“Understood,” she said softly.
Vega nodded. “Get some rest, Erin.”
She didn’t answer.
The hallway was quieter on the way out. The weight of the empty space pressed in on her. She moved on autopilot, down the stairs, through the glass doors, into the night air.
Outside, the city felt wrong. The lights were too bright, the wind too sharp. Her car sat where she’d left it, dark windows reflecting the glow of the streetlamps.
She climbed in and sat there for a long time. The keys dangled from the ignition, unmoving. Her hands were still trembling.
She wanted to cry, but nothing came. Only the hollow ache of exhaustion settling into her bones.
Eventually, she turned the key. The engine hummed to life, soft and steady. She pulled out of the lot, headlights cutting through the empty street.
She didn’t know where she was going yet, only that she couldn’t go home. Not right away. Not while everything she’d built was slipping through her fingers.
Thirty Six
Erin drove without thinking about the streets she took. She kept her hands at ten and two and watched the empty lanes unspool in the wash of her headlights. The radio was off. Even the low hum of it felt dangerous now, like a tripwire that would send her straight back to the park, straight back to Jamie’s voice saying Lila Grant’s name out loud.
Rain had started again, thin and misty. It pooled on the edges of the windshield and caught in the wipers before smearing into a clear line. She focused on that, the rhythmic swipe, the neat clean path, the small order of it. She couldn’t think about the badge she’d left on a desk. She couldn’t think about Collins’s face, or Vega’s voice, or the way the hallway had felt too long when she walked it.
Her phone lay in the cup holder, facedown. The black screen showed nothing. It might as well have been a stone.
She pulled into her lot and sat with the engine idling. The clock on the dash ticked over to a time that felt wrong. She turned the key. The sudden quiet made her ears ring. When she stepped out, the air was cool and damp and smelled like wet concrete. She breathed it in until her chest stopped fighting her.
Inside, Leo’s nails clicked on the other side of the door before she even got the key in. He complained once, eager and warm. When the door opened he pressed his body into her legs like he could shove the day off her. She put a hand on his head and left it there, fingers buried in his fur until he sighed.
“Hey, buddy.” Her voice sounded thin. “I know. I’m late.”
The apartment was dark except for the glow from the microwave clock anda streetlamp cutting a pale rectangle across the floor. She didn’t turn on the overheads. She toed off her boots and hung her blazer on a hook she usually missed. Tonight she didn’t miss.
Leo followed her into the kitchen. She scooped his food, the metal scoop scraping the inside of the bag. He ate like he always did, steady and intent. A small, ordinary sound that kept the room from feeling hollow.
Her phone sat on the counter where she’d set it down. She didn’t look at it. She washed her hands and braced her palms on the sink, head bent, water running over her wrists. She watched the rivulets move along the inside of her forearms and drip off the heel of her hands. Her arms trembled and she turned the water off.
In the living room she dropped onto the couch and let herself sink back. Leo finished and loped over, jumping up like he always did even though he knew better. She didn’t correct him. He tucked himself into the space against her thigh and put his chin on her knee. She rested one hand on his shoulder and felt the slow rise and fall of his breathing.
On the far wall the TV remote sat where she’d left it that morning. She thought about turning it on and then didn’t. She couldn’t put Jamie’s voice back in the room. She pressed her thumb against the seam of the couch until the skin blanched.
She tried to think about steps. If she kept it to steps, maybe she could keep breathing. There would be a written notice from HR tomorrow. She would have to sign something else. She would have to hand over her laptop if they asked. She had a box in the bottom drawer of her desk that would fit most of her things. A mug, a notebook, a photo from the academy graduation where she stood in the back row, unsmiling and sure. She saw herself there and didn’t recognize the certainty.
She’d built this job piece by piece. Early mornings. Late nights. Briefings no one watched. Meetings where she kept her tone measured while someone repeated her words back to her like they had thought of them. She outlasted the condescension by being useful. When people got used to you being useful, they forgot to doubt you out loud. That had been enough. Most days that had been enough.
She could still feel the weight of the badge in her hand. Cold metal. The sound it made when it touched Vega’s desk. Final and small.
Her chest went tight and wouldn’t release. She shifted her palm against Leo’s shoulder and felt the warm press of him, the reminder that her body was here on this couch, not back in that office. She counted to five. Then she started again.
Her eyes landed on the phone. The screen was still black. She imagined for a second that it was full of nothing. No emails. No missed calls. No texts. No one on the other end of a line trying to ask the question she couldn’t answer without hating herself all over again.
She reached for it and stopped with her fingers on the edge. She could turn it on. She could look. But if she did, she might see Jamie’s name, and that would be worse than anything else waiting for her there. She let her hand fall to the cushion.
She tried to build a version of the night where it had gone differently. She tried to make herself say she never would have told Jamie. She saw the scene anyway. The lights. The tape lifting in the wind. Jamie’s face, open and focused. Erin’s voice leaving her before she could catch it. It didn’t matter how many times she rewound it. She handed the match over. Jamie struck it.
A sound scraped at the edge of the quiet. A neighbor closing a door down the hall. Water in a pipe. The world turning on without her. She wanted to be angry, and some hot sharp piece of it was there, but it kept catching on the ache that sat heavy in her ribs. She’d begged. She could still feel the shape of the word in her mouth. She’d asked for the one thing that wouldn’t cost the world anything, and Jamie had looked at her and chosen the job.
She swallowed and it hurt.
