Page 8 of Catch
“He’s my manager,” I shrugged, pretending I didn’t care that much. “The car’s rented in his name.”
"Mind telling me your real name?" His sunglasses were still firmly in place, and I could tell he was trying his best to look intimidating. But he was way too composed and that made me realize that he hadn’t recognized me.
Good, I thought to myself.
“Let’s be honest here,” I deflected, hoping he’d just drop the whole thing. “I was barely speeding. You could’ve just let me go, pretended you’d never seen me, and I’d have kept this between us. No harm, no foul.”
“Ma’am, I’mtwo seconds awayfrom putting you in the backseat of my squad car and taking you in. Hand me your real ID and tell me who you are. While you’re at it, tell me why giving a cop the wrong ID seemed like a good idea.”
I let out a mock sigh. “Bad judgment on my part. But…”
“Now,” he barked, voice getting louder, which made me jump a little. I was half-impressed, half-terrified.
“Alright, alright.” As I grabbed my real ID and handed it to him, my nervous rambling kicked in and I used an obnoxious amount of air quotes. “You know, for someone who’s ‘supposed’ to be ‘enforcing the law,’ you’ve gota lotof time on your hands. What is this, some kind of... ‘get to know yourbarelyspeeders’ day? I’m not the ‘troublemaker’ you think I am.”
He didn’t even glance at the ID as he took it. Instead, he stood there, letting my sarcasm hang in the air while a smirk started pulling at the corner of his lips.
“You certainly ‘feel’ like a ‘troublemaker,’” he said, raising an eyebrow and adding his own air quotes just to mock me.
“Listen, Mr. Officer.” I leaned in closer to him. “If you want to catch me breaking the law, you’re gonna have to be a little more creative. I’m more of a lay-low kind of girl.”
I secretly gave myself a congratulatory fist-pump for avoiding the air quotes.
“You seem to forget you gave me the wrong ID. Once you did that, this was no longer about speeding. It was about lying to a…”
“That was an honest mistake.”
He smiled slowly, then shook his head, unconsciously bending my ID between his thick fingers. “You’re a handful,” he drawled, clearly unbothered by myincessantchatter.
“You seriously have no idea,” I muttered under my breath, knowing that the second he read that ID, I’d be splashed across the front page ofTMZwith the headline: “Smalltown Cop Catches Loxley Adams Trying to Run Away.”
For a moment, he paused, his brow furrowing as if he was contemplating something deeper. There was tension hanging in the air, but I was done talking. I had dug a hole deeper than I could handle and I needed to just let him do whatever he needed to.
“Tell you what,” he said, suddenly sounding less like a hard-ass cop and more like someonedesperatelytrying to appear tough. “I’m going to let you off with a warning. This time.”
“You’re giving me a pass?”
“You gonna argue about that, too?”
He still hadn’t even read my ID. He hadn’t even remotely connected the dots. His decision wasn’t about who I was.
“Just worried you’ll follow me to my hotel and try to bust me for the ‘drugs’ I have in the glove compartment,” I said, my voice rising to a completely unnecessary level of drama. And dammit, I used air quotes again.
Just arrest me.
“If I didn’t know any better, Ma’am, I’d think you were on something, for sure.”
“But you know better?” Shut. Up. Loxley.
“Your eyes look clear, you aren’t showing any signs of being under the influence of anything. Not to mention, I’m not sure your wit would be this well versed if you were trying to hide something.”
“I talk too much when I get nervous.”
“And I make you nervous?” He asked, almost grinning.
“Okay, slow down, Mr. Officer Brooks,” I said, lifting my hands up in mock surrender. “Let’s get something straight. I’m not nervous because of whoyouare. I’m nervous because ofwho I am.Can I please go now?”
I reached for my ID, expecting him to hand it over, but instead, he flipped it over, reading the name my mom had given metwenty-four years ago, when she saw me for the first time and decided I would be a star and needed a name I could take on the road.
