“Usually, where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” the detective tells us. “I’ve learned it from experience.”
“That wasn’t the case with me,” Dominic corrects him. “You accused me of kidnapping him, and I had nothing to do with it.”
“I didn’t say it was a bullet proof theory,” the detective shrugs.
“But… he ended up at the hospital,” Dominic remembers. “You told me he got beaten up severely. Was that all an act? Did he pay the hospital staff to tell you that?”
“No,” Detective Puttner shakes his head, crunching up his nose in displeasure. “That’s the messed-up part. He really was beaten up severely. If I remember correctly, he had a broken rib.”
“He couldn’t have done that to himself,” Dominic points out.
The detective shrugs again. “He probably paid someone to beat him up. That’s my theory.” He sighed heavily, getting up in such a way that it made the chair underneath him screech against the floor. “Not that it matters who beat him up. What matters is that he’s behind the whole thing. We already have him in custody. And we’ll of course, leave you alone, Mr. Hart.”
“I would appreciate that,” Dominic stands up, and I follow.
“No hard feelings?” Detective Puttner offers Dominic his hand.
Dominic hesitates. For a moment, I think that he won’t accept it, but he does. He shakes the detective’s hand, who then turns to me.
“As for your father, Miss Saunders, a deal is a deal,” he tells me, and I am shocked to my very core. “Come see me sometime next week, and we’ll see what we can do.”
“Thank you,” I smile joyfully, incredulous that things were going exactly how I wanted them to. This almost feels like a crazy dream, and I half-expect to wake up from it any moment.
Without even thinking, I grab Dominic’s hand. I need to feel that he is here, that this is not all just in my imagination. The warmth of his hand is enough to convince me that this is reality. My heart is appeased.
The detective leaves, without saying anything else, even a goodbye. After all, what else is there left to be said? We know everything that we needed to know.
I glance at the table, with the ticket still lying on top of it. The ticket that was supposed to get the police off our back, but it turned out, we didn’t need it at all.
“Talk about luck,” I say, pondering what just happened.
“I still can’t believe it was Morris all along,” Dominic turns to me, looking a little pale.
“He needed the money,” I shrug. “I didn’t think you could still get surprised by what people would do for money.”
“I know,” Dominic nods. “I just… never expected it of him. His company has been my greatest rival for years. I never thought he would be in such debt that he’d need to resort to such depths.”
“Well, he just made things even worse,” I point out. “Prison isn’t a nice place to be.”
Suddenly, I remember my dad. Again, that sadness is there, that he isn’t by my side to share in this success with me, that I can’t call him up, like I can call up mom and tell her everything but there is also joy that we are finally given the chance to right a terrible wrong.
“You’re thinking about your dad, aren’t you?” he asks me, caressing my cheek. His touch immediately reminds me where I am and what I need to do.
“Yes,” I admit, with a smile. “But they are happy thoughts.”
“That’s all I ever want you to think,” he reassures me. “Happy thoughts.”
“As long as I have you beside me, I could never think any other thoughts,” I smile.
He wraps his arms around my waist, bringing me closer to him. “You know this is the last place on earth where we should proclaim love for each other.”
“You mean at the police station?” I can’t help but chuckle.
“Mhm,” he smiles back.
Those eyes… I could never get enough of them.
“Why?” I chirp, tilting my head to the side. “In some weird way, it’s kinda appropriate.”