Thrill Kill (Matt Sinclair #2) - Brian Thiem Page 0,22

road bike, golf clubs, or a motorcycle.”

“He’s not getting a motorcycle until the kids have graduated high school and their college is fully funded.”

“You both wear OPD badges for a living and you’re worried he’ll hurt himself riding a motorcycle?”

“What about you and Kayla? Are things serious enough to exchange gifts for Christmas?”

“I ended it a few weeks ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There was nothing to tell. We lasted a month, had fun for a while, and then she got clingy and wanted to make plans for the future.”

“And you got scared and ran.”

Sinclair thought about what Braddock said. The longest he had dated anyone since his divorce almost four years ago was the six months he and Liz were together. That ended more than a year ago when she was nearly raped and murdered by the Bus Bench Killer and subsequently took a position as a news anchor in Chicago. He’d lost track of how many women he’d gone out with since then, but knew none lasted longer than a month.

“It wasn’t like that,” he said. “I knew from the onset that she wasn’t the kind of woman I would settle down with. But she knew how to have fun. She was still into the party scene, though, and I’m just not into that anymore.”

“It’s got to be hard when you don’t drink.”

“I don’t mind going out with people who have a drink or two, but when the sole purpose of going out is to drink . . . Being around drunk people when you’re not also drunk isn’t much fun.”

“You’re not alone.” Braddock pulled out her phone and began texting as she talked. “These days, I start getting sleepy halfway through my second glass of wine.”

“It wasn’t just the partying. Kayla just wasn’t right for me.”

“If the right woman appeared, would you be ready for her?”

“If you mean am I ready to buy a house with a white picket fence and have a couple of little rug rats? I think I have a ways to go.” Sinclair glanced at Braddock. When she looked up from her phone, he continued. “But if you mean am I ready to give up the serial dating routine, then yes. I’m getting so tired of that.”

Braddock read something on her phone and put it into her purse. “Can we stop by ACH on the way back to the office? I need to pick up some paperwork on an old case.”

*

A patient yelled for more pain meds from one of the rooms as Sinclair and Braddock walked down the long hallway. Alameda County Hospital—ACH to cops—housed the regional trauma center and one of the busiest ERs in the Bay Area. Every cop wanted to be brought here if they were shot or seriously hurt, but as soon as they were stabilized, they’d want to be moved to a hospital with nicer rooms, a higher class of patients, and nurses less calloused by the workload and the worn-out facility.

A tall, thin white man with a ponytail and a stethoscope around his neck said hi to them as they slipped past the nurse’s station into the break room. A nurse dressed in purple scrubs got up from a seat at a chipped Formica-topped table. She smiled and gave Braddock a quick hug. Alyssa Morelli then stood there for a few seconds staring at Sinclair.

“Matt,” Alyssa said as she finally opened her arms and embraced him.

Sinclair’s chin touched the top of her head as she pressed her body against him. He was certain she could feel his heart pounding in his chest by the time she stepped back and looked up at him. Her hair, pinned up loosely on top of her head, glistened in the sunlight streaming through the window. The sun had finally peeked through the clouds that had blanketed Oakland for the last two days.

“You look good.” Her enormous brown eyes scanned him from head to toe. “I was afraid that you’d turned into some ruddy-faced bozo with a beer belly and blood-vessel-covered nose.”

Sinclair had been a long-haired, unshaven narcotics officer when he last saw Alyssa nine years ago. She was one of the nurses who hung out with a group of patrol officers that Sinclair used to work with. The nurses and cops skied together in the winter, boated and hiked together in the summer, and met at the Warehouse, the local cop bar, most nights after work. After months of being just friends, Sinclair and Alyssa had gone out on a few