She yawned as she climbed from her police-issue SUV. She’d just tied up one of the most frustrating cases of her career as a homicide detective, and then spent way too many hours over the weekend struggling with all the tedious paperwork she hated so much. The killer wouldn’t be walking off free if she could help it. At this point, she was almost certain there were no loose ends, no possible details left out of her report. Of that she was damn proud.

It was quiet in the massive concrete and steel parking garage. Too quiet. She preferred noise around her, particularly when she wasn’t focused on working a case. Silence left her with nothing to concentrate on but her thoughts. Right now those thoughts centered on recalling her actions of this past week. Not good. She would rather not think about them. Doing the job and writing the report had taken its toll on her. She’d only managed a few hours sleep this last week, barely more than that over the weekend. Lack of enough sleep never helped her attitude. Her attitude had been sour enough from the moment she’d taken on the case from hell. She had grouched around as if she were in eternal PMS mode. Every cop, staff member in Police Central, and even her lifemate had steered wide paths around her. Attitude: bad. Definitely bad. Patience: nil. Cursing: rampant. Disobedience: big time. The sad part was that none of those were rare behaviors for her.

She wasn’t in the mood to hurry into her small office as she usually did, to settle into her personal space and get her head into her work. She never looked forward to diving into the endless number of intranet messages. Right now she felt even more resistant to doing so. Without a doubt her message box would be flashing with far too many messages from her commander. Plus the annoying demerit box would be flashing with more entries. The last time she’d checked her demerits she’d been awfully close to earning a day of correctional time. Definitely not something she—or anyone else—looked forward to or went to without some assistance. Since her demerit list might have shot right off into the holy-hell-she’d-not-sit-well-for-a-month zone, she would not go easily to the Professional Punishment Center.