“You’re really not going to have Peterson open a case after you just spent three hours walking that scene with me and half the freaking fire department?” Her voice came out unnaturally shrill, but she was so far past caring. “What was the point in even asking me if I was sure these are murders if you weren’t going to act?”
“Of course I’m going to act,” Sinclair said, the stone cold certainty both in his voice and on his face killing the rest of the argument she’d been about to launch. “I’m calling Peterson with a recommendation to start a full investigation, starting immediately. If DuPree is behind these murders, I want him to answer for them, along with every other heinous thing he’s ever done or even thought about doing.”
Isabella opened her mouth. Tried like hell to verbalize an intelligent thought. Couldn’t make it happen for all the world.
“I don’t understand,” she finally managed. “You just told me you weren’t calling him.”
“No. I said I wasn’t calling him yet.”
Nothing followed but the far-off ringing of phones from the homicide office down the hall and the muffled white noise of afternoon traffic moving over the street two stories below, but she wasn’t about to get shy—about this case or anything else—now. “What are you waiting for?” Isabella asked.
Sinclair scrubbed a hand over the dark blond stubble peppering his jaw and leaned back in his desk chair, although the increased space between them did nothing to dilute the seriousness in his expression. “I’m waiting for you to go home.”
“E-excuse me?” Isabella sputtered, her pulse tripping through her veins. “Why would I go home if we’re opening an investigation?”
“You’re going home because that’s where I’m sending you. As of this moment, you’re off this case.”
“Sam.” The single syllable was all she could push past the dread keeping her pinned into place. But he couldn’t kick her off this investigation. Not when Angel had been killed for agreeing to meet her. Isabella had to make this right.
Sinclair shook his head. “You’re a great cop, Moreno. But even great cops can’t freelance in this unit. And they sure as shit don’t get to buck the chain of command that starts with me.”
“You bend the rules all the time,” she said, clamping down on her lip as soon as the words were out. Okay, so pointing out his rules-are-mostly-just-guidelines mentality might’ve been a teensy bit brash. But Sinclair didn’t exactly go by the book all the time, or hell, even half the time.
Just when she was certain she’d surpassed her daily quota for total fucking shock, Sinclair said, “You’re right. Sometimes I do. But there’s a huge difference between massaging the rules to get the job done and going completely rogue. You repeatedly put yourself in danger for evidence the State’s Attorney can’t touch because you had no search warrant when you obtained it, you showed a blatant disregard for a direct order given to you by your commanding officer, and don’t even get me started on the fact that you brought a civilian on not one, but all of these field trips of yours.”
“Believe me, that part wasn’t by choice,” she argued, but Sinclair wasn’t having a single word of it.
“Everything you did was by choice. Your decision to pursue DuPree off the books—”
Despair drove her to interrupt. “You wouldn’t let me pursue him on the books!”
He interrupted right back. “Your decision to keep me and the rest of this unit at arm’s length rather than trusting us to back you up once you’d talked to your CI—”
No. Way. “Is that what this is about? You’re booting me from this case just because I don’t want to share my feelings while we all have s’mores around the campfire?” Un-be-fucking-lievable!
“No,” Sinclair bit out. “I’m booting you from this case because you need to learn that being a cop isn’t just about you. It’s about solving cases as part of a team. And if you can’t work with me and Hollister and Maxwell and Hale and Capelli—if you can’t trust us when you need us, either out there or in here—then you’re not working this case.”
Isabella blinked through the afternoon sunlight slanting in past the shades. Sinclair knew her. He’d read her personnel file cover to cover a thousand times—shit, he’d put the full court press on her recruitment to the intelligence unit the second she’d been promoted to detective. He knew why she’d become a cop, why she’d made it her mission to become a detective so she could stop men just like Julian DuPree. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t do this to her.
“Sam,” she whispered, her throat rasping over her words. “You can’t take me off this case. Please.”
But Sinclair simply shook his head. “I’m sorry, Moreno, but I just did. You’re on restricted desk duty, updating your unrelated paperwork until further notice. And if you so much as look at this case again without my permission, I’ll see to it personally that you walk the beat at the shopping mall for the rest of your career. Are we understood?”
19