Page 57 of Forget Me Not

He drew in a long breath.

“I didn’t leave anything here. I wouldn’t have.”

Penn looked up.

Ray met her gaze squarely. “It wouldn’t have been safe here.”

Penn dropped her head, hiding her face while staring at the top of her desk. “I think I will faint if I don’t get that coffee now,” she announced, not quietly. “Got everything?”

Ray hadn’t left anything there that mattered, but paused before grabbing the library books and adding them to his pile. Penn slid a few of her folders his way, not that Ray minded being the one to carry all their stuff.

“Do they need anything from me?” Ray asked, glancing at the room again while Penn poked around in a drawer, searching for something or pretending to. “Does anyone want to interview me again, if nothing else?”

His tone made Penn stop. She swallowed. “Ray….”

“Who is working on my case?” Ray wished he was growling. “Do I even have one?”

“Officially…” Penn cleared her throat. “Officially, it’s such a priority that Lieutenant Faulkes is on it. But no, he didn’t ask to interview you again. Yes, he knows you’re here. He knew before I got up there.”

So someone at reception or one of the deskshadcalled upstairs when Ray had walked in.

A frog thrown in boiling water would jump out, Ray remembered. Slowly turn up the heat and it won’t notice it’s being cooked.

He shook his head. He would’ve noticed—he had, at some point. But he hadn’t acted.

Hadn’t wanted to, he suspected Cal would say, and pushed his palm against his forehead as if that would ward off the headache.

Penn said his name, low and worried.

Because the temperature had already been high. In the pot, out of the pot, it didn’t matter. Ray had worked in this place, every day, for years. Given his life to it, at least until he’d met Cal. To the city, Ray would have said, despite how the people, humans, in the city often regarded him. But it would have been a lie, or part of one. Ray had given his loyalty to the city through this place, these people. And now…

“I can’t even say ‘now’ because this isn’t new,” he muttered.

“Ray, whatever you’re thinking, you don’t need to think itright now.“ Penn came next to him and touched his back. “Later.”

She was right. Ray dropped his hand and looked around the room without seeing anything.

The case was being buried. Ray grabbed the unopened licorice and the butterscotch discs from the drawer. He wasn’t letting Cal back here, even if Cal decided never to speak to him again. “On paper, they did all they could do. In reality…” Ray was supposed to be dead, or as good as. Penn was supposed to be out of the picture. Cal was… meant to be dead as well, or firmly shoved out of the way.

Whatever Ray had been investigating, he hadn’t been reporting to Internal Affairs. They hadn’t contacted him, either, and he doubted he would have trusted them.

“Were we truly that busy these past few weeks that Cal and I couldn’t find time together, or was I avoiding him because I was already…” Ray took another deep breath. He had kept Cal out of this place and his work, and yet worry for Cal had permeated his work anyway, to the degree that Ray couldn’t recall his current cases. “Yeah, let’s go.”

He didn’t want Penn to be gentle with him. Thankfully, she seemed to realize it. “Just breathe and think of him and get us outside, okay?”

Ray started to walk, not particularly caring if his expression made humans afraid and skitter out of his path.

Ray had believed his work to be everything, despite knowing that even reaching for justice took so much effort, off the books, after hourseffort, done by just Ray and Penn with their extra strength and stamina. And then, if a case reached the courts at all, it was generally dismissed, or humans sided with other humans, and then only the humans who looked and acted like them.

In the early days, he and Penn had talked about it, late at night up at the bluffs, staring out at the dark ocean below. It took so much to get even a little. But people had trusted them, and he and Penn had focused on that. Just that, after a while. Only that. Making jokes and keeping their heads down and making themselves go on, and never acknowledging out loud that the other officers and detectives didn’t fight as hard as they did. Some didn’t even try.

But Ray did. Penn did. Calvin had, once upon a time. Ray had told himself that was enough, and done his job until it was just him and Penn, in their corner all by themselves.

He doubted Penn had missed it. She wasn’t the one clinging to a pack instinct.

Ray pushed the doors open with a snarl, holding them for Penn to go through before continuing on.

“Ray!” Penn hissed.

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