Chapter 3 #2
Zeus pressed even closer as they walked, his shoulder brushing her leg with every step, and Maddox let herself take comfort from it. He was real and solid and simple. He didn’t make her dredge up memories and talk about things she’d buried so deep they should’ve suffocated by now.
He just walked beside her, steady and reliable, the only relationship that had never asked her to be anything other than who she was. And if that made her pathetic, then so be it. She’d be pathetic, but at least she’d be functional.
The K-9 building’s door swung shut behind them with a heavy thud, closing out the afternoon sun and the nagging voice in her head that sounded uncomfortably like Jade’s: Is it smart? Or is it lonely?
Both, Maddox thought grimly, unclipping Zeus’s lead and watching him trot toward his water bowl. It’s both.
She had six days until she had to do this again. Six days to shore up her defenses and make sure Jade Kessler didn’t get any further under her skin than she already had. It’d be fine. It had to be fine.
Wednesday brought quarterly qualifications, which meant Maddox spent the afternoon at the outdoor shooting range on the far edge of Phoenix Ridge PD property.
The range was tucked between the treeline and a drainage ditch that always smelled faintly of rust and standing water, and Maddox preferred it out here away from the main building, away from the bullpen chatter and forced camaraderie that came with shift changes.
Twenty-four hours since the therapy session, and she still couldn’t get Jade’s question out of her head. Is it smart? Or is it lonely?
She fired her last magazine with more aggression than necessary, the recoil familiar and grounding against her palms, then set her service weapon down on the bench and pulled off her ear protection.
Spring wind cut across the range, still cold enough to sting, carrying the smell of gunpowder and wet earth.
“Nice grouping.”
Maddox turned to find Riley Thorne collecting her own gear two stations down, her blonde hair pulled back in a bun that had started to come loose. She was grinning, which meant she was about to say something Maddox wouldn’t want to hear.
“You too,” Maddox said, because acknowledging competence was safe.
Riley walked over, holstering her weapon with the easy confidence of someone who’d been doing this for twelve years.
Her German Shepherd, Sarge, was visible through the chain-link fence, lying in the shade of her K-9 vehicle with the patience of an older dog who’d done this routine a thousand times.
“Heard you’re in therapy now,” Riley said, loading her gear into her range bag. “Mandatory sessions with the new counselor.”
Of course she’d heard. Nothing stayed quiet in a department this small, especially when the chief was making wellness a priority and Maddox was apparently the flagship case study.
“News travels,” Maddox said in lieu of an actual answer.
“It’s a small department. Everyone knows when someone’s shitting their pants during a domestic.” Riley’s tone was ribbing. “How’s it going?”
Maddox set her jaw. “I wasn’t—”
“Relax, Shaw. I’m not judging. We’ve all had calls that stick.” Riley zipped her bag shut and leaned against the bench, watching Maddox with the kind of casual assessment that came from years of working together. “So? The therapy helping or just pissing you off?”
“Waste of time,” Maddox said, focusing on cleaning her weapon with more attention than it needed. “She keeps asking about feelings like that matters when there’s a rifle pointed at someone’s head.”
“Yeah, therapists are annoying like that. Always wanting you to process shit instead of just shoving it down and getting back to work.” Riley’s voice was dry and edged with the dark humor that made her tolerable. “God forbid we actually deal with watching people die.”
Maddox’s hands stilled for half a second before continuing the familiar motions of fieldstripping. “I didn’t watch anyone die.”
“Not this time.” Riley pulled out her water bottle and took a long swig. “But we’ve both seen enough bodies to fill a morgue. Hell, last month, I responded to a hit and run. Seventeen years old with sneakers still on his feet. His mom showed up while I was securing the scene.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.” Riley capped the water bottle. “A therapist would probably tell me I’m supposed to feel something about that beyond, ‘well, that fucking sucked.’ But instead, I just went home, drank a beer, and didn’t think about it until right now.”
That was the thing about Riley. She didn’t dress it up or pretend the job was noble. She just did it, same as Maddox, and acknowledged that sometimes the best you could hope for was making it through the shift without falling apart.
“So what’s the new counselor like anyway?” Riley asked. “I heard she’s ex-military. Army medic or something.”
“Army, yeah.” Maddox reassembled her weapon efficiently, the pieces clicking together with satisfying precision. “She’s…persistent.”
“Persistent how? Like she actually gives a shit or like she’s checking boxes for her contract?”
Maddox considered that, surprised she had to think about it. “She gives a shit. Which is worse, honestly.”
Riley laughed, short and sharp. “Yeah, the ones who care are the worst. Can’t just blow them off and call it done.” She pushed away from the bench, slinging her range bag over her shoulder. “Chief’s serious about this whole wellness stuff, you know. I heard there’s even a committee forming.”
Maddox’s stomach dropped, though she kept her expression neutral. “Great. More meetings.”
“You’ll probably get roped into it. You’re basically the new poster child for ‘officer who needs wellness.’” Riley’s grin was wicked. “Congrats on being the department’s cautionary tale.”
“Fuck off, Thorne.”
“There it is. I was worried therapy was making you soft.” Riley started walking toward the parking lot, and Maddox fell into step beside her out of habit.
“Seriously, though, the committee's probably going to be a bureaucratic nightmare with bi-weekly meetings, action plans, and all that admin bullshit we signed up to avoid by becoming cops instead of social workers.”
“Can’t wait,” Maddox said, her tone bone-dry.
They walked in comfortable silence for a moment, gravel crunching under their boots. In the distance, Sarge lifted his head and watched their approach with the calm assessment of a dog who’d been doing this job long enough to know when his handler was coming back.
“You know what’s weird?” Riley said suddenly.
“What?”
“You’re talking about her.”
Maddox frowned. “Who?”
“The therapist. You’re actually talking about the therapy sessions.
Usually when you hate something, you just go silent and let everyone know through aggressive competence and death glares.
” Riley’s expression was unreadable. “But you’re talking about it, which means it’s getting under your skin. Or it’s already there.”
The observation landed like a punch Maddox hadn’t seen coming. Her first instinct was to deny it, to shut Riley down with the same cold dismissal she used on everyone else. But that would just prove her point, wouldn’t it?
“It’s mandatory,” Maddox said instead. “Of course it’s under my skin. I don’t like being told what to do.
“Sure,” Riley said, in a tone that suggested she didn’t believe that excuse for a second. “Well, good luck with it. Try not to bite the counselor’s head off. We actually need her around. Half the department’s one bad call away from putting their service weapon in their mouth.”
She said it casually, the way you’d comment on the weather, but Maddox heard the truth underneath. Riley had been first on scene for three officer-involved shootings in the last two years. She’d probably earned her own mandatory therapy sessions and just hadn’t been flagged yet.
“You doing okay?” Maddox asked and immediately regretted the question. Too personal, too close to giving a shit beyond professional courtesy.
Riley’s expression flashed with surprise or maybe something sharper before settling back into her usual easy mask. “Yeah, Shaw, I’m peachy. Living the dream out here writing officer incident reports and hoping my dog survives the next call.”
“Right.”
They reached their vehicles, parked side by side in the K-9 lot. Sarge had already climbed inside Riley’s vehicle, his tail wagging slowly. Maddox looked instinctively at the K-9 building where Zeus still was running around the yard.
“See you at the wellness committee meeting,” Riley said, opening her door. “Try to look less like you want to murder everyone. It’s bad for morale.”
“No promises.”
Riley’s laugh followed her as she walked to the K-9 yard to retrieve Zeus, and Maddox heard the engine turn over a moment later. She watched Riley drive away, then stood in the parking lot with her range bag and the uncomfortable realization that Riley was right.
She was talking about Jade, thinking about her too. Which meant the therapy sessions weren’t just annoying but were working their way into her head like a splinter she couldn’t quite dig out.
Maddox opened the chain-link fence door, and Zeus immediately pressed forward, shoving his wet nose against her hand in greeting. She scratched behind his ears, letting the simple contact ground her.
“Therapy’s bullshit,” she told him as they walked to her truck.
Zeus tilted his head, unconvinced.
“It is,” Maddox insisted, but the words felt hollow even as she said them.
She opened the door for Zeus and let him get in the passenger seat before closing the door and getting in the driver’s side. She sat there for a moment, hands on the wheel, staring at nothing. Riley’s voice echoed in her head: “You’re talking about it, which means it’s getting under your skin.”
Goddamn it.