AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re a bunch of assholes.”
Laughing, he steps back as Alex Turner, our chief, walks in and studies us both. “What’s going on here?”
“You’re a pain in my damn ass,” Oz continues quietly. “But you’re mine. You’re ours. And I trust you with my life.”
I scrunch my nose and lean away. “You’re getting all weird and mushy. You pregnant or something?”
“Guys?” X steps toward us with narrowed eyes. “Problem?”
“We’ve got two fuckers in the cages.” Oz steps away and swings back into his chair until the steel joints groan under his two hundred pounds. “We were ready to clock out, we stopped at the gas station.”
“He had to pee.”
Oz nods in agreement. “Dumb fuck tried to hold the place up, but he didn’t know Tate was twenty feet behind him. I walked in, he pointed his weapon, Tate took him down. Now we have paperwork, and I owe her fifty bucks.”
“What’s the fifty for?” Alex steps through and snatches up the report from the printer. His light eyes scan the writing, narrow somewhere around the bit where Donohue pointed a gun at X’s best friend and deputy, and his lips firm somewhere around the bottom — the bit about Anton’s part in the burglary. “Two of them?”
“That’s what the fifty is for,” Oz answers. “Lib called it; said they were in it together. I didn’t see it. Shit, I didn’t even see the burglary till the gun was in my face.”
“What the fuck were you doing with your time, Oscar? Because you weren’t paying attention, that’s for sure.”
“I had icky hands.” He holds them in the air in front of his chest. “The paper towels had run out in the bathroom, and the soap was weird and itchy. I was air-drying them when I walked in, and—”
“I think you need a month of cleaning the station bathrooms to get over your feelings ofick,” Alex growls. “Where’s the street kid I met when we were little? Where’s the badass that didn’t mind blood and gross shit?”
“I’m domesticated now, X! My wife cooks and cleans. She irons my underwear, dammit! She made me fancy. Our girls are caviar and crystal.We’reskateboards and kicks. We got fancy, and we aren’t complaining. But that means sometimes shit feels icky when it never used to. We came back here and tossed them into the cage after we took statements and shit. It took me two seconds and a single search once we got back here to find the connection between the guys. We booked them, they’re having a nap, and your officers live to see another day.”
“Jesus.”
Oz sits back, as though impressed with his report, while Alex presses a hand to his broad chest and lets his eyes flicker between me and Oz. This isn’t the kind of workplace where we clock in, do our work, and clock out again. This station is a family. The kind of family where we attend weddings and birthdays. We’re all socially stunted loners, but for each other, we’re there when it matters.
The idea of X’s best friend potentially losing his life will fuck with his head for weeks to come. He’ll probably initiate compulsory training days, and maybe abonding barbecue, because we need to appreciate each other more.
“Everything is okay, right? Any injuries?”
“Nah, but Donohue lost a tooth at some point today.” Oz waves a hand in my direction. “It definitely wasn’t Tate. She was gentle as a kitten with him.”
“Bet she was.” Alex firms his lips and looks me up and down.
I wear the uniforms we’ve been issued. Sometimes the guys wear jeans or whatever, but I almost always wear the blue slacks and button-up shirt. It makes my boxy frame that much boxier, but I consider it almost as important as the badge.
I earned this uniform. I earned this badge. And the members of this and every other town in this country already have trust issues when it comes to the police. Men like my father put a blemish on this career. They made us all look bad. So Icouldhide away in comfortable jeans and pull my badge and sidearm only when I need it. Or I could wear my uniform day in, day out. I could proudly show myself as one of them, and when the folks in this town see me going about my work in a lawful way, they might learn to trust again.
Alex has already earned a lot of it back. He’s the best administration this town has had in a long time. The officers under his command, while quirky, are beyond reproach. Alex Turner hates dirty cops almost as much as I do, and there isn’t a single dollar amount that could convince him to go bad.
I would know. I’ve been watching him since the day I graduated the academy.
The cops in this town have had to scale a steep mountain to earn back the respect that generations before us lost. But Alex did it. He earned it. He deserves it.
He’s a boss worth respecting, when so many aren’t.
But he still narrows his eyes when I turn away. “He seriously lost a tooth?”
“Right,” Oz volunteers. “But it might’ve already been loose or something. I can’t confirm either way. The rest of them were kinda bordering on brown, so maybe they were already structurally weak.”
“Structurally weak…” Alex’s eyes slide away from me and stop on his deputy. They pause and prove how Alex has become so successful when questioning a suspect. His eyes are blue like the ocean, but dark and scary when he’s staring and displeased. After a moment of Oz’s squirming, Alex’s eyes come back to mine. “This report says you slammed him against the plexiglass twice.”
I frown. “Um… no. I slammed him three times.”
