It wasn’t until the fifth attempt— the one that Adam had marked with a small star next to it — that I had any luck.
Fifteen minutes later, I had an appointment booked with Dr. Brinkman. Once that was taken care of, I looked at Adam’s note one last time and noticed something that I’d overlooked.
That little star was an asterisk. And at the bottom of the note, under a part where the paper curled up, was Adam’s tiny scrawl:
*Specializes in BDSM patients.
Adam
“What’s up with you, Big Guy?” my partner Claire asked from the driver’s seat.
“Nothing. Just tired,” I deflected, staring out the window of the squad car.
She glanced at me sideways. “Something’s off about you today…”
“How observant of you. I’m tired,” I said grumpily.
“Whatever, keep your cards close to your chest,” she said, her Jersey accent skewing her words. “If you’re not gonna talk, I’m gonna talk. I can’t handle all this quiet.”
“Lucky me,” I grumbled.
A smile pulled at the corner of her mouth, and she looked pleased with herself. “My boyfriend calls me a chatterbox all the time. Chat chat chat. Blah blah blah. But you know what, I just can’t stop!” she chirped.
I rested my forehead against the cold window of the car as she babbled on about her brother or something, zoning out and thinking about Luke. The way he snapped at me last night… that was something I’d never seen in him before. For him to react like that, he must have been so stressed out. Had I screwed everything up by trying to resolve things? Did I annoy him?
Did I push him further away?
These questions bounced around in my mind like pinballs as the car whisked down the gray, slushy city roads.
All I could do was hope that he made the appointment with one of those therapists and that they could help.
Though if that was what Luke really wanted — for me to find another job, I’d quit if it meant I could keep him. He was my fiancee, and I would put him and his happiness before everything else.
But what if he can never be happy, A nasty voice hissed in my head. What if he was like Peter?
I made a conscious effort to zone back into Claire’s chattering, raking my scattering thoughts into a neat pile of leaves.
No matter how many times I told myself that there was nothing I could do to save my ex, that him taking his own life wasn’t my fault, I still felt the guilt follow me around as if it was tethered to my ankle.
“Yo, you listening?” Claire asked when we pulled up to a stoplight. “Man, it’s like talking to a brick wall over here!”
Luke had used that term with me before when he got irritated with me. It still stung.
“I’m a man of few words,” I explained.
“And many thoughts. So why don’t you do us both a favor and share them?”
“I’m not in the mood,” I said, staring out the window. “We have a job to do.”
“Oh, Big Guy’s down in the dumps, eh? How about I buy you a donut to cheer you up?”
“A donut isn’t going to fix it,” I muttered.
But despite my protests, Claire pulled the car into the icy parking lot of the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts.
Begrudgingly, I got out.
“Oh, I see,” she said, shutting the car door with a whap. “You’re bound and determined to have a terrible time. Well, I’ll make you a bet, Big Guy. If I don’t have you smiling by the end of the day, I’ll take all of your traffic duty.”
I perked up. “Really?”
I hated traffic duty. It was all of the worst parts of being a cop and being stuck in traffic rolled into one. On the days I had to do it, time stretched into an eternity.
“Yeah, I don’t mind traffic duty,” she admitted. “It’s like hunting. You ever been hunting?”
I opened the door to her, and the bell jingled to announce our entrance.
“Nah, don’t have the patience for it,” I said, scanning the area automatically. When you were a cop, there was never a time when you weren’t vigilant. You couldn’t turn off the stress even when you went home. There was always another dark corner some bad guy could be lurking in.
My eye drifted over to the booth at the back of the restaurant, where four skinhead-looking dudes were eyeing us warily over their coffees.
The tingling on the back of my neck started to prickle, and I nudged Claire.
She took the hint, and I saw her brown eyes dart to the trash station. It was close to the table, but not close enough to be obvious she was looking at the skinheads.
An almost telepathic communication passed between us:
Noted.
In front of us was a massive glass case, illuminating all types of cute little donuts. They lined up in neat rows as if they were soldiers of confection: Some of them with cream pouring out of the innards, others with dollops of white, chocolate, or yellow frosting.
I went straight to the Boston Cream.
“Oh, I see you got taste,” Claire said with a smile. “Hey buddy, can I get two of those?”
The unenthused employee behind the counter leaned down and began scooping the two pastries into a white bag.
The prickling on the back of my neck intensified, and I knew the skinheads were watching us carefully. I had enough experience at this point to understand when people were merely uneasy in the presence of police, and when they were up to no good.
This time fell into the latter.
“Have a nice day,” the employee said in a flat tone, handing us the bag.
“I’m still amazed at how cheap donuts are!” Claire babbled jovially. “Can you believe this?”
I was still watching the group of skinheads out of the corner of my eye. Part of me wanted to stay and eat here, but the other part of me wanted to return to the car and watch them from there.
I didn’t say anything as Claire continued to babble, leading us out of the Dunkin’ Donuts as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
As soon as we were safely the cop car, the doors cleaved our voices from the outside world. The smile disappeared from Claire’s face.
“You see that shit?” She asked warily, swiveling around to peer out the back window.
I watched through the window as the four skinheads stood up at the same time.
“I didn’t think you saw,” I said.
She hit me playfully on the shoulder. “First rule of being a cop! Always pay attention to your surroundings.”
“Could have fooled me,” I fired back.
“The point was to fool them and make them think that I wasn’t payin’ attention,” she explained. “You were so obvious with your ‘Hurr, I’m a big scary macho cop!”
I chuckled at her impression of me. “Is that what you think of me?”
“Dude, that’s what everyone thinks of you.”
“Good.”
She frowned as we watched the four skinheads leave the restaurant.
“Where you goin’, boys?” She muttered to herself under her breath, a small grin curling on her face.
I could see from the way she was relishing this — feeling the same spike of adrenaline pump through her body — that she, like me, was a natural-born cop — another adrenaline junkie.
Maybe she was more competent than I thought.
“Let’s follow them,” I said. “There’s something they’re hiding.”
The tingling on the back of my neck was prickling me like a pincushion now. The feeling was almost painful.
“Yes, sir,” she said with a playful smile.
I felt heat rush into my cheeks as I thought of Luke last night. I loved it when he called me “sir.” The warm feeling flowing through me only lasted for a second, though, and was replaced by a pang of stark, pointy guilt.
This… this situation me and Claire were in right now, would be precisely the type of thing that would make him worry. It was the type of thing that he would do better not knowing.
; Claire tucked into traffic a few cars behind the skinheads’ inconspicuous Toyota Camry. Anticipation was tingling in the air.
A few tense seconds ticked by as the Camry made a right, then a left, then another left.
“You think they know we’re following them?” I asked.
“Probably,” Claire answered softly, her breath puffing from her mouth in a small cloud. “Doesn’t mean we have to stop.”
I was starting to like her.
Another few minutes slugged by as we kept on their tail.
“This area looks familiar,” I said, eyeing the buildings around me.
Though I’d been in New York City for a few months, I could still walk a block away from my regular route and get lost. It made me feel less safe. Less secure. It was a much bigger — and more enjoyable — battleground than my hometown. Still… it made me miss how simple everything was back then. You don’t realize how much you take things like knowing exactly where you are for granted until your environment completely transforms.
I felt like back there, I was a shark in a small pond. Here, I was in an ocean with much bigger sharks.
And it was darker. Scarier. The enemies were more vicious, and there were more places to hide.
“It should look familiar to you — it’s a few blocks from your neighborhood,” she said.
My eyes widened in panic. All I could think of was Luke. What if he was walking home during a break from one of his classes? What if these skinheads drove by him and they were homophobic assholes? Luke didn’t exactly blend in with the straight crowd: He was too fabulous.
All of my senses went on high alert as I clung to one simple command:
Protect Luke.
The Camry pulled to a stop on the side of the road two streets in front of us, and we watched the skinheads get out and pile onto the sidewalk.
Claire pulled the cop car around a corner and parked. We weren’t visible from here.
“Showtime, Big Guy?” She asked with a smile.
Her brown eyes were sparkling with the thrill of the hunt. I’m sure mine reflected it.
“Showtime.”
We got out of the car, stepped onto the sidewalk, and peeked around the corner.
Claire was right — this street was uncomfortably close to my neighborhood.
Even though I did my due diligence and bought my brownstone in a safe area, I knew that there was always a high crime risk in New York City. It was odd that this part of the city was getting riffraff like this, though.
There was a fluttering of movement around the Camry’s trunk, and I saw two of the guys pass something around.
One of the skinheads was on the sidewalk, presumably to keep watch.
To keep watch for cops like us.
Luckily he was already stoned-looking. Otherwise, he would have spotted us.
I squinted, trying to see what they were passing from the trunk. It was impossible to know; we were too far away.
“That’s trouble,” Claire declared.
“Can you see what they’re doing?” I asked. Damn, I needed some glasses or something.
“Nah, but look at their body language.”
“I see that.”
Sure enough, the two guys near the trunk hunched over, looking around like animals searching for a predator.
They were acting like people who were afraid of getting caught doing something.
Sometimes it scared me how much the average person could get away with just by acting confident. The important things that gave criminals away was their posture, their fluttering fingers, their nervous energy.
Again, I thought of Luke when he was about to succumb to one of his anxiety attacks. He had that same nervous energy swirling around him, almost identical to the one that set off my cop senses.
Sometimes I wondered if that’s why I first noticed him in the bookstore all those months ago.
But as I got to know Luke, I realized that his nervousness wasn’t because he was doing something bad, per se. It was because his brain convinced him that going about his normal life was bad.
“Yo! You zonin’ out again, Big Guy?” Claire hissed. “Now is not the time!”
I gritted my teeth. I needed to fix things with Luke, but now I needed to stay focused. With sadness, I forced my mind to file the “Luke” folder out of my thoughts.
“Come on, they went inside,” she said, gesturing for me to follow.
We rounded the corner and looked down the empty, snowy street.
Tentatively, we approached the Toyota.
It was such an ugly thing — a model from the early 2000s. Hard on the eyes but more durable than Adamantium.
Claire shone her flashlight into the back seat.
Empty.
She inspected the wheels, then the front of the car, and then tapped on the trunk.
“Nothin’.”
I turned my head and looked at the building we’d seen the skinheads duck inside. It looked like it used to be a beautiful brownstone once upon a time, but decades of neglect had made it derelict. Paint was chipping from the windows, the brick face needed restoration work, and the stoop was almost crumbling.
The needles poking at the back of my neck twisted.
Claire followed my gaze. “Something’s up in there.”
“This house looks familiar,” I said, taking in the position of the windows, the crack in the upper right corner near the roof, the exact shingles that were missing in a “D” pattern…
“I don’t think we have a warrant on it,” Claire said, crossing her arms.
I closed my eyes, trying to place where I’d seen this house before. It only took me a few seconds.
“We do,” I said.
Every night before I left the station, I would take one last look at the warrants that had popped up over each day. My boss always yelled at me to go home, but I had to find out if any areas near Luke were dangerous.
I had to protect Luke.
And a little while ago, a search warrant for this house near our neighborhood went up.
“Huh, guess you’re right, Big Guy,” Claire said, squinting at one of her screens. “Oh wait, it looks like it expired last week.”
“It’s worth knocking,” I said.
I scratched the back of my neck. The needles were digging in.
Claire nodded and followed me up the crumbling steps.
I knocked on the door three times, the adrenaline coursing through my veins.
God, I loved my job.
There was a fluttering noise inside, and then footsteps as the knob turned.
The door flung open, and my hand instinctively lingered just over my holster.
A little blond kid no older than five stood in the threshold, blinking at us innocently.
“Hello,” Claire said in a surprisingly gentle voice. “Are your parents home?”
The kid turned his big brown eyes up to her, then to me.
All of a sudden, he started screaming.
Two of the skinheads came rushing down the stairs, guns in their hands.
“Weapons!” Claire cried.
With lightning-fast reflexes, we withdrew our own, crouched, and stormed into the house.
A whirlwind of noise swirled around me as I felt pure adrenaline coursing through my veins.
My body was on high-alert, but my head was clear.
The skinheads began yelling in Russian, the kid was screaming, and another skinhead appeared at the top of the stairs.
The guy in front of me was looking at me with pure, animal fear in his eyes. I knew that look; that was the look of desperation.
He raised his gun, but Claire was quicker. She swooped in front of me, whacked the guy’s gun out of his hand, and swept her leg under his feet so he stumbled.
The other skinhead was yelling in Russian and raised his fingers to his temples. It seemed from his tone and body language that he was saying something along the lines of, “I can’t believe you could be so stupid!”
Claire had the
man bent over a table and began to cuff him.
I had the guy in front of me cuffed — he seemed to have already given up.
The guy at the top of the stairs was still yelling, pointing his gun not at me, but his friends.
“He’s gonna shoot them, Claire!” I said.
Then a clicking echoed through the air as the skinhead at the top of the stars pulled the trigger.
He uttered one single scrap of broken English:
“Fook!”
“It’s empty!” I said as I flew up the stairs, Claire right on my heels.
The kid was still screaming in the middle of the foyer, the skinheads yelling in Russian.
The guy at the top of the stairs tried to run towards a door, but I was faster. I had him handcuffed within seconds, and Claire took his gun.
“There could be more,” I announced breathlessly.
“I’ve got your six,” Claire said, turning around so we were back to back.
There was something about this kind of bonding with another police officer — something thrilling. It was a different type of bond than any other kind of friendship or relationship. I had never been to war, but I imagined it would be similar to the bond with your fellow soldiers.
It was a connection forged and hardened by constant stress.
But I’d never felt so alive.
We burst through the door at the top of the stairs right into a grisly scene.
There was a young man tied to a bed, passed out. Standing next to him was a haggard-looking woman with a halo of frizzy hair.
Her gaze snapped up to meet mine, and I saw the same brown eyes as the kid downstairs. She must have been his mother.
Claire made a noise behind me as the fourth skinhead appeared from the shadows.
She neutralized him in an instant, pressed him facedown on the bed, and snapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists.
The woman was looking at me with cold, focused eyes. She raised her arm, and I saw there was a chef’s knife in her hand. The beautiful, heavy kind. A Wusthof.
I raised my weapon. “Put the knife down,” I said, low and calm.
She flew at me.
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