“Who’s fucking hair did you give me, Thornton? Wait, actually, don’t tell me. I don’t want to be any more involved in this than I already am.” He huffs angrily, pushing himself to standing and storming across the lab to a desk, snapping up a manila file folder than making a beeline towards me.
I have just enough time to glance around the lab and verify that no one else is in here.
“What did it come back as?”
He stuffs the file folder into my hands. “First off, the handkerchief results. You were right, it’s York Malone. But it just proves that he was in the warehouse, not that he’s involved in the trafficking. It pinged from CODIS, when he got booked for a DUI that his parents unsurprisingly paid off the judge to ignore.”
“Okay, but what about-”
“The hair?” he seethes. “Yeah, it came back right away. A familial match with a CODIS sample.”
So, someone she’s related to has committed a crime. I don’t see how that’s big enough news to have Derek this riled up.
“How strong of a match? And to who?” I ask.
“Her father,” Derek says, wiping sweat off his brow. He’s really nervous about this, making me more worried as well.
“She doesn’t know her dad, been in foster care since her mom died when she was six. So-”
“It’s York.”
My mind comes to a screeching halt, hands feeling dry and clammy at my sides. No, that can’t possibly be. Why would her mom have ever been in a relationship with that stuck-up bastard? And long enough to go to bed with him.
And if he really is connected to the trafficking ring, then Liv’s dad is deeply involved in it. This whole time, it’s been Liv’s father that I’ve been hunting.
I don’t remember walking out of the lab. I remember the words, and the look of Derek’s face, tight and irritated at first, eventually growing to be almost apologetic, like he’d finally settled enough to know what this would do.
But the walk? Gone.
The hallway from the lab to the bullpen stretches too far. Every step echoes louder than it should beneath the irritating fluorescent overhead lights. I’m pretty sure the building itself is trying to remind me where I am. What I am.
A detective, one who follows evidence, doesn’t manipulate it, and definitely doesn’t steal DNA from a woman who trusts him.
My mouth forms a grim line because that’s exactly what I did. And it worked, that’s the worst part. It fucking worked.
I push through the precinct doors, the bullpen noise hitting me all at once. The phones, voices, and keyboards clacking allfeel distant. Like I’m moving through it instead of being part of it.
Liv’s face flashes in my head, her laugh in her kitchen, her voice in the ambulance. The way she told me she trusts me. My stomach twists, because now I know something about her that she doesn’t.
The truth of her origination… it changes everything. And I got it in the worst possible way.
“Alex.”
I don’t stop.
“Alex.” This time it’s sharper.
I turn and see Mason standing a few feet away, watching me like he already knows something’s off.
“What?” I ask.
His eyes narrow slightly. “You look like hell.”
“Been a long day.”
“That’s not it.”
Of course it’s not. I exhale slowly, running a hand through my hair.
