Before I Sleep Read Online Free PDF

as if to say, Have it your way.
    He pulled out a couple of mugs and filled them nearly to the rim with steaming coffee. He was going to need the caffeine just to get home.
    She took the mug from him with a nod of thanks, and he sat across from her, blowing on his coffee and waiting to see if she was going to try to push any more of his buttons. If he hadn't wanted the coffee so badly, he'd be out of there already.
    She surprised him, though. Instead of staying on the attack, she sighed and wrapped her hands around the mug as if it were a warm fire on a cold night. Which maybe it was. Steamy as it was outside tonight, inside the air-conditioning was chilling him through his wet clothes.
    She averted her face, staring off into space as if she couldn't bear to look at him. “I ought to be able to drop it.”
    “Yup.”
    “ I thought I had until I saw the bulletin from the AP wire tonight.”
    “It'll go away again. But I'll tell you one thing—drinking isn't going to help a damned thing. It's a bad way to go, Carey. One way or another, it'll mess up your life.”
    She looked at him with those X-ray eyes of hers. “It messed up your life, didn't it. A drunk driver killed your baby.”
    God, the woman had an absolute talent for throwing his past in his face, for raking up things that shouldn't be raked up. It might have made her one of the best young prosecutors in the State Attorney's Office, but it sure as hell made her intolerable to live with. What was she trying to do? Hurt him as bad as she was hurting?
    Well, he thought, taking a swig of coffee, she'd succeeded, but he was damned if he'd let her know it.
    “I wasn't going to drive,” she said, apparently oblivious of her transgression. “I was going to sleep it off.”
    “Mm.” He didn't trust himself to speak.
    “I'm not that stupid, Seamus. Honestly. I've seen victims, too.”
    Maybe she had, maybe she hadn't. He wasn't going to argue it. What he wanted was to finish his coffee and get the hell out of there.
    She rose and went to get the coffeepot, returning with it to top off both their mugs. “I'm sorry I wrecked your evening,” she said as she put the pot back on the warming plate.
    His evening had been wrecked from the minute he'd opened the door to see his dad standing there. What did one more drunk matter? “I listen to your radio show sometimes,” he said, wanting to change the subject
now.
    “Yeah?” She resumed her seat and gave him a pinched smile that didn't reach her eyes. “Crusader for truth and justice, that's me. Holding back the abysmal tide of ignorance about our justice system with a broom.”
    He shrugged and sipped coffee. No subject was safe with her tonight.
    “I'll bet it really chaps your hide when I talk about how cops lie.”
    He sucked air through his teeth. “Nope.”
    “Really? I thought you were a crusader for truth and justice, too.”
    “I'm a crusader for justice. There isn't any truth.”
    “Ahh. So lying is okay?”
    “I didn't say that.” He could feel his temper heating again. “And this isn't your goddamn talk show, so don't get smart with me. Evidence is all we have. The truth is unknowable.”
    He shoved back from the table, deciding he'd had enough of her. “Have a nice life,
Ms. Justice
.”
    He headed for the door, and heard her following him. The sweater, he noticed, was still lying on the first stair, abandoned and forgotten.
    As he opened the door, he turned his head and saw her staring at him, her eyes wide and hollow-looking, her arms folded tightly across her breasts as if she were cold to the bone.
    “Don't you get it, Rourke?” she said softly. “Without truth, there is no justice.” Exactly the words she had spoken when she had told him she was quitting the prosecutor's office.
    He didn't even say good night. He stepped out into the warm, muggy air and felt the raindrops pick up where'd they'd left off. If he never saw her again, it would be too damn soon.
    Carey stood where he'd left her,