Page 9 of Inferno

“You can’t even tell me her name?”

Samantha figured her sister had already looked Romeo up online if he had profiles. A lot of cops didn’t keep social media except anonymous accounts for work. Bristol probably knew everything about him.

“You’re a detective.” Samantha shrugged one shoulder. “Detect.”

Romeo shifted in his seat. “This is a test of the rookie. A hazing thing.”

“If it helps you sleep at night.”

“Do you do this to all your partners?” he asked.

“To be fair, I’m usually the rookie,” she replied. “Guess you drew the short straw getting me as your training partner.”

“Or they’re easing me in gently.”

She laughed. “Right. That’s a cop thing to do, for sure.”

“Good point. My first training officer out of the academy didn’t let me drive for six months.”

She pulled up at a stoplight and looked over. “I probably won’t make you waitthatlong.”

“I appreciate it.”

She looked to the front again, a smile stretching her lips wide.

“What about for old times’ sake?” he pressed. “Is that enough for you to tell me who she is?”

“You’re really gonna pull the ‘we got blown up together’ card?”

“Will it work?”

She chuckled, trying to decide if she was hungry enough for food or if they should just hit a gas station and get a soda. “You don’t even remember it. You were in critical condition, and I hit my head. We didn’t go through a foxhole moment together.”

“Shame.”

“How have we never talked about what you do remember?”

He fiddled with the radio dials but didn’t change anything. “I get flashes of entering the house sometimes. I know it had to do with the case Stella and Eric were working, those domestic terror guys in the woods who turned out to be his family. I remember every moment of recovery. Every inch I had to push to get back what the injury was trying to take from me.”

“I remember waking up after.” Throwing up. A screaming headache.

The rest of it…those things she tried not to think about. Ever.

That day was a dividing line in her life between who she had been before and who she was now. The life she would’ve lived if the day had gone differently. Her life as it was, and now. This.

Her phone buzzed and lit up in the bracket on her dash, to the left of the steering wheel. “What’s that about?”

He looked at his own cell. “Callout from dispatch. All available units. It’s a couple blocks from here. There’s a fire, and the department has firefighters trapped. They need crowd control.”

She grabbed the radio out of the cupholder and handed it to him. “Call us in as responding.” Samantha flipped the lights and sirens on and waited for traffic to slow. She flipped a U-turn in the middle of the street and tapped her phone until it showed her directions to the address.

Then she hit the gas.

“Crowd control?”

Yeah, not their usual thing.

But that area? If he was on shift, he would be there.

---