"Did you read all of it?"

  Pax's jaw clenched, and she knew she had him.

  "So how do you know then there's nothing in there that I don't want?” Morgan raised an eyebrow at him in a dare.

  "You're chasing dreams."

  "I'm chasing leads. This is a two year case already. It needs to end, preferably sooner rather than later. Give it." Morgan held her hand out again, snapping her fingers to get his attention.

  Pax shook his head. "No. Hear me out."

  "Then speak, man. I don't have all day."

  "Chill out, Stone. You're way too wired, maybe you should switch to decaf."

  "Shut up. What's in the file?"

  "Nothing. That's my point."

  "But you haven't read it."

  "I know what's in it."

  "Says who?"

  "Says your best friend down at Chicago PD. She says there is nothing in the file that will help you."

  Morgan's shoulders tensed. She knew exactly who Pax was talking about. She had kissed Detective Fiona Wexford exactly once and had dreamed of it even more times than she dared to count. Last December had been a fit of insanity on Morgan's part, and she strongly wanted to ignore the fact any of it had happened.

  "What does she know? I'm the expert."

  He snorted. "You trust her."

  "Some days. Others no. Give me the file."

  "Fine." He shoved it in her direction, knocking it into her coffee cup, which earned him a glare.

  Finally having the folder in front of her, Morgan flipped it open to the first page. It was a simple divorce decree, but she'd wanted to read every word of it for a month now as long as it had taken her to get hold of a copy of it. She'd had to twist some arms, fill out a million pounds of paperwork, but there it was right in front of her. The divorce decree of one Jonathon Lockland aka Mr. Jimmy. She knew it was him, though their initial findings that they were one in the same seemed to have faded and there were others now second-guessing that decision and working toward finding alternative suspects. Morgan had no such doubts.

  "You going to ignore me now?" Pax's voice broke through her reverie.

  "Yes," she muttered as she flipped through the next sheet of paper.

  Everything looked perfectly in place from the outside. She'd been through her own divorce years before and remembered how painstaking it was to finalize everything even if the divorce was mutual. No doubt Jonathon had gone through the same, as had his wife. They had one child, currently ten years old.

  "Earth to Morgan."

  "What?" She smacked her hand down on the desk and turned the best glare she could muster at him. Pax's look of surprise should have been her first warning, but she missed it. "What could you possibly want two seconds after just speaking to me? I've got work to do, Pax."

  The clearing throat startled her. Morgan turned and looked up, meeting her supervisor's amused gaze. Rolling her eyes, Morgan pouted out her lip.

  "Sorry, boss."

  "By all means, take him down another notch or two."

  With a deep breath, she turned to look up at Taylor. "Did you need me?"

  "Yeah. My office."

  "Great," Morgan muttered, abandoning her coffee, her desk, and the file she had waited forever for and then had to wrangle from Pax without even getting a chance to look at it. She wanted to read it, in its entirety before she made a judgement call whether there was something in there or not.

  As soon as she got to Taylor's office, she let out a huff. He moved around to the other side of his desk and sat down.

  "Shut the door."

  Fuck, Morgan thought. If he was having her shut the door, then whatever he was going to talk to her about was not going to be good. Morgan bit the inside of her lip as she shut the door, giving Pax one more glare because she could, even though he didn't see it since his back was turned.

  "You're off restrictions."

  Her shoulders tensed. "I'm what?"

  "You're off restrictions."

  Morgan shook her head, not quite believing it. "Really?"

  "Yes, but I swear, Stone, if you ever pull something like that again, you won't be working in this unit any longer even if you're lucky to work at the FBI."

  She clenched her jaw, wanting to bounce up and down at the giddy feeling taking over. Shaking her head at him with a smile tugging at her lips, she wasn't quite sure what to say. It was a week earlier than she had expected, since the evaluation wasn't due for another week. She'd known she'd fucked up in Seattle and had spent the last four months beating the shit out of herself and staying firmly in the lines.

  "Thanks, Taylor."

  "Don't thank me, yet. I'm still keeping a pretty close eye on you. What happened... that can't happen again."

  "I know." Morgan gave him a sincere look. "I know it can't. I didn't even know what was happening at the time."

  "I get your personal life is yours, but when it affects the case—”

  "I get it." Morgan stared at him directly. "Trust me, I get it. I have that conversation with myself every day. Why do you think I haven't been on a date since then? If I can't trust my own judgement, who can I trust?”

  "Your partner," Taylor answered.

  Morgan turned to look out the window at Pax who still sat at his desk. "Perhaps. He didn't know anything."

  "I know. It was all on you."

  "No, sir." Morgan swallowed. "I may have known Pax for the better part of two decades, but he didn't know I dated women until then."

  "Oh."

  Morgan knocked her chin up. "I never...we never...it never came up, so I just let it slide."

  "But Barbie..."

  "Don't ask me how he never figured that one out. Sometimes he is just dense about things, especially things you don't want to see in your best friends. But he didn't know until Seattle."

  Taylor picked up a pen and ran it from end to end between his fingers. "You have to trust someone, Stone. If not him, then who?"

  "I don't know, sir,” she muttered.

  "Figure it out, but for now, you are off restrictions and can return to full active duty. You still need to make sure to report everything to me, though, understand?"

  "Yes, sir." Morgan shoved her hands into the pockets of her slacks. She couldn't wait to tell Pax. They had both been waiting for that day for months, and she was finally back to working without feeling like someone was watching over her shoulder.

  "What do you have on the trafficking case?"

  Morgan groaned. "Not much. We're testing other theories as to who Mr. Jimmy might be. Pax is looking up a James Halverty out of Saint Paul. We're pretty sure our suspect is located in this area of the country based on where the lines of trafficking stem from. We've got surveillance going on under the radar and some that's a little more overt. If Halverty is our guy, hopefully we'll spook him a bit into doing something different."

  "And if he's not?"

  "We're also looking at a James Carrigan from here. We've got the work on him almost done, and I'll start on the profile as soon as they finish getting me the information I need."

  "Lockland?"

  "I still think it's him, sir. I've never seen someone so calculated in everything they do before. Call it intuition, instinct, gut feeling, whatever. I still think it's him."

  Taylor gave her a long look, and she couldn't tell what he was thinking, but Morgan knew he was judging her. "Make sure your preference doesn't cloud your understanding on what you are seeing out there."

  "Absolutely, sir."

  "Anything else?"

  "The Topeka office and Kansas City office are working together to set up another raid, but we're pretty sure Mr. Jimmy isn't there. They should have their plans to us by Friday so we can look them over. I wasn't sure...since I'm off restrictions..."

  "No, Stone. I think you need to stick close to home for now."

  Disappointment settled in the pit of her belly. "Yes, sir."

  "Let me know if you come up with anything else."

  "Right." Dismissed, Morgan stepped away from his desk and out the door. Once she was settled in her chair, she sipped her coffee, wincing when it wasn't scalding hot anymore. She'd have to suffer through the only semi-hot coffee until she could make some more.

  Pax leaned over. "What did he want?"

  "To see if you're still useful to him," Morgan muttered, opening the file again so she could actually read through it this time.

  "No, really, what did he want?"

  "What's it to you?"

  "Did he say something about me?"

  "No." Morgan's eyes went wide, and she turned on him. "Why? Did you do something?"

  "No."

  Morgan wasn't quite sure whether to believe him or not, his words she trusted, but his tone of voice told her something else entirely. Having pity on him, she finally spilled the beans. "I'm off restrictions."

  "Seriously?"

  "Yes."

  "Just like that?"

  "What? Did you think I'd have to retake exams or something? Sign away my life in blood?"

  "No, I just...I figured you'd get lectured again."

  "Well, sorry to disappoint." She clenched her jaw as her phone buzzed on her desk. Grabbing it, she hoped for a distraction, but when she saw her mother's name flash across it, she sent the call to voicemail. She did not have the brain power to deal with that. "I'm going to work now, should you, you know, have your own shit to do."

  Pax put his hands up in the air like she had slapped him. She was being particularly mean that day, but something wasn't sitting right with her. If she was truly off restrictions, then she should be able to go to the raid and join in without a problem. All it told her was Taylor still didn't quite trust her yet. Sighing, she flipped open the file and started to read.

  Every detail was in place. Her gaze slipped over the words, over the decree, the custody arrangement, the alimony. Then she went back through and looked for what wasn't there. They had records of Jonathon Lockland's financial. Every once in a while, there was money that they couldn't quite account for, but it was never a large sum of it. Even in the financials of the divorce, nothing seemed amiss or outside of what they had already found. Everything seemed to match up.

  Morgan was going to have to figure out something, something that stood out for him against the others. She wanted to prove she was right as much as she wanted to find Mr. Jimmy and take him down. He ran, easily, the biggest trafficking ring she had ever seen, and he targeted the least of the least, the ones no one cared about. He'd moved from taking kids off the street when their parents weren't looking to enticing foster care kids, kids who were permanently at risk, into his line of work. She couldn't take it anymore.

  Her phone buzzed again, and once more she sent her mother's call to voicemail. The woman had no boundaries and no understanding that Morgan had a job, and even though it wasn't a regular nine-to-five, she needed to respect that Morgan worked for a living, unlike her. Morgan took another long sip from her coffee and finished reading the divorce decree. She slipped it into the file with the rest of the information she'd collected on Jonathon Lockland.

  They had a conference meeting about it Thursday afternoon, where all the findings were to be presented and they'd then debate who they thought Mr. Jimmy might actually be. They would no doubt come to no answer and stick more surveillance on all of them. That was how it normally seemed to go any time she tried to prove her point. It wasn’t an actual meeting to figure out who had done it. It was yet another bureaucratic meeting to discuss what they were all doing and come to no useful conclusion.

  Sighing, Morgan rubbed her temple and finished her coffee before pulling out the files for the other two and getting to work on finishing out the basic profiles for each. She couldn’t—like Taylor said—spend all her time on Lockland and ignore everyone else. Spending the rest of her day lost in the probable brain space of a crime boss was exactly what Morgan needed to take her own mind off the fact she wasn’t really off restrictions, no matter what Taylor tried to tell her.

  Chapter Three

  Morgan slipped through the glass door at her favorite pizzeria just down from headquarters. Frankie was already behind the counter, eyeing her up and down. She'd thought about it once, very briefly, and then had nixed that idea so fast she wasn't sure where it had come from.

  "Table for two?"

  Narrowing her gaze at him, Morgan nodded. "Yes. Is she here?"

  "No, just you, my ever-happy agent."

  Smirking, Morgan nodded her head toward the back of the restaurant. "I'll seat myself."

  "Fine."

  She walked around the corner and down to the back of the building. It was her preferred booth, gave her the best view of everything happening outside through the large front glass windows, and she had nothing behind her except the bathrooms. Ideally, it was the perfect place for her to hunker down, enjoy some grub, and maybe some company.

  They had been meeting on a fairly regular basis since December when Morgan had returned from her stint out west catching a serial killer who was both delusional and ever-hopeful. She wasn't quite sure what category to put her in, insane or Pollyanna. Though, the killing part pretty much tipped that scale.

  It had been a long few months. She'd been allowed to go back on the case with Pax watching every move and doing everything with her in order to close it out, but she had received a formal reprimand in her file for sleeping with a suspect. Except, she hadn't known she was a suspect when she'd done it, not until the bugger had turned on her and tried to kill her in the middle of trying to fuck her.

  Rubbing the bridge of her nose and then her temples, Morgan unclenched her jaw as she tried her best to relax. Lollie was in jail awaiting sentencing since she'd pretty much confessed to everything, but that still didn't mean Morgan wasn't on edge any time she felt herself slipping closer into a relationship with someone else, like Fiona Wexford, who still confused the crap out of her.

  Frankie came around the corner, his tan pants belted tightly across his hips, white washrag over his shoulder, pencil behind his ear tucked in with his long brown hair. She had watched him grow up in the last six years since she'd transferred to Chicago. She'd found the little pizzeria one of her first weeks on the job, and there was no going back, she loved it. Frankie's father, Frank Senior—so original—had been running the joint then, teaching Frankie the ropes. Over the course of four years, he had slowly given up more and more control so Frankie could take over. It worked out exactly as it should have.

  "What'll you be having? The usual?"

  Morgan pursed her lips as she crossed her arms and stared directly up at him. He was easily a foot taller than her when she was standing, so sitting, she really had to crane her neck at him. "She's not even here yet."

  "I'm busy."

  Morgan's lips parted. "Frankie, there is no one in this place except me. I'm after the rush. What are you even going on about?"

  The flush in his cheeks was surprising. He slid across from her in the booth, his knees no doubt touching the top of the table. "I got to study."

  "Study? Study for what?"

  "I'm taking classes again."

  "Really? For what?"

  "Business."

  "Why? You run your own business. It's going well enough, isn't it?"

  He gave a nonchalant shrug, and Morgan focused her gaze on him. He wasn't telling her something, that was for sure, but it also wasn't the norm. They may have been friends inside the pizzeria, but they never spoke outside of it except the one time she had caught him accidentally at the pharmacy.

  Frankie sighed. "Dad thinks I need a degree."

  "Did he have one?"

  "No."

  Morgan pulled her lower lip between her teeth. "So he wants you to do better than he did?”

  Frankie shrugged.

  "Look, don't go to school just for him. You'll flunk out like all the other times. If you want to go to school, then go, but don't do it for anyone but you. You don't need a degree to run this place."

  Nodding, Frankie let out a sharp breath. "I want it."

  "Good. Then don't fucking fail, or I'll be after you."

  "Don't want that." Frankie winked.

  "Nope." Morgan's eyes lit up when she saw Fiona step through the doorway and into the restaurant. She gave a little wave, which alerted Frankie that someone was there. He scooted out of the seat and waited until Fiona was settled in the booth across from Morgan.

  "The usual?"

  "For me, yes." Morgan nodded at Fiona. "You?"

  "Uh...yeah. I'll just have what she's having."

  "Got it. Order coming up! Oh, and Morgan."

  "Yeah?" She turned to look at him.

  He nodded his head at her. "Thanks."

  "Any time. And hey, if you need help with any classes, Fiona here is brilliant. Don't ask me for help, though."

  Frankie snorted, the smile tugging at his lips again that she missed so much. He waved them both off and went into the kitchen.

  "What was that about?"

  "Nothing really. Just giving him a rough time like normal."

  Fiona nodded and pushed her light brown hair behind her ear. Her gaze moved down to the table, and Morgan wondered for a second if it was a flirtatious move or if Fiona even knew what she was doing. They hadn't talked about the kiss since Morgan had taken over Lollie’s case from Fiona and went off to find the serial killer. They hadn't even talked about Morgan's supposed crush on Fiona since she flew back to Chicago and she'd given Fiona a call to tell her Lollie had been caught. They had both strategically avoided that conversation every single time they had gotten together since.

  "So...how's work going? Any good cases I can steal?"

  Fiona scrunched her nose at Morgan. "No. I think I'll keep them all, thank you."

  Morgan smirked as she grabbed her fork and fiddled with it. Her fingers did not want to sit still when Fiona was around as much as she begged them to. Fiona grabbed her hands, her palm covering both of Morgan's. She gave a squeeze and left her hands there, and Morgan didn't remove them. She didn't want to.

  "You got anything interesting going on at work?"

  "No," Morgan nearly whispered. Her heart skittered. She'd given her normal answer because there wasn't really anything she could talk to Fiona about when it came to work, and Fiona knew that, but it was still a courtesy to ask. Drawing in a breath, Morgan shifted her hands from the top of the table into her lap. She hated that at fifty years old, Fiona was still able to make her feel like a teenager who needed to sneak around.