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Darkness follows. A complete blackness. An entire nothing. I cry out, thinking I have fallen into some hell void.
Then I see a face. A pale face ringed with ruddy red hair looming over me. I also see a camera, and I realize with the remaining activity of my dying neurons that the light was not the welcoming embrace of the eternal. It was a flash from this fucking vulture’s camera.
“Well, hell,” Ramona says as my eyes roll toward her. “You’re alive!”
“Sorry to ruin your corpse picture taking, Randy.” I say, or I try to say. It’s more of a faint gurgle than anything because the muscles that control speech are starting to slacken, the way everything is slackening. I can hear her talking as my eyes close.
“Yeah, we got an officer down,” she says. “Yep. Shot. I’m putting pressure on the wound, but there’s a lot of blood.”
“Stay with me,” she says to me. “Or I’ll get to take that corpse photo. You make a beautiful fuckin’ body.”
“Sick.”
I manage to gasp that word out before the whole world fades to black.
* * *
Back in the office, listening to the fight…
I woke up three days later in a hospital bed covered in IVs and still just barely alive. I found out later that Randy Carrot published the pictures she took of me anyway. Apparently they were very popular with a particularly twisted subculture, and that’s all I can dare think about without wanting to be sick.
She technically saved my life. I should probably be grateful to her, but Randy has a way about her that makes her easy to hate. It’s an abrasive rudeness and a kind of callous disregard that somehow comes through even when she’s being what some would call nice.
After being shot, I became an object of pity, known for all the wrong reasons. I left my precinct and was lucky to be offered a position in Connor’s unit. Then I met Sally, and she didn’t give a fuck about any of the publicity around me. She didn’t feel sorry for me. She needed someone who could be on her side without being by her side, and I needed someone who needed me. We worked well together, and I miss her a lot.
The door to the chief’s office opens, and the pair of them tumble out like fighting cats. “You know what, little lady? Let me show you the inside of a cell,” Chief Connor growls. Oh she has fucking done it now. I couldn’t be more thrilled to be here in time to see this all go down. This has been coming for a very long time. Randy Carrick has been the flea biting us on the ass every second we turn around. She hacks communications, she breaks into crime scenes, and she never, ever leaves well enough alone.
Connor grabs Randy by the back of her head, his big hand curled in her riotous red mane. It’s not technically how anyone should be held, but she one hundred percent deserves it and more. I turn a blind eye as he marches her toward the cells, complaining the whole time about her rights, etcetera.
“I’m going to protect my sources!” She declares. “I don’t care what you do to me. You can beat me, you can…”
“Beating you is a damn good idea,” Connor growls, and spanks her ass. Hard. The sight of his big palm meeting her deserving round ass is so damn satisfying I have to stuff my sleeve into my mouth to stop myself from busting out laughing. The sound it makes is even better, a harshcrackthat echoes around the largely empty precinct. I wish Sally were here to see this. I miss her so damn much.
* * *
About twenty or so minutes later, Connor comes into my,ouroffice, shuts the door behind himself and leans back against it, giving me what I can only describe as a haunted look. I’m going to guess his prisoner gave him as much trouble as he gave her.
“Tell me you got a lead on Sally. I have Randy Carrot in a cell, but I’m not going to be able to hold her legally for more than twenty-four hours.”
“Why do you have Randy Carrot in a cell?”
I pretend I hear the yelling or see the spanking. If I didn’t know better, I’d say there’s something going on between the chief and Randy. I hope there isn’t. He’s far too good for her. She’s worse than a vulture. Vultures just want to feed. Randy isn’t happy unless she’s humiliating someone.
“She knows something is happening,” he says. “She’s telling me she has pictures of moth creatures, and she knows that one of our detectives is missing.”
“How could she possibly know that?”
“She’s nearly supernatural in what she finds out,” he says with a growl and a sideways glance.
It’s not supernatural. Someone in the department is leaking. It’s obvious and simple and it doesn’t make it any easier to find. Chief’s been dealing with this for months now. At first it was a minor annoyance, but now it feels like lives could truly be at stake.
“Maybe we should interrogate her instead of looking for leads, if she already has the information.”
“I’d put money on her getting more out of you than you do out of her.”
He’s probably right, but those words are a challenge to my ego. I am a professional detective, looking for a close friend. Randy fucking Carrot is not going to get the better of me.
“Put her in an interview room, boss,” I say. “Let me at her.”
