Coming Back

by Tabitha J Arment

  They had given up on using real money long ago, because none of them made enough to be gambling all their money away. Someone had sprung for a set of poker chips and they had been happily playing with those ever since.

  Once everyone was settled with their drinks and the pizza was ordered, the cards came out and the games began. They started with a few rounds of Texas Hold'em to get everyone warmed up. Then they let everyone take turns picking a different game. For hours they played Hold’em, five card draw, No Peeky, Indian Poker, and anything else that they could think of.

  It was the perfect way for everyone to relax by drinking and having fun. At around midnight, Ace gave up on them and slunk off to pass out on the couch in the living room.

  When Ben and Veronica were walking everyone to the door, they found Charlotte curled up on top of the oblivious dog and desperately rushed to snap a picture before the cat noticed them and left. Once they had poured the last of their makeshift family into various vehicles, including two Uber rides, they shifted the sleeping animals over and flopped down on the couch.

  “How was that for a perfect day?”

  Ben started chuckling. “Perfectly exhausting. If I don’t get up from this couch now, I’m sleeping here.”

  Veronica stood up and dragged Ben up off the couch. She was leading him up the stairs to his bedroom when Ben spoke again.

  “You know what would really make this a perfect day…”

  ◆◆◆

  Part of me loves them. The fact that they think it’s wise for them to take a day off while I’m around is adorable.

  When are they going to realize that I am the most dangerous person that will ever be involved in their lives?

  They can’t treat me like any other criminal.

  I WILL NOT BE IGNORED!

  Tomorrow I will make sure that they never stop thinking about me for even a moment.

  DAY 11

  Veronica woke in a tangle of sheets and Ben with a smile on her face. The day before may have started as a way to reassure Blake they were fine, but it had turned into a genuinely perfect day. She had not understood how much she needed a day that was not full of paranoia and investigation until she woke up feeling relaxed.

  She left Ben in the bed and walked into the bathroom. She pulled a new outfit out of her travel bag and set it out, hoping that the steam from her shower would get rid of some of the wrinkles. At least, that was the excuse she was planning on giving to Ben for taking an extra long shower. She had always loved hot showers. As a child, she was constantly scolded for using all the hot water in the house. When she got out, she glanced into the bedroom and noticed the Ben had finally woken and she could hear him moving around in the kitchen.

  For the first time in months, she made an effort to dress nicely and do her makeup. When she came down the stairs into the living room, she was in a pair of skinny jeans with a form fitting black top and black combat boots. She knew that she was going to be changing into her uniform the second she got to work, but she was starting to enjoy looking good again.

  She used to relish the looks men would give her as she walked down the street, and never felt any shame when she was asked to use her looks to distract someone. Ever since Nick died, she had made a habit of blending into the background, but she was starting to realize the futility of that. Men had still been staring at her, but they had pity in their eyes. Pity had the tendency to piss her off, so she was done with that. Plus, the look on Ben’s face when she walked into the kitchen was enough to make her blush. It might have been a bad sign that she was letting a man affect her this much, but she loved feeling admired again so she was choosing not to dwell on it.

  Both Ben and Veronica had had a lazy start to the day so they had to rush through breakfast in order to make it to work on time. Blake had instituted an unofficial rule that anyone showing up to work late after a poker night would be banned from the game for at least a month.

  Once they had eaten and fed the animals they opened the front door to find yet another “present” from their mysterious friend. On the welcome matt by Ben’s front door was a Phoenix Zoo pamphlet, a Rosita’s menu, and a poker chip. There was also a white note card.

  HOW WAS YOUR “PERFECT” DAY?

  Ben saw it all and slammed the door shut. Before Veronica even had a chance to react he stepped into the living room and started kicking an ottoman.

  “SON OF A BITCH!”

  By the time he controlled himself again, the ottoman was in pieces and Veronica was already on the phone talking to Blake. When she hung up, she glared at Ben.

  “Yeah...killing the furniture is incredibly helpful. Clean that up before Blake gets here.”

  Ben had tossed the remains of the ottoman into his dumpster when Blake arrived with Erica and her partner, Sam. A van from the lab was not far behind them.

  While the lab techs were taking pictures and bagging the items left on the doormat, Blake went into the house and pulled Ben and Veronica aside.

  “Well, at least we know he can’t still get into the house. This definitely confirms that he had a key to the old lock. If he still had access to the house, he would have left it on your pillow or something. The bad news is that whoever this guy is, he still has eyes on you. Ears too, by the looks of it.”

  Ben and Veronica had both come to this conclusion as well. They were trying to figure out what he could have bugged that they could have missed. Veronica’s car and Ben’s house had already been gone over with a fine toothed comb. They had checked their keys and cell phones before Blake had gotten there, but had not found anything. They were both drawing blanks on where the killer could possibly have hidden a bug that they had not checked yet.

  Mark walked in then, “Okay, now I’m confused. Didn’t we just check this house and Veronica’s apartment for bugs?”

  Ben was the first one to respond. “That’s what we were talking about. There’s one thing that’s bothering me. How does he know what kind of poker chips we use. None of them were missing last night, so that means that one was not from our set. Somehow, he had to have seen our poker game last night, but how?”

  The four of them moved into Ben’s dining room and around his table. When they got there, Blake took over the conversation.

  “Okay, if he could see and hear everything in this room, then he would know everything you did yesterday and what our poker chips look like. If you were trying to spy on someone in this room, but couldn’t leave an actual bug behind, how would you do it?”

  Mark, Ben, and Veronica took their seats from the night before and started looking around the room. Silence filled the dining room until their answer came from an unexpected source.

  “We are all idiots.”

  All four of them turned around to see Erica standing in the doorway staring at the wall on the opposite side of the room. Like people watching a tennis match, all of their heads turned at once to see what she was staring at.

  When Mark realized she was staring at Ben’s desktop he turned a skeptical eye upon Erica. “We checked all of Ben’s equipment when we swept the house for bugs. There was nothing there.”

  Erica nodded, but was not convinced. “Yeah, we checked for physical bugs, but did we check the software on Ben’s desktop? He has a webcam. With the right skills, our guy could have used that to see this room whenever he wanted. He proved when he hacked our system at the station that he has those skills.” When she stopped talking, she noticed that everyone was looking at her with mystified expressions.

  Only Veronica had ever heard her say that much all at once and there was usually alcohol involved when she did.

  A slight blush rose to Erica’s cheeks. “What?...I had a friend in college who played a hacker in a Shadowrun campaign. She did a lot of research so she could stay in character.”

  More mystified expressions.

  “It’s a table-top role playing game. Does it surprise anyone that I was a geek in college?”

  Her annoyance more than the comment itself s
hocked all of them back into action. Ben moved to his computer and booted it up. Once the login screen appeared, he typed his password rapidly into the answer field and waited for his profile to load.

  When the computer was fully set up, Ben spun in his chair and addressed Erica. “I have no idea what I’m looking for. Did your friend give you any more details?”

  Erica’s eyes dropped to the floor and resumed her usual state of reserve. This answered Ben’s question better than any words could have and everyone in the room let out the breath they were holding.

  Blake took over again, “Okay, we’ll turn Ben’s computer over to the lab. See if they can come up with anything. In fact, I want everything in this house with recording capabilities turned over to be checked. That goes for your cell phones too. I want to try to cut off our guy’s stream of information. Maybe he’ll slip up trying to regain it. We can pick up a couple burner phones for you on the way to the station.”

  Ben and Veronica reluctantly turned their cell phones over. At this point, they were both cursing the fact that they had smartphones capable of being hacked and turned into a spy tool.

  After taking a moment to talk to one of the lab techs, Blake turned back to the others. “Alright. Erica, take Sam and start canvassing the neighborhood. I’ll send Cheyenne and Ryan to work on it too. When they get here, you can head back. Mark, Ben, Veronica, go to the station and meet me in my office.”

  He glanced around the room and was met with reluctant nods. Knowing that his orders would be followed, he left the house and got in his car so that he could return to the station. This case was causing a mountain of paperwork to build up and he needed to keep working on it.

  Mark, Ben, and Veronica shared a brief farewell with Erica and Sam and left the room.

  On the way to the station, Veronica wondered how many tense and uncomfortable car rides she was going to have to sit through before this was all over.

  When they were about five minutes away, Ben finally started speaking. “He’s gonna pull you off the case. You know that, right. He’s gonna send you back out on patrol. At this point, he doesn’t have much of a choice. We’ve lost momentum on this case and we can’t justify having a patrol cop working with the detectives if there’s nothing for them to do. Not to mention a patrol cop that has an emotional connection to the case and is currently a target. Right now, his bosses are asking him why he’s letting a newly returned cop put themselves in danger by working the case. At this point, we’re lucky if he doesn’t stick us both in protective custody for the duration.”

  Veronica glared at a driver that tried to cut her off and wished that she was in a squad car at that moment. “Yeah, I figured that out when he told us to meet him in his office. I’m not gonna fight him on putting me back on the street. I don’t have that kind of pull in the department. But if he so much as whispers the words ‘protective custody’ I’m gonna kick up such a fuss he’ll wish I’d stayed at the museum. He can’t technically order me into protective custody, so I’m not going. Besides, between being on patrol and staying at your place, I’m never going to be more than ten feet away from another cop until this is over. That might as well be protective custody.”

  Ben was silent for a moment and then suddenly grinned.

  Veronica was suspicious.

  “What exactly about this situation is funny?”

  Ben started chuckling under his breath. “I’m sure with official protective custody you wouldn’t get to have nearly as much fun at night.”

  Without taking her eyes off the road, Veronica reached across the car and swatted Ben on the back of the head.

  “Keep your mind out of the gutter!”

  Then she fought to keep the smirk off her face.

  When they got to the station, they tried to act casual but nobody was buying it. If anybody in the building had doubted that Ben and Veronica were together, they no longer did. As they moved to the locker rooms, it seemed they were connected by a tether. They were never more than a couple feet apart and neither one of them could keep the smiles off their faces.

  In light of what had happened that morning, everyone had expected a different attitude from the two of them.

  Apparently, they both managed to find a way to get their minds back on work while they were in their separate locker rooms because they had their game faces on when the moved back across the building. They paused for a moment outside of Blake’s office to steel themselves for the conversation they were about to have.

  When Veronica walked into Blake’s office, she found him bent over his desk typing rapidly into his computer. She could tell that this case was starting to wear on him as well. They could not do much as investigators right now, but he could do even less as an administrator. Plus, judging by the sweat circles under his arms, he was dreading the coming conversation even more than Ben and Veronica were.

  Knowing Blake, he was terrified that he was going to make her break down or worse; blow up. Veronica had never been well known for the former, but these were new circumstances for everyone. The latter however; the latter was something she was famous for among her friends. They had all had a taste of the stereotypical red-head temper in the past, and they all feared having to deal with any more of it.

  To be completely honest, she felt bad for Blake in that moment. She knew that it must be terrible to have to give orders to your friends. Hanging out and having fun one night, and then being the boss the next day must be exhausting.

  Somehow, they had managed to beat Mark to his office so they sat down in the chairs opposite Blake’s desk and waited. Blake would not look Veronica in the eye, so she knew that Ben had been right in the car. As much as Veronica valued Blake as a friend and sympathized with him, she was not going to make this moment any easier for him. If he was going to put her back out on patrol, he was going to have to face her and say the words.

  For a minute, the only sound in the room was the ticking of Blake’s clock on the wall. It seemed like none of them were even breathing.

  Then the door swung open again and Mark stumbled into the room. “Sorry, I got stopped at every light on the way here.”

  Blake nodded and took a deep breath. “I’m sure you all know why you’re here...Veronica, I know I told you I would keep you on this case for as long as I could. But I can’t do it anymore. My decision to let you come back and work this case put us all on thin ice. With everything that has happened in the past week...there’s nothing more I can do. Veronica, I’m sending you back out on patrol. You’ll be riding with Erica. Sam has been here long enough now that her training is almost over. Jack’s been riding alone recently, so I’m switching Sam over to him.”

  Veronica felt the anger start to bubble up inside of her. “You’re putting me with Erica because she’s a training officer, aren’t you? You could have just as easily put me with Jack. I am not a rookie.”

  For the first time since she walked into the room, Blake looked up and stared her right in the eye. “You haven’t done this job in a year. We have to anticipate a bit of...rustiness.”

  Blake visibly flinched when Veronica shifted in her chair.

  “Fine, I’ll ride with Erica.”

  Everyone in the room looked momentarily shocked that she backed down so easily, but none of them said anything about it. They did not want to bring any more attention to her shame at being gone for so long.

  Blake spoke again. “Okay, I guess you should go catch up with your new partner. She should be back from Ben’s place any time now.”

  Veronica nodded stiffly and then stood to leave the room. She hesitated at the door. “Can Erica and I be at the take-down.”

  Blake answered in the affirmative and Veronica left.

  It turned out that Erica was not back yet, so Veronica stood in the squad room and tried to surreptitiously watch Blake talking to Ben and Mark. It looked like Blake was doing all the talking and Ben and Mark were doing a lot of nodding. She was desperate to know what was happening, but she did not want to p
ush Blake. Besides, she knew that she could get any information that she wanted out of Ben later that night. He might try to hold out for a few minutes, but she had a few tricks up her sleeve.

  She was in the midst of planning how she would get Ben to talk when she heard someone walk up behind her. Suddenly she heard Erica’s voice in her ear.

  “You have dirty in your eyes.”

  Veronica jumped about a foot into the air and spun to find Erica behind her with a bemused expression upon her face. Veronica arranged her face into an innocent expression.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She tried to keep her face straight, but found that impossible under Erica’s intense stare.

  “How are you always sneaking up on people? Do you have any idea how unsettling it is?”

  Erica chuckled darkly and walked away.

  Veronica trailed after her as Erica made her way back out of the building and to her squad car.

  “Blake told me the plan earlier. Don’t worry. I promise not to treat you too much like a rookie.”

  Veronica glared at the back of her head and sarcasm dripped from her tone as she spoke. “Gee, thanks...how nice of you.”

  Once they were in the car, Erica began speaking again. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a particularly interesting day ahead of us. We’re supposed to help Jack and Sam at a speed trap”

  Veronica nodded through the whole speech. “Okay. Maybe we’ll get a chance to ruin some jerk’s day. That’s always fun.”