“There it is. I was worried therapy was making you soft.” Riley started walking toward the parking lot, and Maddox fell into step beside her out of habit. “Seriously, though, the committee's probably going to be a bureaucratic nightmare withbi-weekly meetings, action plans, and all that admin bullshit we signed up to avoid by becoming cops instead of social workers.”
“Can’t wait,” Maddox said, her tone bone-dry.
They walked in comfortable silence for a moment, gravel crunching under their boots. In the distance, Sarge lifted his head and watched their approach with the calm assessment of a dog who’d been doing this job long enough to know when his handler was coming back.
“You know what’s weird?” Riley said suddenly.
“What?”
“You’re talking about her.”
Maddox frowned. “Who?”
“The therapist. You’re actually talking about the therapy sessions. Usually when you hate something, you just go silent and let everyone know through aggressive competence and death glares.” Riley’s expression was unreadable. “But you’re talking about it, which means it’s getting under your skin. Or it’s already there.”
The observation landed like a punch Maddox hadn’t seen coming. Her first instinct was to deny it, to shut Riley down with the same cold dismissal she used on everyone else. But that would just prove her point, wouldn’t it?
“It’s mandatory,” Maddox said instead. “Of course it’s under my skin. I don’t like being told what to do.
“Sure,” Riley said, in a tone that suggested she didn’t believe that excuse for a second. “Well, good luck with it. Try not to bite the counselor’s head off. We actually need her around. Half the department’s one bad call away from putting their service weapon in their mouth.”
She said it casually, the way you’d comment on the weather, but Maddox heard the truth underneath. Riley had been first on scene for three officer-involved shootings in the last two years.She’d probably earned her own mandatory therapy sessions and just hadn’t been flagged yet.
“You doing okay?” Maddox asked and immediately regretted the question. Too personal, too close to giving a shit beyond professional courtesy.
Riley’s expression flashed with surprise or maybe something sharper before settling back into her usual easy mask. “Yeah, Shaw, I’m peachy. Living the dream out here writing officer incident reports and hoping my dog survives the next call.”
“Right.”
They reached their vehicles, parked side by side in the K-9 lot. Sarge had already climbed inside Riley’s vehicle, his tail wagging slowly. Maddox looked instinctively at the K-9 building where Zeus still was running around the yard.
“See you at the wellness committee meeting,” Riley said, opening her door. “Try to look less like you want to murder everyone. It’s bad for morale.”
“No promises.”
Riley’s laugh followed her as she walked to the K-9 yard to retrieve Zeus, and Maddox heard the engine turn over a moment later. She watched Riley drive away, then stood in the parking lot with her range bag and the uncomfortable realization that Riley was right.
She was talking about Jade, thinking about her too. Which meant the therapy sessions weren’t just annoying but were working their way into her head like a splinter she couldn’t quite dig out.
Maddox opened the chain-link fence door, and Zeus immediately pressed forward, shoving his wet nose against her hand in greeting. She scratched behind his ears, letting the simple contact ground her.
“Therapy’s bullshit,” she told him as they walked to her truck.
Zeus tilted his head, unconvinced.
“It is,” Maddox insisted, but the words felt hollow even as she said them.
She opened the door for Zeus and let him get in the passenger seat before closing the door and getting in the driver’s side. She sat there for a moment, hands on the wheel, staring at nothing. Riley’s voice echoed in her head:“You’re talking about it, which means it’s getting under your skin.”
Goddamn it.
She started the engine and pulled out of the lot, heading home with the uneasy feeling that she was losing ground she couldn’t afford to give up. The next session loomed, and she had less than a week to get her head straight and make sure Jade Kessler stayed where she belonged, firmly outside Maddox’s walls.
The drive home took twenty minutes through Phoenix Ridge’s winding streets, past the harbor district where fishing boats rocked in their slips and seabirds circled overhead. Maddox drove on autopilot, her hands steady while her mind replayed Riley’s observation on an endless loop.
Zeus sat in the passenger seat with his head out the window, ears flattened against the wind, perfectly content. At least one of them wasn’t overthinking everything.
She pulled into her gravel driveway and cut the engine. Zeus was out of the truck the second she opened her door, trotting straight to the fence and sniffing along the perimeter like he did every time they came home. Always working, always assessing. They were alike in that way.
