Judging Time

morning.

'Doesn't need it,' she murmured. Her inner eye flickered over him again like a butterfly searching for nectar in a flower garden.

i,Mi Dios, existe? Could it be? His heart jumped into his throat and blocked his breathing. Could it be? He'd been watching this woman with his whole being for many months, waiting for a sign. He'd been waiting for such a long time he'd begun telling himself to give it up. Give it up, move on. How many times could a man get that close only to be pushed away at the very last moment with a look determined enough to stop a starving tiger from lunging at a still target? Move on, his head kept telling him, A thousand women wanted it, move on. And then what would he do? He'd move an inch or two away from her, only to lose the ground the minute he saw her again. In the middle of work, he'd be sitting across the desk from her and smell her, feel the whole of her living inside of him as if his body were her home, and he'd yearn to be inside her the same way.

'You want to get in the car, or stand here in the rain? Either way's fine with me,' she said.

Jesus. There was the sign. There it was. She loved him. No doubt about it. His scarred eyebrow jumped up as he opened the door for her. He checked for the devil's face in the window. It had disappeared. A good omen. He trotted around the car and got in on the driver's side, glanced in the mirror. His hair and face were dripping. His coat was water-spotted. He looked horrible. The car smelled like wet upholstery. This was not the best moment, but he couldn't let the chance pass. His lips burned. He didn't want to mess up again, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. What was he supposed to do here, ask her to marry him? Ask her to sleep with him, or give her a kiss?

Okay. He opened his eyes. April had put down her hood and was studying him with a wrinkled forehead.

'You all right?' she asked.

'Yeah, sure.' He nodded, trying to be cool.

'So?'

'So . . . April, I've been thinking.' He scratched his cheek. 'We know each other pretty well now. It's been six weeks since we haven't worked in the same shop. What do you say we get married?'

April let her breath out in a whistle. 'Just like that?'

Mike shrugged. 'Well, it's not just like that. I've been thinking about it for a while now. I think cops should marry each other, know what I mean?'

April chewed on her bottom lip, then glanced out the car window at her house.

'So, what do you say?'

She studied the water dripping down the windshield before answering. 'What about love?'

'Huh? Didn't I say I love you? You know I love you. You'd have to be crazy not to know that.' He started patting his pocket down now for the car keys, didn't think this was going well and wanted to get away. 'I want to marry you, be with you forever, don't I?'

'They're right here.' She handed him the car keys.

'So?' He fumbled with the ignition.

After a long moment, she shook her head. 'I couldn't marry anyone I haven't slept with, you know, quite a bit. Maybe as long as a year, to see if we're compatible.'

'No kidding?' Mike perked up.

'I don't know why. But it seems important to me.'

'It's important.' Mike cleared his throat. 'Shouldn't marry if you're not'—he coughed again— 'compatible.' He checked his watch. It was 7:00 A.M. He didn't know what time her shift started.

April brushed raindrops off the front of her raincoat, waiting for his next move.

Mike sucked on his mustache, considering. 'You hungry? Want to go to my place for breakfast?'

'Sure,' she said. 'Got any food?'

'Ah, not really. Is that a problem?' Mike looked at her again, checking to make absolutely sure he wasn't missing something somewhere.

'No problem,' she said, then smiled, stopping his heart again. Jesu Christe, she meant it.

After all this time no problem? Mike plunged the key into the ignition, got the car started, and pulled out with a roar. At 7:33 the rain stopped. At 7:45 Mike and April were in his apartment in their first deep kiss, struggling to embrace around their various weapons when the phone rang.

Mike picked up, breathing hard. 'Yeah. Sanchez.'

'You in the middle of something, Mike?'

'What's up?' He nuzzled April's neck, wasn't leaving now no matter what.

Hardly wincing at all, April pushed up her sleeves and wrapped her smooth slender arms around his neck. He kissed the inside of her upper arm. Her skin smelled of soap and roses. She pressed her hips against him. He kissed her mouth and tongue. She tasted of mint toothpaste. He could feel her breasts, her heart beating, her thigh nudging between his legs. He felt light-headed, almost dizzy with excitement. All he wanted was to sink down on the floor with her and never get up.

He couldn't hear what was being said to him. 'I have a bad cold,' he said. 'I have a fever. It's my day off.'

'You heard me, this is important. Are you coming ill?'

April had removed her weapon and now was disarming him. She caught a tender place under his arm and tickled, making him laugh into the phone. And he hadn't thought she was funny! Then she was tugging at his shirt, at the buckle on his belt. He was breathing hard.

'Mike—! Are you coming in or what?'

'No, man, not today,' he croaked. He tried to hang up the receiver and dropped it with a crash. By the time he got the two pieces of phone together and the dial tone shut down, April had most of her clothes off. He stopped short, gawking like a kid.

'Jesus, April—'

'What was that about?' she asked.

'Oh, nothing. Um—' He took his pants off, tripping and almost falling on a cuff. Not cool, not cool at all.

'Very nice,' April murmured at what she saw. She said 'Kiss me a lot' in Spanish. He was pretty much out of his mind with desire, but he did notice that her accent was pretty good. He figured that she didn't really mean kiss me a lot. She meant what kiss me a lot really means. So he did.

If you enjoyed reading Judging Time,  be sure to look for Leslie Glass's powerful new April Woo suspense novel, STEALING TIME

Read on for a special brief excerpt. . . .

Available now from Signet

At 5 A.M., on what would tum out to be anything but a routine Tuesday, April Woo saw the glow of morning spread around the comer and down the hall into the bedroom where she was trying to sleep. The light came from the living-room picture window of the twenty-second-floor Queens apartment where her boyfriend had lived for six months and where no curtains concealed the drop-dead view of the Manhattan skyline. Punched out and highlighted by the dawn, the jumble of building shapes hung as if etched in the sky, a monument to the ingenuity of man, that great magician who used the raw power of steel and concrete in bridges and glass towers to dwarf nature and hide himself. Another day, and the city beckoned even before the cop was fully conscious.

April Woo was a detective sergeant in the New York City Police Department and second whip in the detective squad of Midtown North, the West Side precinct between Fifty-ninth and Forty-second streets from Fifth Avenue to the Hudson River. She was a boss who supervised other detectives and was in charge of the squad when her superior, Lieutenant Iriarte, was not around. She was also a person used to sleeping in her own. bed. Having grown up in a Chinatown walkup, and living at the moment in a two-story house in Astoria, Queens, April was now in the highest place she'd ever spent the night. She yawned, stretched, and let the soft drone of the news perpetually playing on 1010 WINS filter into her consciousness. A sharp detective listened for disaster twenty-four hours a day.