Reid
Sullivan closed the folder in front of her.
"I assume whatever personal crisis prompted you to assault a civilian has now been resolved," she said evenly. "Because this office will not tolerate another incident."
His personal crisis was ongoing and there was no end in sight.
“You were commended for professionalism, Lawson,” Sullivan continued. “Try not to destroy that reputation with impulsive behavior.”
For a moment, Reid just stared at the director.
He didn’t deserve a commendation. He’d never deserved that commendation. It didn’t show Reid Lawson was objective. All it showed was that Reid Lawson was a failure of a husband and a failure of an IRS agent.
He pushed to his feet and strode out of the office.
"Lawson!”
He ignored her.
He crossed to his desk, pulled open the top drawer, and grabbed the glossy certificate.
Sullivan followed. His colleagues were already looking up.
"Everyone," Reid said loudly. "I need to correct something."
A faint line appeared between Sullivan's brows.
"Reid—"
He held up the commendation.
"This was issued on the basis that I conducted a thorough and objective investigation."
A harsh laugh escaped him.
"That's not what happened."
He looked around the room.
At the people who had congratulated him.
The people who respected him.
The people who thought he'd done his job well.
"I built a shoddy case," Reid said. "This commendation is not recognition of good work. It's recognition of a failure."
Sullivan's expression tightened.
"Lawson. That's enough."
He thought about Maya's face the moment the cuffs went on.
The look in her eyes.
The betrayal.
He would remember it for the rest of his life.
There was no hesitation when he tore the certificate.
The sound ripped through the room.
Paper split cleanly beneath his hands.
He dropped the pieces onto his desk.
Silence.
“Right,” she said. “Well. That’s… noted.” Sullivan held his eyes for a second longer, then gave a dismissive shake of her head. “Back to work,” she said to the room, the tone of command returning easily.
The office noise resumed, conversations picking back up, chairs shifting.
Diane was watching him. “How’s the hand?” she asked.
Reid paused, flexing his hand, remembering the satisfaction of smashing his fist into Julian Cross’s face. “It’s fine,” he said. “I wish I’d hit him harder.”
Brian let out a low whistle. “Guy had it coming.”
Wilson leaned back. “It was the best thing I’ve ever seen you do.”
Reid’s gaze lifted, annoyed that his colleagues were proud of him. “I arrested my innocent wife,” he said. “Don’t act like I’m the hero here.”
Diane leaned back in her chair, her expression changing, recalibrating. Brian gave a small nod.
“Yeah,” Wilson said. “Good point.”
Reid turned back to his screen.
The torn pieces of the commendation lay on his desk, the clean lines of the text broken and meaningless now.
By lunchtime, the attention on him had only slightly waned.
He pushed outside, feeling the relief of the fresh air.
He’d never deserved the commendation.
He was the kind of man who needed a book to teach him how to be a husband. He was the kind of man who had needed the lesson in the first place.
The memory of Maya’s face haunted him. Not just the arrest itself—not the cuffs, not the formal words, not the way her wrists had looked too small in his hands—but before that.
When she had been standing on the stage. When she’d spotted him and her face did that soft, automatic shift it always did when she saw him.
Like she was glad.
God.
He pressed the heel of his hand into his eye.
She’d told him she hadn’t done it. And he had doubled down.
As if it had ever made sense to him that his wife was lying.
He dragged a hand down his face.
Across the street, the construction crew was tearing out the new ramp.
Reid stared for a moment before he understood what he was looking at.
The slope had been wrong.
He watched one of the workers crouch near the fresh framing while another checked measurements.
I could make more of a difference, she had said. Nobody ever asks me before they build.
Maya had acted like that was an impossible fantasy. Something indulgent. Unrealistic. Greedy.
She should be greedy. He wanted her to be greedy. He wanted her to need things, so he could give them to her.
She was his wife. And he had failed her but wouldn’t ever fail her again.
Whatever came next—whatever she wanted, whatever she needed—he would do it.
If she wanted distance, he would give it.
If she wanted answers, he would find them.
If she wanted him to tear his entire career apart to prove the truth, he would.
And if she wanted a different job, he would make that happen, too.
The site was loud. A drill bit into concrete, voices carried over the open frame of what would eventually be a building.
Reid recognized a few of the contractors speaking with the foreman.
They cut off the conversation when he approached. “Lawson,” one said.
Reid didn’t bother with pleasantries.
“You worked with Maya for years,” he said.
The contractor nodded. “Yeah. Sports center, library, and—”
“And the community hall,” one of the other workers chimed in. “She managed to fix that mess when the new regulations came in.”
The foreman raised his eyebrows.
“You needed her on this job,” Reid told them. He gestured toward the ramp being demolished. “You build to code,” he said. “She builds for people.”
The drill somewhere behind them cut out. The sudden drop in noise made the quiet sharper.
Maya knew regulations better than everyone here, but she would’t just do the minimum. She’d make sure the building worked for everyone.
Reid thought about the way she’d said that’s not really a job.
Like the world simply had no place for someone with her specific brilliance when the opposite was true.
“Talk to your people,” Reid said to the workers. “Ask them about Maya Lawson. And then come see me. I work across the street.”
The architect caught up with him at the edge of the site.
“Naomi Carter,” she said, hard hat tucked under her arm. She didn’t offer her hand. “That thing you said. About building for people?”
Reid waited.
Naomi glanced back toward the site. “I’ve seen the community hall project. Your wife worked miracles with that.” A pause. “I want someone like that on my books.”
Maya made existing buildings better, but she could do so much more with a blank page instead of a building that was already wrong.
And the companies needed her. Reid spent his days pouring over financial accounts. He knew the cost of starting over and he knew what Maya’s work would be worth to a development company.
“She trained in architecture,” Reid said. “For one year and then she moved into industry. She understands design, she understands construction, she understands regulations. More importantly—she understands what people need.”
Reid was finished watching the world undervalue his wife.
“Bring her in at blueprint stage,” Reid said. “She should be part of the design process, not the cleanup.”
Then he named a figure.
Naomi’s eyes widened.
“That’s—”
He’d already done the calculation. Project timelines, delay penalties, redesign costs. Litigation exposure.
“It’s a fraction of what a six month delay costs your firm," Reid held her gaze. “Paying her is the most cost-efficient decision you'll make on a project."
Naomi looked back at the frame and bit her lip.
Reid didn’t push.
He didn’t need to.
They would be idiots not to want her.
Reid reached into his pocket, pulled out a pen. He flipped his own business card over, and wrote Maya’s name and number, the address of the Merritt’s.
“Introduce yourself,” he told Naomi. “Make her an offer. You’ll be lucky to have her.”
He should know. He’d been the luckiest man in the world. And the goddamn dumbest.