Cross the Line (Apartment 402 #1)

Chapter 1 The Wrong Kind of First Impression

Ryan

The taxi pulled away in a belch of exhaust. I was alone on the cracked sidewalk. I straightened my tie, navy with the diagonal stripe. The same one that had impressed the Chief's secretary last month. Not that it mattered here.

This was my punishment. My purgatory.

I checked my hair. Made sure every bleached strand fell where I had taught it to fall. First impressions matter, even when you are being exiled. Especially then. My hands were shaking a little. The kind of shaking I would have died before letting anyone see.

The glass doors slid open with a reluctant wheeze.

Inside, fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.

One was flickering at the end of the hallway, almost out.

The place smelled of instant coffee, stale cigarettes, and something older underneath.

Desperation, I thought at the time. Looking back, I am not sure that's what it was.

Conversations stopped. Heads turned. Gazes tracked me from desk to desk, sizing me up. Bored curiosity. Outright disdain. The whole spectrum. I caught snippets as I passed.

"That's him."

"52's golden boy."

"Heard he fucked up big time."

I pulled out my signature grin. The one that had charmed reporters and gotten me out of trouble more times than I could count.

It felt stiff on my face. At 52, that grin had opened doors.

Here it marked me as an outsider, and I knew it, and I kept it on anyway.

You don't hand a hostile room your throat in the first thirty seconds.

The weight of their judgment pressed flat against my chest. Toronto's darling to Toronto's disgrace in one leaked conversation. One fatal mistake I still couldn't fully explain.

A cop with thinning hair and a coffee stain on his shirt pointed toward the back. "Inspector's office is down there. He's waiting."

I nodded my thanks. Started navigating between desks cluttered with case files and takeout containers.

My Italian leather shoes clicked against the worn linoleum.

Too loud in the sudden hush. Everything about me was screaming doesn't belong.

The tailored suit. The cologne. Tom Ford.

A birthday gift from an ex who had once said it made me irresistible. Here it just made me a target.

A vending machine stood in the corner, humming softly.

I stopped at it. Maybe a peace offering, I thought.

Something to break the ice. The machine swallowed my coins with a mechanical gulp.

A paper cup dropped down. Dark liquid filled it, and the smell hit me before I'd lifted it. More industrial cleaner than coffee.

Watchful stares followed me while I waited. A female sergeant in her late thirties watched me steadily without bothering to hide it. Calm. Reserving judgment. Next to her, a heavyset man, senior by the way the desks angled toward him, said something low into her ear. She frowned.

The cup finished filling. I took a sip and nearly choked. Bitter. Burnt. Somehow watery and sludgy at the same time. Nothing like the single-origin pour-overs from the café across from my old division.

"I wouldn't drink that if I were you." The voice came from behind me. "Pretty sure it's classified as a biological weapon."

I turned. A young cop. Rookie, based on the eager face and the pressed uniform. He offered a tentative grin.

"Constable Jordan Reid. You must be Detective Ryan Carlson. From 52."

"The one and only." I shook his hand. Grateful for the small kindness, more grateful than I wanted him to see. "Is your commanding officer as terrifying as everyone says?"

His expression faltered. The way faces falter when the answer is yes. "Inspector Murphy is fair. Just don't waste his time with excuses or charm. He sees through both."

Great. A human lie detector.

"Any other survival tips?" I dumped the toxic brew into a nearby plant that already looked half dead. Waited.

"Yeah." Reid glanced toward a closed door at the end of the hall. "Watch out for..."

The station's front door swung open. The room went still. Not the same stillness as when I'd entered. This silence had weight. Respect. Maybe even fear.

A tall figure stepped inside. Broad-shouldered. Plain black jacket. His face was stone. His gaze swept the room and landed on me.

I felt my breath go careful before I'd consciously processed why. Not from fear, though there was that. Something more primal. He moved with controlled power. Held tension under the jacket. Where I was all polish and performance, he was raw, unvarnished reality.

His stare found mine across the cluttered station. For a moment neither of us broke contact. Dark irises. A hard jaw, set. Hands that had seen real violence, not the sanitized version I'd sold to cameras. Oh.

I hated how my pulse had quickened. Hated more that I couldn't tell whether it was intimidation or something else.

Reid's voice dropped to a whisper. "Detective Hawley. The Bear."

The Bear. Even his nickname was a warning.

He held my stare for another heartbeat. Then, with the slightest turn of his head, he dismissed me.

Like I wasn't worth a second look. The morning light through the dirty front window caught the side of his jaw on the way out, and the room seemed to close around the small angle of his shoulders the way water closes over a stone.

That should not have stung. It did.