14th Deadly Sin: (Women’s Murder Club 14) Read Online Free PDF Page B

to someone else, too, and I have to make a hire right away.
    “Give me a call either way, OK?”

CHAPTER 14
     
    YUKI HAD BEEN lying awake in bed since Brady got up at four and started bumping into things as he tried to dress in the dark.
    “You can turn on the light,” she said.
    “I’m good. My socks. I can’t tell if they’re blue or black even when the light is on.”
    He came to the side of the bed, sat on the edge of it, and kissed his wife.
    “Why are you up?” she asked him.
    “A drug lab was shot to shit. Go back to sleep. I’ll call you later.”
    Yuki thought,
Later might be too late.
He was checking his gun, strapping on his shoulder holster.
    “Brady?”
    “Hmm?”
    “C’mere a sec.”
    He came back to the bed and stood above her in the dark, zipping up his Windbreaker.
    “I have to tell you something big,” she said. “I’m going to leave the DA’s Office.”
    “What? Yuki, what are you talking about?”
    “I have a job offer with a not-for-profit. The Defense League. Impeccable credentials. I’ll get the same salary, don’t worry. But I’ll be defending people with inadequate representation. They already have a case for me.”
    “Can we talk about this later?” Brady said. He unhooked his phone from its charger and put it in his pocket.
    “Sure. We can talk about it,” she said. “But I’ve got to give the Defense League an answer.”
    “Today?”
    “Yes. And I’ve got to tell Parisi before I accept, and he’s on his way out of town at the end of the day.”
    Brady took his wallet off the dresser and put it in his back pocket. He was moving in a pretty herky-jerky fashion. Yuki read his body language. He was processing something he really didn’t like. She knew her timing sucked.
    “Sounds like you’ve made up your mind.”
    “It was sudden. I just met with the director yesterday, and I wanted to think about the offer overnight.”
    “Thanks for your faith in me.”
    Yuki trusted Brady with her life. This wasn’t about faith in Brady.
    “OK,” he said after five or six silent seconds had elapsed. “I guess you should do what you want. I hope it works out for you.”
    “Brady? Please don’t be like this.”
    “People are waiting for me, hon. I’ll see you later.”
    She listened to him leave the apartment, closing the door hard; she heard the door lock. And she heard her dead mother’s voice inside her head.
    You hurt your husband’s pride, Yuki-eh. Why didn’t you ask him if he approved of this move?
    She didn’t have to answer her mother. She felt defiant, knowing that truly, Brady would have pressured her out of the job. And he would have had valid reasons. He would have said it was good for her to work in the Hall, to be near him.
    As a lifetime cop, he would have told her patiently that it was good for her to be part of the city government, where her job was secure, where she was moving up, making a reputation, and locking in a pension plan. He would have said that her hours might be long, but they were predictable. And he would have said that he wouldn’t be able to stop worrying if she was working in bad neighborhoods.
    And he would have been right on all those points.
    But he would also have been wrong.
    Safe was good. But she had another idea about what she should be doing with her life and her abilities. She wanted to do work that would make her feel good about herself.
    Yuki looked at the clock, then slipped a sleep mask over her eyes.
    She tried to fall back to sleep, but there was no way.
    As bad as it was fighting with her husband, she couldn’t stand thinking about what Red Dog was going to say to her. It wasn’t going to be good.
    But she had to get it over with.

CHAPTER 15
     
    YUKI SAW THAT Leonard Parisi’s office door was open and that he was at his desk, with its wide, uninspiring view of traffic and the handful of gritty low-rent businesses on Bryant Street.
    Parisi’s assistant was away from her post, so Yuki rapped on her boss’s