Chapter 5

“Oh, so you’re not dead!”

When Maxine heard his distinctive New York accent, the relief that overtook her body made her nearly collapse on the stairs. Strong arms reached out to steady her as she swayed, and that was when she realized that Miles had followed her into the building. She had no time to address him; she was too busy en route to kill her boss.

“I’ve been calling you! Where have you been?!” she cried as she reached the top of the stairs and stepped through Brooks’s open door.

There he was, leaning back in his wooden desk chair with his feet crossed on the desk, a pose she was sure he’d only affected after hearing her come in.

“Where have I been? Who had her phone off all damn day? I was about to send out a search party,” he said, his crystal blue eyes moving from her to Miles, who hadn’t entered but was hovering awkwardly in the doorway.

“Can I help you, sir?” Brooks said to Miles.

“Oh, he’s with me. I told him not to come in, but he’s allergic to listening.”

Holding up a finger, Miles said, “I was actually going for valiant or chivalrous, but go off.”

Maxine got a bad feeling in her stomach when she saw Brooks regarding Miles with a small smile.

Removing his feet from the desk and standing to greet the new addition to his office, Brooks held out a hand and said, “Your chivalry might be a bit misplaced with this one, mister…”

“Pérez. Miles Pérez. And that won’t stop me from trying, sir,” Miles said, taking Brooks’s hand firmly.

“Clearly. Nice to meet you, Pérez, Miles Pérez. I’m Brooks, Gavin Brooks.”

He then turned back to Maxine and said, “You’ve never brought a boy home before, sweetie. Is there something you wanna tell me?”

Maxine threw him the death glare to end all death glares, but he was unfazed.

“Brooks, what the hell happened today? Your messages made no sense!”

“Sure they did,” Brooks said with a scoff, walking back to his desk to pick up his phone. “By the way, you really need a safe, I’ve been telling you this. Your desk drawer, Maxine?” he said with a scowl as he scrolled what was presumably their text thread from earlier.

“So, you’re the one who broke in? Nice of you to let me know!”

“Well, I would have, but as we have already mentioned, someone turned her phone off.”

“You left me a ton of cryptic texts about needing the memory card immediately, but didn’t think to send a final one saying you’d gone to my place and taken it?!”

Brooks opened his mouth to reply, but stayed like that for an extended moment before saying, “Didn’t have time, I’m afraid. Had to get it into the right hands, and besides, I would’ve been texting a ghost.”

“Me? A ghost?! What about you? I got back here yesterday afternoon, and it looked like you had been kidnapped!”

Brooks snorted a laugh. “I could never be kidnapped, are you kiddin’ me?”

“That is categorically untrue, and you’re not getting any younger; you could really stand to lose the James Bond complex.”

Turning towards Miles, Brooks said, “My daughter. She worries about me.”

Maxine knew that he was joking, but still found it grating when he said things like this. She didn’t want to be thought of as his kid; she wanted to be his partner. If she was honest, she really believed that the retrieval of the card would be the deciding factor in that matter. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

“So? Where were you!? And what happened with the card?” she said, flinging her arms into the air in a bid to interrupt the weird camaraderie inexplicably brewing between Brooks and Miles.

Brooks took a deep breath and stepped back to his desk to sit down, fingers clasped in his lap.

“To answer your first question… well, I won’t. It’s nunya business.”

“Okay, Maui,” she said.

Understandably missing her Moana reference, he went on. “I got back and saw your messages. I reached out to my contact to say we’d retrieved the evidence before realizing you didn’t leave it here, hence my hurry.”

Maxine let out a long sigh and said, “Shit, I need to tell Eashan he can unlatch the door.”

“Well, we do need to address the security issue at that building of yours, young lady,” Brooks said, but Maxine couldn’t deal. She turned to Miles instead.

“Can you do me a favor?”

“You know it.”

Unlocking her phone and navigating to Eashan’s contact, she handed it to Miles and said, “Can you go and call Eashan and tell him it was a false alarm; a friend just came by to get something I was holding for him, and it was an emergency? Make something up?”

Miles seemed frozen in thought for a moment before nodding once as he said, “Consider it done.” Then, he turned on his heel and descended the stairs.

She felt a small rush of relief before remembering the conversation they’d been in.

“So? What was on the card?”

“Nothing.”

Maxine blinked for a few long moments before saying, “Come again?”

“The card was wiped, or more likely, had never been filled. Looks like you intercepted it a bit too early, doll.”

“Don’t call me that. And are you sure? No one got to it before you?”

Blinking at her in kind, Brooks said, “And who would have known where to look for it? Maxine, don’t tell me you blew your cover.”

“No! I didn’t!”

“Well, then why would you think anyone else could have gotten to it first?”

“I don’t know, okay?!” she said, and was pissed off to no end when she felt tears pricking at the backs of her eyes. She walked over and sat down in one of the chairs opposite Brooks’s desk. “I just got home to find my room ransacked, sorry if I’m a little jumpy.”

It wasn’t just that. She was shaken. Shaken to discover that her greatest victory was, in fact, a spectacular failure. Not only had they wasted the time of their detective contact, Adrienne Gladstone, but it had been her fault entirely. Why did she have to turn off her stupid phone? Why hadn’t she charged it properly? Why hadn’t she slept properly? Why was she fucking up royally right now in every possible way?

The answer that occurred to her made her stomach roil.

She had let herself get distracted.

“While we’re asking questions,” Brooks said, breaking her train of thought, “Where were you getting home from? And who exactly is this Miles you apparently trust with your unlocked phone?”

Maxine froze for a moment, only just registering that she had, in fact, trusted Miles enough to hand him her unlocked phone. The realization was oddly unsettling, but she did her best to shake it off.

Entirely ignoring the questions about Miles, but still not managing much coherence, she said, “I was just— I thought you were— I thought something had—” Finally, she cut herself off with a small growl and stood. “Okay, look. I messed up. Obviously, there was some kind of misunderstanding in my research at the catering hall. I must have thought the passing of the card to give information was actually just the return of the same card empty, ready to be filled again. My bad. And I will correct it.”

“Well,” Brooks said with a shrug, “We’ll see if I leave it to you, but go on.”

Maxine bared her teeth for just a moment before continuing. “And I’ll admit, I… let my emotions get the better of me. And I was irresponsible today. I should have made sure I was available, and it will not happen again, I can promise you that.”

What Brooks did next was the last thing she ever expected. He leaned back in his chair, tilted his head to the side, and smiled as he said, “I like this, whatever’s happened to you. It’s not like you to let emotions get in the way. Even though you fucked up, this is nice to see.”

“I’m so glad I could entertain you,” she said, deadpan.

“No, no,” he said, standing and waving his hands. “Not entertainment. Because if you recall, I actually care about what happens to you, kid. I’m just glad to see this side of you, that’s all.”

“What side?” she said, again, hating the level of emotion in her voice.

“That one,” Brooks said with a smile.

Maxine blew a puff of air up out of her mouth, and it made some pieces of her long dark hair do a little wave.

𓂃🖊

“Okay, man, level with me. Did she just tell you to say that?” Eashan said on the other end of Maxine’s phone line.

Miles let out a quiet sigh, then said, “Fine, yes. You’re right. I’m not a great liar, but can you at least pretend you bought it? For my sake?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line before Eashan’s voice came through again, this time playful and… Unexpectedly high.

“You really like her, huh?”

“Uh. I mean—”

“All that stuff about wanting to be friends; man, I knew that was just game.”

“I will neither confirm nor deny the veracity of your statements,” Miles said, interjecting boldly so that he wouldn’t be cut off this time.

“Oh wow, are you a lawyer in addition to being an Uber driver, or do you watch too much Law and Order?”

“I watch TV with my grandmother.”

“Understood.”

“So we good? You got the message?”

“Yeah, Maxine asked you to lie and tell me everything was okay, but I should probably still sleep with the big kitchen knife under my pillow just in case. Got it!”

“No, that—”

“Relaaaax, I’m just joking. I’ll pretend you lied real good, I promise.”

With a sigh, Miles said, “Thanks, Eashan.”

“Oh please, call me Eash. It seems like you and Eenie are gonna be friends for longer than today, so we might as well be on shortened-name basis.”

“Eenie?”

“That’s my nickname for her, but don’t call her that, she will actually kill you.”

“Wow, okay.”

“Don’t feel left out, I’ll come up with one for you eventually,” Eashan said.

Then, before Miles could respond, he added, “In fact, I just did. Bye bye, Mai Mai.”

“Mai Mai?!”

The call ended.

Miles stood there on the street outside Brooks’s office, staring down at the phone. He dearly hoped that Eashan wouldn’t just break down and tell Maxine that Miles had failed to deliver on his promise.

The guy knew he was safe, and that was what mattered.

Miles took a moment to take a few deep breaths and look around. Taking stock.

In less than forty-eight hours, his life had been kind of flipped on its head. The advent of Maxine Alvarez —not just in his physical but mental presence— was all-encompassing. For one thing, he hadn’t made enough cash to justify taking a day off in as long as he could remember. He probably should have worked and saved what he made, but she was too interesting. He had to see her, and had nearly given up on the possibility until he got her text the night previous. Then, they’d had the best day. Only to have it shattered by returning home to threats and panic in the form of a torn-up room and a flood of messages.

And now, here they were, and he was meeting her boss, which felt weirdly like meeting her father.

Just as he’d decided to go back inside and tell her the task was finished, a nearby voice startled him so badly that he nearly dropped the phone.

“Hey man, you live around here?”

Miles looked up to see a young Hispanic guy who looked vaguely familiar, but whom he couldn’t place.

When the guy registered how much he had startled Miles, he said, “Sorry, didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“Nah man, it’s all good. And no, I don’t live here, why?”

The guy made a sound of annoyance and looked away. “Damn man, I’m not cut out for this shit,” he muttered to himself, then went on to grumble unintelligibly.

Eventually, unsure what else to do, Miles said, “You good, bro?”

“Yeah,” the guy said, waving a hand, “It’s just my boss givin’ me a side job even though I told him I’m not good at it. Wastin’ my time, since he’s only payin’ me if I finish it.”

Miles sighed. Sometimes he wished he didn’t have one of those faces that random strangers trusted, and therefore unloaded their problems to. He was like a beacon for it.

“What’s the job?” Miles said, inwardly rolling his own eyes at his propensity to humor people who did this to him.

Making another tsk of annoyance, he said, “I’m supposed to find this girl I worked with, Trina, but I ain’t no detective. I got next to nothing to go on, just the very small chance that she was at this address yesterday.”

The guy motioned over at a building a few doors down. Miles made a grunt of acknowledgement and nodded as the guy went on to say, “Can’t believe I never got her number. I got a lot from her, if you know what I’m sayin’, but not her number.”

At that moment, the phone in Miles’s hand buzzed, and he instinctively looked down, spotting a text from Eashan that said, “Out on the fire escape with my air rifle just in case.” 

Shaking his head, Miles looked up and said, “Well, good luck, man. Sorry I couldn’t help.”

“Nah, all good, bro. Here,” he said, stepping forward and handing Miles a card. “If you happen to meet anyone named Trina, call this number. She’s young, like twenty-three maybe, I don’t know, I never asked. But she’s like smokin' hot, man. Amazing tits.” As he said this, he laughed and held out his hands as if holding two watermelons.

Miles felt his eyebrows go up. “I’ll keep my eyes out.”

“Yeah, I bet you will! Thanks, man!” the guy said, then walked off.

If the best description the guy could give was that “Trina” was super hot with amazing tits, then Miles agreed that he was very bad at detective work.

For a brief moment, he had considered suggesting that the guy hire an actual detective, but when he looked down at the card in his hand, he was massively relieved that he hadn’t.

a/n: hehehe you were all wrong. I mean, your instincts were correct, and I confess that Brooks was originally going to turn up dead, but that's not how it ended up going! In general, I am discovering the story as I go, and sometimes the characters decide things for me, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

However, after writing this, I got a download of what the entire rest of the story will consist of. We'll see how much that outline gets stuck to (probably not much) but it's wild the way it all unfolded, regardless! Also, I promise someone will die in the next chapter 🤭 BUT WHO?!

THANK YOU FOR READING AND COMMENTING I LOVE YOU