Read Online Under a Silent Moon: A Novel by Elizabeth Haynes - Free Book Online Page B

at the same time as being angry with him— furious— she realized that this was the closest they’d been since everything had happened and she could feel the warmth from his body, and her body was reacting to it in spite of herself.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, unprompted. “It was unprofessional.”
    “Yes,” she said. “It was.”
    He started to say something else, then stopped.
    “What?” she said. “Say it.”
    “You should have known Ali Whitmore would have wanted to take that side of it. He did the last job on Maitland when he was in intel.”
    “I’m not bloody psychic!”
    “Well, it all worked out for the best, then, didn’t it?”
    “I don’t want you playing games like that again. I don’t do pissing contests.”
    In spite of her fury, Andy smirked. Damn the man! How was it possible to hate him so much and still find him attractive?
    His shoulders had relaxed and he leaned forward slightly. “It wasn’t that long ago that we were proper friends, Lou . . .”
    She didn’t need reminding of it. “Is that what you call it? Felt more like betrayal than friendship.”
    “I didn’t mean that. I just meant—sometimes I forget you’re in charge. And I’m sorry.”
    “It doesn’t matter what rank I am, what rank you are,” Lou said. “We’re here to do a job, aren’t we?”
    “Sure.”
    She waited for more, half-expecting him to bring up the one big subject that they were both ignoring, but he remained silent.
    “I think we should leave it there. Now are you doing the press briefing with me, or are you too busy?” She smiled, to soften the sarcasm, and to her relief he took a deep breath and smiled back.
    Opening the door of her office, the silence in the main room despite the number of people crowded into it made her realize that they’d probably all been watching through the glass, straining to hear.
    She took five minutes in the ladies’ to apply some lipstick and run a brush through her hair. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes staring back at her, challenging her to admit to the crushing weight of self-doubt that she was feeling. Why this case? Why not something nice and straightforward, like every other Major Crime job that had turned up in the last few months?
    You asked for it , her reflection suggested insolently.
    The main conference room at Police Headquarters was full: lots of cameras being set up at the back, press of varying types chatting happily together as if they were all best friends.
    Lou had had media training as part of the three-week Senior Investigating Officer’s program. They’d staged a press conference at which various police staff pretended to be members of the press, asking the most awful questions they could, with some sort of internal competition to see who could be the one to “break” the poor trainee. They’d got the police photographer in with his big camera to flash away while they were talking. Part of the test was to see if you could remember to set the ground rules for the press conference before it started—no flash photography until the end, all mobile phones turned off, no questions until the end of the briefing. If you failed to do this, you’d have mobile phones going off left, right, and center; flashing in your eyes the whole time; questions fired at you from the back of the room with no warning. You’d lose control of the room, lose your thread, lose your marbles.
    “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” Lou said in a voice that sounded more confident than she felt. “Thank you all for coming. My name is Detective Chief Inspector Louisa Smith and I am the officer in charge of this investigation. Before we begin, can I ask you please to turn all your mobile phones off? Thank you. There will be time for photographs at the end of the press conference, so I would ask you to refrain from flash photography until then. I would like to introduce my colleague Detective Inspector Andy Hamilton—I will run through a brief summary of the