Chapter 1
Lara
I jogged up the steps into the precinct building, being careful of the coffee cup in my hand, my purse slung over my opposite shoulder. I checked the time on my wristwatch and rushed a little faster. I flashed my ID to the guard just inside the door, making a beeline for the locker rooms.
I could have just gone around the back, but I was running late, and the staff door tended to get stuck since they added the electronic system that let you enter with a scan of your staff ID. It was especially bad for the newbies, who were entirely forgotten when the system went faulty.
I got a few looks, a few head nods. One guy even waved, and I waved back, hitching my slipping purse higher up my shoulder. I didn’t stop to talk to anyone, though, and none of them expected it really. Instead, I moved faster.
It was still weird, how I was suddenly getting acknowledgment when I was a no-name rookie not too long ago.
"Officer Foley."
I gave an awkward smile to the detective that said my name. I hadn't memorized names yet, and he was one of the few that I didn’t know. The ones I did know were the guys that had talked to me from the beginning, and I got used to them. I'd always been good with faces, but crap with names.
Thankfully, he didn’t wait for a response from me, walking onto his desk.
It was still early, but the station was awake and starting to pick up the bustle. I entered the locker rooms, shared between male and female officers, thankfully empty.
Even though it wouldn’t have mattered either way.
I didn’t need to get naked; I had a T-shirt and shorts under my clothes, but it was still weird sharing a coed locker room.
I would get used to it, eventually, or so I was told by the officers who'd been around a lot longer than me.
I took a few sips of my black coffee, not quite hot, not quite warm, and set it down so I could strip. With all the new tech flying around, the locker room hadn't been spared the upgrades.
In place of a traditional lock was a small circle lit in red where I fit my thumb. After a second, it turned green, and the door unlocked, opening automatically.
I pulled out my uniform, quickly changing into it and stuffing my things inside. I did up my belt, added all the stuff that went on it—radio, gun, a baton stick. To lock it back up, I held it closed and pressed my thumb to the green circle, and it turned back to red.
Instead of going out immediately, I stopped to take a breath.
Part of me didn’t want to go back out there, because of the mixed reactions I knew I was in for. Plenty of people were impressed with my track record so far; but quite a few were not.
The reason for it all, was because I, a rookie, and only months out of the academy, managed to make a big arrest, one the precinct had been after long before I arrived. I'd even heard a few people grouch because I was a woman.
I got to be the lucky idiot that arrested Jimmy Randolph, son of the notorious mafia don, Eric Randolph; a man that many senior officers had been after to send to prison, only no one could quite get enough evidence to put him away.
It was quite a feat. And it shot my reputation up—down to the people who decided I was being too much of a show off with the spit shine on my boots not even dry from the academy.
I rolled my eyes upwards, hoping for a more normal day, took a deep breath, and left the locker room.
If I needed proof they still thought of me as a greenhorn, though, I got it. I was swamped with paperwork as soon as I sat down at my desk. And throughout the day, as I slowly worked through the files left for me, I was asked to run various petty errands—for coffee, for donuts, for lunch, even running files between officers—for the detectives and other senior officers for most of the day. I practically watched the clock in desperation as time moved on, waiting for it to be my time to clock out already.
It was evening by the time I felt like I was getting to relax. Paperwork was done, no one else needing errands, I sat back in my seat with a weary sigh. Then I frowned at the empty desk beside mine.
It was weird how I hadn't noticed he wasn’t there before…
"Hey there, Lara."
Gabe practically came out of nowhere, grabbing an empty seat from a desk across from mine, dragging it over and turning it around, so he could straddle it and rest his arms on the back of it.
I was surprised we'd managed to go a whole day without meeting. Technically, as my partner, he could have at least been around to help me with some of the work. So, where had he been? I looked at him bitterly and asked him just that.
He laughed at me. "I was corralled by some of the guys in the gun range. I've been in and out, helping the other rookies with their aim, perfecting my own." He shrugged, looking relaxed.
"I'm still a rookie. Why didn’t I get to join you guys?"
It was too undignified to whine, but I came close. I didn’t even care.
He just laughed at me again.
"Oh, but see, you're a hot shot now. Not just in this precinct, a few guys in the next couple of precincts over have heard of your heroic deed."
I snorted, but it was weak. "Heroic, my ass," I muttered under my breath.
He heard me anyway and smirked.
Gabe Jackson was something of a seasoned veteran of the force himself since he'd been around a lot longer than my few months. I'd been partnered with him before the whole Jimmy Randolph fiasco, and Gabe was a nice guy.
Gabe was also in line for a promotion to detective, though he hadn't been told what department he would be joining. But because of my sudden fame—or infamy, depending on who you asked—focus had been shifted from him to me.
He didn’t take any of it like I expected. Any other junior cop in his place, looking to move it up and out of uniform certainly would have been pissed off at the turn of events, but he just took it in stride. More than just that, he was genuine about it.
I knew I was lucky to have him as a partner; it could have been a lot worse, and a very short-lived career for me otherwise.
Then his demeanor suddenly turned serious.
"You should be careful, though, Lara. The kid is a nasty piece of work, but his father is a class A bastard. As awesome as what you did was, arresting Jimmy Randolph put a huge target on your back, and I'm talking a bulls-eye here."
I sighed, not even bothering to answer because I knew. I just didn’t realize it when it happened.
I understood it, but it was my job, wasn’t it? He was a criminal because I caught him committing a crime; so, I caught him before he could run, slammed him against the car door, put cuffs on his wrists, and booked him. Then we had a lovely ride in the squad car where he cursed my ancestors and I whistled along with a fifties tune on the radio. I didn’t realize until much later just who he was.
Considering the position he was in when I caught him, it would never have occurred to me. Catching him was ridiculously easy, even though he tried to run. Hard to believe someone so incompetent was a son of someone so feared.
I didn’t regret doing it, not even after finding out his and his family's history with the police; I did the right thing.
"There really isn’t anything more I can do about it," I said with a helpless shrug. "I didn’t even mean to, but what's done is done."
He frowned. "You'd think, but it just isn’t that simple. I haven't been here all that much longer than you compared to the real veterans—just about five years—but I realized that my first year here."
"Realized what?"
He paused, casually glanced around. When he turned back to me, he was hunched in on himself, chin nearly hitting the tops of his arms, and he held my eyes.
"You need to keep your head low, especially while you're still so green. Trust me when I say you don’t want to push the wrong people. We're cops, yeah, we're supposed to enforce the law, but we are still just people. You and me, currently we're low on the totem pole."
"So what? No matter how fresh, we are still cops." I scowled at him. "So long as we're doing our work right, what's the matter?"
"Forget what you had in mind when going into this career track, whatever shit they told you at the academy. If you fill your mind with that crap, you will remain green for a while. This is the real world, Lara, where the good guys don’t always win. Corruption, rampant crime; more cops are recruited and trained not so much because the current workforce isn’t enough, but because this crap never dies. But we can. It also spreads when left unchecked, which is basically our real job, to keep it all in check. There are only so many of us to begin with; we can't get them all."
I stared at him hard. I understood that, too. I chose to be a cop. I wasn’t forced to by whatever other reason. I could have gone to college, learned something that would get me a cushy job, and lived a comfortable life. But I didn’t go into the cop thing with rose-colored glasses. I knew the ugly out there, I'd seen plenty of it, and not just on TV. My motivation wasn’t so much to stop it all, just to manage what I could.
There was no way to explain that without sounding stupid, though. Besides, the last thing I wanted was for someone to stumble upon this conversation. It was a private thing, and I could sense Gabe wouldn’t want it getting out, because it was a pretty bleak stance for a cop to take when they were charged with protecting the public.
"Officer Foley, Officer Jackson. I've got a report for you. Boss says you should consider it."
We both looked up at the interruption. I'd met the guy before. He wasn’t in uniform, but he did most of his work behind a desk. 'Boss' was technically the captain, but just about everyone referred to him as 'the boss,' no matter how tacky it sounded. Anything that came from him was to be taken seriously, so both Gabe and I went on alert.
"What is it?"
"A report of a disturbance at a night club just came in. He wants the two of you to drive over and check it out, smooth it over if you can."
He didn’t give any more detail, which was strange, but then the captain himself wouldn’t have taken interest in it if it wasn’t important. It must have been serious.
"If we can't handle it, we'll call for back up."
I was grabbing my empty coffee cup to throw away, everything I would need was already on me, so I was ready to go. Gabe got up and rounded his desk, sat down and pulled open a drawer.
"Um—"
I froze, looked up. "Anything else?"
"Yeah. Don’t go in uniform. If you can rush, get an appropriate change of clothes at home then go. Or you could ask one of the other officers that keep spare clothes here if they have anything suitable."
I wasn’t comfortable with option number two. Not only did I not know anyone enough to ask, I hadn't met a woman in the precinct that was near my size, so I would be stuck with clothes too small, or a bit baggy, the wrong length. Besides, I didn’t know anyone so well that I could casually ask for clothes.
"Where exactly is this club?" He rattled off the address, and I grinned. "It's on my way. Gabe, go get the car. Let me get my keys."
"Hurry it up."
"We'll be there in five minutes, tops!" I called over my shoulder as I took off. The exhaustion had miraculously left my body. But then I was way past ready for some action.
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