Chapter 10
“Iwant to see my husband!” A woman demanded, tears falling from her eyes.
“Take a seat, someone will be with you shortly.” The portly, balding officer at the desk gave her the same instructions that he gave everyone.
This entire scene felt like Maxi was watching her life from the outside in. The station reminded her of a television set, complete with all the characters you’d expect to see on a given episode. It even smelled how she would expect it to. The musk of the old building was a combination of urine and cigarettes. Her head was pounding from the pungent scent and the flickering overhead florescent lights weren’t helping.
She was trying to remain calm but her nerves were surfacing in the form of her foot tapping on the linoleum floor as she waited beside Billy for Detective Grover. Her gaze darted down the hallway that led back into the precinct looking for any sign of Carter, Grover or anyone that she recognized. They’d been at the station for almost two hours and still hadn’t spoken to anyone. All she wanted to do was see Carter, talk to him. This was a huge misunderstanding. It had to be.
Her phone buzzed with another message from Alan and Maxi’s entire career flashed before her eyes. Everything she’d worked for was going down the drain. Each minute that passed was cementing her failure.
On the way to the station she’d called her team to let them know that she would be late. Since then she’d been in constant contact with them, checking in every fifteen minutes to make sure that things were running smoothly. And it was. In fact, her social media manager had been live tweeting the entire event and they had already reached hundreds of thousands of retweets, making it one of the most successful events SPC had ever hosted. That hadn’t stopped Alan from leaving her outraged voicemails and texts.
Billy had been on his phone as well. He’d been getting as many messages as she was. She’d resisted the urge to ask if it was his harem of women since the last time she’d traveled down that road it had led to a place she wasn’t ready to visit again. She’d replayed the conversation they’d had on her couch at least a hundred times and she still wasn’t sure why she’d admitted the fact that she dated men that were safe. She’d never revealed that to anyone. It was something that she guarded because the next logical question was why, and that was not something she even let herself think about.
“Rizzo!” The officer at the desk called out.
Maxi sprang to her feet. “Yes.”
Another officer opened the security door and motioned to her as he said, “Follow me.”
Billy stood as well and they both followed the man down a narrow hall. She had so many questions. Where was Carter? Why did they bring him in? Did he have a lawyer? Did he need a lawyer?
The officer stopped in front of an open door. Inside the square room sat a table and four chairs. “You can wait in here. Detective Grover will be with you shortly.”
Shortly. Right.That’s what the front desk cop had told her over two hours ago. She guessed “shortly” covered a multitude of sins. It could mean ten minutes or four hours depending on your perspective. At this point she was just happy not to be seated out in the main waiting area. Hope blossomed that progress was being made and they would soon be seen while at the same time the reality that she was not going to make Ricco’s performance—and would most likely be fired—sunk in.
“This has to be a mistake,” she repeated to Billy as she sat down.
She’d expressed that exact sentiment at least a dozen times since they’d arrived. It wasn’t news to him that that was how she felt, but for some reason it made her feel better to say it out loud.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he responded the same way he had each time she’d made the comment.
Logically she knew that he was just saying words. Realistically he didn’t have the authority to promise that anything about this situation would be okay. But that didn’t change the fact that when he said it, she believed it. Whether it was his unwavering confidence or just his overall air of command, when he said that it would be okay, she believed him. Even if it was only for a second, a calm settled over her.
Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to bask in that peace for as long as it remained.
“Why are you so sure that this is a mistake?” Billy settled into the chair to her right.
Just like that her all-too-brief peace bubble burst.
Her heavy lids opened and she lifted her eyes, studying his features, trying to read between the lines of what he’d just asked. His expression was guarded. She wasn’t sure where this train of questioning was headed but it was definitely on a track to a predetermined destination.
Sounding more defensive than she’d meant to, Maxi snapped, “I just know. I know it’s not him.”
“Is it just a feeling, or is there more to it than that?” His tone was calm but the intensity in his piercing stare pinned her to the back of her seat.
If there were such a thing as emotional x-ray powers, Maxi would swear that Billy possessed them. She felt his gaze all the way to her soul.
“More to what?” Her voice wavered with nervous energy. “What are you talking about?”
“Maxi,” his baritone voice rumbled as he said her name. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
His question was straightforward and so was the answer, but for some reason she just couldn’t bring herself to respond. If she told him the truth about her suspicions, she would be digging up a past that she wasn’t ready to face. And what if she was wrong? Then what? All of those memories, the secret that she’d kept for so long would be exposed and for what? They could hurt the one person she loved the most in this world: her dad.
The weight of what she’d carried around for over a decade and the confusion and fear of what she’d been dealing with for the past few months was more than just an elephant in the room, it felt like that sucker was sitting on her chest.
Tears sprang to her eyes as a lump of emotion formed in her throat. An avalanche of feelings started tumbling over her, smothering her. She was suffocating from them. As much as she’d tried to convince herself that she’d been doing a good job keeping everything together, this moment was proof that pushing things down and ignoring them didn’t actually work.