Trouble Comes Knocking (Entangled Embrace) Read Online Free PDF

isn’t a froufrou coffee kind of guy. Him coming to my door in street clothes with no other officers meant he’d realized he’d made a mistake and wanted to make it better.
    But it didn’t mean I had to forgive his treatment.
    Or help.
    But even as I made his coffee and my tea, I couldn’t stop seeing Mr. Winters’s face. I wasn’t supposed to have seen the body, but when the coroner uncovered him, presumably to collect evidence, I did. A glimpse, not long enough to scar me for life but definitely enough to imprint on my memory. He’d been strangled, or at least that’s what they were saying at the scene. His eyes bulged from his slightly purple face. The gray slacks he’d been wearing that day were wet from when he lost his muscle control, and I saw a circle of blood on the floor from where he’d fallen.
    He’d been nice to me. Loyal to his team. Proud of his company.
    People shouldn’t die like that. Especially not someone as nice as Mr. Winters.
    I gave Detective Reyes his coffee and a chance to say his piece.
    “Would you sit?” he asked, shifting slightly in his chair.
    I wanted to remain standing but knew it wouldn’t help hurry him along, so I sat, uncomfortably, at the edge of a chair. Ready to bolt. “Go ahead.”
    He took a breath and inched forward in his chair to match my position. Definitely reading me. “I understand why you’d want to quit,” he started again. “I can’t blame you.”
    Good cop.
    “But a man died. Our department analyst started going over the information you gave us and saw that you were right. If everything else you said is true, about your memory, about being able to observe and retain the information—”
    “Because I’d lie about something as crazy as that?” I hadn’t meant to interrupt him, but it always frustrated me so much when people questioned me. Especially when it mattered. This time it mattered.
    He couldn’t mask the irritation on his face. “I believe you, Lucy. But you have to understand, what you say is pretty radical. It isn’t as if you’ve been saving up information for months, you’re giving me information you gathered over a three-day span. As it is it took our guys working through the night to come up with the data you supplied. And only because you already gave them what to look for.”
    Okay, so very good cop.
    “Could you hold off on quitting? Maybe stick it out for a bit, see what else you might pick up? Let me know anything suspicious?”
    “You want me to play Sherlock at HGR.”
    “I want you to do what you do anyway, but let me know what you find.”
    “You want me to plug myself in a dangerous situation. One where someone already died.”
    “No.”
    I waited.
    He leaned back, no longer matching me. “Yes. You’re in a position to help us solve this, probably much quicker than we’d be able to on our own. Mr. Winters’s murder and the missing data may not be related at all; it could be you stumbled upon a completely separate problem. But if they are involved, we could sure use your help.” He reached forward and touched my arm.
    Heat flooded my cheeks, and I looked away from his dark brown eyes. I thought about my aunt. About how it was my turn to take care of her. “Will you compensate me?”
    “We could pay you as a consultant.”
    “And what about when this is over and HGR finds out I’ve been spying on them?”
    He stood and swallowed the rest of his coffee. “I can’t promise anything, Lucy. You want to quit anyway, you said as much. This is a chance for you to get paid doubly for doing what you do anyway.”
    “Can I think about it?”
    He rinsed his cup and walked toward the front door. “I can give you until Monday. We have other leads we need to follow, but to be honest, the information you already gave is the strongest, and we need to have an answer soon.”
    I shut the door behind him. Leaning against it, a smile spread across my face. How exciting . A chance to finally have my brain work for me. Like