Chapter 43

“Hey, bitch,” Jules said.

Sinead literally jumped in place as she spun, her eyes wide from getting spooked. “Jesus Christ,” she said, blinking and putting a hand on her own chest. “Where the fuck did you come from?”

“The elevator?” Jules laughed. She looked around the barren Financial Forensics office. “Real busy place here, eh?”

“Well, I’m busy,” Sinead said darkly. “I don’t know what the other two guys do.”

“I can see that,” Jules said, poking at the stacks of documents Sinead had spread across her desk and a folding table she’d set up next to it. “Is this your case with Marc, or something else?”

The documents were from Marc’s USB drive, but Sinead hadn’t been zoned out reading them. She’d been standing with her hands planted on her desk, looking at her computer screen without really looking - her mind had been wandering again. To last night. It was the fourth time that day she’d drifted off, trying to comprehend everything that had happened. Somehow blowing Marc in a coat room at a fancy fundraiser wasn’t even breaking the top 5 mind-bending things from that night.

It also didn’t help that her ass still stung when she sat down, which was why she was standing to begin with.

“So it’s Marc now and not Fornier?” Sinead asked, reversing the question onto her old partner.

Jules shrugged with a little smirk. “I guess so,” she said. “I had to bring him in a few days ago to get everything cleared up officially. We talked.”

“He never mentioned that,” Sinead frowned.

Jules sighed and wheeled over a chair from one of the empty desks in the nearly-unused bullpen around them, dropping into it. “Not keeping strong tabs on your CI, Sinead?”

“He’s not a CI,” Sinead said. “He’s a ... concerned private volunteer.”

“Well, whatever he is, he’s interesting,” Jules said.

Sinead felt a spike in her chest at that but buried it. There was no way she could talk to Jules about everything that had been happening with Marc. Especially not now. “He certainly is,” she said, trying to make it off-handed. “So what brings you down here?”

“I got permission to loop you in on the Barisha case,” Jules said. “Officially. And Cap said he called your Captain and gave me the go-ahead, so I thought I’d drop in.”

“Does Cap know that Barisha is just a stepping stone to try and get Le Français?” Sinead asked. “I don’t need something useful getting used as a bartering chip because it’ll nail someone smaller.”

“Sinead,” Jules said, screwing up her face a little. “What the fuck? You know I wouldn’t do that.”

The redhead stopped herself from shuffling through the papers in front of her and took a breath. “I know,” she said. “Sorry.”

“What’s going on with you?” Jules asked. “Jesus, sit down and talk to me.”

Sinead didn’t have a good reason to deny that, so she gritted her teeth and sat in her desk chair. She managed not to wince as the deep aching sting in her glutes flared up. “Nothing’s going on,” she said. “I’m just- I’m feeling a little lost here, I guess. I’m doing the work, but I don’t have anyone breathing down my neck like I’m used to. It’s weird because you’d think I’d be enjoying that but it feels like I’m sort of adrift here.”