Sins of the Angels by Linda Poitevin

off the car and tossed her cup, coffee and all, into a Dumpster. Then she met his gaze with a stony one of her own.
    â€œFine,” she said. “Maybe it was a trick of the light. Or the shadows. Or my fucking imagination. It was raining, it was cloudy, I saw whatever it was from the corner of my eye for a split second, and then all hell broke loose. I’m sorry I even mentioned it.”
    Roberts’s lips thinned. Then he shook his head. “Look, let’s just forget it, all right? Like I said, we’re all under stress.”
    Alex bit the inside of her cheek to keep further comment to herself. She changed the subject. “How’s the kid doing?”
    â€œThe rookie? He’s pretty shaken up, but he’ll survive. His trainer is apoplectic, however.”
    Alex would be, too, if her partner had been that quick to fire. Or if he’d missed at that range.
    Two shots, both buried harmlessly in the wall behind Trent, wide of their mark. If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she wouldn’t have believed it. She hugged her arms around herself.
    Still wasn’t sure she did.
    â€œRemedial firearms training?” she hazarded.
    â€œOh, yeah.”
    They fell silent for a moment, watching the latest victim being zipped into a body bag and then loaded onto a gurney.
    Roberts cleared his throat. “Whether you saw him or not, Alex, we came close this time. Any closer and we’d have had him.”
    â€œYeah. Sure.”
    Roberts looked down at her. “He’s getting cocky. Killing in broad daylight in an alley off a busy street—if he keeps up like that, we will get him.”
    Alex’s palms turned clammy. She remembered Trent’s flat, cold expression; his colder words: “You’d better hope to Heaven that you don’t, Alex Jarvis. Because you don’t stand a chance against him. Not you, and not your entire police force.”
    She stared again at Trent. He didn’t look in her direction, but she felt his attention on her all the same. His awareness of her, echoing her own sensitivity to him. Her heart stuttered in her chest. Roberts had continued speaking, and now something he said snagged her attention.
    â€œWhat did you just say?”
    â€œI said, even with this rain, we got here soon enough that we might actually find some evidence.”
    â€œBefore that.”
    â€œWhat? The part about Trent having such good hearing?”
    â€œIs that what he told you? That he heard something?”
    Her staff inspector’s forehead creased. “Is there a problem with that?”
    Alex hesitated. Was Trent’s claimed sixth sense something she wanted to share? She glanced at her partner again and noted the tension that had crept into his posture, as if he knew what they discussed and didn’t want her to continue. Which gave her ample reason to do so. She straightened her shoulders.
    â€œWe were sitting in a coffee shop two blocks away,” she told Roberts. Trent turned his head and Alex recoiled under his fury. Then she lifted her chin, met his anger glare for glare, swallowed hard, and made herself continue. “He said he could feel the killer. Physically hauled me out and brought me here. Told me to wait while he went into the alley alone.”
    Silence met her words. She saw a muscle flex in Trent’s jaw and she deliberately hardened her own expression and turned her back on him and looked up at her staff inspector.
    â€œIt was raining,” she said harshly. “And thundering. There was traffic and we were two blocks away , inside a building. Trent didn’t hear anything.”
    Doubt mingled with outright skepticism on her supervisor’s face, and he looked in Trent’s direction. “You’re telling me you think the guy’s psychic?”
    â€œI’m telling you what happened. What he told me. He said he could feel the killer. Feel him stalk the victim, feel him kill . . .” Alex