Page 2 of He Sees You

Officer Mace Burns, the man who’s been teaching me everything he knows—in more ways than one.

To be honest, I did do a double-take when he introduced himself as Mace after the sarge partnered me up with him to learn the job. His name is Mason, but he prefers to go by the shorter version of his name. Between his last name being ‘Burns’ and him being a veteran beat cop on the force, you’d think he would stick with ‘Mason’. That he doesn’t, that he chooses to be Mace fucking Burns when you can’t deny that police brutality is constantly in the news… well, that tells you everything you need to know about this man.

“Drink up,” he says, and his dark blue eyes are gleaming beneath the glow of the nearby streetlamp. “You got a long night ahead of you.”

He’s not wrong. “Always do,” I say with a shrug, taking a sip of my coffee. Fuck, that’s hot. It burns my tongue, but I actually don’t mind it too much. If it’ll chase the chill out of my bones, I’ll take a wounded tongue for a couple of minutes.

“Not much longer, though, eh, rook?” Burns snorts. He lifts his own coffee cup to his lips, though he doesn’t drink. “You and your New Year’s resolution bullshit.”

My back goes tight under the weight of my SPD-issued coat. “It’s not bullshit. It’s a target deadline.”

“Haven’t I taught you anything? Like any good sting operation, you do your research. You learn everything you can to have the upper hand. You show no mercy, you go in prepared, but there’s such thing as overplanning, kid. Sometimes you have to be on your toes. Find an opportunity. Make one.Takeone.”

I nod in agreement, all while trying not to show him how much it rankles to be called ‘kid’ like that. I’m only a couple of years younger than Burns, two or three maybe, and I’m actually a few inches taller than he is. Sure, I only just joinedthe Springfield Police Department in June, while Burns is a longtime beat cop who is happy to keep his position, butkid?

He knows it bothers me. Burns is a perceptive bastard. I mean, for fuck’s sake, he picked up on my obsession for my precious Dove back when I stupidly thought she was just a woman I could fuck and forget.

As if I could have her once and let her go. No. From the moment I first saw her, responding to a call at Waverly’s Department Store at the end of June, I wanted her. I had every intention of going back after—when I was off the clock and out of my blues—to ask her to go out for a drink. I was still naive those first few weeks on the job. I thought it would be an abuse of power to go from being a responding officer to a guy looking to get laid, all while she was dealing with the fallout of having had to deal with the cops in the first place.

I went to Waverly’s with Burns that day. It was supposed to be a routine call. Some idiot headed to the part of the store where a shop photographer takes your picture in front of a few different backdrops. He wanted to take a couples’ photo with his new girl, but forgot to dump the last one first. She showed up, the altercation got physical, and the poor photographer ended up with her camera smashed and her face punched when she tried to break it up.

Dove Yarrow. One of her co-workers called the cops, but she hung around to give a statement even after Burns and I got the brawling women in cuffs. She mourned the loss of the camera, though it was company property, and passed on seeing a paramedic despite her left eye having swelled shut by the time we were on scene.

She put on a brave face for us, and I might’ve tightened the cuffs on the one who suckerpunched Dove, but that’s because I already knew—from the second she flagged us down and, ina shaky voice, tried to explain what had happened—that this woman was mine.

My body knew, too. I’m fucking thirty. I can control my cock. A stiff breeze might’ve been enough to make me hard when I was a teenager, but it takes more than a pair of big tits, some sad brown eyes, and an ass as gorgeous as Dove’s to have me getting aroused while I’m on duty.

And then I met her. Everything about this woman was primed to get a reaction out of me. The way she seemed to have a deliciously sweet scent, almost like she’s made of cotton candy. Her hair twisted in soft curls as they nestled on her shoulders. Her thick body poured into her Waverly’s uniform, made up of a tight white polo and black pants that molded to every last curve she has.

Her bravery. How she interfered in a catfight, took a punch, and still tried to sweep the whole thing under the carpet so that no one got in trouble. That was the manager’s decision to make, though, and I was happy to cart the offenders down to the station if only because it pissed me off to high heaven that anyone would mark up her gorgeous face.

I promised myself from that moment on she’d have her own personal protector.Me. I’d keep her safe, use my badge for good, and make sure that when she saw me the next time, her smile wouldn’t be as hesitant as it was.

I would protect her. I would love her. I would make her fall in love with me, too, and I’d have that happy-ever-after that I deserved so fucking badly.

Burns figured it out. Before I could even plot my next move, heknew—and just like how he’d been training me to be a cop in the weeks leading up to that fateful call, he eventually started to spend a part of every one of our shifts giving me advice on how to make Dove mine.

I listened to him. At first, I stayed in the shadows. I watched her from a distance, but soon I needed more. He expected as much, admitting that when it came to his relationship with his wife, he also tried to keep his distance in the beginning.

It didn’t work. But you know what did?

Going inside of her apartment.

Dove has this small one-bedroom apartment in the rougher part of the downtown area. She lives on the sixth floor, but like so many of the tenements in Springfield, it has a fire escape.

And like so many of the renters, she got a little lax when it came to the security of her apartment.

That’s how I justified the cameras. Whenever I could—and probably even when I shouldn’t—I slip into Dove’s apartment. I get off on watching her sleep, but once I realized that her sleeping pills make her basically dead to the world most nights, I’d explore her personal space. But what about when I was ready to crash and needed to sleep in my own empty bed? Or if Sarge scheduled me and Burns for the rare overnight patrol? I rigged it so that the window was always open for me, but I couldn’t leave my precious Dove unprotected.

So I installed cameras. That way I could always make sure she was safe—and alone.

For months, I’ve done my research. I know everything there is to know about Dove Marie Yarrow, twenty-eight, and a Libra with an affinity for stuffed cats—mainly the ginger-colored ones—her Canon Eos R5 camera, and the Springfield Sparks, the local unaffiliated baseball team.

Have I over-prepared? Maybe. But knowing Dove as well as I do… I’ll only get one shot at this.

Burns makes fun of me for having a deadline. I promised myself that, by January 1st, one way or another I was making my move. Hell, I’ve already started. Besides my extracurricular activities—stalking, I mean mystalking, my breaking andentering and watching her whenever I can—I’ve taken advantage of the season to let her know I’m here.

I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.

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