Officer Mackereth was scratching Tulip’s ears, but eyeing me. I didn’t return his gaze. I scoured the sink. Coffee and hard water stains everywhere. Drove me nuts.
“Quite the call tonight,” he said presently.
I stilled, noticed a rust stain that would never come out, scrubbed harder.
“Sorry I was slow on the intel,” I said abruptly. “Caller was hiding from her husband and couldn’t really talk.”
“Then how’d you get the information?”
“Phone beeps.”
“Pardon?”
I finished the sink, glanced at him, then turned on the water to rinse the sponge. Officer Mackereth was probably mid-thirties, blue eyes, short-cropped brown hair. Bit burly, but carried it well. Gave him the kind of presence that made subjects give up on the idea of running and surrender instead.
I didn’t like him standing so close. I didn’t like him studying me with cop eyes, trained to ferret out secrets and spot dissembling.
He’d never caught up with me after a shift. Most of them hadn’t. On the one hand, as Detective D. D. Warren had said, I had their backs and they felt like they had mine. On the other hand, dispatchers had a notoriously high burnout rate. Meaning most of my officers were waiting for my one-year anniversary, to see if I was still around, before investing in a personal relationship.
I was like the walk-on part in all those old war movies. The new guy whose name nobody bothered to learn.
Except Officer Mackereth was talking to me now, paying attention to me now. Following war movie logic, he’d just doomed me to blow up in scene two.
The thought made me smile, then made me want to laugh, then made me want to cry.
Exhaustion and adrenaline. A dangerous combination in any person, but particularly in one with only eighty-four hours left.
“What do you mean phone beeps?” Officer Mackereth asked again.
I put away the Clorox wipes. Got out my messenger bag. “I asked questions. The caller responded by using one beep for yes, two beeps for no,” I supplied. “Got the job done.”
I slipped the wide flat strap crossways over my body, black leather bag, with my loaded Taurus, draped at my hip. I picked up Tulip’s leash.
And Officer Mackereth placed his hand on my arm.
I stilled. Maybe sucked in a breath. Tried to think what to feel, how to respond. For a year I’d been training to attack, retaliate, defend. I should drop into boxer’s stance, hands in front of my face. Take a picture, my coach always yelled. I should prepare to deliver jab one to be followed quickly by punch two, left hook three, uppercut four.
No one had touched me in a year. Casually, politely, kindly.
And the sheer vacuum of my isolation suddenly threatened to consume me. Isolation, exhaustion, adrenaline.
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry.
I wanted to throw myself into Mackereth’s arms and remember what it felt like to be held again.
“Did you learn that in training?” he asked me evenly.
“No.”
“What about the gun? How’d you know he had a gun?”
His hand was still on my arm, his blue eyes fastened intently on my face. I kept my chin up, my expression neutral. “Just knew.”
His arm finally dropped. Beside me, Tulip whined slightly, as if sensing my discomfort.
“Good work,” he said abruptly. “I think.…Thank you, Charlie. I mean it, thanks.”
“I’m glad you’re okay,” I said simply. “And I’m sorry it took me so long to figure out the situation. I’ll do better next time.”
Two more shifts. That’s all she wrote. Two more shifts.
Officer Mackereth switched his attention to Tulip, who was now pressed against my leg. I noticed his hands by his side. No wedding ring, but that didn’t mean anything. Few officers wore them, not wanting to broadcast personal information in their line of work.
“I’ll take you home,” he said abruptly.
“It’s okay—” I started.