Read Fatal Scandal: Book Eight of the Fatal Series for Free Online Page A

before bolting past the agent at the door and stomping down the ramp, checking the time on her phone as she went.
    Twelve minutes from phone call to car with shower sex. Not bad.
    As she drove, she ate the apple and yawned her head off, jonesing for the diet cola she’d been forced to give up when her stomach revolted against the acid in the soda. While she wouldn’t have traded a minute of the evening she’d spent wrapped up in her gorgeous husband, she wished now that she’d spent a tiny bit more of it actually sleeping.
    She parked illegally on Constitution Avenue and stepped under the yellow crime scene tape that a patrolman held up for her. “What’ve we got?” she asked Officer Beckett, who stood next to the car.
    “Female vic, approximately thirty years old. Waiting for Dispatch to get me the details on the car.”
    “Have you touched anything?”
    “I gloved up to open the car door and check for a pulse. I also checked the glove box for a registration, but it wasn’t in there. That’s as far as I went on my own.”
    “Good job.”
    She pulled latex gloves from her coat pocket and snapped them on before leaning into the car for a closer look. The woman had long brown hair and pale skin. Sam noted bruising around her neck and throat, indication that she’d been manually strangled. She reached across the front seat for the purse that sat on the passenger seat and went through it looking for a wallet, which was at the bottom.
    Sam pulled it out and stood upright, relying on the first light of day to get a read of the name and address on the Maryland license. Lori Phillips. A bolt of shock traveled through Sam, drawing a gasp from her tightly clenched lips as she took a second look at the woman and recognized her as the mother of Gonzo’s son—the same woman he’d faced off against in court, the same one he’d said he wanted to strangle.
    “Fuck,” Sam whispered.
    “What’s got you swearing before the sun is even up?” her partner, Detective Freddie Cruz, asked as he joined her.
    Sam turned to him, not surprised to see him bed-headed and rumpled as he always was when he responded to calls late at night or first thing in the morning. “It’s Lori Phillips.”
    Freddie’s mouth opened and then closed. “As in
Gonzo’s
Lori Phillips?” he asked in nearly a whisper.
    “One and the same.”
    “Shit.”
    “Thus the swearing.” Sam didn’t tell him—and wouldn’t tell anyone—what Gonzo had said to her the night before. But she’d be having a conversation with her detective sergeant the second she could break free from the crime scene.
    Freddie zipped his coat all the way to the top. A whipping wind made it that much colder than it already was. “How do we play this?”
    “I don’t know. I just got here myself. I need a minute to think.” Sam took Lori’s phone out of her purse and handed it to Freddie. “How do we see what’s on this?”
    Freddie took it from her and pushed some buttons. “It’s password protected. We’ll need to get it to Archie for a dump.” He glanced at something over her shoulder. “Here comes the ME.” Then he looked down at her, concern etched into his handsome face. “You don’t think—”
    “No! I don’t think that. And neither do you.”
    “Right. Of course I don’t think that.” After a long pause, he said, “But everyone else will.”
    “Shit, fuck, damn, hell,” she muttered, staring down at Lori and thinking of the shitstorm that would erupt when the media caught wind of the fact that she’d been murdered. In any homicide investigation, Sam’s first thoughts were always for her victim and getting justice for both the victim and the victim’s family. In this case, however, she couldn’t help but think of her close friend and how this particular homicide would turn his life upside down.
    “What you said.” As a rule, Freddie left the swearing to her, but even he was known to break loose in the most extreme situations, and this