12
Riley
Help!
Ispent nine hours with my boss today. Nine straight hours while we studied a dead girl, took her prints, watched her being loaded into a van destined for the morgue, scoured the land outside town for evidence I knew we wouldn’t find – seeing as Jay was the one who brought her out here – then I sat in the boardroom at the station and stared at her pictures while Alex tried to figure out what I already knew but was unable to share.
Alex knows she’s tied to Infernos club and Abel Hayes, becauseeverythingis tied to Infernos club and Abel Hayes at the moment. He knows it has something to do with Bishop – though he’s guessing the wrong Bishop. My boss has no clue there are two of them, no clue they are brothers. The intel we have is of one; Kane Bishop. Then in addition, we know of aghost. A second man that sticks to the shadows and is never caught in the surveillance images – or so Alex thinks.
When you take a couple brothers, same build, same features, barely a couple years difference in age, and you have no reason to know there’s two of them, you don’t question the subtle differences.
We get pictures of Kane in his alleyway, we see his face, his hands, his scowl.
Then we see a picture of Jay unloading a truck of guns. We see his back, his shoulders, his hair – all the same as his brother.
So when cops are presented with these facts, these images, but they’re distracted by the bigger picture, no one stops and sees what’s right under their nose.
There are two of them, and that’s why they insist Kane is top dog – because he’s seemingly everywhere.
Alex stood by the large whiteboard in the station boardroom and stared at pictures of the girl we’ve identified as nineteen-year-old Chelsea Stone. But while he stared at her, then at pictures of Kane at the club at the time the body was dumped – and therefore, our own surveillance team provide him with an alibi – I stared at the girl with bright blue eyes that were uncomfortably similar to Dee’s. I stared at her choppy hair, her bruised mouth, the blood beneath her nails.
And it made me sick that Alex is so close – heknowsthis is on Hayes – but knowing and proving are two completely different bags of shit, and knowing isn’t enough, nor is it going to help the agents take Hayes down as fast as they wish they could.
I spent nine hours doing that shit today, staring at a girl that made me yearn to hug an unavailable chick, and now, I sit on my couch in sweat pants, drooping eyes, and Cheetos dust on my fingers.
I work so hard on my intake. I count macros and lift the exact right amount of weight six days a week. But then Andi comes along – Chelsea happens – and I fill my body with fake cheese to feel better about my day.
Ninja prowls my home like it’s her job to walk the perimeter without rest, while a certain celebrity family on my wall-mounted TV throw a tantrum similar to the bullshit Andi’s nephew pulled today, but this one is all girls. They get catty and call names. They screech and act like idiots to make a little money when their show’s ratings skyrocket. I don’t hear what they say, I don’t pay a whole lot of attention, I just want to go to sleep and pretend the pillow I’ll hug is actually a woman’s body.
Unfortunately for me, my phone dings and drags me out of my near-coma.
I groan, because I so rarely receive texts, and when I do, they’re about work. I’m so fucking sick of my job already. Maybe I’m not cut out to be a cop. Or maybe I’m not cut out to stay still for long. I’ve always reached for thenext; next goal, next weight class, next degree, next promotion. I can’t sit still, and the career I figured would be my final stop, the place I’d work my way up the ranks and become content, has become something I can barely tolerate.
I don’t want to ticket people for jaywalking. I don’t want to break up fights between the idiots that live on the outskirts of town. And I sure as fuck don’t want to find more dead girls in the middle of the night so they become those who haunt my dreams.
Helping people makes me happy, and solving cases gives me an intense sense of satisfaction that not a lot else does. But paperwork, lunch runs, and arresting the same asshole every other week because his lawyer got him off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist wears on a guy like me.
It’s not enough for me. It’s not satisfying to see them walk out of the courthouse with smiles on their faces.
Picking up my cell and hoping for something like a ‘sorry, wrong number’, I narrow my eyes at the new number displayed on my screen. Opening to the text box, my sour mood shifts when I get pictures of the lake and the line of moonlight cast along the smooth surface.
Unknown:Guess what I’m doing?
Half of me is giddy she’s texting, but the other half freaks out that she’s out late at night and all alone. Chelsea haunts me, and Abel is a maniac that has our names. We’re fucking with his business, so I know he’ll come for us soon. He won’t settle for less than fucking us up.
Me:I give up. What are you doing? Are you alone?
Instead of replying with words, she replies with a picture of her bare legs. Pink nail polish sparkles where it wasn’t this morning, and knobby knees poke out and make me smile all alone in my living room.
Me:You’re tanning your legs?
Again, instead of a worded reply, she sends a picture of her bare belly. Toned so much, I canalmostcount abs.
Me:You’re doing your hundred crunches for the day?
Andi:No. Guess again.
Me:You’re studying the Milky Way?