With shaky, bloodless fingers Julia opened her satchel and fished around for her keys. Somewhere very far away a dog barked. Her whole body shook as she unlocked the driver’s side door and opened it. She saw Max staring at her, something lonely in his eyes and felt one last stab of defiance. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re making excuses,” she said, her voice quavering. “You’re pretending you’re doing this to be a decent, stand-up guy, but you’re just scared of what other people think, which is pathetic considering you areeight hideously long years older than me.”
Max said nothing. He unlocked his car and drove away without so much as glancing at her. She stood alone in the parking lot, wanting to cry but too numb to manage a single tear. It was pitch black when she finally slung herself inside her Commodore and started the engine, her heart a tangle of muscle and aching fibers.
Chapter 20
JULIAarrived home to find everything exactly as she left it: filthy, cold, and covered in dog hair. Ash was still gone and she was glad; she didn’t have the energy to do anything except eat buttered toast lying down.
The next morning she got up and the entire evidence room experience felt like a strange marijuana-scented dream. If she hadn’t had the scratch marks from what she and Max had done on the carpet she might not have believed it really happened. Ash came home and informed her she’d shagged the dreadlocks guy on a pile of sleeping bags. Julia congratulated her and neglected to mention she’d done anything more exciting than watch TV. It was just easier that way.
She spent Sunday working on Scarlet Woman’s game design. She emailed Tiff her drawing of Eli tied to the post and her partner nearly wet her pants with excitement. Apparently they’d gotten a new investor while she’d been entombed in the property office and they now had enough cash to see them through to the end of their GDD. With that in mind, Julia called in sick on Monday. It was cowardly but she just needed more time. Then on Tuesday, she did the same thing. By Wednesday her boss was pissed but Julia swore she had gastroileitis the likes of which the world had never seen and he shut up. On Thursday Ash came home from a shift at the hospital and yanked her headset clean off her ears. “You’re giving yourself PTSD. Tell me what’s wrong or I throw all your consoles out the window.”
Terrified Julia told her. Ash was by turns amused, angry, and sympathetic but she made one thing abundantly clear: Julia couldn’t camp out in their living room for the foreseeable future just to avoid a guy she screwed.
So on Friday morning, Julia ate breakfast under Ash’s watchful eye and left for work.
Brenthill, the scene of the crime, looked the same as ever, a bland concrete building, totally unremarkable except for the blue and white police insignia on the front.
“Home sweet home,” she muttered to herself and she threw back her shoulders and headed inside.
In her absence, someone had downloaded a particularly malicious ransomware virus. Usually this would have been unbelievably annoying but not today. Decrypting the network meant she had to camp out in the processor room, with little to no contact with her colleagues. One colleague in particular. As the shadows on the wall grew long, Julia almost believed she’d leave for the weekend without encountering anyone other than the shamefaced cop who’d opened the bugged attachment. Then at ten minutes to five, Inspector Morrison came to see her and she remembered there was no such thing as good luck. Apparently the projector in the mess room wasn’t working and she was the only person who stood a chance at fixing it. And the reason it needed to be fixed? The entire station was watching an instructional video in the mess room. Of fucking course.
Once she was standing on a chair in front of thirty cops in a skirt, Julia knew she should have just moved to Canada like she’d said she was going to.
Max was there, of course, taking up three times the space of a normal human. Julia could feel his gaze on her skin like liquid fire. But that might have been from the blatant perving of everyone else. She wanted to tug down her green plaid skirt but knew it would only draw more attention to her thighs. She distinctly heard the word “schoolgirl” and gritted her teeth, wishing she’d had the foresight to wear pants. Just being in the same room as Max made everything inside her hot and achy. He was a ransomware virus, she realized. She’d opened the seed attachment the night of Brett’s party and now he was in her system, turning her into a stack of useless, corrupted files. Julia yanked out the projector’s twisted cords and plugged them back in as quickly as humanly possible, wobbling slightly on the chair.
“Whoa there.” A big blond guy stepped up to her side. “Want me to find you a stepladder?”
His tone was so courteous Julia thought he was mocking her, but his smile was friendly. “Uh, no thanks. I should be done soon.”
The guy gripped the chair harder. “I’ll stay here ’til you’re done.”
“Oh, um, thanks.”
“I’m glad you’re here. No one knew how to fix the projector but we were all too proud to admit it. We had ten blokes dismantling it before you showed up.”
“Yeah, the funny thing about the projector is it’s not the TV they fixed in 1998.”
Blond Cop gave a deep belly laugh that turned him from mildly cute to distinctly handsome. Julia wondered if the guy was single; he was definitely Ash’s type; beefy and kinda dim-looking. A prickling sensation drew her gaze to Max. He was staring at her, his mouth a flat line. At once she was glad she’d been called up to the mess room for such a dumb reason. Let him be jealous. He’d made it clearhedidn’t want her. She smiled down at Blond Cop. “I think I’m done but thanks for helping.”
He grinned. “Oh, no problem at all. For the record, I think you might be the best-looking IT person I’ve ever seen.”
“The bar for that is generally pretty low, but thanks.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Max scowl and she mentally gave him the finger. Once all the projector’s cords were reattached, she gave the box a final jiggle and powered it up. The screen on the wall flashed blue and there was a round of applause.
“Nice work,” Blond Cop said and as she descended his hand brushed her calf. It wasn’t untoward but it was definitely more intimate than she was comfortable with. She turned to flash him a polite “don’t touch me bro” smile but Max was at her side in a flash.
Blond Cop frowned. “Something wrong, Connor?”
“Nope.” Max’s grin didn’t touch his eyes. “Just need a word with Julia if that’s all right with you?”
“Pornhub playing up again?”
Max’s smile became lupine. “Nothing like that. How’s your girlfriend?”
“Broke up last week.”
“That’s a shame. That’s the fourth this year. You’re powering through them.”