Promises to Keep by Maegan Beaumont Page A

That’s what he was getting ready to do, but then he made the mistake of looking at her. The look of quiet resignation on Sabrina’s face told him that this was something she’d heard before. Something she was long used to. And that didn’t sit well with him at all.
    So he stood, towering over that self-important piece of shit, and let loose. He didn’t regret what he said or the shouting match that had ensued behind closed doors, with Mathews threatening to call his superior and him laughing in his face. No—what he regretted was that he’d allowed Sabrina out of his sight for the two minutes it took him to tell Mathews to shove it up his ass. He should’ve remembered that she had a habit of taking off when the situation at hand promised to be emotionally messy.
    The light coat that had been on her chair was gone, which meant she’d left the building. Glancing at Strickland, he saw that he’d traded the files in his lap for his keyboard. He was peering at his computer screen, painfully pecking at the keys with an excruci ating lack of skill or speed. “Where’d your partner go?” Michael said, yanking open one of her desk drawers to rifle through it. Not because he thought it would offer him any answers but because his messing it up would make her angry.
    â€œBetter not do that. She gets testy when assholes touch her stuff,” Strickland said, glancing up from the screen with a frown. Sabrina’s partner looked at him as if he’d known Michael was here all along, which went to show that no matter how impressive Michael found him, he continually underestimated the man.
    Slamming the drawer shut, he went for another one, scattering colored paperclips and perfectly sharpened pencils everywhere. “Where’d she go?”
    â€œHome. Spelunking. Around the world in eighty days. How should I know? She was here and now she’s not,” Strickland said, his tone gaining edge as he sat back from his computer to look at Michael.
    â€œYou just let her go?” he said, slamming yet another drawer.
    â€œLet her? I’m sorry, are we talking about the same woman?” Strickland said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “No one lets her do anything. You of all people should know that.”
    Michael ignored Strickland’s last comment. “If you see her, tell her I need to talk to her,” he said, pulling a business card from his breast pocket. He flipped it at Strickland, who stared at him while it sailed over his desk and onto the floor next to his chair. Without even looking at it, Strickland turned back to his computer and resumed his hunt-and-peck routine. “Yeah, I’ll be sure to do that for you. Have a good day,” he said.
    Clenching his jaw with enough force to make his teeth ache, Michael walked away before he did something he probably wouldn’t regret.
    He walked to the lot that housed officer parking. Her car was nowhere to be seen. She was in the wind, and he had no idea where she’d gone.

    The boy was awake, although he was pretending not to be. Sabrina pulled up a chair and prepared to wait him out. If at all possible, he was even paler than she remembered, the dark shock of hair that fell across his forehead standing out in stark relief against the impossible white of his skin. She glanced at the tray of untouched food on the nearby overbed table. How long had it been since he ate?
    The social worker was long gone. As horrific as the circumstances were, she was “doubtful that his case took any kind of precedence.” There were children everywhere in need of social services. Sabrina assumed it went down as it always did—they came in, took a report, tried to ask the kid some general questions, and talked to the doctors about his condition. Not much they could do, really; he was the Russian Embassy’s problem now.
    A brief conversation with the charge nurse when she arrived told her that Ben had