Page 44 of The Sins That Bleed
RAI
Stiffness has seized my body and a jackhammer is pounding away inside my skull.
I’m sitting in my office at the end of another long day, typing up notes and adding everything to the case file, but my body is being punished for not moving from my desk.
Fuck, I’m getting old.
So far, we’d quadrupled the amount of leads we had and if we kept this up, I’d run out of room in my office soon from the sheer volume of paperwork. The day had flown by while Nico and I interviewed everyone we’d arrested.
They’d looked a little better than the day before, but not by much and, true to their word, they sang like canaries. Names, address, family trees, and day-to-day operations were provided in great detail. We had to verify it all, of course, but from the information we could confirm in real-time, they were giving us incredible leads.
“Knock knock,” Nico chirps through the open door, and I lift my head to look at him.
“You know, most people actually knock instead of saying it.”
“And here’s me thinking you’d actually be in a good mood after such a successful day! We’ve had a major break in the case,and you have the most handsome, intelligent, gorgeous, did I say handsome?—”
I throw a pack of sticky notes at him that he deftly catches, swiping them out of the air like it was nothing. His hearty laugh fills the room and I can’t hide my grin because he’s right, we’ve had a great day.
“I’m worried, is all, this all seems too good to be true and I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know? How do we know our informant can be trusted?”
Nico moves into my office, closing the door behind him to give us some privacy from the rest of our coworkers. With a case this sensitive, you can’t trust any information accidently falling into the wrong hands.
“You mean, what if she is secretly a serial killer that lures unsuspecting victims to her basement and tortures them to death?” His face is deadpan, as if he’s actually there.
“What the fuck, Nico? That’s so dark! You’ll only give yourself nightmares, but yes, something like that.” I grumble the last part, and I’m confused as I watch his face warp back into a grin, as if he’s coming out of a trance. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, didn’t mean to freak you out, but I swear it’s what happened in a dream I had the other night and I guess I freaked myself out.”
He laughs again, but there is a nervous edge to it. I make a mental note to check-in with him more since he tends to always be chipper and positive, he can easily convince you he’s never struggling with anything.
“Good, you would tell me if you weren’t though?” I press.
“Of course, princess, you know I will.” This time when he smiles at me, I relax and give him a terse nod.
“Can you help me get this all filed away? I was thinking we can go out for something to eat, maybe pizza and a few beers to celebrate, my treat?”
His eyes light up and he immediately snaps into action, practically throwing himself at my desk so we can get out of here faster, and my smile is so big it makes my cheeks hurt. I wish we shared an office; we spend so much time together in here we might as well.
We finish up in record time and my office is back to being neat and tidy, everything back in its place. I lock up and we head out, saying goodnight to those still working before making our way to the elevator.
We chat and laugh the whole evening, neither of us talking about work for once, and its refreshing. I’ve been so caught up in the case and beating myself up at the lack of progress that I forgot what it was like to have fun, always working late into the night before just falling into bed.
We eat pepperoni pizza and drink beer until we can’t fit anything else in. We’d walked to our favourite pizza joint a few blocks from our apartment complex so we didn’t have to worry about staying sober and could enjoy ourselves.
Nico tells me a story about a cat that sounds like its summoning a démon and we can’t stop laughing at his attempt to copy it as we walk home, clutching our stomachs as we hoot and holla through the city streets.
I can’t recall the last time I had this much fun, and the thought makes me sad.
We’re both wiping tears as we make our way up to our apartments. I step out of the elevator first, barely able to say goodnight around giggles and stumble toward my place. I try and calm myself down but it isn’t working as I pull my keys from my pocket.
It takes me a moment to find the right one but eventually I do and raise it toward the keyhole and it’s only then that I realise my door is slightly ajar and it immediately sobers me. I knowValeska comes and goes, but she has never used the front door so I rule her out.
I draw my firearm from my ankle strap, the one I keep on me at all times in case situations like these come up. I flick the safety off and enter my apartment, flinging the door open and scanning the room, my gun aimed everywhere my eyes look.
There’s nobody here, but I need to clear the apartment before I assume I’m alone. I go room-by-room and check all the closets, even the fire escape gets a scan before I put the safety back on.
My apartment is empty, but whoever came here made an absolute mess. It looks like a bomb went off, cupboards open and hanging off the hinges, clothes and shoes strewn everywhere, all of the drawers left open and in disarray.
