Doing so was more than a reminder of her past. It was motivation for her future.

Of course, there was something else driving her. Or rather, there was someone. He was tall with dangling dreads and a smile that he saved just for her. He was intense and driven. He was smart and sexy. Most important, he was hers.

She’d spent the bulk of the morning trying to reach him after receiving word of the train station shooting. Her calls had gone unanswered.

As she walked into the diner and slid into her favorite booth at the front of the greasy spoon that had somehow survived amid sidewalk cafés and gourmet shops, she took off her hat, revealing reddish brown hair slightly darker than her cinnamon-colored skin. Then she took out her cell phone and pressed send, once again calling the only number she cared to reach that day.

It rang as the waitress smiled silently while sliding a cup of green tea in front of her. It rang while Jackson looked up with wide brown eyes and smiled back appreciatively. It rang while the sun shone dimly through the diner’s dirty window, and rang again while Jackson worriedly rubbed her right temple.

“Hey, Sandy,” he said, picking up on the seventh ring.

She exhaled, unaware that she’d been holding her breath. In that moment, she was soft, vulnerable, worried about the man she loved. That lasted for a few seconds, and then the tough veneer she’d developed as a cop resurfaced.

“Don’t ‘Hey, Sandy’ me,” she hissed. “I’ve been calling you since I heard about what happened this morning. Are you all right?”

“Of course I am,” he said. “I’ve just been dealing with some stuff down here at homicide.”

“What do you mean, ‘stuff’?”

There was a pause. She noticed it. Clearly he was going to try to hide something from her. That wasn’t a wise move.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” he said, his voice filled with the self-assurance that had drawn her to him in the first place.

But she heard a slight tremor in his voice when he spoke. It wasn’t fear. It was the kind of rage she’d held in far too many times herself. Rage she thought might boil over someday, in a time and in a place she least expected.

“Let me guess,” she said knowingly. “Coletti and his minions are at it again.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Mann said quickly. “Actually, I can’t talk about it. I’m on my way to internal affairs right now to give my statement about the shooting.”

“Well, here’s my statement,” Sandy said. “Don’t take any crap from anybody in that homicide unit. You’re the best detective this department has seen in a long time, and I’ll be damned if they’re gonna treat you as anything less.”

“Listen Sandy, I—”