Page 43 of Misadventures in Blue
I round the corner and see a door marked Employees Only. Taking a risk, I open it with wary, slow caution, making sure I can slide into the restricted area without being seen or creating any noise. After I’m in, I close the door with a barely audible click and enter a fluorescent-lit hallway to see two patrol officers outside a windowed room. One of them puts a finger to her lips, indicating I need to be silent, and I creep up to join them.
Through the window of the staff room, I see Cat sitting across a cheap table from Gia Pisani, two disposable cups of coffee between them. Gia is agitated but trying to hide it under a veneer of friendly confusion.
Cat is unreadable—save for the occasional twitch of her lips as Gia talks. The Ice Queen’s signature cool amusement. It seems to piss Gia off.
For a moment, I relax. It’s just an interview in a forgettably bland staff room—a tense interview, maybe, but nothing more. No weapons, no open containers of nuclear waste, no anonymous men here to protect their supply. Cat doesn’t know about the nuclear material yet, which means she won’t question Pisani about it, which means the interview probably won’t escalate into—
Gia stands abruptly, her chair knocking back behind her, her cheeks glowing as she says something heated to Cat.
Cat merely crosses her arms and arches a perfect brow, as if to make the point that the young woman is embarrassing herself with this outburst. Like most cops, Cat has the gift of complete reticence—that is, refraining from reacting to another person until she’s good and ready—and her lack of response only provokes Gia to say more. Which was probably Cat’s intention the entire time.
Hardly any sound makes it through the window, and at this angle, it’s hard to attempt any kind of interpretation to what Gia says, but Cat tilts her head and murmurs something in an unperturbed tone.
Gia blanches, and I know whatever Cat said hit home. Hard.
She’s so fucking good at this.
Weird how I feel that thought in the pit of my stomach—not with lust but with fear.
Because she’s so good, she’s more than good—she’s sharply perceptive, intelligent beyond measure, fierce as hell, and that’s not even taking into account all that sophistication and beauty. She’s so far out of my league that we’ve never even played on the same field, and with a sudden, gripping terror, I wonder if that was what our fight was about. If she’s not truly worried about our age difference or my job, but if she’s trying to let me down easy because I’m not good enough for her.
And shit—she’d be right. I’m not.
I have to glance down to take a breath—a big, deep one to try to stave off panic I’ve never known before, and right at that moment, something happens that blows even that panic right out of the water. Gia shrieks something and, in a clumsy but quick movement, fumbles a gun from behind her back where it was tucked in her waistband.
She aims it right at Cat.
I’m moving before I can think, my gun out and my shoulder ramming the flimsy interior door open, and it’s like all sound and feeling are gone, all extraneous sensation. There’s only the gun in my hand and the palpable presence of the woman I love who’s about to die.
She can’t die.
Oh God. She can’t die.
Reality comes back in with a vicious, adrenaline-laced flood.
The explosion of me through the door draws Gia’s attention, and I hear myself yell for her to drop her weapon. I hear the two other cops behind me shouting for Gia to get on the ground.
Cat says something in a low, soothing tone as she gets to her feet and gracefully gestures for everyone to lower their weap
ons, and for a moment I think Gia is going to do it. I think she’s going to drop her gun and give up this pointless resistance.
But then the officer behind me speaks again, his voice jangling with sheer human panic, and it jars Gia free from thoughts of surrender.
She swings the gun.
She shoots.
And pain, big and stark, swallows me whole.
Then darkness.
Chapter Thirteen
Cat
I’ve died. I’ve died and I’ve gone to hell.
And I’m not even the one who was shot.
