I'm adjusting my uniform, trying to get my head back in the game, when something on my desk catches my eye. The file I'd been reading when she arrived with breakfast and scrambled every coherent thought in my skull.
The federal clearance file I'd forgotten I'd even requested.
My blood turns to ice water as the words swim back into focus.
Multiple psychiatric evaluations. Court-ordered institutionalization following violence incident. Drug possession (Class A substances). Resisting arrest.
"Jesus," I breathe, gripping the edge of my desk until my knuckles go white.
But even as my heart tries to hammer its way out of my chest, something feels wrong. I force myself to read more carefully, to look past the damning phrases to the details underneath.
Mathew Carter.
Not Lucy Reid. This isn't about my Lucy at all.
This is about the registered owner of her van. The name that came back when I ran her plates weeks ago. A name that had been sealed tighter than a steel trap, requiring federal clearance to access.
My old Army buddy Marcus Webb at Homeland Security had owed me enough favors to pull strings, but I'd completely forgotten about the request in all the chaos with the Cutters and Lucy's attack.
Now the file is here, and the picture it paints is dark as a Montana winter.
Mathew Carter. Twenty-three years old. A senator’s son, that justifies the sealed records. History of psychiatric treatment starting in his teens. Institutionalization for violent behavior. Drug charges. Multiple arrests for resisting authority, disturbing the peace, assault on a corrections officer. The kind of rap sheet that speaks of someone deeply troubled. Potentially dangerous.
Someone who owns the van Lucy's been living in.
I lean back in my chair, running both hands through my hair as possibilities race through my mind like spooked cattle.
Best case scenario, Lucy bought the van from this Mathew character through some under-the-table deal that explains why the paperwork never got transferred. Maybe she had no idea about his history, just needed reliable transportation and found herself tangled up in his legal complications by accident.
Worst case scenario...
Don't go there, Maddox.
Because the worst case involves Lucy being connected to whatever violence put Mathew Carter behind locked doors. Maybe as a victim. Maybe as something else entirely.
I try to reconcile this information with the woman who just left my office. The woman who saved a dying dog without hesitation. Who works herself to exhaustion caring for animals. Who brings me breakfast because she's worried I'm not taking care of myself.
The woman who makes me want to throw away every principle I've ever held about duty and honor and doing things by the book.
Because that's what I've been doing, isn't it? Ever since Lucy walked into my life, I've been compromising. Small things at first.
Giving my personal information at the hospital instead of letting them run her through the system.
Keeping quiet about her obvious desire to stay under the radar during the Cutter investigation.
Looking the other way when it became clear she was keeping secrets any good law enforcement officer should be investigating.
And now this morning. Letting her perform oral sex in my office, in a government building, where anyone could have walked in.
Letting desire override every professional boundary I've ever maintained.
My chest tightens with something that feels like panic mixed with guilt. I've spent my entire adult life living by a code. Military discipline first, then law enforcement protocol. Black and white, right and wrong, no gray areas to muddy the waters.
It's what kept me sane after watching my mother choose my father and violence over freedom. What kept me functional after losing Katherine to pills I should have seen coming.
But Lucy is nothing but gray areas. Beautiful, complicated, impossible gray areas that make me question everything I thought I knew about myself.
The crazy thing is, I've never felt more alive.
