I tilted my head, my eyes narrowing. “Pausing? But not running.”
He speared his hand through his head, grunting in frustration.
“You. Wouldn’t. Run.”
“You are not me!”
I froze.
I knew he meant it as a compliment, but in the moment, it landed like a cut. Like he was telling me I was weak.
“No,” I said quietly, my throat tight. “I’m not you. But I have my own tools to work with.”
I went into the bathroom and shut the door, then sat on the side of the tub and covered my face with my hands.
What the hell was I doing?
James was right. He wasn’t a hundred percent, and if Knox was gunning for me, I needed backup. Protection.
We should regroup. We should wait and make a plan more concrete than chasing an accountant who probably wouldn’t talk to us, and a girl at a convenience store who may or may not have been trafficked. And even if she was, she wasn’t likely connected to Knox’s network.
Moving forward was insanity.
But deep in my gut, I also knew I couldn’t back down. Because Knox would see it as a weakness, and men like him only respected strength. If I ran and came back, he’d see me as smaller than him.
But… was that so bad?
I could play into that belief. Let him underestimate me.
Was I this adamant about staying because I feared Knox would see me as weak, or because I would?
I drew a deep breath, held it in, then let it out.
Staying was foolish. I knew that. But after the shooting last fall, I’d let myself get beaten down into an alcoholic mess, with zero confidence and nothing to live for, because I’d played it safe. Followed the rules. I’d let Keith and all the higher-ups destroy my reputation, destroy me, and I was fucking done with letting men steal anything else from me.
I wasn’t backing down.
And before I started berating myself for my stupidity, I thought about the girl I hoped to meet at the convenience store tonight.
Who was fighting for her? Or the other women Knox was trafficking? What about Wilhemina from the Velvet Room, who had likely been kidnapped and trafficked, all because she fit some man’s sexual fantasy? The police sure as hell weren’t looking for her.
Who was going to save them?
I stood and moved to the sink to get ready, but what I saw in the mirror stopped me cold.
I’d been hard and no-nonsense before, but the woman staring back at me now … there was fire in her eyes.
I’d been looking at this all wrong. I’d started out wanting to bring Gerald Knox down because his mother had killed mine. Because he’d threatened both James and me.
I needed to change my motivation. I needed to stop making this about myself and make it about them. I needed to save those girls. Nobody else gave a shit about them. But I knew what that felt like, because other than James and Louise, no one gave a shit about me either.
I didn’t have a badge anymore, but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. I could do things a cop couldn’t.
The rules had changed.
Before, my job was to find evidence to arrest the monsters, with the ultimate goal of getting them off the street.
But what if I skipped the tedious part and focused on the end goal?
