Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(2)

Signs. There had to have been signs. There almost always were. But Foster had missed every single one, even though she had been trained to lock in, to be observant, intuitive even, to always see three moves ahead. Where had she failed? She had replayed that day over in her head for weeks, eight weeks, but the picking didn’t change anything. Dead was forever. A chance missed to say just the right thing or do the right thing would never come around again.

Glynnis had been a good cop, a decorated cop, and they had worked eleven years together like well-oiled gears in a high-performance machine. After Foster had lost her only son, Reg, to a thug with a gun who’d demanded his bike, a painful divorce had followed. Amid all the pain, Glynnis had helped her stay sane.

Foster was godmother to Glynnis’s youngest son, Todd. There had been nothing unusual about the marriage as far as she could see. Mike and Glynnis had been married more than fifteen years. There had been ups and downs, of course, but nothing that might explain what had happened. The kids, though . . . Foster always came back to them. The Glynnis she knew, the one she trusted with her life, wouldn’t have done that to her kids. To Mike. To her. But she had.

With a nod and an unconvincing half smile, she moved past the cop at the detector and flashed her star to the cop sitting at the desk in the lobby before heading up to homicide, every step reining in fear and self-doubt and resentment. By rote, the mask went up, her shoulders went back a little farther, and the cop returned. Eight weeks. Eight seconds. She held her breath, kept her dark eyes steady, and put the hardness in them.

“Here we go,” she muttered to herself. “Here. We. Go.”

Foster stood at the office door, peering in. Just another cop squat—scarred desks, CPD insignia everywhere, the stench of burnt coffee, and sweaty cops who’d seen more than any human should have the misfortune of seeing.

She squeezed her eyes shut, breathing, remembering who she used to be, needing that woman back like yesterday. She’d lost fifteen pounds off her five-foot-seven frame since Glynnis’s funeral. The shirt, pants, and jacket she had on today were new. Fresh start and all that. Even her hair was different. She’d gone short and natural, short twists ringing her thin, serious face. Less bother. Less interest. Primping her hair and planning her wardrobe were the least of her worries. Jacket, shirt, slacks, gun, badge, and shoes with a low heel were all she needed. Cop. The job. The rest of her lay buried.

A white cop, tall, thin, brushed by her, flicked her a look. “You’re the transfer? Foster, right?”

She nodded. “Harriet Foster. Don’t tell me they made an announcement.” She glanced at the cop room again, panic rising, her heart fluttering like butterfly wings. If there was a welcoming committee hiding somewhere or cops with prying eyes, she was out of here. “Please, don’t.”

He chuckled. “Relax. There’s no brass band. I just saw your paperwork on the boss’s desk.” He held out his hand for a shake. Foster took it. “Kelley. Matt.” His dark-blue eyes were filled with understanding and a tinge of pity. He looked to be in his late forties, wiry, about six feet, built like a runner instead of a stevedore. “Sorry about . . . you know. That’s tough.”

Foster stiffened. It was the pity she couldn’t take. It felt like it burned her skin and set her insides on fire. Mask on. Eyes ahead. “Thanks. Everybody knows, I guess.”

He nodded. “You know the cop grapevine, but it’s cool. We get it. Here, let me show you where to go.”

She followed Kelley through the office, feeling the looks at her back. She was the oddity, the cop whose partner had killed herself. Foster could just imagine what they were thinking. Where had she been when it all happened? Why hadn’t she stopped it, intervened? What kind of partner was she? Could they trust her? She kept her eyes on the back of Kelley’s shirt. They were right. She had asked those same questions of herself every single hour of every single day since that day. What kind of partner was she? What kind of cop? What kind of friend? What kind of mother? The last thought, random but not, caught in her throat, and she pushed forward, a tiny fear and a tiny sorrow stabbing at her core. Today, she thought. She just had to get through today. Once today was past her, everyone would turn away, the cop bullshitting would take over, and there would be no great attentiveness shown to her. After today, she could ease back into the routine of the job and fill her days with the misery of others.

Kelley pointed at a corner office. The door was closed. “The boss is there. What do you go by? Harriet? Harri?”

“Either’s fine.”

He smiled. “Got it. See ya around, Harri.”

She nodded, eyed the door, and then remembered her manners, catching him halfway down the hall.

“Hey, Matt? Thanks.”

He tipped an imaginary hat as Foster walked to the door, knocked, and waited to be invited in.

“Yeah, get in here.”

Sergeant Sharon Griffin sat at her cluttered desk, jacket off, white blouse spotless. She checked her watch, then looked up, stern of face, giving Foster a quick once-over. She pointed to a chair. “Detective Foster. Sit.” Griffin’s posture was as straight as a ruler, her face implacable, blue eyes sharp as Arctic ice. She folded her hands on the desk. Foster couldn’t miss the wedding ring.

Midfifties, maybe. Griffin’s ash-blonde hair was sprinkled with strands of gray and cut short, easy to tuck under a uniform cap. Simple makeup, a little lip coloring, mascara, nothing more. Just female enough to identify, the rest all career cop. Proudly Irish, too, Foster divined from the shamrocks on Griffin’s coffee mug, the dusty Saint Patrick’s Day fedora sitting on a side table, and the photo on her desk with three pale, freckled teens.