Read Online PsyCop 4: Secrets by Jordan Castillo Price - Free Book Online Page B

waistband and slipped his hands underneath; Jacob slid his palms up and down Crash’s arms, and traced his tattoos.
    They stopped kissing and kept on looking at each other. They seemed comfortable like that, just looking. Neither one of them filled the silence with words. Jacob looked away first. He reached into a box on the coffee table—the coffee table I’d eaten dinner on the night before—and pulled out a remote. He aimed it at the camera.
    There was a half-second of blackness, then snow, then a shot of Jacob’s monster-nephew Clayton in the back seat of a car, green trees with a few gold leaves rushing past the window. Jacob’s voice: “You know who your teacher is going to be this year?”
    “I get a different teacher every period,” he said, making the whole phrase sound like,
    “duh”.
    “What do you think your favorite subject is going to be?”
    “I don’t know.” Clayton was trying to act cool, but Jacob’s attention was pulling a reluctant smile from him.
    “Clayton is very good at math.” A woman’s voice. Probably Jacob’s sister, Barbara. Control freak.
    “How about gym?” Jacob asked.
    “I dunno.” Clayton said it long and drawn out, with a goofy smile on his face.
    “How about recess. You still get recess?”
    Clayton nodded.
    “How about lunch?”
    I turned off the camera. My own lunch wanted to repeat at the thought of Crash calling Jacob “baby.”
    I snapped the camera shut, put it back in its box, and buried the box in the back of the lowest desk drawer. If Jacob ever asked, I could claim I didn’t even open it since I thought it would be too complicated to use. That’s what I could say if Carolyn wasn’t around, anyway.
    I pressed my face into the computer keyboard and sighed. When Jacob had shot that tape, the two of us hadn’t even met. So it was stupid of me to feel like I’d just caught my boyfriend kissing another man. Not that stupidity ever deterred me.
    My phone rang in my pocket. It was the generic ring tone that meant it wasn’t one of the half-dozen people who called me with any regularity. I considered letting it go to voice mail, but the keys trying to cram themselves up my nostrils weren’t all that comfortable, and besides, it could have been Jacob calling me from a land line. Even though I felt like smacking him, answering the phone seemed like the thing to do. That way, I could assure him I wasn’t rifling through his stuff and getting pissed off over him having the nerve to kiss the guy he’d been dating last summer.
    I glanced at the caller ID—pay phone—and hit the talk button. “Hello?” My first impression was noise, the kind of hollow wall of sound you get when someone’s in a big, crowded room. Second thing: crying.
    Even I’m not a big enough heel to blurt out, “Who is this?” when someone calls me up sobbing. I sat there for a minute and tried to see if I could figure out who it was by the sound of the voice. Female, probably. Unless it was Clayton. But he was too young to be using a pay phone, wasn’t he? Did kids these days even know what pay phones were?
    “Um…hello?” I said again.
    “V-V-Victor….” More crying.
    Okay. A woman. It couldn’t be that difficult to narrow it down. There were the women at work who never cried because they were cops and they had to keep up their tough facades, unless you count Betty, who probably could get away with crying since she was only a receptionist….
    “I c-c-can’t do this….”
    So familiar. “Do what?”
    “I can’t know everything.” A fresh volley of tears.
    It took me a second, but then I placed the voice, the slight Hispanic accent to the vowels.
    “Lisa? Oh my God, what happened? Where are you?”
    Lisa snuffled. “I’m at O’Hare.” Her voice was very small, nearly drowned out by the sound of the concourse.
    I pried her flight number and airline out of her. “Sit tight. Have a drink. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
    “Okay. And