Thank you for the response to the first chapter! I'm glad people seem interested in the idea. I will try to get you guys an update at least once a week, sometimes more. This one it a bit shorter than the first chapter, I'm still getting a feel for writing for these characters; but hopefully I will have another one up by Friday/Saturday at the latest. Hope you continue to enjoy, let me know what you think:)
Myka glanced to her side and frowned. Ms HG Wells was sitting next to her desk, comfortably relaxed, sipping coffee and clicking a pen incessantly. From the signature smirk etched onto her face, she was well aware of the fact that it was annoying Myka beyond belief. Rather than give the older woman the satisfaction of admitting it, Myka bit her lip and returned to her file.
"Is it usually this dull?" HG asked a few moments later. Myka was learning that Helena Wells was not someone who was capable of being quiet for very long.
"Welcome to the real world Ms Wells, a lot of our work has boring aspects." Myka said without looking up from her desk.
"You can call me Helena." She offered with a cocky smile.
"Wells is good enough for me. Cop thing." Myka said, standing up and grabbing her coffee mug. She was well aware of HG's eyes following her to the break room. It frustrated her that the author affected her so much. It had taken a while to establish herself in the very male dominated profession of police work; especially being the youngest officer to be promoted to detective. While leering eyes were something she had gotten used to; them coming from a woman was new. Myka – and the rest of the world – was painfully aware that HG Wells played for both teams. Having both an ex-husband and an ex-wife along with countless boyfriends and girlfriends constantly seen out with the woman; it was obvious to anyone with eyes. Myka kept her personal life just that, personal. Apart from never feeling comfortable talking about such things, she never really had time for them. The last boyfriend she had was Sam, back when she was a rookie. Sure, she had gone on a few dates with guys over the years, but hardly anything stuck past a second date, let alone a third. HG wasn't the first woman to flirt with Myka, but she was the first woman to have gotten some sort of reaction and it both confused and infuriated her.
Getting her coffee, Myka made her way back to her desk to find HG chatting it up with Claudia. Myka sighed. Her team had taken to the woman quickly; Leena and Claudia loved her, and even Pete seemed amused.
"She driving you up the wall yet?" Pete asked as he came up behind her.
"I might end up committing a murder myself." Myka said with a teasing grin. Pete chuckled and took a bite of his banana. The man was never without food.
"As long as you let me be the arresting officer." He grinned. Myka punched his shoulder and went back to her desk, lightly shoving Claudia out of her chair.
"Did you know HG's got a ferrari?" The redhead asked excitedly.
"Good for her."
"Not a fan of automobiles Detective Bering?" HG asked with a smile.
"I like my bike better." Myka answered before grabbing her phone. "Bering?"
"You have a motorcycle!?" HG asked in awe. "I had no idea."
Myka clicked the phone back into it's receiver. "We've got a body." She announced to her team while grabbing her things. Turning around hastily and stopping HG in her tracks she added, "and there are a ton of things you don't know about me." She gave HG a smirk of her own at the look of shock on the English woman's face and followed Claudia and Pete outside.
"Murder is thrilling up close." Helena announced as she sauntered into her apartment later that night.
"Oh wonderful dear, that doesn't make me question my parenting skills at all." Martha said sarcastically as she sipped her drink. Helena rolled her eyes and bent to kiss Christina's cheek.
"You started dinner without me!" She accused playfully.
Christina smiled up at her mother. "You we're taking too long." She complained.
"Was I now?" Helena bent down and tickled her daughter's sides, loving the giggles that erupted from her.
"Mom!" Christina protested. "Stop it!"
Helena ignored her a few seconds longer, revealing in her daughter's laughter before finally letting go. Christina stuck her tongue out and passed a plate over to her mother. Helena took it and stuck her own tongue out as well.
"Very mature darling." Martha quipped. Helena responded by cheekily sticking her tongue out at her mother.
"Today, a woman was murdered and placed inside a washing machine." Helena informed her family. "It was ghastly."
"Then why are you smiling?" Martha asked.
"Because it was also thrilling. I mean a washing machine? What will they think up next?"
"Mom, that's gross." Christina said. She dumped her plate into the sink, kissed her mother and grandmother goodnight and headed up to bed.
"Really Helena? Talking about a murder in front of your daughter?" Martha chastised.
"Oh how is it any different from any other night?" Helena asked as she flipped her hair back over her shoulder.
"Perhaps because the murders aforementioned were made up for your books whereas this is a real dead woman."
"Christina is very mature for her age, and death is a part of life Mother, I'm not going to frighten her." Helena insisted. She accepted the glass of wine from her mother and dug into the chinese takeout. No one in this family could cook a proper meal. Helena could make breakfast foods, and little more. Martha ha a knack for burning plain water. More than once as a child, Helena had come home to fire alarms wailing and bits of their apartment on fire.
"Have you not annoyed the detectives enough for them to kick you out yet?" Martha asked.
Helena merely smiled. "We're getting along swimmingly Mother."
"Really?" Martha raised her eyebrows in question.
"Yes." Helena insisted. Her smirk dropping slightly, "well, with most of them." She added.
"Ah, there it is."
Helena flipped her hair and took a bite of her dumpling. Shooting a glare at her mother, she finished chewing before answering. "The lead detective, Myka Bering, is...well, she's still warming up to me."
"Is she now? When I met her she looked ready to take your head off."
"The relationship has progressed." Helena said with a shrug. "She now merely wants to hit me from time to time." Martha chuckled as she stood up and kissed the top of her daughter's head.
"Darling, please don't drive that nice woman insane."
"Me? Never." Helena grinned.
"She is infuriating!" Myka insisted to Leena. She was sitting on top of a table in the morgue, letting her legs swing back and forth while Leena performed an autopsy for another detective. She couldn't believe that she was a grown woman and hiding from someone like a child. She had left Claudia and Pete to entertain HG and slipped away unnoticed.
"I think she's entertaining, plus, her aura is kind." Leena said as she pulled open the man's chest cavity. Myka grimaced. She had seen a million, and the freaky cases were almost always assigned to her, but no matter what, she never got used to seeing a dead body.
"You've got to be kidding me Leena."
"I never kid about auras." Leena said without bothering to look up at Myka. The curly haired woman sighed and kicked her legs back and forth faster, trying to expel her nervous energy. Since they had solved the case of "Nanny McDead" – as HG had so tastefully christened it – two days earlier she hadn't had a thing to do. Myka got restless without a case. She never quite knew what to do with herself when she wasn't working. She had already finished her copy of the book HG had given her, and a second she had purchased at a bookstore yesterday. Myka didn't relax well.
"I don't get the aura thing." Myka said.
Leena looked up as she dropped the man's kidney onto the table and raised her eyebrows at Myka. "That's because you are too practical and logical to believe in anything you can't see."
"I..." Myka began to protest but faltered. She really didn't have a response to that, it was true.
"You know, your auras fit nicely together." Leena said casually, turning back to the body.
"Leena, don't." Myka warned. "She is arrogant, impulsive, can't follow orders to save her life, and constantly makes everything into a sexual innuendo. I want to strangle her!"
"You left out, talented as hell, someone you have admired for years, the woman behind your favorite books, incredibly intelligent, and beautiful." Leena added, plopping stomach contents down without warning. Myka pinched her nose and glared at Leena. "Also, she gets under your skin, I can see it."
"Of course she gets under my skin! I just said that, she is driving me nuts!" Myka said, her voice slightly distorted due to her pinched nose. Leena chuckled.
"Yeah, I meant a different kind of under your skin." Leena said with a smirk.
Myka glared at her friend. "Leena, I'm not gay."
"Gay, straight, purple, labels are useless." Leena said as she began sifting through the contents of the man's stomach. "People are people, you meet someone, there is a connection, then brilliant. That's all there is to it."
"No it's not."
Leena shrugged. "It is, it just scares people is all. Whatever, do what you want girl but your ass is so tightly wound; you are going crazy with nothing to do for two days. That is not normal. She looks like a lady who knows how to have fun, you could sure as hell use a little fun. If she loosens you up a bit, friend or what have you, I'm all for it." Leena pointed her scalpel at Myka and grinned. "A little lipstick wouldn't kill you either."
Myka picked up a gauze pad and hurled it at Leena with impeccable precision.
"I saw that Detective Bering." HG said as she sauntered into the room, hands in her coat pockets and her signature cheeky grin on her face. Myka rolled her eyes, she had been found. "Thought you'd gotten a call and left me all on my own, but someone said they saw you come down here." HG quickly moved over to Leena and studied the body without any trace of horror, only fascination. "And who would this be?" She asked. "A new case?" She looked up at Myka hopefully.
"No. Not ours." Myka said with a slight pout.
"Ours." HG smirked and ran her fingers through her dark locks. "I like the sound of that." She told Leena. "What exactly is that there?" She asked, pointing to something on Leena's table.
Myka leaned forward to try and see what the two women were looking at, but couldn't see without getting up and moving closer; which she was not about to do.
"That would be fish." Leena said.
Myka grimaced.
"Not a fan of seafood Detective?" HG asked, moving away from Leena slightly and closer to where Myka was sitting.
"I like it just fine, it's when its digested and in someone else's stomach that I'm not all that fond of."
"Ah, yes it is rather revolting." HG said giving it a second look and shuddering. As quickly as she had gotten wrapped up in Leena's dead body, she forgot about it. She hopped up onto the table next to Myka and clapped her hands together gleefully. "So, when do we get another case?"
"When we get a call there's been a murder." Myka said, keeping her gaze forward and ignoring the close proximity of the author.
"Well, that's unfortunate. It has been a long two days."
"Don't you have writing you could be doing?" Myka asked.
"Ah yes, actually I have gotten quite a bit of writing done. My editor is thrilled. You're very inspiring Detective Bering."
"You're editor is also you're ex-wife is she not?" Myka asked, hoping for once to catch HG of guard. "That's got to be tense." Myka could see Leena glance up and smirk at her, but she only shrugged and looked down at the woman sitting close to her.
"It has it's challenging moments yes, but we were always better as friends than lovers." HG answered without missing a beat. Myka sighed. She should have known it would take a lot more to throw the English woman off than a simple mention of an ex. "And you Detective? Nothing ever go on between you and your former parter, Mr Lattimer?"
"Pete?" Myka snorted. "God no. He's like my brother."
"Hum.." HG murmured. "Good to hear."
"What?" Myka asked, unsure if she had heard the woman correctly.
"Oh, nothing."
Myka was about to press HG further when her phone rang. She slipped down off the table to pull it out of her pocket. "Bering." She answered sharply and professionally. HG leaned forward and tried to press her ear against Myka's; listening in on the phone call. Myka frowned at the woman, and stepped away. "Okay, thank you." She hung up and looked reluctantly at HG. "Alright Wells, come on, we've got a body of our own."
HG grinned widely, and caught Myka off guard for a moment. There really was no denying the woman was beautiful. HG jumped down off the table and strutted past Myka. "Murder awaits!" She announced happily. Myka rolled her eyes, shot a final glare at Leena to keep her quiet and followed after her.
"Yeah, this is gonna be fun." Leena whispered to the dead man. "You might not see it, but I do."