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But she didn't do that. She wasn't ready to go back in there and talk to him.
Why?
She almost felt like she was afraid of Hank Kamian, and getting into the Crown
Vic and driving toward home, she explored that a little. She was going to have
to work with this man in a situation that put her safety at risk. She had to
know what buttons of hers he was pushing and why he was pushing them.
She wasn't physically afraid of him. In no way did she think that he would
turn on her or hurt her. Not least because he was a friend of Jim's, and Jim
would not have put her with someone who would turn vicious.
She wasn't unnerved by the way Hank looked. The scars had been startling, but
they hadn't been disturbing. She considered his appearance for a moment. As
she did, a quick image of a friend's old Kevlar vest flashed in her mind. The
vest had a taken some lead, and he'd shown it to her afterwards. The bullets
had torn it up.
But not him. And that, she thought, was Kamian's face.
He'd taken some damage, but it hadn't destroyed him.
And that made him interesting. Oddly attractive. Certainly not repulsive.
But&
In light traffic, getting home hadn't taken too long. She pulled into her
apartment complex and parked her car in her reserved space and sat there
staring up at the
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building.
She could afford better, but she'd never gotten around to looking for better.
The only person in her life was her, after all, and all she had was her work.
She closed her eyes.
"Jess?"
"Yeah, Ginny?"
They'd been doing arabesques together in the garage their father had renovated
so that they would have room to practice without destroying the house. They
were sixteen, not quite ready for pointe yet, wanting pointe so badly, but
already hearing their dance instructor explaining to their mother that both of
them were too tall. That they would never be anything but chorus dancers in
the ballet. That they had the talent and the fire and the beauty to win lead
roles, but&
Ginny said, "You heard what Dame Gerta said, right?"
"I heard."
"You going to stick with ballet?"
Jess had sighed. "I suppose the chorus wouldn't be so bad. But I've been
thinking maybe theater. Or modern."
Ginny had nodded. "I've already decided to switch to modern. I don't have the
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I already know I want lead roles. I've been looking at the
North Carolina School of the Arts. I think I could get what I need there."
Jess sighed. "I thought we were both going to try to get into Harrt School. It
has one of the best dance programs in the country."
Ginny shook her head. "Be practical. You want us to endlessly be fighting each
other for parts? I don't. You take one school, I'll take the other, and we
won't each be competing with our double for every single slot." "I wanted to
be your roommate, though." "I know," Ginny had said. "It would have been fun.
But this is about the two of us being dancers. For real, up on the stage. With
lights, and music. And applause."
Jess opened her eyes and stared up at the four-story apartment.
She and Ginny had figured it all out. Then fate threw Jess's new path before
her as clear as a broad highway in midday. She'd had no choice. She became a
cop, with her goal from the very first to make detective.
On patrol, and soliciting Johns on the Tricks Task Force, and at the bar when
she celebrated making detective with her new partner, she'd privately shared
every moment with Ginny, and with a pain that Jess never admitted to anyone.
At the beginning, even after the dream of dance was dead and buried, Jess had
still tried to have it all. She'd seriously dated a nice man, a man who could
have
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She'd gotten engaged, and she'd struggled to be everything to him and
everything to her work at the same time. But she'd discovered the same truth a
lot of other women had already discovered: Having it all was a lie.
She could be an overworked cop and a frazzled wife and* a mother who never saw
her kids. Or she could choose to do one thing with everything in her, and make
the sacrifices that took. Every path she followed meant turning away from all
the other paths.
It was the same for everyone. Life had costs, and to live, she paid, just like
everyone else.
So as she'd walked away from dancing, she walked away from the dream of
marriage and children. She said good-bye to any hope of a normal life lived
among good people; traded it in for a life lived amid criminals and their
crimes.
Years later, she didn't know if she even believed in good people anymore. One
thing she'd found, first as a uniformed officer and then as a detective, was
that in almost every situation, almost everyone lied. She trusted other cops.
And not always them. She never looked at civilians without wondering what sort
of games they were running, what nasty secrets they were hiding, who they were
hurting and how.
She was disillusioned with humanity. She didn't have dreams anymore. She had
work instead, and the single goal that stretched out in front of her like an
open
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be filled.
Save them
. The innocent few, the helpless, the victims of the cruel, the violent, the
insane, the evil.
Sitting in that car looking at her life, she abruptly realized why she was
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afraid of
Hank Kamian.
He made her realize there was more to life than work, which was a deep, dark
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