Page 35 of Shadows of Justice

“Yes, sir.”

I unclench, saying a silent prayer of thanks to whomever is listening that he didn’t throw me under the bus in front of the chief. I rise from my seat and awkwardly scoot between the two men that I’ve had the most complicated relationships with ever in my life.

“Don’t go far,” my father says with a sneer.

Great.

“I’ll be . . . waiting next door, I guess,” I say, and close the door behind me.

“Next door” happens to be interrogation Room C.

The precinct rarely uses it, since A and B are equipped with cameras and one-way mirrored observation rooms. Room C has become kind of a storage overflow, lunch room, and general use space.

I sink into the metal folding chair and shiver, its place across the old metal table from two more. I hang my hand in my hands, my mind spinning over what the hell Gavin could be here to ask me, and just for the fact that—it’s Gavin.

Gavin Montgomery and I were high school sweethearts. Unlike me, he came from an Ivy League pedigree and a trust fund lifestyle. We fell fast in love as teens and stayed together through the distance when he went off to Sam Houston State in Texas to pursue his double major criminal justice and computer forensics degrees. We even stuck it out when he interned at the FBI headquarters in DC after graduation, able to float the exorbitant rent with the mundane pay—something I could never hope to achieve.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of working full time to put myself through the academy—damned proud. But it would have been nice to get a faster start, and to have achieved our dreams together, considering mine happened to mirror his.

As the only son of a decorated general and state department executive, you could say Gavin was destined for government. The FBI was practically leaping at the chance to have him join. He transferred back to the Los Angeles field office and we were reunited, and you’d think that then everything would have been simpler.

But, we were different people after all those years. We wanted different things.

The day that he flew in, he proposed to me. He’d planned showings for numerous properties in West Hollywood, close to both our jobs, and had everything about our lives romantically mapped out.

He completely blindsided me.

I felt like I barely knew him. After so much time apart, I wanted time to date again. To be close and to relearn each other. Find out his quirks—like if he squeezed the toothpaste from the end or from the middle, or was a hard-ass about sorting garbage and recycling. You know, couple shit.

Gavin came out every year for my birthday, and we saw each other on holidays when we were both in college, but I tended to avoid his family like the plague the times he was home in LA. I could tell that they never truly accepted me. I scraped together enough to surprise him in Texas once, but he was so caught off guard that he seemed almost irritated that I’d come. He’d had a ticket for a sold-out concert with friends, and my presence had clearly spoiled his plans. He was nice enough about it, but I could tell.

We stuck to well-planned, necessary visits after that.

Once he was down on one knee, the whole play of my future with him shined in his eyes like a movie. The beautiful house, the stability, the kids I knew he wanted . . . the tastefully crown-molded walls felt like they were closing in on me. I panicked, asked him for time, asked to try and get to know myself as being someone’s wife. Someone’s mother. I was only a few weeks shy of my 24th birthday, I was green on the force, and I needed to know that we worked as well together as we did apart.

Gavin was clearly hurt, but he told me that he understood.

The next few months were tumultuous. We fought horrendously. He told me if I didn’t go to therapy he’d leave me. Three months after the proposal, I discovered that when he said that he was going golfing at his parents’ country club, that really meant that he was fucking Gretchen Jorbecki in the steam room.

They were married four months later.

That was almost five years ago, and I haven’t seen Gavin since the day I moved out and into my current apartment.

Gavin and Gretchen mailed my father Christmas cards for a while, so I stopped going to visit my dad’s office. I was sick of seeing their bright-eyed, dark-haired and freckled children smiling at me, their family embracing in complementing holiday hues and pinned against the corkboard.

Maybe deep down I regret saying no to Gavin. Or, maybe I just regret the years of my life I spent hating myself for never being who he wanted me to be.

I’m mulling it over, staring at the metal table, where someone has carved “Fuk tha police” into the polished sheen with a ballpoint pen.

The door to Room C opens loudly and I startle, staring up into Gavin’s baby blues. He’s holding a brown file and a pen in one hand and precariously juggling two coffees in the other. He kicks the door closed behind him and slaps the file and pen down, handing me one of the coffees.

“‘No cream, enough Splenda to keep a dead guy awake,’” he says, reciting my coffee preference with a small smile.

“Solid memory,” I murmur, gratefully clutching the cup and letting its warmth bring life back to my hands.

He sits back comfortably in one of the chairs across from me and eyes me, the polite smile growing wolfish. I shift in my seat, the cold metal digging into my back, completely uncomfortable under his scrutiny.

“You still fidget,” he says, a fondness in his voice that awakens my gag reflex.

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