The Firm Hand of the Law Read Online Free PDF

finished off the rest of his hot dog in a couple bites and shrugged. “I got to go, Jeff. Have a good night.”
    “Yeah, you too.” Jeff gave him a dubious wave.
    The faith was not strong in that one, but Gareth had better things to be doing than reassuring nervous nellies. He got one of the duty sergeants to pull Lily out of the cells and bring her to an interview room in which he was waiting for her arrival. He wanted to be there first, see how she came in, asses her state of mind before she got a chance to compose herself.
    The duty sergeant brought her in without any issue. Some subjects came in cursing, squealing, fighting. Not Lily Brannigan. She sat in the uncomfortable metal chair with all the grace of a queen taking her throne. She was a tough little thing, that was for sure. When she got spooked, she got brave. He liked that, even though it made his job far more difficult.
    He gave her a look designed to let her know he’d not forgotten what she looked like head down, bottom up, her pink pussy lips spread around his cock, pliantly accepting his will. “You tired of that cell yet, want to talk?”
    She clasped her hands together and batted her lashes at him. “What would you like to discuss, Mr. Officer, sir?”
    He smirked. Oh, she was so cute with her pretend submission.
    “I’d like to discuss your cooperation,” he said. “Because one way or another, this gang you have yourself mixed up in is going down. If you want to go down with them, you better get used to what the inside of a cell looks like, because that’s going to be your new view for a long time to come.”
    Lily shrugged off his threats. “Are you planning on actually charging me with something?”
    Intimidation wasn’t working very well. He’d failed to factor in the sort of people Lily had been around her whole life. She was used to dangerous people throwing their weight around. In fact, he was probably the safest person she’d dealt with in a long time. There were rules he had to play by, and she knew it.
    “You know what I think?” He sat down and fixed her with a penetrating stare. “I don’t think you want to be here, and I don’t think you want to be arguing with me. I think you’d rather be rid of this problem once and for all instead of waiting for the day when something really bad happens—and I think you know that sooner or later, something really bad is going to happen.”
    He watched her carefully as he spoke, noting every little expression. She was trying to blank him out. A lot of the people he interviewed tried to do that, but there were some things people couldn’t hide. Dilation of pupils, respiration, heart rate, how much a person fidgeted, how much tension they were holding in their body.
    Lily looked tense and she looked scared. She was trying not to show it, but he could all but smell her fear. Gareth had never played good cop before, he wasn’t entirely sure he knew how, but there was no way he was going to crack this pretty nut by playing the heavy.
    “Tell you what,” he said. “I’m going to let you go home. And I’m going to let you go about your business as normal. And you’re going to come to me when you’re ready to get the help you need to get out of the trouble you know you’re in.”
    She looked down at her hands now clasped in her lap, her fingers entwining around themselves over and over. “So you brought me in to let me go?”
    “I brought you in to make a point,” he admitted. “But I think you get it. I think you probably got it a long time ago.”
    “I get the point,” Lily said, looking up with her eyes narrowed. “You think a little do good lecture and some tactics you saw on scared straight are going to get you somewhere.” Her tone was beyond derisive; it was outright disrespectful. He was used to people not liking him for being a cop, but it was more than that for her. Her rebellion was soul deep. She hadn’t fallen in with a bad crowd, she’d been born into it. Her