Page 7 of Cage

Cage could be grouchy and cynical at the best of times, but on a hot day it seemed like he was close to boiling over at any moment.

Cage leaned back in his chair and drained the remaining iced coffee from the plastic container.

Details of his latest case spun around in his head.

He needed to think.

Cage needed to bring his thoughts together and let his police brain get down to business. But in recent times, it wasn’t so easy.

Nothing had been the same for Cage since he lost a younger police partner a few years earlier. Nicki Roldo was her name. They had been a good team. The chemistry was just right. It was the kind of chemistry that had begun to spill over into their personal lives.

Tragically, Cage and Nicki’s professional and personal relationship never got the chance to flourish like it could have. It had been a vice bust that had gone wrong.Badlywrong. When his partner died, Cage felt like a part of him went too.

Sure, he still wanted to be a cop.

It was all Cage knew.

But something about Nicki’s death had brought out his cynical, pessimistic side. Ever since that fateful day, life had felt like a struggle.

As such, Cage rarely smiled.

This was a shame, because Cage was undeniably a very handsome man. He was tall, and naturally equipped with the kind of physique that most men would kill for.

Cage was strong, broad, and ripped.

He was chiseled from head to toe.

The truth was that Cage didn’t even work out all that much anymore. By this point his body had just become on solid piece of finely tuned muscle mass.

Cage was about as far from the stereotype of the fat, donut-munching cop as you could get.

But this wasn’t the only difference.

Cage also wouldn’t have been seen dead in the crumpled, stale old suits that most beat detectives wore either.

No, Cage was a man of style.

He prided himself on showing up each and every day in the most pristine, well-tailored suit. Cage’s collection was made up of suits from the finest tailors of Rome to London, England, with some pieces even coming from Tokyo, Japan.

Each and every one of the suits was customized to Cage’s exact fit.

In a life that provided him little joy, Cage’s tailored suits gave him at least a little something to feel good about.

Even Cage’s beard was a work of well-maintained art. It was always perfectly trimmed, dark brown with a smattering of white flecks.

If only the rest of his life was so perfect…

‘Jesus. I do not need this shit,’ Cage said, banging his fist onto the desk as his computer crashed yet again. ‘When the hell is the mayor going to give us a budget we can actually work with? This computer would have been out of date ten years ago.’

No one responded to Cage.

The other cops were just as over-worked and grouchy as he was.

This was just a typical day in the department.

Too much work and not enough time to do it.

The heatwave was annoying for more than just its impact in the office. It was a long held statistical fact that crime went up during heatwaves.

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