Page 35 of Lovesick Titan

Danny nodded, got up, and left, walking in a daze toward his office, feeling colder and emptier with every step. It wasn’t really hitting him how much his life would change from this. If he served time. Even if he didn’t. Unless he could prove it was all a lie, which he couldn’t and didn’t want to, his career was over.

He reached his office and found two officers from IA rifling through his things. One of them was Lieutenant Liu, who’d interviewed Danny a few weeks ago when IA thought he might go off the rails nearing the anniversary of the defeat of Thanatos. Despite their earlier encounters, she’d never shied from Danny or acted unfriendly. Now she fixed him with a calculating stare.

“Have a seat, Grant. When we’re through, you can get what you need, but we’ll have to check your bag as well.”

Nodding impassively, Danny had no intention of fighting any of this. He sat off to the side while they continued ransacking his office. Not messy or spiteful, just thorough, no softening of any blows because, in this situation, Danny was the enemy. If they were the officers working the investigation, then they already knew about the picture.

It was maybe ten minutes later and they were nearly finished going through his desk when John stormed in. He must have followed Danny out of the house. Shan was right on his heels.

“What the hell is going on?” he barked at Liu and the other officer.

“John…” Shan warned. “You can’t—”

“Sir,” Liu called from Danny’s desk, having opened the last drawer, the bottom drawer where Danny had…

Oh no. He sat up straighter as Liu dumped the plastic evidence bag with Mal’s comms in it on top of the desk. He hadn’t thought it would matter, too preoccupied to come back for the comms during the week like he’d planned and dispose of them. Sitting there these past ten minutes, it hadn’t dawned on him that something that could easily lead them right to Mal existed in plain view.

Danny didn’t care that it clinched his own downfall, but if they were able to trace the comms…

“Grant, why was this evidence not correctly catalogued with everything else from the museum case last Monday night?” Liu asked with a hard look as she inspected the catalogue ID and held up the bag.

They were all staring at Danny. He couldn’t look at them, so he turned his gaze to the floor. “Because I was hiding it. I had no intention of processing that piece of evidence.”

“Danny…” John said in disbelief as he no doubt began to piece together what was happening. Shan, the IA officers, the stashed evidence. Danny was caught red-handed as crooked; he was going down for it, and no one could do anything about it.

“Go home, Grant,” Shan said, practically seething. “John, you can’t be a part of this—”

“Sir,” the other officer with Liu spoke up. “We still need to look through Grant’s bag before he leaves.”

Shan sighed. “Then we’ll do it now. Get up, Grant.”

Danny felt like a slide under a microscope—exposed and at the mercy of the others. He handed over his bag and stepped back. They went through everything, but there was nothing to find. Not there. Danny realized they would go through his pockets next and thought of his cell phone. There was more than enough on his phone that pointed to him as Zeus, to his involvement with Mal, to Andre and Lynn helping him. His friends,everyonewould be at risk.

Backing up a step, he caught John’s eye. His father looked so betrayed, which Danny knew would only get worse once John learned what had started all of this, but he didn’t hesitate to keep Shan distracted while the IA officers worked and Danny took the next moment when noeyes were on him to stash his phone by the exit with a quick lightning jump.

When they were done with his bag, they went through his pockets.

“Where’s your cell phone, Grant?” Liu asked.

“Didn’t bring it.”

“You know this will go smoother for you if you hand it over now,” the other IA officer said. “It won’t make anything better if you make us get a warrant, and we won’t have any trouble doing that after the evidence we’ve found so far.”

“It’s not on me, I swear. You just checked. I forgot it at home. You can search my house; you’ll find it there.”

Both officers looked unconvinced, but there wasn’t any more they could do.

“You can’t prevent us from looking into your phone records, Grant,” Liu said, “so don’t try anything stupid in the meantime.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Get out of here,” Shan practically threw Danny’s bag at him. “You’ll know when they’re ready with questions or to search your premises. I don’t want to see your face in here until you’re requested. You got that?”

“Yes, sir,” Danny said and turned immediately to leave with his father. He glanced back, and as soon as he had a moment where Shan and the IA were all looking the same direction, he lightning jumped to retrieve his phone.

Danny had only a brief reprieve while leaving the station and getting into John’s car to head home. He took out his phone, called Andre, and explained in no uncertain terms that he didn’t have time to tell his friend what had happened yesterday because they had an emergency. He needed Andre to remotely wipe all of his text messages and calls that could point back to him as Zeus or get anyone else in trouble. IA were going to be looking at his phone; there wasn’t much time.

“Yeah, Danny, you know I can do that. But what happened?”

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