“Turn around,” he commands. “Hands behind your back.”
“What?” My voice jumps an octave. “You cannotbe serious.”
“Ma’am.”
“I amnotunder arrest.”
“Yes,” he says, already reaching for his cuffs, “you are.”
The metal clicks shut around my wrists. Cold. Final. My insides seize.
“For what?” I demand. “For sitting in my car?”
“For loitering under a designated enforcement zone, failure to comply with lawful orders, and obstruction,” he recites. “You can argue it downtown.”
“I want a supervisor,” I snap.
“You’ll get one,” he informs me, steering me toward the patrol car. “After intake.”
Operation Destruction collapses in real time. The streetlights blur. Anger floods my chest—hot, choking, useless. The first night. The first move.Ruined.
22
JUSTIN
“Your girl just got herself arrested.”
My spine locks.
It’s after ten at night, the kind of hour where nothing good ever arrives unannounced, and for a beat I’m sure I misheard him. My brain stalls, refusing to process the sentence as anything real.
“What?” I snap.
“She was parked on Baker Street,” Miguel tells me. “Engine off. Cop just rolled up. I’m too far to hear it, but it looks like he’s trying to pin her for solicitation.”
For a second, I can’t speak.
It isn’t exactly shock. It’s the sudden, infuriating clarity of it. This girl—brilliant, reckless, catastrophically self-destructive—planting herself in a known enforcement zone and acting surprised when she gets pulled up for doing so. The sheer absurdity of it hits hard enough to make my jaw ache.
“Where are they taking her?” I ask, voice gone flat.
“Not sure,” Miguel replies. “She’s in the back of the cruiser now.”
My vision sharpens at the edges.
“There goes your law career,” I mutter, low enough that he can’t hear.
Miguel hesitates. “You want me to intervene?”
“No,” I say immediately. I draw in a slow breath, forcing the heat in my chest down into something controlled. Usable. “Follow them. Let me know which station she’s taken to.”
“Copy.”
The line goes dead.
I’m already moving—pulling on clothes, grabbing my keys, mind racing ahead of my body. By the time I reach the station, the initial surge of anger has cooled into something darker. Heavier. Something that sits in my chest like a live coal, burning steady, waiting for somewhere to land.
I park, get out, and walk into the building without slowing.
