“My water,” Danielle said.
Sasha was looking right at her but took several seconds to process it. Finally, she seemed to understand and riffled through the car until she emerged with a water bottle. She joined Danielle again and held the bottle up to the toddler’s mouth. The boy caught on quickly and in short order had emptied what was left.
“How long do you think he was in there?” Danielle asked.
Sasha shook her head. “Long enough for there to be bugs.”
“How long is that?”
“I don’t know.”
Sirens screamed, but they were nowhere to be seen yet. Danielle tightened her arms around the boy in her arms as if she could somehow squeeze the memories out of him.
Chapter Seven
Jenna went to her office thirty minutes before her scheduled meeting with Sasha and Adam just so she could sit in silent misery. Management had gone to great lengths to keep most of her friends out of her immediate responsibility, and yet Adam managed to get in trouble in a matter of days and Sasha had somehow found a way under her thumb.
The phone call from Paula had been terse and urgent. People weren’t where they were supposed to be. A dead person was found. A trainee witnessed the whole debacle. Paula simply laid out the facts and told Jenna to handle it. She hadn’t attempted to influence her decisions, which meant this was a test.
A timid knock on the door sounded ten minutes early. Jenna sighed. She knew it was professional to be a little early, but being on the other end of that appointment, she just found it imposing. She stood and smoothed out her pants and jacket, still not used to the fit and feel of fancy clothes. She opened the door. Sasha and Adam stood there with the exact same guilty face. She had an appointment with Danielle in an hour, but she’d decided to take her friends on together. She motioned them inside. Jenna circled her desk and sat, waiting for them to settle into their chairs before she spoke.
“Jenna, I—”
Jenna held up her hand and cut Adam off. He was always impeccably dressed, but he’d gone the extra mile today and was entirely striking in his tailored suit. His thick dark hair had been sculpted, yet looked somehow casual, and his expression was sharp and clear. He looked like he belonged on Wall Street, not in her office getting scolded for ditching work like a teenager.
“Two weeks,” she said. “This is my second week.”
“I know,” Adam said. “I am so sorry, Jenna. I swear. Just write me up. Do whatever you need to do.”
“Why wouldn’t you just call me, Adam? I don’t get it. You couldn’t have possibly thought I wouldn’t give you the day if you asked for it.”
“I knew you would, but it’s only your second week. I wanted to wait one more before I made your life hell.”
Jenna felt her cheeks tugging into a smile, but she shook her head and forced herself to stay serious. “You don’t have to treat me any differently than you would anyone else. If you need to call out, call out. Now it looks like you were trying to get away with something.”
“It was my idea, Jenna,” Sasha said. “I offered to take the visit for him.”
“Why would you do that while you had a trainee?” Jenna asked. “Even if things hadn’t gone the way they did, it could have gotten out that you covered for Adam and around to management. This was just a bad idea, guys.”
“Because of Danielle? Come on, she wasn’t going to narc.”
Jenna stopped before she spoke too soon. She couldn’t have an argument about the best ways to break policy. Her job was to enforce policy.
“I’m not talking about her deliberately trying to get you in trouble, Sash. I’m sure she wouldn’t,” Jenna said carefully. “But she’s new. If she thinks that’s common practice, if she casually mentions it to someone, or asks someone to do it for her because she saw you two do it, you see where I’m going.”
Sasha nodded. “Sure, of course. We really are very sorry, Jenna. We were trying to help.”
“I know that.” Jenna sighed. “That’s why I’ve been so miserable trying to figure out how to punish you.”
“It’s fine,” Adam said. “Really. Don’t sweat it. I know you have to write me up.”
“I’m giving you a verbal warning,” Jenna said.
“They’ll give you hell if you go that soft,” Adam said. “Really, do what you need to.”
Jenna reached in her drawer and pulled out Adam’s file, then slid it across the table. He opened it and looked inside.
“On the left you’ll see that you haven’t missed a day of work for two and a half years. Now, maybe that’s because Sasha’s been covering your shifts when you’re not here, but I’m going to choose to believe it’s because you’re a model employee who has not had any behavioral issues in the entire time you’ve worked here,” Jenna said.
Adam waited a long time before he finally nodded.
“On the right side of the folder is something you need to sign that states we discussed this, and that you understand you need to call in through regular channels when you can’t be here.”
“Of course.” Adam scribbled his name without reading the paper and handed the folder back.
“All right, get out of here.”
Adam looked at Sasha, then Jenna, then Sasha again, reluctant to leave.
“If you have to go hard on someone, it should be me,” he said.
“I decided what was happening to everyone yesterday, Adam. This isn’t a debate.”
Adam’s face changed six times in about a second and for the first time, Jenna saw him look at her like she was one of them. The boss. “Of course,” he said.
“Adam,” she said. He spun. “You and Sean okay?”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I think so.”
“Good.” Jenna nodded. “Now go on, I promise I won’t hurt her. And for God’s sake, just pretend you’re sick next time.”
He smiled weakly and left the room. Jenna turned her attention to Sasha. They stared at each other for a long moment before they finally both smiled.
“What’s my sentence?” Sasha asked.
“Same.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“Nope. Taking the visit for Adam makes you an accomplice in the same crime, and as far as I’m concerned that makes you deserving of the same punishment.”
“Well, sure, as far as taking the visit goes, but what about the rest?”
“Ah, so good of you to bring up the dead body.” Jenna reached into the drawer again and pulled out Sasha’s folder. “I read your statement. Danielle broke the glass, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“You asked her what she was doing. She said there was a body.”
“Yeah.”
“You told her to wait; she didn’t.”
Sasha shifted her weight. “Yeah, but—”
“Once she let you in the house, you told her to take the boy back out of the house.”
“Well, yeah.”
Jenna closed the folder with the statement inside and tossed it on the desk. “So you should be in trouble for what, exactly?”
“Danielle was my trainee. I was responsible for her. Even if I didn’t do it, I let her.”
“That’s not what this says.” Jenna pointed at the folder. “That says, and Danielle’s is identical if you’re curious, that you were around the corner when she decided to break the glass. That’s not letting her. That’s Danielle making a bold decision without consulting her trainer.”
“She’d just seen a dead body. It was a normal reaction to want to barrel in there and help.”
“I agree.”
“It’s my job to keep her from doing things she hasn’t had the training to know not to do.”
“Within reason.”
“What do you mean, within reason?” Sasha’s voice rose a little.
“If you’d been interviewing a client and Danielle had suddenly blurted out that they should go fuck themselves, would that be your fault?”
“Of course not.”<
br />
“Well, neither is this then. You can’t inform decisions she makes without you. You even managed to tell her to wait before going inside, and she ignored you. She says she ignored you right in her statement. Very honest of her to put that in there.”
“You’re just going to lay all this on her then?” Sasha stood up.
Jenna looked at her curiously. “Are you mad at me for not getting you in trouble?”
“I just don’t think it’s right to let me off scot-free because I’m your friend and blame it all on her. I didn’t think you’d be like that.”
“All right, first of all, it’s got nothing to do with us being friends. I wouldn’t throw the book at anyone over this. She saw something awful and she reacted. That’s not your fault.”
“Maybe not, but I still don’t think it’s right for her to take all the heat for this. Do you?”
“I do when I know I’m the heat and it won’t be very hot.”
The anger in Sasha’s face was replaced with confusion. Finally, it seemed to register.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I don’t think anyone needs to get in a lot of trouble. People cover each other’s shifts all the time. It’s not cool, but it’s not a huge deal either, and I’m not going to pretend it is just because a one in a million occurrence happened this time. I’m not going to get you in trouble for not psychically knowing what Danielle was going to do, and I’m not going to get Danielle in trouble for making a snap decision during her second week. I’m just not going to do it. Call it soft if you want, but I’m not going to go tough on you because you’re my friend any more than I’m going to go easy on you because you’re my friend. I’m comfortable explaining that to anyone who has a problem with it.”
“Oh.” Sasha’s shoulders slumped back to normal.
“Now will you sit down and sign your verbal warning, you maniac?”
Sasha scanned Jenna’s face, then she grabbed a pen to sign the warning. “So, I guess you’re not bad at this.”
* * *
Danielle was sitting in a chair in the hall when Sasha opened the door to leave. Jenna saw a brief exchange between them, but couldn’t hear what they were saying. They looked much more comfortable than they had in the break room last week. She supposed rescuing a toddler from being stranded with his mother’s dead body together could do that. Combined with the way Sasha got heated at the idea of Danielle getting in trouble, Jenna wondered if Sasha might have a little crush. Sasha identified as bisexual but only ever dated men, a habit she took plenty of flak over, but that typically seemed unlikely to change.
Jenna couldn’t help fixating on the way the planes of Danielle’s face moved as she talked. She had a face that was both soft and strong, and she had dimples Jenna had somehow not spotted before. Danielle caught Jenna off guard when she turned in time to catch her staring. Jenna grabbed her keys and met Danielle in the hall just as Sasha finally took off in the other direction.
“I thought we had a meeting?” Danielle said.
“More of a discussion. I figured we could have it while we’re on the road if you’re comfortable with that. I want to check in on Deon and Raylon.”
“Sure,” Danielle said. “That’s great since it probably means I still have a job.”
Jenna laughed. “You definitely still have a job.”
Jenna waited until they were in her Acura before she spoke again to make sure no one overheard anything. After she closed the car door and started the engine, she looked over and met Danielle’s eyes.
“So,” she said. “You okay?”
Confusion passed through Danielle’s face.
“You found a body,” Jenna said. “In some stage of decay, and a boy trapped with it. We’ll get to protocol, but first, I’m much more interested in how you’re doing with that.”
“I’m okay,” Danielle said, but Jenna waited. “It was pretty awful,” she added. “The smell was, I can’t even start to describe it. You can’t really breathe. It was so hot. I can’t imagine being trapped in there. That boy…”
Jenna fought the instinct to reach out and touch Danielle. It’s what she would have done for any of her friends or even perfect strangers when she was a caseworker, but as a supervisor it was basically a no-no.
“You can have a few days off if you need them,” Jenna said. “It’s important to process that kind of stuff.”
“No,” Danielle said. “No, I’m okay. You don’t have to be careful with me. I know I screwed up. I know I wasn’t supposed to barge in there.”
“No, you weren’t,” Jenna said. “We don’t have the authority to force entry. We have to call the police for that. And it’s dangerous. If there was someone else inside still they could have hurt you. There could have been a suspect inside who killed that woman, or even just someone who lived there but didn’t know what happened that could have thought you were breaking in.”
“There’s no way anyone could have not known she was in there. That smell—” Danielle broke off. “And it was a drug overdose, right? Isn’t that what they said?”
“Yes,” Jenna said. “It was an OD, and there was no one else in the house, but you couldn’t have known that from outside.”
“Of course,” Danielle said. “I didn’t mean to argue.”
“It’s okay,” Jenna said. “It’s not exactly in our orientation. You don’t come across it often. Now you know.”
“Really?” Danielle asked. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Wow, the way everyone was talking around the office I thought I was in way more trouble.”
“Well, if they ask, tell them I beat you.”
Danielle smirked and her dimples came to life. Jenna could see how Sasha would fall for that. She wanted to pry about their relationship, but it wasn’t appropriate. When she’d applied for supervisor she never realized the biggest thing she was giving up was the right to be inappropriate. Jenna put the car in drive and headed for the basketball courts.
When they pulled up, she was satisfied to see Raylon and Deon immediately. Raylon and his friends were building something out of rocks in the grass while Deon casually shot free throws. He tossed the ball to one of his friends when he saw her car pulling up. Jenna rolled down the window as he approached.
“Hey, Ms. Thompson,” he said. “What’s good?”
She hated the way he always talked differently around his friends, even when they were out of earshot. It was hard to watch a fourteen-year-old think he had to act tough. It was harder to know deep down that he did need to be tough. She spotted a purple shadow on his jaw.
“What’s that?” she asked before he even made it all the way to the car.
“Nothing,” he said.
She always gave him points for not playing dumb, but it wasn’t enough. “Let me see.”
He lifted his chin up so she could have a better look.
“What happened?”
“Just basketball,” he said. “It gets rough sometimes.”
Jenna stared at him, looking for some buried truth. She couldn’t find it in the bruise or his eyes or his voice, but something inside still told her it was something much worse than basketball.
“Just tell me,” Jenna said.
“I did, basketball.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“What do you want to hear?” Deon asked. “You want me to tell you my mama did it? Or one of her boyfriends?”
“Did they?”
“No, but even if they did I wouldn’t say.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll take us away if I say that.”
“Haven’t I always told you I’ll talk to you about that before it ever happens?” Jenna said.
Deon looked at his feet. “Yeah.”
“We’ve talked about stuff like this before, remember? Did I just take you and your brother away?”
“No, but now you have her with you.” Deon nodded at Danielle.
“So?”<
br />
“So it’s not the same. I know you have to play by the rulebook now, Ms. T. I get it.”
“Deon.”
“Look, don’t sweat it. It ain’t even from that anyway. Just basketball.” Deon turned and jogged back down to the courts before Jenna could stop him. She rolled up the window and merged with traffic.
“Damn it.”
“You okay?” Danielle asked.
“Yeah,” Jenna said. She could hear the frustration in her own voice.
“Am I messing this case up for you?”
Jenna looked over. “No,” she said. “He’s looking for any reason to distance himself. He wants to drop out and be a tough guy, and he knows I won’t be okay with it so he has to start breaking ties. He’s using you as an excuse. If you weren’t here it would be something else.”
“What do you think the bruise is from?”
“I don’t know.” Jenna sighed. “The original accusation that started their case was that Ladona was disciplining them by hitting them with objects, among other things.”
“That’s awful.”
“All three of them say it isn’t true, Mom and the boys. Ladona says the neighbor that accused her is just mad she’s sleeping with her boyfriend.”
“But Deon did tell you about something else that happened?” Danielle asked.
“The poverty is real, as you saw. When we first started working with them the place was unsanitary. The boys were malnourished. And Deon told me she slapped him once.”
“Which probably means all the time,” Danielle said.
Jenna looked over, surprised. She wanted to ask about Danielle’s past, about what would make her assume such a thing. “Maybe,” she said carefully. “Maybe not.”
“Can’t you just pull them out of there?”
Danielle exuded a confidence she hadn’t just days before. Jenna wondered if the incident with the body could change so much so fast, or if Danielle was just starting to come out of her shell.
“Deon is exceptionally smart,” Jenna said. “That bruise could be exactly what you think, but it could also just be basketball. You can’t pull them out on something that debatable. If Deon doesn’t want to be removed, he knows how the system works, what he can and can’t say, and when he doesn’t know, he shuts down completely. If it comes to the point he needs to be taken out of there, I’ll have to get him on board with it. That will only happen if he trusts me.”
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