Linda Kay Silva - Delta Stevens 3 - Weathering the Storm Read Online Free PDF Page A

With prying eyes, she studied Delta’s movement across the room and waited with arms folded for Delta to sit down next to her. “I can tell by that look in your eyes it was worse than you thought, huh?”
    Lifting her long leg over the back of the chair, Delta sat backwards and rested her chin on the chair back—a habit she picked up during her childhood when her father had her press her gaping front teeth against the chairback. It had been his answer to the “fad” of braces. Somehow, it worked, but Delta was stuck with the habit of turning her chair around backwards whenever she sat down. “Worse is an understatement.” Watching her best friend turn the monitor off, Delta sighed. “I don’t know what I was expecting. I guess...”
    Rising from her chair, the woman gently touched Delta’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s talk.” Following her into the bathroom, Delta turned and locked the door. “I feel like such an idiot.”
    “It wouldn’t be the first time. What did he say?”
    At five feet nine inches, Delta towered over the diminutive woman. Delta studied her deep brown eyes and knew it was no use trying to disguise the frustration and humiliation boiling beneath the surface. Connie would know. Connie always knew. There was no point in pretending it didn’t hurt because what Connie didn’t inherently know, she felt, and she would most certainly feel the anguish Delta was experiencing. Good friends were that way sometimes.
    Best friends were that way all of the time. At least, Connie Rivera was. She knew Delta better than Delta knew herself. This made sliding anything past Connie a real challenge, and more often than not, Delta just coughed up the truth.
    “You’re not going to believe this,” Delta began, walking over to the sink and staring at her own reflection in the mirror.
    “Try me.”
    Turning around to face her, Delta tried to avert her eyes from the ones drilling into hers. Consuela Dolores Maria Rivera knew Delta well enough to know when to ask questions and when to just listen. Through their six-year friendship, Connie had done both more times than Delta dared count. She could pry even the deepest, darkest secrets from Delta. Occasionally, Delta would try to hide something from her, but it seldom worked. It was simply too hard to hide anything from this perceptive woman. Connie had an IQ of 160, was fluent in five languages (working on her sixth), held a blackbelt in karate, and could see right through the people she cared about. She certainly could see into Delta’s soul, and had on many occasions.
    “He’s bucking me back to Training Patrol. Training Patrol, Con, can you see it? Me trying to teach some green-eared rookie how to survive the streets?”
    Stepping up to Delta, Connie smiled. Two rows of perfect teeth glistened against her smooth caramel complexion. If it weren’t for the crow’s-feet around her eyes crinkling every time she grinned, she could easily pass for late twenties rather than her late thirties. “First of all, the phrase is wet-behind-the-ears and secondly, not that you’ve asked my opinion, but I think you’d be a very good FTO.”
    Delta’s jaw dropped. “You’ve got to be kidding. With all the shit that happens on my beat, I can’t afford to stop in the middle of a chase or a bust and teach some rookie how it should be `properly’ handled. We’ll both get killed.”
    The smile on Connie’s face softened. “You were a rookie once yourself, Storm.”
    Connie’s nickname for her assuaged Delta’s anger. “I know.”
    “I remember how you were. You’d go storming up to a rabid dog with its leg caught in a trap if you thought it would help make a collar. There was nothing you wouldn’t do to make even the smallest bust.”
    Delta grinned. “Yeah, but—”
    “But nothing. You shot out of the academy at the top of your class determined to single-handedly rid the world of all its evils. More times than not, that dog took a big chunk out of your butt