Perez doesn’t let up. His eyes narrow slightly. “C’mon. You said you hadmultiplereasons. Give us one.”
I sigh internally. I’m not ready to open up aboutthatreason, not to them. Not yet. Especially not tohim.
So I give them the safe version.
“I’ve always been fascinated by true crime,” I say carefully. “I eventually decided I wanted to study it, and in my freshman year, I decided I wanted to be a cop and then work my way up to being a homicide detective one day.”
“Homicide, huh?” Perez snorts, like it’s some kind of joke. Like he believes I don’t have what it takes.
“Yes,” I say flatly, the edge in my voice cutting sharper than I intend. “And for the record, I have my reasons. But I’m not exactly eager to share them with someone who’s spent this entire ride treating me like an inconvenience.”
I cross my arms—not just out of defiance, but to steady the flicker of emotion clawing its way up my chest. Anger, mostly.Frustration. And buried underneath it all, the dull ache of old grief stumbling back after years of trying to keep it contained.
I was only six when my mom was murdered.
And by nine, I had lost both of my parents.
My dad unraveled after her death, piece by agonizing piece. The guilt consumed him—he blamed himself for not being there, for not protecting her. It clung to him like a second skin he could never peel away. The monster responsible—a serial killer, the media nicknamedThe Butcherfor the way he left his victims. Brutalized and in pieces. He vanished after my mother’s murder. No trace. No justice. Just a gaping silence that settled over our lives like a shroud.
I was old enough to feel it. Old enough that the trauma of her death etched itself deep inside me, a scar I would carry into everything that came after.
That silence hollowed my father out. It made it impossible for him to look at me without seeing everything he’d lost. He tried to drown it—grief, guilt, memory—in the bottom of a bottle.
It didn’t work.
After three years of numbing himself into a ghost, he finally gave up for good. He wrapped his car around a telephone pole on some deserted back road in the middle of the night. The official report called it an accident.
I knew better.
After that, I was passed into the care of my grandparents. They did their best—God, they tried—but by the time I was thirteen, life had taken another swing at me. My grandmother died quietly in her sleep. Peaceful, they said, but it didn’t feel peaceful to me. It felt like the world was ripping another piece out of me, leaving less and less behind.
My grandfather tried, but he wasn’t equipped to raise a grieving teenager—not mentally, or physically. And before long,the system started circling, ready to scoop me up and spit me out somewhere I didn’t belong.
If it hadn’t been for Tessa’s family, I would’ve become just another file buried in a stack of forgotten kids until my eighteenth birthday. But they didn’t hesitate. They opened their home and hearts to me without asking for anything in return. No conditions. No pity. Just love. Real, stable, unconditional love—the kind I didn’t even know still existed.
And because of them, I’m still standing.
A heavy silence inside the cruiser is suffocating. Perez stares at me for a beat, something I could almost mistake as regret flickering across his face. His jaw tightens, then loosens. His lips part like he’s about to say something, but whatever it is, he swallows it down and turns back to face forward without a word.
I exhale slowly, feeling the weight of it all settle in my chest again, and lean back against the seat, staring out the window as the cruiser hums quietly beneath me.
An uncomfortable twenty minutes pass by, filled with nothing but the occasional squawk of the radio and the low, steady hum of the air conditioner. No conversation. No acknowledgment. Just silence, heavy and awkward, weighing down the already stifling air inside the vehicle.
Finally, Kline eases the cruiser into the station’s parking lot, pulling into one of the reserved spaces near the back entrance. He shifts the car into park and reaches for the radio. “2-Adam-34 is 10-7,” Kline announces on his radio.
“Copy that 2-Adam-34,” a voice crackles back through the speaker.
Without another word, both Kline and Perez climb out of the vehicle. A second later, Perez opens the back door for me. I glance up at him, my lips pursed. His expression is neutral as he steps off to the side, giving me space to climb out.
“Thank you,” I murmur, sliding from the backseat and into the hellish afternoon heat. Going from an air-conditioned vehicle and straight into what can only be described as walking into an oven, nearly has me cursing, but I hold my tongue and immediately start stripping off the stiff andbeyondfucking itchy vest, wishing I could rip off the rest of this godforsaken outfit while I’m at it. It’stoo damn hotfor any amount of clothing, much less this. I will never get used to the heat, despite living here my whole life. Anyone who says they’re used to it is fucking lying.
The vest does nothing to help the sensation of overheating. I fold it over my left arm anyway and quickly fall into step behind Perez and Kline, eager to chase the promise of air conditioning as we cross the lot and head back toward the station entrance.
Inside, we wind through the familiar halls—past uniformed officers, department staff, and the low buzz of conversation and ringing phones. Kline leads the way to Sergeant Rodriguez’s office, knocking twice before pushing the door open. He steps aside, holding the door with a small nod, gesturing for me to enter.
“Welcome back, Miss Carson,” Rodriguez says, glancing up from behind her computer screen. A warm smile spread across her lips.
I smile politely and take a quick scan of the office as I step inside. It’s small but clean, with just enough personal touches to feel lived-in. A neat stack of case files sits to one side of the desk. A framed photo of what I can only assume to be her family sits next to a departmental award, and a dry-erase board covered in neat, color-coded writing hangs on the opposite wall. Everything about the space is structured and efficient—exactly what I’d expect from her.
