Love is Dangerous

1. Wildfire

It was a quiet, normal day in Bath, Somerset, where Charlotte Cornell was working as a policewoman.

She started working there a couple of years before and, since the beginning, she proved to be one of the best cops of the police station. She was respected by her colleagues and, even though she was a fairly shy girl, almost everyone there seemed to like her.

They knew almost nothing about her past; just that previously she had worked in Newcastle, and then she decided to move to the South of England to change her life and, if possible, to have a better career.

At that very moment she was at the police station, chatting with her few female colleagues. They were all friends in that office, so Charlotte really loved the time they spent together; even if they usually had to deal with killers and thieves, they were all very happy about their lives and their job.

Charlotte, Lydia and Lizzie were talking and laughing together during a break, when their boss suddenly ran into the room: it was something so unusual that all of them immediately looked at him. What was the matter?

- Charlotte? – he asked, with a weird expression on his face. He was smiling but seemed worried at the same time.
She followed him in the nearby room, where no one else could listen to them...even if probably all her friends were trying to eavesdrop from behind the door.

- What happened? – she asked, smiling.
- This... - he said, giving her an envelope full of pictures.

Charlotte looked at them and almost gasped when she noticed that those photos showed the walls of a building, a huge abandoned building in the Southern area of the town. On the walls, her full name was written over and over and over again.
Now yes, she was worried too.

She looked directly into the eyes of her boss; he was her same age, but seemed way older than Charlotte, probably because he had spent almost his entire life as a policeman.
Mark was a man with dark blonde hair and blue eyes, and it was like all the difficult situations he had faced were visible on his body, like little scratches on his cheeks.

On the other hand, Charlotte was 30 and had started to work only 5 years before: the first 3 years in Newcastle, the last 2 in Bath...

- How do you explain this? – she asked him.
- I don't know... - he said, looking around the room, as if he could expect to find the solution in that place, close to them.
- Is there... - he added – is there...something you want to tell me? Something you must tell me? –

Charlotte was so surprised she couldn't even answer – No... - she whispered.

- Cornell? – he insisted, and that time it was her boss asking the question, not a friend anymore.
- No! – she replied with more determination. The idea that she could have something to hide was an insult for her. She was a good cop.

Her boss, Mark Williams, finally seemed a little embarrassed for the way he was treating her.
- I'm sorry, I was just wondering... -
- What? – now she knew she could take control of the conversation.
- If you have any enemy, or maybe just someone who would like to...maybe make fun of you like that. Is it possible? –

She started to walk about the room, thinking and thinking again. At the end the answer was always the same.

- No, it's not possible. –
- Good, then... - he sighed. It was a great relief that one of his favourite agents was not involved in something wrong.

Also, even if it was just Charlotte's opinion, he also seemed happy to know that she was not in danger.
They smiled at each other and they were ready to leave the room, when a phone call informed them that there was an emergency.