Dipped into some sort of bright yellow sauce, they hadn’t been half bad.
Of course, they’d crapped out on everything else, but that was life with a badge.
She flipped out her palm-link as she trudged up the steps to street level.
“There she is.” McNab’s face, split by a big, welcoming grin, filled the screen. “Heading home yet?”
“Just a couple blocks away. We covered a lot of ground, didn’t pick anything up.”
“That’s the way it goes.”
“You said it. Did you get any more packing done?”
“Baby, you’re going to give me a really big sloppy one when you walk in the door. It’s done, and we’re ready to rock and roll out of here.”
“Really? Really?” She did a little skip-step on the sidewalk. “There was a lot left, you must’ve worked the whole time.”
“Well, I had the really big sloppy one as incentive.”
“You didn’t throw out any of my—”
“Peabody, I want to live. I didn’t ditch anything, including your little stuffed bunny.”
“Mister Fluffytail and I go back. I’ll be there in five. Be prepared for the sloppy one.”
“When it comes to sloppy ones, I’m a fricking Youth Scout.”
She laughed, stuffed the ’link back in her pocket. Life was really good, she thought. Her life was really good. In fact, just at the moment it was absolutely mag. All the little nerves about moving into a new place, with McNab—signing a lease, blending lives, furniture, styles, sharing a bed with the same guy for . . . well, possibly forever—were gone.
It felt right. It felt solid.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t irritate her cross-eyed sometimes. It was that she got he was supposed to. It was part of their thing, their style.
She was in love. She was a detective. She was partnered with the best cop on the NYPSD—possibly the best cop anywhere. She’d actually lost three pounds. Okay, two, but she was working off number three even now.
As she walked, she looked up, smiled at the lights glowing in her apartment—her old apartment, she corrected. McNab would probably come to the window any minute, to look out, wave, or blow her a kiss—a gesture that might’ve looked silly on another guy, but gave her such a nice little rush when it came from him.
She’d blow one back, and wouldn’t feel silly at all.
She slowed her pace, just a bit, to give him time to come to the window, fulfill the fantasy.
She never saw him coming.
There was a blur of movement. He was big—bigger than she’d imagined—and he was fast. She knew, in that fingersnap of time that she saw his face—eyes obscured by black sunshades—that she was in trouble. Terrible trouble.
Instinct had her pivoting, reaching for the weapon she wore at her hip.
Then it was like being rammed by a stampeding bull. She felt the pain—crazy pain—in her chest, in her face. She heard something break, and realized with a kind of sick wonder that the something was inside her.
Her mind stopped working. It was training rather than thought that had her pumping out with her legs, aiming for any part of his mass so she could knock him back far enough to give her room to roll.
She barely budged him.
“Whore.”
His face loomed over her, features obscured by the thick layers of sealant, the wide, black shades.
It seemed time dripped, slow as syrup. That her limbs were weighed down like lead. She reared up to kick again—all in slow, painful motion—struggling to suck in air to a chest that burned like fire. Ordering herself to remember details.