Clean: A Mindspace Investigations Novel by Alex Hughes Page B

and I dug in. We talked about inconsequential things while her happiness started to bleed over into me. I basked in it—stood under it joyfully like a warm sunbeam on a chilly day.
    I loved this, her happiness, her openness—I couldn’t name the last time I’d seen it. Her smile, rare as an old two-dollar bill, made something inside me smile too.
    “We should go out more often,” I said without thinking.
    Her eyes changed. I felt her nervousness.
    “Out of the station,” I said quickly. “Food’s much better here.”
    We held eye contact for a long moment, and I memorized the blue of her eyes, emphasized by that dark stuff she put on her lashes.
    She looked down. Twisted her napkin in her lap. She fought interest and unease, neither feeling easy to ignore.
    “Is it just me or is the workload getting heavier for DeKalb?” I asked. Work seemed to put her at ease, and I wanted that happiness back from earlier. I wanted her happiness more than anything else right now.
    She glanced at me, a furtive glance from under her eyelashes. She thought my stubble was sexy. Did I really have—oh. Yeah. Hadn’t shaved since yesterday. And she thought—
    As Cherabino told me crime was up and budgets down, I realized. I shouldn’t have been able to read that thought about my face. It had been a quiet, private thought.
    I closed her out with a lot of effort. Had I used her for an anchor too much? Concentrated on her mind to shut out the others one too many times? After six years of working with her on and off, had I crossed some vague line and connected us? Even the lightest, most polite Link in the world meant any concept of privacy got real fuzzy real fast.
    Personal space and privacy were strange things; some people didn’t care at all, some would freak out from the slightest touch, but most people would let you in freely, and then kill to protect those last few inches. Cherabino was one of the last camp, and no matter how forgiving she was on the surface stuff, I knew the whole concept of mind reading bothered her more than she admitted. It was important I didn’t ruin whatever trust she had left in me. And the part of me that was still Guild—the part of me that still believed in certain ethics as a telepath—that part was very very disturbed by this…connection of ours.
    What I’d meant to be a Scotch tape connection was turning into something more—maybe duct tape, maybe stronger still. A connection that, if I was right, could break all the location-based laws of physics and let me find her anywhere, talk to her at any time. Let her do the same to me—if she could. I didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t know at all, and that scared me.
    A Link—even a light one—was a big deal. Therewere rules I was supposed to follow, Guild rules sure, but rules. Ethics I used to buy into wholeheartedly; ethics I’d quoted to myself earlier when I decided to put my hand in the hornet’s nest that was the Guild. Ethically, I had to tell her. I had to tell her that we were bound together, by purpose or accident. I had to. But I couldn’t picture a version of that conversation in which I would come out unscarred.
    I studied her. Straight posture, long brown hair in a ponytail, makeup today and a white shirt that on all the other female cops looked businesslike and on her looked sexy. Truthfully I didn’t want to tell her.
    She laughed in a small burst. “You weren’t checking me out, were you?”
    “No, of course not,” I lied, and smiled to soften it.
    Wrong move. She looked away, like the slamming of a door.
    I nodded politely at the waiter as he refilled our waters, but he was in and out too fast to notice.
    “Are you okay?” I asked her. I hadn’t flirted, not really. I mean, if I had been flirting, it would have been a lot more—
    “Fine,” she said, and set herself to eating again.
    “I didn’t mean to—”
    “It’s fine,” she said, and looked me in the eye. “Can we talk about something else?”