Caught In The Crossfires - Spinoff

31

Chapter 31

Lola

The day had gone by at a snail-like pace after my call with Detective Rollins. I spent the better part of the morning going over that night again and again in my head until I made myself sick thinking about it.

By midday, I  concluded that something awful had to have happened to Brody after he bolted from the shop that night. I wanted to reach out to his sister, but I was probably the last person she wanted to hear from after the way things between him and me ended.

Opening the thick steel door, I swallowed hard and then paused mid-step, feeling my cell phone vibrate in my pocket. I looked down at the name on the screen and blew out a sigh. Cristiano was calling, but I couldn't speak with him at the moment. Hitting the lock button, I tucked it back into my black slacks, hoping to make it up to him later.

I don't have time right now.

Nat...Professor Mullens kept me after class with his bullshit. He started apologizing for not informing me he was married. Saying things like he wanted me back because he was going to leave his pregnant wife and he was in love with me. I couldn't even say anything to him. My mind was too preoccupied with other things.

Like, where the hell was Brody, and why did the cops want to talk to me?

I breathed slowly through my nose and continued into the building letting the heavy door slam behind me. There was no one here, and if I hadn't known any better, I'd think the police station was closed. I walked up to the front desk, which was empty, and bounced on my toes, looking around for someone.

Thankfully the phone started ringing, and a pretty young black woman in uniform rounded the corner, her long curly brown hair pulled back into a tight pony at the top of her head. She smiled up at me before holding up an index finger and picking up the phone. "Miami-Dade PD, hold, please," she pressed the hold button and then turned back to me.

"Hello, Ma'am, I'm officer Keeley."

"Lola," I said with a nervous smile and clasped my hands together behind my back. I had to stop myself from reaching out to shake her hand as though this were a friendly meeting. Rightfully so, my nerves were shot—mind all over the place. I couldn't think straight.

"Okay...Lola," she kinked an eyebrow, giving me a perplexing look. Shit, I needed to get it together. "What can I help you with today?"

"What can you help me with?" Repeating her question, I nervously shifted my weight from one foot to the other. "Uhh..." I trailed off, unable to bring myself to say the words aloud.

"Are you here to file a report? If so, please have a seat over there," she pointed to a bench that had a man I didn't even realize was here handcuffed to one side of it. "And an officer will be with you soon."

"Uh, no," I shook my head, and her shapely eyebrows pulled together while her light brown eyes narrowed in confusion.

"No?"

"Yes," I shook my head. What the hell was that, Lola?

Clearing my throat, I swallowed the lump forming in it. "I meant, umm, I'm here to speak with Detective Rollins about a missing person...Broderick Jones...Uh, he goes by Brody, though...well, mostly, but Broderick is his government name. So that's what his family calls him."

I really needed to shut up before I started to make myself look suspicious. But even saying the words out loud made me feel unwell, and I'm sure she could see it on my face.

Officer Keeley's smile faltered for a brief moment before she nodded. "Ah, yes, the ex-girlfriend who was the last to see him. He's been expecting you." Her words made my stomach drop, and I felt a bit dizzy. I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly through my nose again before looking back at her and nodding. "Right this way."

She directed me toward the back of the bureau, and I glanced over at the man sitting on the bench as I followed behind her. His dark eyes cut into mine, and he licked the air in front of him, almost like he was tasting me before shouting obscenities in our direction.

"Ignore him," Officer Keeley looked back at him over her shoulder and shook her head. "Just a lousy drunken repeat offender."

After a short walk, Officer Keeley opened an office door a bit too comfortably and led me into a small room with a handsome dark-haired Hispanic looking man, possibly in his late twenties sitting at the desk. "Ms. Mariano's here to see you, Sir."

The very handsome man looked up from his computer, darkly eyeing Officer Keeley for a brief moment, and she sheepishly shifted her weight from one side of her incredibly curvaceous body to the other. Her cheeks turned a deep shade of red, making the corner of his full pink lips tip upward, and his nostrils flared before he cleared his throat.

"Thank you, Officer Keeley, leave us, and please, close the door behind you," he said to her as I watched their exchange from the sidelines. "Oh, and please come see me once Ms. Mariano has left."

"Yes, Sir," she whispered and quickly glanced over at me before leaving the room.

"Have a seat, Ms. Mariano," the detective said to me, and I took a seat in front of his huge mahogany desk. "You know why you're here, and I don't like to beat around the bush, so tell me what happened the night Brody came to the shop."

"Umm, okay, well, I went in because a coworker of mine was feeling unwell," I told Detective Rollins, tucking my hands into my lap and fidgeting with my fingers. "It was a slow evening, so I decided to close up a bit early when Brody came inside the shop."

"Yes, go on," Detective Rollins urged me to continue his dark brows pushing together in curiosity.

"Then we just caught up. He ordered a large coffee with extra creamer and a lemon poppyseed muffin," I lied through my teeth, hoping I was doing a convincing job. "He left about twenty minutes later."

If I told him what really happened between Brody and myself. It would not look good on both of us.

Me: because it would look like I had a motive to do something terrible to Brody.

Him: because if he is just hiding out because he's embarrassed over what he did. I didn't want him to go to jail. I just wanted him to apologize and move on.

I may not be in love with him any more, but that doesn't mean I didn't have love for him even when he's a complete idiot.

"And about what time was that?"

"Uh, I can't be too sure," I lightly shook my head, trying to remember the exact time, but I couldn't. "7:30-ish, maybe?"

"So is that all that happened? Your ex-boyfriend came in for a little chat and coffee," Detective Rollins asked, slightly slanting his head in question, and I nodded.

"And a muffin," I clarified, tilting my head to the side to match his. "But yes, that's what happened."

"Hmm," Detective Rollins's black eyes bore into mine, and I willed myself to hold it together. "Was there someone else around to witness this sequence of events as you say they happened, Ms. Mariano?"

"No," I shook my head. "As I said earlier, I sent the only other employee working that night home early because she wasn't feeling well."

"Hmm." Detective Rollins sat back in his seat and ran a hand over his thick beard. "Have you had any recent repairs to the shop? Because it looked like the front window had been smashed around the time he disappeared."

My blood ran cold, remembering that Cristiano had told me that he had to bust the window out to get into the shop because Brody had locked it behind himself before he attacked me.

Clearing my throat, I forced a smile. "Oh uh yes, that night after I closed up, someone threw a rock through one of my windows."

"Did you report it?"

"No," I told him. "I don't think that I did."

Detective Rollins rested his elbows on the table and brought a hand back to his chin, playing with his unkempt beard, his dark eyes still focused on my face. "Someone threw a rock into your place of business, and you didn't report it?"

"I thought about it, but I guess it slipped my mind. It's been a busy few weeks for us at the shop," I smiled as sincerely as I could manage. "Plus, you, of all people, should know how stupid kids can be. No point in ruining any lives for one mistake."

"That's an interesting way of looking at things," he tilted his head to the side, eyeing me intently. "Personally, I would have reported it because I do know firsthand how simple criminal activity can snowball to something much more."

"I'll take that into consideration next time," I said, and he gave me a forced smile.

"You do that," he clipped, and I clenched my jaw to stop myself from saying something that would land my ass in serious trouble.

"Have you heard from Brody since that night, Ms. Mariano?" Detective Rollins asked while leaning forward to scribble illegible markings into the notepad on the table in front of him.

"No, I haven't."

"And that didn't seem strange to you?"

"No, he's my ex-boyfriend. I don't make it a habit of keeping tabs on him or how often he should call me," I told Detective Rollins truthfully.

"But I thought you two were friends that hang out drinking coffee together while eating muffins," Detective Rollins looked up at me with a malicious curiosity in his dark brown, almost black eyes. "Lemon poppyseed muffins, wasn't it?"

"I never said we were friends, Detective," I shrugged my shoulders non-committedly with a forced laugh that sounded all too real if you didn't know me better. "He just missed me and came by to see me. That was all."

"Oh, I see," he wrote something else down before looking back up at me. "What's your business with Cristiano Luna, Ms. Mariano?"

"Excuse me? What do you mean by my business with Cristiano?" I thought I was here to talk about Brody.

"One of my fellow officers notified me that you two knew one another," he confessed, and the way his jaw ticked told me he didn't care too much for the man I was currently sleeping with. "And I'm just curious what a girl like you is doing with a man like that?

"And what kind of man is that?"

"So that's the game you're going to play, Ms. Mariano?

"Game?" I asked. " I have no idea what you're talking about Detective Rollins and if you must know. Cristiano Luna is my lover."

Detective Rollins choked on what I could only assume was his own spit while I held his stare. Once he caught his breath, he wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

"He's...your...lover?" He coughed out between words.

"That's what I said, isn't it," I told him as I felt my phone go off in my pocket.

Reaching down, I pulled it out to check who it was, and I smiled when I saw the text from the devil himself informing me that a car would be at my place to pick me up at 8:30 and to have a bag packed. I tucked my phone away and rolled my eyes back up to look at the detective unamused. "Is that a problem?"

"No, not at all," he said, but I could tell he was lying.

"Good," I replied, ready to leave.

"I mean, he's old enough to be your father," snorting under his breath, his eyes gave me a once over before landing back on my face, and I had to fight the urge to roll mine. "You just don't strike me as the kind of girl to date old men, but to each their own, right?"

Detective Rollins snickered, and the smug way he said it didn't sit well with me.

"Well, he doesn't fuck me like an old man, in fact, quite the opposite," I confessed to him, getting up from the interrogation table, now looking down at him. "But if there's nothing left to discuss, Daddy's waiting."

"Nope," he held his hands up in a surrendering motion and laughed, obviously taken with my sudden boldness.

"You're free to go.

"Great." That's what I thought, asshole.

"Don't leave town, Ms. Mariano," he called out from behind me as I exited his office.

"I wasn't planning on it, Detective Rollins," I shouted back over my shoulder before leaving the station.

Shit. I needed to talk to Cristiano, and I needed to speak to him now. Because what the hell was that?

ツ hope   you enjoyed it.

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