Burnout (NYPD Blue & Gold) Read Online Free PDF

reviewing their conversation. Aside from acknowledging she was upstate and working as a cook, she hadn’t disclosed any specifics. She was sure of it.
    At least, she thought so.
    Her phone rang. It was Dom, calling from his cell phone. Her partner didn’t mince words.
    “My desk phone’s bugged. So’s Gray’s. I just had our cell phones checked and they’re both clean. You need to go into protective custody. Now.”
    Cassie took a deep breath. “No.”
    “Whatdya mean, no ?” Dom roared.
    Cassie winced and jerked the phone from her ear. “All I said when we talked was that I was upstate. I’m positive I didn’t say where. New York is a huge state. There’s no way anyone could actually find me.”
    Again, she held the phone away from her ear as her partner let loose with a litany of colorful expletives. She waited patiently for him to unload and calm down.
    “I don’t like it,” Dom growled, “and neither does Gray. He’s throwing a conniption over how someone managed this in our own house. It was an old-fashioned job by an amateur, not the modern undetectable digital wiretap. Bugging precinct phones is beyond ballsy and a helluva risk. Lt. Frye wants IA in on this. We’ve got a dirty cop, and we need to clean house. Bottom line, you must have seen or heard something pretty damn important at La Femme that isn’t on the recordings. Think, Cass, what the hell is it?”
    She frowned. “Everything I know, you know. This was a standard undercover job with all the hot evidence on the body wires. The only thing I can suggest is looking at those blackmail videotapes Manici made to keep his wealthy clients in line. Maybe there’s something there.”
    “We’ve got someone going over them now, but there must be ten years worth of tapes. If you think of anything else, call me ASAP, day or night. I mean…shit.” Dom’s voice softened. “You’re the best-looking partner I’ve ever had, and I don’t want to have to train a new one. I like making the other guys jealous when they stare across their desks at their ugly, unshaven, belching partners.”
    “I miss you, too, Dom.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you’ve got to do this, at least tell me where you are. For safety reasons, the lieutenant will insist on knowing.”
    Cassie blew out a breath. “Fine, but promise me you and Gray won’t drag me back to the city.” Dead silence on the end of the phone. “Promise me!”
    “Okay, okay,” Dom said.
    Reluctantly, Cassie rattled off the address of the Nest and the house where she was staying.
    “And before I forget,” Dom added, “Frye says you should consider this a paid vacation until you have to come back to testify against Manici in grand jury.”
    “Tell him I said thanks. For the vacation, that is.” With a bitter laugh and a shake of her head, she ended the call. “Some vacation,” she said to Raven, who had come to sit by the sofa. “A vacation from getting killed.”
    No matter how much fun she might have pretending to be a chef for a while, someone out there still wanted her dead.

Chapter Three
    “Good to have you back, Mike,” Rose said from behind the cash register as he walked into the Nest. “How was Albany?”
    He flashed her a quick smile. “Not bad.” It was good to be back. A week sitting on his ass in an auditorium, forced to listen to other police chiefs boast about how many felons they’d locked up, sucked. If those morons had been doing more proactive enforcement, maybe they wouldn’t have such a high crime rate in the first place.
    He leaned his hip against the register desk and looked around at the tables brimming with customers eating lunch. Busier than usual for a Monday. Order bells rang and people chattered away, enjoying themselves. After all these years, this town finally felt like home.
    Things in Hopewell Springs were quiet—the way he liked it. And very much unlike his last duty station in the South Bronx. At times he missed the action and excitement of his old