Luke:
The precinct smells like burnt coffee and tension. I'm mentally and physically exhausted, and it’s barely morning. Gray light leaking through the high windows, but everyone’s already humming with the news. The shooting. The alley. Two men dead, one of them wearing a badge.
I step through the doors and every conversation falters, like someone hit pause on the world. Heads turn. Whispers scrape the walls. I keep my shoulders square, my eyes forward, but the weight of their stares rides me all the way to the captain’s office.
They’ve already decided what I am.
Inside, Captain doesn’t bother with small talk. He’s not the kind of man who softens the blade before it cuts. Papers sit in a neat stack on his desk, my name clipped to the top.
“Sit,” he says.
I don’t.
“You know why you’r
