Page 28 of Fractured Chances

“Yeah, I remember. That was the intention but being alive isn’t allowing us to do much good either, is it? Since we have to be oh so fucking careful and anything can lead back to us,” she says in frustration.

She moves around to the passenger seat and pulls open the glove compartment, grabbing out everything she can find and I try to bite my tongue as she takes everything out of the order that it was in. “Julissa, please. Try to put it back how you find it, will you for fuck sake?” I blurt out in a high-pitched whisper.

She shoots me a look but seems to understand as she says, “Okay, okay. Fine.” She begins to move a bit more carefully as she sorts through the stuff, one by one. In a bunch of envelopes and papers, she comes across a photograph and we’re both looking at it, examining it only to realize that it’s a picture of the mother of the children, only when she was a bit younger.

Julissa clutches her chest and looks at me in panic. “You don’t think, you know…” She gulps. And I tear my eyes away from my surroundings to look at her. “I don’t think what?” I ask before the idea strikes me. “What? That he groomed her?” The words leave my mouth and I’m horrified.

She starts packing back up all the things she’s found, trying for my benefit as I anxiously look on, to put everything back as she found them, not to raise suspicion. She holds on to the photo though as she is leaving the car. I whisper loudly. “You have to put that back.”

She hesitates, holding on even tighter to the picture. “Please, Julissa. You have to put it back. If it’s missing then he’s going to know for sure someone was in here! Please.”

“Okay. Don’t look so much like you’re going to shit yourself.” She rolls her eyes before trying to put it back the way she found it. She jumps out of the car, locking the door a bit too loudly and I look to see if my boss heard it, even though it would be completely fine if I opened the car door, he doesn’t know that the customer told me not to search it and it would otherwise be standard procedure. But I’m just hypersensitive right now.

“I’ve found everything I need anyway to tell me that I need to find out for sure what he’s up to. It’s way too coincidental that there’s a bloody trunk with kids' stuff lying around in the car, with a fucking bullet shell and a younger fucking picture of the girl that’s with him now for me to just try to find some other explanation than what my gut is fucking telling me is up. And sure, while you might be right and they can all easily be explained away, knowing what I know about him, accompanied by all the things I’ve found today, I know better than that. I can’t just leave this alone.” She folds her arms and looks at me.

And she’s right. Especially since he was so adamant that I leave the interior of his car alone, it all makes sense now why he wouldn’t want anyone in there, even though I won’t tell her that part because that would certainly be the nail in his coffin. Chances are he didn’t think about that when he brought the car to me and so he didn’t think about cleaning it out beforehand. Silly of him, really. Must have slipped his old-ass mind. Fucking Alzheimers no teeth motherfucker. It would’ve given me great pleasure if I still had a fucking badge to throw his nasty ass in prison because I know he wouldn’t last long, not at his age. Someone would probably make him their bitch and he’d have had it coming. I’d have happily turned a blind eye to knowing he was being abused the way he abused others.

Badge or not, though, if I were a free man, I would help Julissa tear him to pieces because men like those, before and after Julissa have always been the type of men that could push me to my limit, that I would take joy in watching bleed out on the concrete.

So the worry I have packed up in my chest about what this means for Julissa and what this means for all of us, hoping that we can manage not to do anything dangerous has nothing to do with protecting the stupid fucker and it has nothing to do with disregarding his potential victims, it has to do with living. Except now I have to battle with the concept Julissa proposed, whether being alive means anything at all, if we live our lives turning a blind eye to the ones who need our help.

Chapter 20

Julissa

Itfeelsgoodtobe able to shove the truth in Mikhail’s face after all he did to make me feel small and ridiculous. After everything he did to try to shut me up. I love seeing the look on his face knowing that he can’t run from the damn jackass that he made of himself, treating me the way that he has. And I’ll admit, I enjoy the bit of fear I see dancing around his face as I start to make him panic the way I’ve been panicking ever since I saw my fucking father’s face, even as he disregarded my feelings, stressing me out even more. That part was relieving but what was sickening was moving around the diaper rash’s death vehicle.

It smelled like his adult drawers failed to keep him from pissing himself a few times. I’m still itchy thinking of it. Not just because of the smell. Old people have accidents and shit. But he isn’t just any old person and doing what I’ve done for a while, you become able to sense death from a sense of smell and although I’m doubting myself now because of what I’ve had to endure from Mikhail these past few days, my gut is telling me that the blood in the trunk didn’t belong to a deer. It belongs or well, it belonged to someone innocent. Someone who wore children's clips and little stud earrings. I’m doing everything not to think about it in-depth in order to not throw up.

“Listen, I know you’re against me going back over there and all but I can’t ignore the pit in my stomach. I have to know for sure,” I inform Mikhail, making it clear that I’m not asking him for permission. It’s happening whether he likes it or not. I have to know if that girl is being held against her will with her children and if they’re evenherchildren. I guess we could go over there and pretend to have some news about his car and shit but I don’t want him to see my face again and know I was in his car.

As Mikhail said, my prints are all over the thing, his too, I just don’t want to add to that complication so maybe bringing up the car isn’t a good idea. But at least, I could find a way to pull her aside if we did use that option. Never mind that though. Plus, Mikhail probably wouldn’t agree to it anyway, so I’ll just be on the cautious side and do what’s been working for me so far since I haven’t been caught yet. I’ll just show up and stalk him ask as usual.

“You’re right,” Mikhail answers me.

I think my brain just shook. “What?” I ask him. “Come again?”

“I said, you’re right. And I’m coming with you,” he adds.

Uh, okay. Well, that was unexpected. There might be hope for us yet. I don’t give him time to change his mind. “Well, come on,” I say.

“Right now?” he asks.

“Yeah, isn’t your shift over?” I ask him challenging him to change his mind again on me.

“Yeah, okay.” He nods, sticking to his word. Well, okay then. I guess the man I fell in love with is still in there after all.

I’m still a little hesitant to believe him but I can tell he’s trying so as he walks off to let his boss know he is leaving, I say, “And thanks for letting me go through the car and keeping watch for me. I appreciate it.”

He smiles. “My pleasure.” He returns with his helmet and hops onto his bike. I jump on behind him, wrapping my slender arms around his muscular torso, with a little more body fat percentage than he had before when he was working actively as a cop. Just a tiny bit more. There’s still a lot of muscle definition but the extra body fat makes him more comfortable to hold although my arms are stretched even further than usual. I rest my head against his back waiting for him to pull off, allowing myself to take some of the comforts I’ve been resisting from him.

Instead of putting the helmet on himself, he hands it to me. I refuse it.

“Come on, take it,” he says. “I’m not going to have you riding around barely hanging on with your head exposed. Please. Take it. I know you’re tough and all but I love you and I want to protect you,” he says.

My heart warms. I know I could do without the special treatment because I’ve put myself through worse and survived but I appreciate the gesture. I take the helmet.

“If I had known we’d be going over there today, I’d have taken the car,” he adds. I roll my eyes behind him as I’m securing the helmet on my head.

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