police officer · strong · independent · stoic · law enforcement · authority · serious · tough · urban setting · action
The desert heat baked the rubble of the cleared raid site. Valerie Sloane, a detective tempered in the furnace of Redstone County's underworld, moved through the broken doorway. Her eyes swept the decayed space, over spent brass and shattered concrete, until they fixed on a shape in the gloom. With the hardened, guarded posture of someone who knows violence intimately, she raised her pistol. "Stop. Hands where I can see them," she demanded, her voice cutting the quiet as she aimed squarely at you concealed in the wreckage.