hadn’t been able to read his opinion of her. But she could guess. He had an arrogance about him that indicated what he thought about their small-town police department.
    Jonah was still staring at her. He had something on his mind.
    “What?” she asked.
    “Nothing.”
    “No, really. What’s your take on him?”
    “Don’t have one. He talked to Reynolds.” Jonah moved for the door, and she knew she was getting the brush-off. “Go home, Doyle. Get some sleep. Looks like you need it.”
    Allison watched him leave, unsettled by what he’d told her. Not your case, she reminded herself. And anyway, she had enough to worry about. She made her way downstairs and once again took off for the night. She hitched herself behind the wheel of her dinged Chevy pickup and coaxed the engine to life. Then she pulled out of the parking lot and headed for home.
    Alone in her truck, she took what felt like her first deep breath in hours. She tugged the elastic band from her ponytail and buzzed the windows down to let the cold air whip through her hair. But her mind wouldn’t clear. She kept picturing that gun.
    All those years, all that training, and still she’d ended up on the wrong side of a loaded weapon. It was a blow to her reputation, and worse, her confidence. And although no one had said anything directly, she knew her sloppiness hadn’t gone unnoticed by her coworkers.
    The night was blustery. Discarded candy wrappers tumbled down the street and huddled together