Chapter 6
The middle-aged woman nodded along with a smile. “You’re the sensible one. The Captain will treat you right from now on.
Lena’s smile grew brighter, but her eyes flicked my way without meaning to.
When she saw me, her face froze, then melted back into that frail look. She hurried over.
“Ms. Lane, what a coincidence.” She put on concern. “Have you been doing okay? The Cap… he… he really misses you.”
Her act was almost funny.
“How I’m doing has nothing to do with you,” I said, cool as ice. “And stop bringing up Reid Foster in front of me. He and I are done.”
I pushed my cart and walked. Didn’t spare her another glance.
She clenched her shopping bag so hard her nails nearly broke skin. “Avery Lane, you think you can walk away clean? The Cap is mine.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket while I was at my laptop, sorting post-divorce assets.
An unknown number popped up with a harsh, staticky line. One of Reid’s teammates rasped, “Ms. Lane, the Cap… the Cap’s been hit.”
The mouse went still under my fingers; the cold bled through my fingertips.
On the call, he said Reid had a suspect under control during an op-until Lena rushed in to “plead his case” and blew the whole setup. She was clutching an old photo frame, sobbing that the suspect was a “good man who knew her late husband,” and wouldn’t stop dragging Reid to look at the picture.
In that tiny window, the suspect slipped a blade from his sleeve and drove it straight for Reid’s chest.
“It missed his heart by a millimeter. He’s still in the trauma bay,” the teammate choked. “Lena’s outside crying that it’s her fault… but if she hadn’t barged in, the Cap wouldn’t be down!”
The cool I’d kept at the hospital burst like a pricked bubble.
I pulled a plain, color-draining dress-the one that made me look deliberately worn-from the closet, mussed my hair in the mirror, grabbed my bag, and ran.
By the time I hit the inpatient floor, Lena was on a hallway bench, clutching that frame and sobbing, shoulders jerking.
A few of the squad stood nearby, faces like thunder and tongues bitten clean through. She was, after all, a fallen officer’s widow-and she’d just lost a pregnancy. No one wanted to give the crowd a reason to say Chapter 6
60.00%
they were “picking on the weak.”
My heels cracked against the tiles as I closed in, voice pitched with anger and tremor on purpose, enough to
draw every eye.
“Lena Shaw! You still have the nerve to cry?”
She flinched. When she looked up, her eyes were rimmed red, lashes beaded with tears, the perfect picture of delicate misery. “Ms. Lane, I… I didn’t mean to. I was only trying to help the Cap-”
“Help him? You nearly got him killed.”
I stepped in, tore the frame from her arms, and smashed it to the floor. The glass pop echoed down the quiet
hall.
Everyone froze-even Riley, who usually ran interference for Lena. I’d never lost it like this, not even at my
angriest.
Chapter 6
