Sacrificial Muse (A Sabrina Vaughn Novel) Read Online Free PDF Page B

car?”
    She looked around the squad room. It was practically deserted, most of the other inspectors long gone, but there were a few diehards still hanging on. The two of them sitting at her desk working together was bad enough. If they were seen leaving together … she shook her head again. “No,” she said, softening her rejection with a smile. Michael wouldn’t have asked. He would’ve just fallen into step with her as she headed for the elevator and ignored every protest she threw his way.
    The thought came out of nowhere. The moment she touched on it, Sabrina pushed it away. Michael couldn’t walk her anywhere because he was gone. He was gone and Nickels was here, sitting right in front of her. She deepened the smile on her face, forced it into her eyes. “But I’ll call you when I get home.”
    Nickels smiled back before he stood. “Alright then,” he said, reaching over to fit the lid onto the last box of letters. The gesture brought him a little too close, his fingertips brushing the back of her hand. “Talk to you later,” he said before walking away.
    She watched him leave, quelling the impulse to call after to him, to tell him that she’d changed her mind about the armed escort.
    She stacked the boxes on top of each other, using evidence tabs to seal them shut, initialing and dating each one before calling down to the evidence locker for a pickup. While she waited for the uniform to make his way up to Homicide, she collected her report and signed it before dropping it in the file holder mounted on the wall outside Mathews’s office.
    She realized that Mathews had never done that before. Made her actually open and catalog the letters she received at the station. Usually, making her lug the bag down to Evidence herself was enough to pacify his need to humiliate her. What made today so different?
    “This all you got, Inspector?”
    She turned to see a uniform standing next to her desk, a hand truck stacked with the three boxes she and Nickels had filled to the top. The red envelope flashed in her mind. The smell of it seemed to fill her nose. The black wax seal on one side, elegant lettering on the other in rich, velvety ink.
    Calliope
    She nodded. “Yes.” She crossed the room, accepting and signing the chain of custody form he offered to her on a clipboard. His signature followed hers and then he was gone, taking the boxes with him.
    She waited for the elevator door to close before she moved. A quick glance around the room told her no one was paying any attention to her. With Nickels gone, the rumor mill was no longer interested in what she did. Crouching down beside her desk, she used the small brass key on her ring to unlock her bottom drawer. There, on top of her active case files, was the evidence bag holding the red envelope.
    Without giving herself time to think about why, she took it out of the drawer and slipped it into her bag before she stood. She put on her jacket and gathered her bag before switching off her desk lamp.
    “You leavin’?”
    Sabrina looked up to see Evans watching her from his desk a few yards away. Looking around, she saw they were the only two left in the room. If he’d seen her take the card, he didn’t seem to care. Or maybe he was waiting for her to leave so he could call Mathews. “Yeah, listen—thanks for helping Strickland today,” she said, feeling like a bug trapped between two pieces of glass. Like maybe Mathews had asked Evans to stick around to keep tabs on her.
    “Just following orders,” he said, shrugging his shoulder beneath the rumpled brown tweed of his coat.
    “Well, thanks all the same.” She resettled her bag on her shoulder, ready for the conversation to be over.
    Evans just snorted and went back to whatever he was doing on his computer.
    She walked away, pushed the call button. The elevator doors slid open immediately and she stepped inside. She glanced up as they slid closed. Evans was watching her again, and she smiled awkwardly until