“The mayor’s office has been breathing down our necks since that crash,” she said, almost casually, as if the words were a small complaint about a noisy neighbor.
Jamie blinked. That wasn’t the kind of thing Erin offered at briefings. At a press conference she would have saidinvestigation ongoingand stopped. Here, she had slipped, giving a detail that belonged to the inside of a department, not a paper.
“Really?” Jamie kept her tone light, careful. “That explains the tension at the scene.”
Erin met her eyes and the recognition passed across her face. She had said too much, but she didn’t clamp up. Instead she breathed out, long and tired. “Don’t make me regret that, Garrison.”
“I won’t,” Jamie said, quicker than she planned. She meant it. For reasons she wasn’t ready to name, she didn’t want Erin to regret trusting her.
The latte arrived and Jamie hid behind the foam while she sorted the knot in her chest. Sources talked when they felt safe, when they thought you listened rather than pried. Erin wasn’t just a source. That made everything more complicated.
Jamie aimed the conversation at safer ground. “Why do it? This job. You could have stayed on patrol, worked cases instead of babysitting reporters.”
Erin let out a small laugh that didn’t reach her eyes. “Believe it or not, I thought this would be easier. Fewer night shifts, less paperwork. A chance to make a difference.” She pushed at the last drop in her cup. “First year nearly broke me. I messed up a release on a homicide, misidentified the victim’s age. One line, one stupid mistake, and the family saw it before I caught it. I thought I would have to resign on the spot.”
Jamie felt a tightness she knew from deadlines and edits, but this felt heavier. “But you didn’t quit.”
“No.” Erin’s expression softened. “A captain told me people forget the mistake faster than they forget how you handle it. I’ve been holding on to that.”
Jamie was ready to say something that might help, but Erin kept talking, and as she did, another detail slipped into the conversation, small and almost accidental.
“And now, with Medford still dragging and the lab backed up, everything feels like a tightrope. You miss one step and…” She stopped, realizing her slip.
Jamie heard it clear as day, the phraselab backed up. It wasn’t something Erin would say at a public briefing, and it had the kind of value that made reporters sit straighter. Her fingers twitched toward her pen before she caught herself.
Erin’s face dropped. “Damn. I really need to shut up around you.”
“You don’t,” Jamie said before she could stop herself, softer than she intended. Then she added, “I mean, off the record.”
Erin tilted her head. “That easy?”
Jamie held her look. “That easy.”
It felt like a promise and like stepping onto ice. Erin had trusted her not once but twice in a short span, offering things she didn’t usually hand out. Any reporter would have cataloged those details, tucked them away as leads. Jamie felt something else instead, a mix of gratitude and worry.
Outside, a streetcar rattled by, throwing splashes against the curb. Jamie sipped her latte and watched Erin trace the rim of her cup with one finger. Those small gestures mattered. They were how a guard lowered without the person noticing.
The vibration of Erin’s phone cut through the quiet. She cursed under her breath and snatched it up. “Duty calls,” she said, standing and slipping her badge into her pocket.
Jamie laughed ruefully. “I knew one of us would get pulled back.”
“Maybe next time it won’t be so rushed.” Erin adjusted her jacket, alreadyhalf-turned toward the door. “We’ll see.”
“Careful,” Jamie said, standing too. “I’ll hold you to it.”
Erin’s smile was half smirk, half something softer. Then she left, the café bell tinkling as the door closed behind her.
Jamie sat back down, staring at the spiral of foam left on the surface of her cup. Erin had slipped twice and trusted her to not run with it. To anyone else it would have seemed like a gift. Jamie felt only weight, the complicated lump of responsibility in her throat.
She pulled her notebook closer, flipped it open, and wrote in the corner of the page:Lab backed up??The words looked too sharp against the white paper, an echo of the conversation she knew she should not be recording. She folded the page quickly and shut the notebook, tucking it deep in her bag as if she could hide the impulse from herself.
When she finally left the café, she walked slower than she had on the way in. The world was the same city with the same rain and traffic, but something between her and the people she covered had shifted, subtle and real. She had a line she needed to respect, and she had a person who had crossed it for reasons that felt both honest and dangerous.
Jamie couldn’t decide if that was good or bad. For now she held both feelings at once and let them push her forward into the next assignment.
Seventeen
The precinct at night sounded different. Phones stopped ringing in waves and settled into occasional single chimes. A muted television scrolled headlines no one read. Somewhere down the hall a vacuum started and stopped as the janitor worked one office at a time. The building exhaled once the day shift left, and in that quieter air Erin could hear the smallest things: the click of her own keyboard, the twitch in a fluorescent ballast, the soft scrape of paper when she turned a page.
