THE CHASE - Connor x OC (I Am Sequel)

Chapter 48

Connor opened up the backdoor as Nick and I began sorting through the evidence box, revealing Blueberry. She ran towards me excitedly, and I smiled.

"She always misses her mom, and I'm just like 'I'm here too.' She doesn't care," Connor said, shaking his head. I chuckled, as I gently pet Blueberry and she let her head softly drop into my hand. She laid next to my feet and Connor sighed. 

"She loves you," I smiled. He shrugged. 

"I know." 

Connor pulled up a chair to the table, and Nick pulled on his pair of gloves.

"So if we find something...how do we make this not illegal?" Connor asked.

"I will drop this box off no matter what to the prosecutor tonight. If we find something, I will anonymously inform Kaela's lawyer, who will presumably speak to the judge about it. Once that's out, there's only two homicide detectives to reopen the case," Nick said, turning to Connor. "You'll already know what's here, and Kam can be arrested."

"This feels...very unethical," Connor cringed.

"It is," Nick sighed, sorting through stacks of paper. 

"We're doing what right here," I explained. I reached into the box and immediately picked up a ziplock bag and saw a phone inside. 

"I was right! A phone or something!" Nick smiled.

"Yeah..." I realized. I opened the bag and took out the phone. It was lightly splattered with blood. I tapped it and saw that it was locked.

"Do you want me to?" Connor offered.

"No, I've got it." 

I plugged the phone into my finger and began analyzing it's contents.

Downloading...

Downloading...

Analyzing...

"This is his phone. This is the victims. This is Theo's," I explained.

"Anything special?" Nick asked excitedly. 

I felt myself becoming overwhelmed with emotion.

"He was writing a message to Kaela. He never finished it. He said 'Why did you do this?'"

"Well...that's not good. Anything else?" Nick asked.

"It wasn't written until after his time of death. There's other messages too. One to a man called...Ashton. He broke up with Ashton that morning saying that there was someone else. Ashton asked if it was because he was an android...and Theo told him that it didn't matter. Ashton began sending him messages about how he told someone he was a deviant. Theo didn't respond," I answered. 

"Ashton is a very similar name to Asher, Charlotte," Nick said. 

"I know..." I sighed. I flipped the phone over, and looked at the blood. It was a handprint. "Did they ever analyze this blood?"

"DNA analysis revealed it was Theo's, yes," Nick answered, looking at the forensic results sheet. I stared at the handprint, looking for anything else odd.

"Anything else?"

"They didn't test the phone much. That was all they found about it," Nick shrugged.

"A mysterious Ashton isn't much to go off of. I don't know if that's enough for reasonable doubt," Connor explained.

"But...a lack of fingerprints is," I said staring at the phone screen. "This is the killer's hand. There's no finger prints on this handprint. Where was the phone found?"

"In Theo's hand..."

"The real killer planted it. If we can trace these text messages back to Ashton back to a phone number, we'll have him," I explained. Nick smiled.

"I knew you could do it, Bolts."

"Couldn't Asher have put the phone number under another name?" Connor asked.

"We'll have to hope he wasn't smart enough to not send these texts from himself. If he sent them from his head, right? They would be connected to his serial number."

"But that's enough to cast reasonable doubt on Kaela. We can at least free an innocent woman and reopen the investigation," Nick acknowledged. "Maybe something else would turn up if we don't have that."

Connor sighed. "You guys scare me."

"What time is it?" Nick asked.

"4:00," I explained.

"We have to get this to the prosecutor now. Before he catches on. I'll call Kaela's lawyer in the car. Let's go," Nick said, packing up the box. 

~

"This is definitely a hitch in the plan," Nick sighed.

"What?" Connor asked from the backseat of the car.

"They're totally going to recognize me if I go in here," Nick said, looking up at the Justice building. "And Charlotte can't go in. She's suspended. We have 5 minutes to come up with another plan."

"If only we had someone who had a badge, and was relatively unrelated to the case, and-"

"Alright, fine," Connor said jumping out the car with the box. He ran into the tower quickly. 

"So he just forgave you and you're lovebirds again? Just like that, huh?" Nick asked as Connor went through the front doors.

"I don't know. Hank must've said something," I shrugged.

"Wife cheats on you and you forgive her in like...days."

"Well, considering everything going on, and everything that happened, we had to move on. Otherwise we would've been trying to get through the hardest time in our lives without each other."

"Connor is a simp," Nick said, looking straight forward.

I turned to him and stared quizzically. "A simp?"

"2020 was a hell of a year, Bolts. Urban Dictionary it with that computer brain of yours."

I back turned to Nick and gasped. "My husband is not a simp!"

"I will happily admit mine is," Nick answered. "You can't tell me Gavin isn't absolutely subservient to me for the simple fact that I cook breakfast every morning."

"It took you like a decade to tell the man you had a crush on him. I think you're the simp."

"Having a crush does not make me a simp," Nick defended.

"Over the years, how many cases did you take for him? How many patrol rotations? Oh...how much paperwork did you do for him? Didn't he break his taser at one point, and you switched it with his so he didn't get written up? And-"

"Okay, okay. I'm the simp of the group," Nick sighed. "But Gavin's a himbo."

"A wh-" I began when we were interrupted by the sound of gunshots ringing through the air.

~

A/N - I will completely pretend that I was not inspired for this entire last section by comments on Chapter 17 of the first book. I would tag the individuals specifically but I don't want them to get notifications and accidentally have any spoilers so I'll tag them like this.

@/JoopFoop and @/LetsGoUpstate they both absolutely cracked me up so I had to write a "simp" section to this book.

Thx guys!