“She’s not dating them because she’sengaged,” silver-hair clarifies, the word delivered with the breathless emphasis of a woman who considers this piece of intelligence significant. “To some Italian pack. All high-ranking police officers. Higher than…well, higher than the boys at your old station.”
The other woman nods vigorously.
“Didn’t they actually replace your pack entirely?” she adds. “The whole unit got restructured. New faces across the board.”
Hazel’s body stills.
Against mine. The complete, systems-halt immobility of a woman whose investigative brain has just received a data point that requires immediate processing.
“Huh?” she says. “Replace?”
The women nod in unison—the coordinated, emphatic head-bobbing of a two-person news network delivering breaking updates.
“Omg, Hazel, how long have you been gone?” silver-hair asks.
“Only a few weeks?”
“Girl.” Reading-glasses leans in with the conspiratorial posture of a woman who is about to deliver information that she considers explosive and is enjoying the delivery. “The whole station had an overhaul just last week. Like—I don’t know what intel was sent to the higher departments, but they did a full investigation. Thewholestation is on fire now with allegations.”
I feel Hazel’s pulse quicken.
Through my arm around her waist. Through the contact between my chest and her back. The cardiac acceleration that her body produces when information triggers the investigative response—the physiological equivalent of an engine revving.
“So far,” silver-hair continues, “the only one they know isn’t involved is Callahan. He’s apparently running a detailed operation—scouting out everyone there. Some kind of internal affairs review combined with a federal audit. It’s massive.”
Reading-glasses nods. “It’s good you got out of there when you did, Officer Martinez. If you’d still been at that station, you probably would have been dragged into it too. Caught up in the crossfire.”
Caught up in the crossfire.
Or protected from it.
The reassignment. Callahan pulling Hazel out of the city station before the investigation launched. The timing that looked like punishment but is starting to look like extraction—removing the clean officer before the net dropped on the dirty ones.
Callahan isn’t involved in the corruption.
And he’s running the investigation.
Which means either he knew what was happening and waited for the right moment to act, or he was building the case all along and needed Hazel out of the blast radius before he detonated it.
Either way, the chess board just rearranged itself.
Silver-hair is nodding sagely. “See, this is what happens. The good cops are always protected by the universe’s grace. And the bad ones are finally caught in their bullshit.”
“Always,” reading-glasses agrees.
Hazel nods.
Slowly. The motion carrying the measured, outward composure of a woman who is maintaining her social expression while her internal systems are running at full analytical capacity.
“Well,” I say, and my voice carries the warm, conversational ease of a man who is managing the social interaction while his partner’s brain is processing intelligence at a speed that precludes small talk. “It’s good that justice will hopefully be served.”
They nod with the enthusiastic agreement of women who believe in justice the way they believe in weather—as a force that operates on its own timeline but eventually arrives.
“Oh, we’ll let you continue your date!” silver-hair exclaims, the worddatedelivered with the delighted emphasis of a woman who has collected a significant piece of gossip and is eager to distribute it.
Hazel blushes.
I see it from my vantage point above her head—the warmth climbing her neck, reaching the tips of her ears, the visible evidence of a woman who has just heard the worddateapplied to her current situation and is processing the fact that this is, in fact, what she’s on.
