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An excerpt from Sharp, Mindspace Investigations Book #2
By Alex Hughes
I pulled the door closed, suddenly wary, and took a seat in her battered guest chair. The seat squeaked as I sat down. A feeling of oppression filled the room, but I couldn’t tell if it was Mindspace or my own panicky mind. With the increased stress of the morning, I was starting to see floating lines of light go in and out of my vision. I took a deep breath and tried to calm, to slow my heart rate. Whatever was going on with Paulsen, I’d need to be at my best to handle it, not struggling to keep my attention.
Paulsen pushed some papers into a folder and set it aside. Pulled another folder toward her. Then she looked up. I expected her to speak, but she only cleared her throat. For the first time ever, I could see every year of her sixty-mumble age written on her face, wrinkles cutting deep, her warm brown skin ashen.
“Are you okay?” I said.
“I’m fine,” she said firmly, the phrase imbued with all the weight of decades as a cop trained to show no weakness. Then she paused again.
Paulsen was a decisive woman, a strong woman. A cop who got things done and constantly held me to her high standards. If she was pausing, this would be bad.
Had she found out my telepathy wasn’t working? It was better now, healing slowly in dribs and drabs more or less at the pace I was expecting, but I’d been keeping it a secret. Cops didn’t like secrets.
“Am I being fired?” I asked, and tried with everything in me to stay calm.
“No,” she said, then amended: “It’s possible.” She cleared her throat. “DeKalb County and the City of Decatur have decided to cut police funding again. By millions. Every department is being hit, across the board. Not just equipment budgets. Not just training this time. We’re being forced to let people go. And the damn politicians are going after what they call wasteful practices. Things like vacation time, recovery time from injuries, and most of all and especially . . .” She paused here again and met my eyes.
“Especially contractors. Unlicensed contractors are at the top of the list of cuts.”
I sat back, the chair squeaking again. I was numb. Wait, this wasn’t about my secret? That almost made it worse.
“How long?” I asked. I liked this job. I needed this job.
“Not yet,” she said firmly. “Not quite yet. We have a couple of months before things go into full effect. I’d suggest—in strong terms—you go out and find yourself a license. A certification. Something on paper, in the next six weeks.”
I took a breath. “Six weeks? Wait, my Guild certification doesn’t count?” That was half a million ROCs in training, more, even if the Guild had gotten far more out of me in labor afterward. Before they kicked me out for the drug problem that had landed me on the streets, years ago.
“It’s suspended, has been for a decade according to the information you gave us.” She put her hand on the folder in front of her, what had to be my file.
“I have the training! I thought you guys liked that I was an independent. There aren’t that many people outside the Guild, much less at my level. Even they say my training’s still good. It’s not like I can’t do the job.” And with the normals hating the Guild and fearing telepaths, well, I’d thought my lack of certification (of affiliation) was a plus. Apparently not.
“I know,” she said, and sighed. “I know. But the commissioner’s under pressure to make cuts. A lot of pressure. And politically, well, it doesn’t look good for you. Don’t be an easy target.”
“This isn’t fair.” I tried to reach out, to peek into her head, but all I got was a sense of mourning, and determination. No matter how I tried to push, that was all the information I could get, and even that moved away like sand through my fingers. Paulsen was familiar, which helped, but we were right after lunch, approaching my afternoon cutoff for reliable telepathy,, and my heart was beating a hundred miles an hour.
I pulled back and focused on what she was saying in the here and now, “—work in the interview room will be critical. Cherabino’s cases too. Give them a reason to keep you. Give me ammunition.”
I took a breath. “Right before Christmas. You’re telling me I could be laid off right before Christmas.” I felt like I was in free fall, like I was standing at the top of a cliff looking down at my life on the streets again. And to make it over Christmas—Christmas still made me think of my mom before she died. Did we have to add another heartbreak on top of that one?
She paused. “This is the worst-case scenario for everyone. I’m sorry.”
“I know,” I said, and stood. I clenched my hands together so she wouldn’t see them shaking. So I wouldn’t be tempted to lash out. So I wouldn’t burn whatever bridges I had left. But I wanted to.
Three years clean, and none of it mattered in that moment. I wanted my drug, I wanted to fall off the earth and run away. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I’d come too far, I’d built too much to give up now. No matter how much I wanted to.
So instead of being stupid, I did what any sane Narcotics Anonymous member did—I called my sponsor. And then I went outside to the smoking porch and I chain-smoked, six cigarettes in a row while outside the awning it rained, a nasty hard rain that suited my mood perfectly.
I had to keep this job. Whatever it took, whatever I had to pay—I’d pay in blood, if I had to. I couldn’t fall back down that cliff to the streets. I just didn’t have it in me, not a second time
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Nothing ruins a romantic evening like a brawl with lowlifes—especially when one of them later turns up dead and my date, Detective Isabella Cherabino, is the #1 suspect. My history with the Atlanta PD on both sides of the law makes me an unreliable witness, so while Cherabino is suspended, I’m paying my bills by taking an FBI gig.
Alex Hughes, the author of the award-winning Mindspace Investigations series from Roc, has lived in the Atlanta area since the age of eight. Her short fiction has been published in several markets including Every day Fiction, Thunder on the Battlefield and White Cat Magazine. 
A: You don’t have to stick with the public. Really. 
Alex Hughes, the author of the award-winning Mindspace Investigations series from Roc, has lived in the Atlanta area since the age of eight. She is a graduate of the prestigious Odyssey Writing Workshop, and a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America and the International Thriller Writers. 
Back in September I read an amazing debut called Clean by Alex Hughes. I loved the thrilling mystery which involves telepathy, addiction, a lack of computers and some flying cars. It had some really unusual and realistic concepts and I was hooked from the first chapter.
