Page 3 of He Sees You

What started out as fascination with the photographer has grown over the last six months into a full-blown obsession with Dove Yarrow. I think about her constantly. I imagine what she’ll sound like when she moans my name. I’ve got a ring all picked out, though even I’m not nuts enough to buy it before she evenknowswhat my name is.

Burns is aware that I aim to marry this girl. He called me out on it, and though I cleared my throat and shook my head and tried to deny it, he instinctively knew I was full of shit. Of course, to show that he didn’t judge, he told me that he fell for his wife from the moment she gave him a daisy from her flower shop to brighten his day.

He had the ring picked out and purchased before they were officially a couple, and look at them now: his Angela is as head-over-heels for her cop as Dove will be for me sooner or later.

Nothing will stop me. Not her. Not my job.Nothing… and it was Mace Burns who helped me realize just how in over my head I was when he mentioned how the trigger that pushed him from stalking his wife to claiming her was finding out she went out to Mama Maria’s for dinner with the guy who owns the hobby shop on Main.

That was thanks to my nosy ass wondering why Burns’s friendly mask—the one he seems to wear whenever we’re on patrol—always seems to crack when we move past that store. Glaring in the window, murder in every line of his face, I was beginning to think that Burns just really fucking hated trains or something when he admitted that the guy behind the counter used to have a thing for Angela Burns.

Then, he turned to me at the same time as he turned the subject around on me, too, as he asked, “What would you do if she goes on a date with another man?”

Kill him.

The answer is instant. I don’t have to ask what Burns is talking about or who he’s referring to. There is only one ‘she’ that means anything to me, and just the idea that Dove might spend time with another man…

Fuck, no.

That’s when everything changed. The second I realized that I’d kill anyone that tried to come between Dove and me, I knew I foundmytrigger. To keep from doing anything too rash and reckless, I set my deadline, and threw myself into learning everything I could about Dove. But I never forgot that, though I consider her mine, she doesn’t know that she is yet.

Soon, though.Soon.

Besides, I’m a cop. I have a gun. Accidents happen, right? All over the country, cops murder civilians and get off with barely a slap on the wrist. In Springfield? Please. After I signed on to Devil’s payroll, just another of Lincoln Crewes’s loyal pigs, as long as I don’t target a Sinner, I have nothing to worry about.

Dove isn’t affiliated with any other gangs. Of course, withherextracurricular activities, that might get her in trouble—but then again…

Find an opportunity. Make one.Takeone.

Yessir.

TWO

WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS

DEREK

I’m getting antsy.

The snow’s died down. The shops are open later this week with Christmas only a handful of days away, and that just means that while the snow’s barely flurrying, there are still plenty of pedestrians hustling down the street, carrying their bags and sense of entitlement with them as they go.

Across the way, a street performer is banging out ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’on the plastic tubs he’s using as drums. He has a small crowd surrounding him, and an upturned Santa hat for soliciting tips.

Burns ignores him, so I do, too. We’re closing in on the end of our shift, and though I can’t wait to grab a bite, change my clothes, and check in to see what Dove’s plans are for tonight—as if I don’t already know—Burns is strolling along leisurely, whistling the Christmas song under his breath in time to the beats.

An older woman, her hair done up in tight, white curls, waves as she passes us. “Merry Christmas, officers!”

Burns nods. I wave back.

Christmas. I can’t believe how quickly it came. I didn’t really have to do much. My folks are both gone—my mother dead, and my father as good as—and I was an only child. So were they. I don’t have a family, and any of my friends or acquaintances aren’t really the ‘sharing the holidays with’ types.

I decorated my apartment a little because my latest costume admittedly put me in the Christmas spirit, and because my cameras revealed just how into the season Dove is. She’s got one of those six-foot-tall douglas fir trees in her living room, lights strung up on the frames of her windows and her bedroom door, and at least a dozen of these plush cats with Santa hats tucked between their ears posted around her place.

She has a family. Mom, dad, plus two brothers, both younger than her by a few years. They live in Colorado, which is where Dove is from originally. Finding out she’s a transplant, someone who only moved to Springfield two years ago, made a lot of sense. Considering how every fiber of my being recognized that this woman was born to belong to me, I would’ve found her long before now if she’d been a Springfield local.

She’s not going home for the holidays, though. Between snooping through her phone and reading her emails back and forth to her mother, it was easy to figure out why. As the only photographer who takes the annual Santa pictures for the kids who visit Waverly’s to sit on the big guy’s lap, she was working straight through Christmas Eve. By then, she’d be too exhausted to fly out, and she promised she’d visit in the new year.

I’ll make sure of it, so long as I get to go and meet the parents.

I’m glad that she’s sticking around Springfield. When my Christmas plans consist of watching whatever Dove’s doing, it’s better that she’s somewhere that I can keep my eye on her.

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