Conflict of Interest

Chapter Four

Carrie

"Problem, Detective?"

"Problem?" Jenn repeated, limping into my kitchen at six in the morning. "No problem."

"You're walking like that for fun?"

"It's your fault I'm walking like this."

I took in air, not having realized my own strength. "I did that? You mean, last night?"

"It's okay, cutie," she smiled deviously, kissing me on the cheek on her way to the coffee. "It was worth it."

"Hey," I said, turning her back around to face me by the shoulder. "If you're going to go there, do it right."

She smiled, taking my less-than-subtle implications to mean she should kiss me properly, and she did. I transcended her intensity and ran my tongue across her bottom lip, but she she broke before I could go any further.

"And don't start something you don't plan on finishing, Counselor."

"It's only six," I tried to reason, my voice almost pleading, my hands not leaving her body.

"What the hell has gotten into you?" she marvelled, abandoning me for the coffee. "Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex."

"Maybe I just have nothing else to think about because nobody's brought me any evidence in the past week."

"Ouch," she noted. "We're trying, you know."

"Yeah, but how hard?"

"About as hard as what you're carrying under your shirt."

"Jennifer," I whispered as though we were in public.

"Seriously, what's up with you, Counselor Horny? Two days ago you would hardly make eye contact with me. Now, you want to make eye contact, and...every other type of contact."

"Okay, you want to talk contact?" I challenged, changing the subject from my thriving libido to our dying investigation. "Contact the PD and tell them they're putting me between a rock and a hard place."

"Again with your hard places."

"Jenn."

"Well seriously, the word choice?"

"Can you be serious with me for one minute?"

She sighed, though still smiling at her own jokes. "What's the problem?"

"Media hysteria," I answered, slapping the morning paper in front of her.

She squinted and held the paper a certain distance from her face, trying to make the headline out. "'Still no Conviction on Double Rape Homicide: DA Appears MIA.'" She rolled her eyes, putting it back down. "Well, that's clever."

"It goes on to say 'Green Falls is teeming with crime, and its biggest loser, Counselor Caroline Everett, is to blame.'"

"It does not say that," she dismissed.

"It's implied."

"Oh my God, you are so hard on yourself all the time. How do you live like that?"

"By succeeding," I said truthfully. "By winning."

"You should hear yourself. You sound like a pageant girl."

I blinked a couple times before staring at the ground and shuffling my feet, and her mouth just kind of hung open, having understood what I was trying to avoid saying.

"You were a pageant girl?"

"No," I lied, staring at the ground, then muttered, "I was Junior Miss Connecticut, 1990."