Page 53 of Diesel’s Desire

The page loads. Applications, fingerprints, an exam. If I want to open my own agency, there’s a separate company license to sort out too. More paperwork, but this time it would get me somewhere.

I sit with the cursor blinking in the search bar for a long time, listening to the printer hum two desks over, Johnson’s voice on the phone with someone about a fender bender on Route 9, all of it going on as if nothing has changed.

I don’t close the tab.

27

DIESEL

The rumble of a car engine, not a bike, pulls my attention to the clubhouse windows. Most of the guys are out on runs this Tuesday afternoon. It’s been a week since Penny started dealing with Wexler, and she hasn’t had a good word to say about him. I set down the AR I’m cleaning and glance through the blinds.

Penny’s truck. Not her cruiser.

She climbs out wearing jeans and a plain gray shirt, hair down around her shoulders instead of pulled back in that bun she always wears on duty. No badge on her hip. No gun belt. Just Penny, looking smaller somehow without all that armor.

“That your cop?” Gunner asks from the pool table, cue stick paused mid-shot.

“That’s Penny,” I confirm, already moving toward the door.

She’s got her chin up when she walks through the door, scanning the room until she finds me. A few of the guys go quiet, watching her the way you’d watch a fox that wandered into the henhouse. She doesn’t flinch from any of it.

“Can we talk?” she asks. “Privately.”

“You’re not in uniform.”

“I know.”

“You’re not in your cruiser either.”

“Also know that.”

I lead her toward the back hallway, aware of every eye in the room tracking us. Bone’s watching with his arms crossed, waiting to see what kind of trouble just walked through our door. I don’t care. I stopped caring about optics weeks ago.

We end up in the small room off the kitchen, the one we sometimes use for quick meetings that don’t need the whole table.

“I quit,” she says.

The words don’t land right away. “You quit what?”

“The force. This morning. I walked into Wexler’s office and handed him my badge and my gun.” She says it steady, like she’s reciting facts from one of her case files. “I’m done.”

“Jesus, Penny.” I lean against the counter, studying her face for cracks, but she looks calmer than I’ve seen her in weeks. “Why?”

“Because I couldn’t do my job anymore. Not really. Not the way it needed to be done.” She crosses her arms, but it’s not defensive, more like she’s holding herself together. “Katrina Doss saw something three years ago, and I couldn’t even get approval to interview her without three signatures and a week of red tape. Addison would’ve died in that basement if we’d waited for procedure.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“I know I’m not wrong. That’s the problem.” She meets my eyes. “I’m going to be a private investigator. I’ve checked the requirements. I’m applying for the license.”

I let that settle for a second, the weight of what she’s telling me. “And you came here because…”

“Because I want you to help me. The way you helped with Addison.” Her jaw tightens like she’s bracing for my reaction. “When I need it. When it’s someone innocent who’s falling through the cracks.”

I stare at her, waiting for the joke, but there isn’t one. “You do remember what I do for a living, right? Guns. Drugs sometimes. Things that would’ve had you cuffing me a week ago.”

“I remember.”

“So what changed?”