Chapter 46: The Diner's Reckoning
The diner’s neon glow was a sickly smear on the wet asphalt. Jennifer sat in a back booth, her back to the wall, watching the door. The vinyl seat squeaked under her weight every time she shifted. The place was a tomb after midnight, just a couple of truckers at the counter and the cook scraping a grill with a violent, metallic screech.
Milo was fifteen minutes late.
She nursed a black coffee that tasted like burnt tires and tried to ignore the phantom smell of gasoline that still clung to the inside of her nose. Her fingers traced the rim of the mug, feeling a chip in the ceramic. Silas Rook wasn’t talking. He’d lawyered up the second he hit the interrogation room, his eyes glazed with a fanatic’s calm. The lab was a treasure trove of evidence, but without Rahul, it felt like a hollow prize. He was the brain. He was the one who’d looked at her and seen a relic.
The bell above the door jangled. Milo slid into the booth opposite her, bringing in a chill from outside. He looked wired, his gray eyes bright and restless, but there was a new tightness around his mouth. He smelled of cold air and, faintly, of the same chemical tang from the lab.
“You reek,” she said, by way of greeting.
“I had a fascinating chat with a forensic chemist. Their ventilation is subpar.” He didn’t order anything. Just leaned forward, his voice dropping below the hum of the fluorescents. “I found a crack in the wall.”
Jennifer waited.
“Someone inside The Clearing. Not a fan of the new management style. Specifically, not a fan of Ray Delgado’s crispy remains. Has a conscience, imagine that.” He pulled a napkin from the dispenser, unfolded it, smoothed it on the table. A nervous gesture she’d never seen from him. “They want to talk. But only to us. They’ve heard of me. They’ve definitely heard of you. Says you walking into that lab and walking back out changed the calculus. Rahul’s not infallible. It created… doubt.”
“It’s a trap. Rahul’s setting a better one.”
“Probably.” Milo didn’t deny it. “But what if it’s not? This person gave me a name. A detail about the Delgado scene not released to the press. The guard’s watch. A cheap digital thing. It was found melted into his wrist strap. The source knew the brand. Casio. Model F-91W. Not in any report.”
Jennifer’s pulse thumped once, hard. She’d seen that watch, a little black rectangular lump fused to blackened leather. She’d noted it. It was buried in the evidence log on page four. The press had been told a watch was found, no details. This was specific. Verifiable.
“See?” Milo said, watching her face. “It’s a thread. You pull it, maybe the whole sweater unravels. Or it’s tied to a tripwire. Either way, you have to pull.”
“Where and when?”
“An hour from now. Docks at Terminal Island. Berth 7. It’s a dead zone, lots of rusted-out containers. They’ll be in a white panel van with a busted tail light.” He glanced at the window, at the dark. “They specified ‘you and the reporter.’ No backup. No wires. They see a squad car, they evaporate.”
“That’s insane.” She laughed, a short, brittle sound. “That’s a perfect recipe for two bodies in the harbor.”
“Yes.” Milo’s usual smirk was entirely absent. His gaze was steady, intense. “Which is why I’m telling you to think about it. Seriously. This isn’t a source looking for a payoff. This is a terrified person making a desperate play. The risk is off the charts. Rahul will be looking for a leak. If this is real, they’re already dead if they’re caught.”
“And you want to go.”
“I want the story. But I’m not suicidal.” He ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. For a second, he looked every one of his forty years. “Look, Jennifer. I’ve dealt with rats before. The scared ones, the angry ones. This feels different. This feels like a human being who just hit their limit. I think it’s real. And I think it’s our only shot at finding Rahul before he decides to make his next statement personal.” He paused. “I don’t like the idea of you being that statement.”
The admission hung between them, raw and unpracticed. A crack in the armor. It wasn’t charm. It wasn’t manipulation. It was just a stark, quiet fear. It was more unsettling than any of his smooth come-ons.
She stared into her terrible coffee. The truckers paid their bill. The cook turned off the grill with a final hiss. The diner got quieter. She weighed the Casio detail, the pure insanity of the meet, the look in Milo’s eyes. The memory of Rahul’s voice in the dark. You are a relic.
“We go,” she said, finally. “But we do it smart. I’m armed. You do exactly what I say, when I say it. You are a civilian observer. You fall back, you stay in the car, you don’t play hero with a flashlight again. Understood?”
A ghost of his old smile returned. “Detective, I’m just along for the quotes.”
She threw a ten on the table for the coffee she didn’t drink. “Let’s move.”
Outside, the night air was cold and damp. The parking lot was empty except for her sedan and Milo’s nondescript rental. As she reached her car door, a figure stepped out from the shadow of a dumpster.
“Jen. Wait.”
John. He was in a hoodie and jeans, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. His face was pale under the flickering neon.
Her guard slammed up instantly. “What are you doing here, John? Are you following me?”
“No. I mean… I heard you caught the Rook case. I was at the precinct late. Kelly saw the dispatch update about the diner call. She thought…” He shook his head, frustrated. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. After the lab.”
She could see Kelly’s shrewd logic in this. Sending the boyfriend to check on the rival. A peacekeeping mission with a knife’s edge. “I’m fine. Working.”
John’s eyes flicked past her to Milo, who was leaning against his car, lighting a cigarette, pretending not to listen. “With him.” It wasn’t a question.
“He has sources. It’s part of the job.”
“It’s not part of the job to almost get burned alive in a drug lab with a reporter as your backup!” The words burst out of him, too loud. He lowered his voice, stepping closer. The hopeful idealism was gone, stripped away by worry. “Jen, come on. This guy… he’s not like Sam. He’s not even like… like us. He uses people. I’ve read his pieces. He’s a shark. And you’re swimming right next to him.”
There it was. The protective urge, tangled up with everything else. The babysittee seeing danger the adult couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see. It should have felt condescending. It just felt like a mirror, reflecting her own doubts back a little too clearly.
“I know what he is, John.” Her voice was softer than she intended. “I have it handled. Go home. Go to Kelly. This isn’t your concern.”
He flinched, just a little, at the dismissal. His jaw tightened. “It is when I care about you. When everyone at the station cares if you come home or not.” He looked at Milo again, a hard, young man’s glare. “He doesn’t care. Not really. He just cares about the story you’re in.”
From across the lot, Milo took a long drag, the ember glowing bright in the dark. He didn’t engage. He just watched, a spectator to a drama he’d helped write.
“I have to go,” Jennifer said, opening her car door.
“Jen.” John’s hand came out, stopping the door from closing. Not grabbing, just resting on the frame. His touch was warm.“Please. Be okay.”
For a fleeting second, she saw the kid he’d been, looking up at her with total, unquestioning trust. That trust was fractured now, mixed with a mess of adult complications she had no energy to untangle. She gave a single, tight nod. He pulled his hand back as if burned.
She got in, started the engine. In the rearview, she saw John standing alone under the neon, watching her go, until Milo’s headlights flared to life behind her and she pulled out onto the empty street, heading south towards the port.
The docks were a skeletal landscape of shadows and echoes. Giant gantry cranes stood like frozen dinosaurs against a cloud-veiled moon. The air smelled of salt, rust, and rotting fish. Berth 7 was at the far end, poorly lit, a graveyard of stacked shipping containers creating a labyrinth of narrow canyons.
Jennifer killed her lights and rolled to a stop a hundred yards out, behind a mound of discarded pallets. Milo pulled in behind her. She got out, the crunch of her boots on gravel absurdly loud. She checked her Glock, the weight familiar and cold.
Milo approached, his cigarette discarded. “I don’t see the van.”
“It’s here.” She could feel it. The silence was too complete. “Stay by the car. If you hear shooting, get the hell out and call it in. Do not come looking.”
“Your concern is touching.”
“It’s not concern. It’s operational clarity. You’re a liability in a firefight.” She moved before he could reply, melting into the shadow of the first container stack.
The maze was disorienting. The moonlight bled in slivers from above, creating pools of pitch black and strips of sickly gray. She moved slowly, her senses stretched taut. The smell of the ocean was joined by another scent—diesel, and something sour, like spoiled milk.
She found the van tucked into a cul-de-sac of containers, its white paint ghostly in the dark. The left tail light was indeed shattered. The engine was off. No movement.
Her heart hammered a against her ribs. This was the moment. The perfect kill box. She edged along the container wall, giving herself an angle on the van’s side door.
A soft click.
The van’s interior light flicked on, dim and yellow. The driver’s side door opened slowly.
A figure got out. A woman. Young, maybe early twenties. She was skinny, shivering in a thin denim jacket despite the chill. Her face was pale, her eyes wide and darting. She looked like a trapped animal.
“Hello?” the woman whispered, her voice swallowed by the vast, metal space.
Jennifer stepped out, keeping her gun low but ready. “I’m here.”
The woman jumped, a hand flying to her chest. “You’re her. The detective.” She looked past Jennifer, frantic. “Is the reporter here? He said he’d come.”
“He’s nearby. You have information for us?”
“I have… I have everything.” The words tumbled out in a rushed, terrified stream. “Ledgers. Drop locations. The schedule for the next burn. It’s tonight. A storage facility in Sun Valley. They’re moving the last of the product there before they torch it. Rahul’s going to be there to oversee it. He doesn’t trust anyone else with the final purge.” She dug into her jacket pocket, pulled out a thumb drive, held it out like an offering. “It’s all here.”
Jennifer didn’t move to take it. “What’s your name?”
“Lena.” The woman licked her chapped lips. “I was Silas’s… I did the books. I just did the books. I didn’t know about the guard. I swear to God, I didn’t know they would do that.” Her eyes filled with tears. “He was just an old man.”
The emotion seemed real. The details checked out. But the setting was a stage. Jennifer’s eyes scanned the tops of the containers. Too many shadows. Too many places.
“Why come out now, Lena?”
“Because after they took Silas, Rahul… he changed. He said we all had to prove our loyalty. He said the next burn was a baptism.” She shuddered. “I don’t want to be baptized.”
A low, scraping sound echoed from the far end of the container canyon. Lena’s head whipped around, pure terror on her face. “Oh, God. He followed me. He knew.”
“Get in the van. Lock the doors,” Jennifer said, her voice ice-calm. She raised her gun, stepping in front of the young woman.
Lena didn’t move. She just stared into the darkness. “It’s too late.”
From between two containers, a figure emerged. Not Rahul. A man, big, holding a tire iron loosely at his side. Then another from the opposite side. They were young, hard-faced, moving with intent.
They weren’t here for a chat.
“Lena, you stupid bitch,” the first one said, his voice a low growl. “Rahul said you’d try to run.”
The trap wasn’t for Jennifer. It was for the leak. And she’d just walked into the middle of it.
“LAPD! Drop your weapons! On the ground now!” Jennifer barked, her command echoing off the steel walls.
The men didn’t stop. They spread out, flanking her. The tire iron glinted. The other pulled a knife, its blade catching a sliver of light.
Jennifer’s world shrank to the immediate geometry of the threat. The van at her back. Lena, frozen. Two hostiles advancing. She centered her aim on the one with the tire iron, the greater threat.
A sharp, loud crack split the air.
Not a gunshot. The sound of a heavy metal door slamming.
From the top of the container directly above the van, a silhouette appeared, leaning over the edge. The moon lit the sharp angles of his face.
Rahul Rook.
He held a metal gasoline can in one hand. In the other, a small, glowing object. A road flare, spitting angry red sparks into the night.
He didn’t look at the men. He looked directly at Jennifer, his expression one of profound disappointment. “I told you, detective. You are a relic. And relics belong in museums.” His voice was calm, conversational, even from twenty feet up. “Or ash.”
He tipped the can. A stream of clear liquid hissed down, splashing across the roof of the van, the ground around it, the shoes of the paralyzed Lena.
The smell of high-octane gasoline flooded the canyon, thick and nauseating.
Rahul held the sparking flare over the edge.
“Run!” Jennifer roared, shoving Lena hard away from the van.
She didn’t wait to see if the woman listened. She fired two rounds up at the silhouette on the container. Rahul flinched, darting back, but his arm was already swinging.
The flare tumbled, end over end, a falling star trailing furious red light.
It hit the wet ground.
The world erupted in a rolling, whoomp of flame that raced across the gasoline slick, engulfing the van’s roof in a sheet of fire, cutting off her retreat, painting the steel walls in hellish, dancing orange light.
The heat was an instant, blistering wall. The two enforcers, suddenly trapped in the same inferno, shouted in panic, their weapons forgotten.
Jennifer scrambled back, her sleeve smoldering, her eyes stinging from the smoke and heat. She saw Lena stumbling, falling, her jacket on fire. She lunged, not thinking, tackling the woman to the gritty asphalt, rolling her, beating at the flames with her bare hands.
Over the roar of the fire, she heard a car engine scream to life. Tires peeling on gravel. Milo.
And from the top of the burning container, through the curtain of heat haze, she saw Rahul look down once more, his mission accomplished, his message sent. Then he was gone.
The fire snapped and roared, consuming the van, climbing the container walls. The two enforcers were fleeing down a side alley, silhouettes against the blaze. Lena was sobbing, her burns angry and red on her arms.
Sirens, distant but approaching, finally cut through the night.
Jennifer knelt in the hot, oily gravel, the taste of smoke and failure thick in her mouth, the thumb drive Lena had offered now nothing but a melted piece of plastic in the heart of the flames. He’d been one step ahead. He’d used their source, their hope, as kindling.
And he’d made sure she’d watched it burn.
The sirens swelled into a wall of sound, flashing lights bleeding blue and red across the container fortresses. Jennifer stayed on her knees, her hands raw and smarting from beating out flames on Lena’s jacket. The young woman whimpered, curling into a fetal position, the sour-milk smell of burnt hair and melted synthetic fabric clinging to her.
“He was on the container. Rahul,” Jennifer coughed out to the first uniformed officer who reached her, her voice scraped rough by smoke. The officer’s eyes were wide, reflecting the still-raging fire from the van. “He had a flare. He lit it and ran west.” The directive felt useless even as she said it. Rahul was a ghost in a maze he’d designed.
Milo’s car skidded to a halt just outside the ring of emergency vehicles. He didn’t approach the chaos. He stood by his open door, a darker silhouette against the pulsating lights, watching the containment efforts. He was waiting. For her.
Paramedics descended, gently moving Jennifer aside to tend to Lena’s burns. The sudden absence of action left a hollow, shaking space in her chest. She stood on unsteady legs, brushing grit from her palms, and walked toward Milo. Her clothes reeked of accelerant and failure.
“You’re smoking,” he said flatly, his eyes scanning the smudges on her coat, the frayed edges of her sleeves.
“It’s metaphorical,” she shot back, her voice still gravelly. She leaned against his rental, the metal cool through her clothes. “You saw him leave.”
“I saw a shadow disappear. Poetic, really. He gave you a front-row seat to his principle of destruction.” Milo lit a cigarette, the flame of his lighter trembling just slightly. He offered it to her. She took it, the nicotine hitting her empty stomach with a welcome, familiar dizziness.
“The source is alive. Burned, but she’ll talk. The drive is toast.” Jennifer exhaled smoke toward the night sky, where the fire’s glow swallowed the stars. “He knew she’d crack. He used her as bait to give me another demonstration.”
“And to prove he’s smarter.” Milo stated it as a simple fact. “You okay? Really?”
The question, coming from him, felt like a trap. She ignored it. “He said the next burn is tonight. A storage facility in Sun Valley. A ‘final purge.’ You believe it?”
“He just immolated his own logistics and a potential informant to make a point. He’s not bluffing. He’s on a timeline now.” Milo dropped his cigarette, grinding it under his heel. “The thumb drive is slag, but the source’s brain isn’t. If we can get to her before Internal Affairs and the arson unit lock her down, we might get the address.”
“We?” Jennifer turned her head to look at him. Soot streaked his jawline. “There is no ‘we.’ You’re a witness. You’ll give a statement. Then you’re gone.”
“She’ll talk to me. I’m the one she reached out to. She’s terrified of cops.” His gaze was unflinching. “You need me. Again.”
A familiar unmarked Crown Vic pulled up, too fast, spraying gravel. Captain Ruiz emerged, his face a thundercloud. He stalked past the fire chief, his eyes locking onto Jennifer and Milo with palpable fury. John was in the passenger seat, but he didn’t get out. He just watched through the windshield, his hands visible on the dash.
“Wu. My office. Now.” Ruiz’s voice was low, meant only for them, but it carried the weight of a shout. He glanced at Milo. “You. Stay put. A detective will take your statement. Do not breathe a word to your editor until I clear it.”
“Captain, the source said the next target is—” Jennifer began.
“I don’t care what the source said!” Ruiz’s voice cracked like a whip, slicing through the residual roar in her ears. He stepped closer, invading her space, his face a mask of betrayed authority. “You met an informant, at night, in a known dead zone, with a reporter as your backup, after I explicitly told you to keep him on a leash.” His eyes flicked to Milo, brimming with contempt. “And you. You impersonate police, incite a SWAT response, and now you’re facilitating unsupervised field interviews that end in chemical fires. Do you have a death wish for my detective, or is this just your brand of foreplay?”
Milo held up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. “Captain, I was merely observing. The detective was in command.”
“Bullshit.” Ruiz turned his fury back to Jennifer. Her smudged face, her singed jacket—none of it invited sympathy. “You are a senior detective. You know the protocols exist for a reason. You gambled with your life, compromised a potential witness, and let the primary suspect waltz away after setting his own crime scene on fire. This isn’t intuition, Wu. This is a vanity project.”
The words landed, each one a precise, painful strike. She said nothing. Arguing would just fan the flames. John was still a statue in the car, a silent witness to her humiliation. The heat from the still-burning van pressed against her back.
Ruiz paced two steps, dragging a hand over his mouth. The anger bled out of him, replaced by a deep, weary frustration. He stopped, his shoulders slumping. “The Sun Valley lead. Is it credible?”
“The source was terrified,” Jennifer said, her voice low but clear. “Rahul made an example of her. He wouldn’t have done that if she wasn’t giving us something real. He’s cleaning house. The burn is tonight.”
“And the witness is on her way to County General under guard. Where neither of you can get near her.” Ruiz sighed, the sound heavy with reluctant calculus. He looked at Milo, then back at Jennifer. “You created this mess. The two of you. Together. So you can fix it. Together. But you do it by the book. My book.”
He pointed a thick finger at Milo. “You are not a deputy. You are not a consultant. You are a source liaison. One word of this hits the papers before we give the all-clear, and I will have you charged with obstruction so fast your press pass will melt. You report to her. She reports to me. Every step. Clear?”
Milo gave a slow, measured nod. “Crystal.”
“Jennifer.” Ruiz’s tone softened a fraction. “You have 72 hours. Use him, his contacts, whatever. Find that facility. But you call it in. You wait for backup. You do not become a headline on my watch. Again.”
He turned and walked back to his car without another word. John finally looked away as the captain got in and the car pulled a tight, angry U-turn, disappearing into the industrial night.
The silence it left was filled only by the crackle of the fire and the static of radios. Jennifer felt numb.
“Well,” Milo said, brushing soot from his sleeve. “That went better than expected. He didn’t suspend you.”
“Shut up, Milo.”
He did, for once.
An hour later, after giving their statements to a stony-faced IA detective, they stood in the precinct parking lot. The adrenaline was gone, leaving a hollow, cold exhaustion. Her stomach growled, a sharp, physical reminder she hadn’t eaten since a stale donut that morning.
“I need food,” she said, not looking at him.
“There’s a place that does a decent double cheeseburger. It’s on your way.” His offer was uncharacteristically devoid of suggestion. It was just a statement of fact.
She hesitated. Every instinct said to go home, to her empty loft, to process the failure alone. But Ruiz’s order hung in the air: fix it, together. And the lead was ticking down. “Fine. Just the burger. We talk about the case.”
The place was a gritty shack with yellowing windows and a buzzing sign. They got the food to go. He drove them to a quiet overlook in the hills, the city a sprawling bed of jewels below. The air inside the car was thick with the smell of grease, fried onions, and smoke.
They ate in silence for a few minutes, the simple act grounding. She could feel the grease on her fingers, the crunch of the pickle, the heat of the burger—real sensations cutting through the lingering chemical haze.
“Sun Valley is a grid of storage lots and light industrial,” she finally said, wiping her mouth. “We need to narrow it down. Your source… Lena. She have any other contacts? Friends still inside who might be having second thoughts after tonight’s barbecue?”
Milo stared at the city lights, chewing thoughtfully. “Maybe. I’ll make calls. There’s a burner number she gave me, for emergencies. It’s likely dead now, but the metadata might give us a starting area.” He took a long drink of water. “Rahul’s smart. He’ll pick a place with easy access, good sightlines, and minimal residential oversight. Somewhere he can burn it and be gone before the first engine rolls.”
“He’s also proud. He likes the performance.” Jennifer balled up her wrapper, the wax paper cracking. “He won’t just set a match and run. He’ll want to watch. To verify the purge.”
“So we look for a place with a vantage point. A hill, a taller adjacent building.” He finished his burger, crumpling the paper with finality. The case talk lapsed. The intimate darkness of the car pressed in.
“Why did you get into reporting?” she asked suddenly. The question surprised her as much as it seemed to surprise him.
He was quiet for a long moment. “My old man was a union rep at a plastics plant. Got cancer. Cluster cases in his shift. The company buried the safety reports, fought every claim. Local paper wouldn’t touch it. I was eighteen, watching him waste away on our couch, thinking someone should have to answer for that.” He shrugged, a sharp, defensive movement. “Decided that someone would be me. First story got the plant fined. Didn’t bring my dad back. But it felt like pulling a tooth that was poisoning the whole body.”
It was the most unvarnished truth he’d ever offered her. No cynicism, no spin. Just a raw, old wound. It changed the shape of him in the dim light.
“Why policing?” he asked, turning the mirror on her.
“It seemed like the front line. Where you could actually stop the bad thing from happening.” She gave a short, humorless laugh. “Naive.”
“It’s not naive. It’s just harder.” He shifted in his seat to face her. The casualness was gone. “What’s going on with you and the captain’s kid?”
The question was so blunt, so off-rhythm, it felt like a physical shove. Her heart did a complicated, stumbling flip. She stared at him, her mind utterly blank for three full seconds.
“I…” She swallowed. “I honestly don’t know.”
The admission hung there, shocking in its honesty. She never admitted to not knowing.
Milo watched her, his gray eyes missing nothing. “He looks at you like you hung the moon. And you look at him like you’re trying to remember where you left it.” He shook his head slowly. “Sam, and what’s-his-name the priest, and the others… they were idiots to let you go. For what it’s worth.”
Her breath caught. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re a good detective. You’ve got a nice smile when you bother to use it. And a better ass.” He said it plainly, a statement of fact as observed as a weather pattern.
A startled laugh hiccupped out of her. She tried to suppress it, to frown, but the corners of her mouth betrayed her. “You’re a pig, Davidson.”
“I’m observant.” His voice had dropped, the city sounds fading to a distant hum. The space between them in the car was suddenly charged, thick with all the unspoken tension, the near-deaths, the shared secrets.
He leaned in. Slowly. Giving her every chance to pull back.
Her pulse roared in her ears, louder than the dockside fire. Every rational alarm blared—complication, liability, disaster—but her body didn’t listen. The fatigue, the adrenaline crash, the startling vulnerability he’d just shown… it created a powerful, gravitational pull. Her eyes started to flutter shut, her breath evening out in anticipation.
The buzz was violent, a jarring seizure of sound and light in the dark cabin. Milo’s phone, screen blazing, skittering on the console between them.
EDITOR – URGENT CALL NOW.
The spell shattered like glass. Jennifer jerked back, her head hitting the window with a soft thud. The cold reality of the upholstery against her skin was a relief so profound it felt like salvation.
Mlo stared at the phone as if it were a live insect. He didn’t reach for it.
“You should get that,” she said, her voice thankfully steady.
He exhaled, a slow, defeated sound, and grabbed the phone. “Davidson.” He listened, his expression closing down, the professional mask slamming back into place. “Yeah. I’m on it. Twenty minutes.”
He ended the call. The awkwardness descended, dense and suffocating. “Paper’s heard about the dock fire. They want copy. I have to go craft something that doesn’t get me arrested by your captain.”
“Right.” She focused on gathering the trash, her movements precise. “We’ll talk tomorrow. About Sun Valley.”
“Yeah. Tomorrow.” He started the car, the engine unnecessarily loud.
The drive to her loft was silent. The almost-kiss sat between them like a third person, awkward and enormous. He pulled up to her building.
“Jen,” he said as she reached for the door.
She paused.
“For the record,” he said, staring straight ahead through the windshield. “The interruption was probably for the best.”
She knew he meant for the case, for the professional disaster it would have been. But she also heard the reluctant admission in it. It mirrored her own secret relief exactly.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “Get some sleep.”
She got out and didn’t look back, feeling his eyes on her until the key turned in her lobby door. The cool, silent emptiness of her building welcomed her. She leaned against the wall, finally alone, and let out a long, trembling breath she hadn’t known she was holding.
Complication averted. For now.
She just walked to the elevator, the taste of grease and smoke and missed chances still clinging to her, the city’s endless lights waiting indifferently beyond her windows.