My stomach fluttered with nerves, first because of what I was about to do, and second because unless the Bastards were tracking me at this very moment, they didn’t know I was here.
If they were tracking me, it was too late to stop me now, which was the whole point of planning my trip to the Blackwell PD during one of my Monday Burger Haven shifts (I’d traded with a girl named Marnie for Thursday).
I knew they tracked my phone, and honestly, I didn’t even completely object to it given the circumstances. It was nice to know someone would notice if I fell off the face of the earth, even if protecting me was only a matter of principle for the Bastards.
But it wasn’t like they could stare at the tracker all day. They had work to do, maintenance around the house. They worked out in the gym and answered emails that came in through their encrypted email, something Nolan had explained was becauseof the “sensitive” nature of their work, by which he’d probably meant illegal.
And really, it shouldn’t matter to them that I was here. The whole point of coming alone was to keep them out of it. Attention would be bad for them, especially given their line of work. Better to do this on my own.
I took my knife out of my pocket and slipped it into the console of my car. Technically there was nothing illegal about taking it into the police station, but being here made me feel paranoid, and it wasn’t like I was going to need it.
I opened the door of my car and started for the building. Was everyone nervous around the police or was it just me? Maybe it was part of living on the edges of society. Maybe it was being poor, or being a woman.
I didn’t know, but I was scared walking in, like some kind of alarm might go off and the police officers inside would rush me with handcuffs.
Except none of that happened. I just opened the glass door and stepped into a small lobby. Its linoleum floor was stained from years of use and a row of blue plastic chairs sat under a bulletin board crowded with flyers.
Three uniformed officers worked behind a clear pane of glass, two of them sitting at desks in the background while one of them, a younger man with black hair, his head bowed to some kind of paperwork, manned the front.
“What can I do for you?” he said as I approached.
I almost took a step back when he lifted his head.
It was Brandon Miller.
As in, Brandon Miller from high school. Brandon Miller who was notorious for having parties and spiking the liquor he gave to girls. Brandon Miller who was rumored to have assaulted more than one of said girls.
I hadn’t been one of them — thank god — but what happened to me at his party had changed my life. Bile rose in my throat, and for a split second, I could almost taste the sickly-sweet alcohol he’d handed me when I’d snuck out of the house to go to his party.
He was a little heavier now, his face puffy in the way of someone who drank a lot.
“Um… I’m here to talk to Detective Rodriguez.”
I’d slept like a baby after Jude’s yoga nidra and had woken up with the answer staring me in the face, like it had been there all along and had just been waiting for me to see it.
Recognition washed over his face as I spoke. “Hey!” He snapped and pointed at me. “I know you! From high school. You’re… Lilah! Lilah Abbott.”
My face burned. Brandon hadn’t been the one to take pictures of me and send them to the whole school — I had to live with the fact that it was the Bastards who’d done that — but he was the one who’d given me spiked alcohol, and he was one of many who’d seen me almost completely naked without my permission.
I swallowed around the lump of fear that had risen in my throat. “Yeah…” I cleared my throat, told myself to sound strong. High school was forever ago. “That’s me.”
“Long time no see.” He braced his forearms on the desk behind the glass. “How have you been?”
I didn’t know what surprised me more, that Brandon Miller was a cop now or that his face was so open, so warm, like we’d been friends.
I wondered how many women had experienced a moment like this one, this moment where I had to choose between calling him out for what he’d done — to me and to other girls — or playing nice, not rocking the boat.
He was acop.
That made the equation an even harder one to solve. Deep down, I knew that was wrong — it shouldn’t matter — but I was pretty practiced at living in the real world, and when you lived in the real world there was no point crying over the way things should be versus the way they were.
I tried for neutral, which seemed safest. “Um… good. I’ve been good. Is Detective Rodriguez in?”
“You have an appointment?” he asked.
I shook my head. “It’s about one of her cases.”
His happy-go-lucky facade shimmered a little and I caught a glimpse of shrewd curiosity. “Brezinski!” he barked. “Tell Rodriguez she has a visitor, someone about one of her cases.”