Page 82 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
The fire hisses. Retreats. The sprinklers are winning, the building saving itself messily, belatedly, with the grace of a system that waited until the last possible moment to do its job.
I stumble into the corridor, soaked and shivering. Water is streaming from my hair, my clothes plastered to my body. I look like a wet poodle robbing a Staples. But it doesn’t matter.
The bag guys are caught. The evidence is safe. And the building is standing.
I’d call that a pretty great act-three victory.
“Everly!” A voice calls out to me through the downpour.
Out of the steam and water, a shape materializes. Moving fast. Broad shoulders, dark curly hair, dripping wet. Hands clutched around my forgotten hockey stick. Water runs in rivers down his face, but his eyes find me in an instant—ice blue and devastating.
He came after me.
I could cry.
Beckett came after me.
He stops ahead of me, shouting over the sprinklers. “Are you insane?”
“Probably!”
“You ran into a burning building. I was?—”
“I got the evidence!” I hold up my shirt (don’t get excited, not that much), the folder visible above my waistband.
“You ran into a burning building for paper?—”
“For proof. For Cole’s freedom. For your name.” I wiggle out the folder—the paper trail of a corrupt betting ring, soggy and cold. “Without this, they walk. Your record stays dirty. Cole goes to prison with no leverage. This is what makes it right.”
He stares at me. Water cascades over both of us, dripping down the stern lines of his face. His lips part slightly, his brows drawing together as though trying to make sense of me.
Then I hold out the photograph.
It’s water-spotted and the glass is cracked—it must have happened when I hit the floor, a single fracture line running diagonally, bisecting the two buddies and the boy between them. But the faces are clear. The grins are clear. The before picture, damaged but surviving.
“This was on his desk,” I say. Quietly. Under the sound of the water, the hiss of the dying fire.
He takes it.
Looks at it.
And something in his expression breaks, the hard lines softening, the slope of his shoulders letting down just a little. The way a single degree changes ice to water.
“You saved this for me?” he says, his voice breaking.
“I thought you’d want it.”
And then he looks up at me. Nods.
And quietly, Mr. Blue Line Benson falls apart.
BECKETT
Get. Yourself. Together!
Yes, I’m standing here in the hallway, crying.
Yes, I hate myself a little for it—not just the crying, but my anger and the terrible fear that made me scramble to find Everly, even if I had to light myself on fire to do it.
