“You have been in law enforcement for almost two decades, and you’re acriminal?Whose side are you on, exactly?” I stand straighter, willing myself to keep calm, but I throw my phone across the room. Captain Barrett barely flinches when it dents the wall behind him. My fingers crumple the pages of the letter spread out under my hands, and the breaths in my chest feel so incredibly inadequate for the amount of oxygen I feel I need to stay standing.
“I am on the side of the victims, Colin.” He raises his palms into the air like I’m a wild animal he’s preparing to restrain.
I scoff, the sound scratching my throat as it transforms to the brink of hysterical laughter. “The victims are dead! And you let their murderer walkfree!Who are you?” It leaves my lips, but knowing now what those men did to her, I’d hardly call them victims.
“You know me, Colin. Just like you knew Chloe. You knew who she was the whole time—”
“And you took me off her path! You sent me out of town so I’d quit digging because you knew I would eventually find something that would put her away!”
Heads are lifting from their desks past the windows surrounding us, my colleagues wondering why I’m standing behind my captain’s desk screaming at him. I turn from them and thread my hands through my hair. “You made me feel like I was insane. You threatened totake my badgeif I kept digging.”
“I had to protect her,” he argues, crossing to his desk and planting his hands on it.
“From what?”
“From you!” he booms, his face growing red. “From them!” He turns his face toward the desk, taking a deep breath and standing straight again, running his hands down the front of his suit to compose himself. “Law enforcement…it’s complex, Colin. You know that. We don’t always win. The good guy does not always win. But with her…”
“What?” I raise my arms into the air. “Do we partner with criminals now? Should we employ the mafia to help us take out the neighborhood drug dealers?”
“With her,” he says again emphatically, ignoring my sarcastic taunting. “People get justice. People stay safe. With people like Chloe, the limitations of our justice system become flexible.”
A laugh escapes my lips, and I cover my mouth, squeezing my cheeks in my hand, hoping the pressure will relax me. But my brain is on fire, my mind is running a million miles a minute, and I have no idea if this is a trap or I have died and gone to Hell.
Pressing my fingertips to the heavy pulse in my neck, I close my eyes, trying to slow it after I’ve confirmed that I am indeed still alive.
“Colin—”
“Be quiet,” I snap.
“Watch yourself,” Captain Barrett demands, circling the desk to stand in front of me. Our eyes clash, both of us fighting for dominance and neither of us willing to give it up. And for the first time, I notice it.She has his eyes.
Every time he berated me. Every time they flashed with anger, or worry. It was because of her, but not in any way I had realized.
I’ve been staring the truth in the face for years, and I haven’t recognized it.
“She does not hurt good people, Colin.”
I glance away from him, knowing, believing in the depth of my soul that he’s right, but I’m so fucking angry that I can’t accept it.
“I was coming here to ask for your advice,” I mutter, keeping my face turned away from him, no longer able to look into his eyes. Intohereyes. “And you would have fed me some bullshit to keep her out of jail. To keep hersafe.”
“I would have,” he admits. “She is my priority, and I’ll say anything—I’lldoanything—to protect her.”
His statement raises the hairs on the back of my neck, and I meet his gaze again, hearing the words on repeat in the back of my mind, until it clicks.
“You planted the DNA.”
A slow nod of confirmation. “I had to.”
My phone vibrates across the room, and I roughly brush past Captain Barrett’s shoulder to pick it up off the floor. Barry’s name displays on the screen again, and I answer this time. He’s talking before I have a chance to greet him.
“Detective, she left her house. I followed her. We’re twenty minutes outside town.”
“Jesus Christ, Barry. Anything for a story, huh?”
I glance back at my captain who is flattening Caroline’s crumpled letter and shuffling it back into a neat pile.
“It’s not that,” Barry says, drawing my attention back to him. “I—I think she’s in trouble.”
