Chapter 33
Thirty Three
The podium light was too bright. Erin adjusted the mic once, twice, until the feedback died down and the room stilled.
She could hear the soft whir of camera shutters and the click of pens tapping against notebooks.
Her uniform collar felt snug, tighter than usual, the fabric stiff under the weight of command eyes behind her.
She’d done this dozens of times. Stand straight, project calm, give the update. But her pulse thudded anyway.
“The joint task force between Boston Police and the Massachusetts State Police executed several warrants late last night,” she said, reading cleanly from her notes.
“These arrests are part of a broader effort to disrupt narcotics distribution networks that have operated within the greater Boston area.”
A few flashes burst near the front row. Erin blinked through them and kept her voice even.
“Seven individuals were taken into custody without incident. Evidence was recovered at multiple locations. The investigation remains active, and additional warrants are expected in the coming days.”
She glanced once toward the back, where Jamie stood half-hidden behind another reporter. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second before Erin looked away. It steadied her, somehow.
“Questions?” she said.
The first few were routine. A follow-up about agency coordination.
Another about whether this connected to the retail theft cases announced last week.
Erin handled each without hesitation, the words coming clean and clipped.
Then a man near the aisle, a freelance stringer she recognized mostly by reputation, raised his voice over the low murmur.
“Can you confirm whether the mayor’s daughter has ties to any of these suspects?”
The room shifted. Chairs squeaked. Erin’s breath caught. For a beat too long, no one spoke.
“We’re aware of those reports,” she said finally, careful, professional. “She’s not a suspect. She’s being looked after, and her family is cooperating fully.”
The silence stretched a half second longer than it should have. A few mics pushed closer. Someone murmured something she couldn’t catch. Erin’s fingers tightened around the sides of the podium.
“That’s all I can say at this time,” she added quickly. “Any further details would compromise ongoing efforts.”
She nodded once toward the crowd, a signal the briefing was over, and stepped back from the mic. Her commander’s eyes found hers immediately, hard and unreadable. Erin felt the blood rush in her ears. She could hear her own sentence echoing. She’s being looked after. She’s being looked after.
By the time she made it back to her office, her inbox had already started to fill. Links, timestamps, social media clips. A headline scrolled across her monitor in a tab someone had forwarded: “PIO Confirms Mayor’s Daughter Linked to Drug Investigation.”
She closed it with a shaky breath and sat down. The hum of the air vent above her was louder than it should have been.
Her phone buzzed.
You handled yourself fine.
Define fine.
Better than the others would’ve. You okay?
Always.
She stared at the last word. Always. It didn’t feel true, but it was what she knew how to say.
* * *
The rest of the afternoon blurred into short meetings and carefully worded emails. She drafted a release to clarify her comment, sent it for approval, and tried to focus on anything that wasn’t the hollow in her chest.
Every time she looked at her inbox, another subject line mentioned the press conference.
“Clarification requested.” “Media follow-up.” “URGENT: second round of statements?” The words bled together until they stopped meaning anything.
She rewrote the same two sentences half a dozen times before giving up, leaning back in her chair until it creaked under her shoulder blades.
Her commander stopped by once. He didn’t close the door, just leaned on the frame and said, “Stick to the talking points next time.” It wasn’t a yell, but it landed like one. Erin nodded, promised she would, and waited until he walked away before letting her hand fall flat against the desk.
The hum of the station pressed in on her.
Phones ringing. Radios crackling. The low, constant shuffle of people moving past her door.
She could feel every sound scraping against her nerves.
The press had already started calling for comment, and someone from the communications team had fielded half of them before looping her back in.
She gave them the same line each time: “We don’t comment on family connections within active investigations. ” It only made her throat tighter.
At one point, she caught her reflection in the dark glass of her monitor and almost didn’t recognize herself. The uniform still looked right, the posture still correct, but the woman in the glass looked tired in a way that clean lines could not fix.
She minimized the news tab again, but not before catching another headline: “Mayor’s Daughter Questioned in Ongoing Probe.” The words made her stomach roll. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t true. Once it was out there, it would live forever.
She stood, walked to the breakroom, poured coffee she didn’t want, and tried to breathe through the noise in her head. A few detectives passed her on their way out, and one of them, Reyes, gave her a look that hovered somewhere between sympathy and caution. She hated both.
Back at her desk, she typed another draft of the release, this one stripped bare to the facts. No emotion. No room for misinterpretation. She sent it up the chain, folded her hands in her lap, and stared at the cursor blinking on a blank follow-up email until her vision blurred.
The day moved without her. Conversations shifted to other cases.
The lighting changed as the sun dropped behind the building, leaving the bullpen bathed in a dull amber glow.
Erin forced herself to answer two more routine media inquiries, each one an exercise in control, and finally exhaled when the last call ended.
She didn’t realize how long she had been holding her breath until her chest ached.
When the clock hit six, she was still typing. The bullpen had thinned out, a handful of detectives lingering, a few patrol officers waiting on reports. The TV near her desk ran silent footage of her own press conference, subtitles crawling across the bottom.
She looked away just as a burst of motion caught the corner of her eye. A sergeant jogged past with his radio clipped to his shoulder, voice tight. Another followed. Then someone shouted from the far side of the room.
“Shots fired! Boston Common!”
The noise doubled. Phones rang. Chairs scraped back. Erin’s stomach dropped.
“Units on scene reporting multiple injuries,” the radio crackled. “Possible homicide.”
Erin was already on her feet when the call sliced through the bullpen.
“A homicide in the Common. Major response.”
Her pulse jumped hard, sharp enough to make her vision tighten. She grabbed her notepad, her bag, and her radio without thinking. Someone called across the room, “Calhoun, you’re up. You’re lead on comms.”
“Copy,” she said, though her voice felt like it came from somewhere far away.
She hit the stairs fast, her shoes echoing off the concrete, and pushed through the heavy door into the cold night air. Her cruiser sat where she’d left it, dew gathering on the windshield. She climbed in, turned the key, and the engine roared awake beneath her shaking hands.
Dispatch chatter crackled immediately.
“Units on scene confirm: female, early twenties.”
“Possible witnesses fleeing toward Tremont.”
“Notify Command.”
And, buried fast between calls — quiet, clipped, like someone hadn’t meant to broadcast it:
“…mayor’s daughter…”
Erin’s grip tightened on the wheel. Her breath hitched once, hard.
She pulled into traffic, lights flashing, siren weaving her through the downtown grid. The sound became one long note in her bloodstream. She tried to focus on the road, but her mind kept snagging on that one impossible phrase.
The mayor’s daughter.
The city blurred past — brick buildings, shuttered shops, empty sidewalks — all streaked blue and red as she threaded through intersections.
When she turned toward the Common, the sky itself seemed to pulse with the glow. Dozens of cruisers. Floodlights cutting through the trees. Tape strung in a wide perimeter. The shapeless movement of uniforms, EMTs, detectives converging all at once.
She parked half on the curb and was out before the cruiser fully stopped. The cold air hit her like a slap, carrying sirens, radio crosstalk, and the rising buzz of onlookers whispering behind the tape.
Erin squared her shoulders, shoved down the tightening in her chest, and started toward the cluster of lights.
The night swallowed her whole.