Chapter 6

“There’s nothing you can say, kid, you’re off the case.”

Just like that, it was as if he’d punched her right in the gut. Overwhelmed with the feeling that she might cry, she felt herself plop back into the uncomfortable wooden chair and folded her arms across her chest.

“Are you even gonna tell me where you were yesterday? Or is that now classified information?”

Brooks gritted his teeth and let out a huff of air before glancing out the window and muttering, “I was in jail.”

“What?!” Maxine cried, standing from her chair.

“Sit down, it’s not a big deal. It was just the holding cell.”

“But… But…”

“Down, girl, and I’ll tell you,” he said, waving a finger at her like she was indeed an unruly puppy.

Obeying sheerly out of shock, Maxine lowered herself back into the chair, unblinking, as Brooks began to explain.

“I got an emergency call from Gladstone’s office, and I went down there to find out what it was about. She relayed the new information, and I told her the case was getting too big for us to stay involved. She didn’t like that, and the conversation got a bit… heated.”

“Heated?” she said, raising a suggestive eyebrow. Maxine had long suspected that Brooks held a candle for Adrienne Gladstone, but he was masterful at denying it, even to himself. If her instincts were correct, they had some kind of past, but they had both agreed not to speak of it.

“Mind outta the gutter,” said Brooks dismissively.

“Go on,” Maxine said in a conciliatory tone. “What was the information?”

With a deep breath, he said, “That’s beside the point.”

Maxine scowled and opened her mouth to protest, but Brooks went on.

“We started bickering, I said some things that weren’t strictly true or necessary. Gladstone got angry, and into the clink I went.”

“Wait… She can just do that?”

“Technically, her partner did it. She got annoyed I was monopolizing their time, which is rich, considering Gladstone hired me out of her pocket. Not that the rest of the force knows that.”

Privately, Maxine had always thought, from hearing Brooks’s descriptions, that the entire dynamic between him, Detective Gladstone, and her partner would make a fantastic TV show. It was already her favorite IRL show to tune into, even if only in retellings.

“That explains why you didn’t call or text. But how could she just hold you like that? On what grounds?”

He shrugged. “Even when the cops aren’t evil, they’re still crooked. Drunk with power. That’s why I’ll never be one of them, nor will you. You made a good decision, there.”

Maxine swallowed with difficulty, as always when this topic arose. It was true; she was not then, nor would she ever be, a police detective. Only, it wasn’t for a lack of desire to be. Brooks didn’t know that, and she would never tell him so.

“So, how did you get out?”

“Gladstone took pity and let me out this morning, claiming she didn’t know her partner had kept me overnight. But she said it in a way that made me sure she did know.”

“That is some intense foreplay,” Maxine said with a wry smile.

“Would you stop with that, kid?”

“If you stop calling me kid.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“Well then, neither can I.”

“So, then,” Brooks said, breezing past that point in the conversation, “I got back, saw your messages about the evidence, and hurried to tell her we had it before checking where you put said evidence, as I’ve already explained.”


“But I don’t understand, what makes the case too big for us?”

At this, he leaned forward and clasped his hands, laying them neatly across his messy desk.

“I know you’re not technically new to this, kid,” he said, and Maxine pulled a face at him. “But I have to trust my gut on this. There are some areas I don’t wanna work in. The drug stuff was bad, and the cartel connections already put this job in the red zone. When Gladstone added one more straw to the pile, that was it for me.”

“What straw was it?”

Just as she asked this, a slight knock sounded at the door. Looking over through the frosted glass, she recognized Miles’s outline and, with a jolt, remembered that he’d been outside calling Eashan.

Brooks called, “Come in,” which effectively ended their conversation. For now.

“All good with Eashan?” Maxine said, standing from her chair.

“Uh, yeah,” Miles said, then looked down, which was when she saw he was holding a business card in his hand, in addition to her phone.

She read the words on the card, and time seemed to slip into slow motion.

The Diamond Palace

Catering & Banquet Hall

For the second time that evening, she felt like she’d been punched in the gut. In the background, she heard Miles’s voice saying, “A guy was just out on the street looking for someone. A girl.”

When she looked up from the card and her eyes connected with Miles’s, she started blinking rapidly, trying to snap out of the brief dissociative haze she’d slipped into upon seeing the name of her undercover workplace, in the form of a logo she’d become very familiar with. She shook herself and could register that Miles was asking her a question, his gaze narrowed in suspicion.

“You didn’t happen to go by the name Trina when you worked there, did you?”

Registering that that had been her undercover name, Brooks sprang into action. “Wait, what guy?” he said as he shuffled out from behind his desk with a panicked haste Maxine was not familiar with seeing him in.

Then, his face lit up in outrage, and she cringed, bracing for what might come next. “Holy hell, how did they find you?!” he shouted, outrage now replacing panic entirely.

“I don’t know!” Maxine cried, many possibilities flying through her mind, but none with any immediate staying power.

“Oh, this clinches it, you are definitely off this case, Alvarez.”

“What?! You already said I was!”

“Yeah, well, I thought maybe man-in-the van, but not after this.”

“Excuse me, woman-in-the-van, and this doesn’t rule that out. I can wear a disguise!”

“Not if this guy is tracking you!”

“Um, if I may—” Miles began.

“WHAT?!” Maxine and Brooks snapped, turning to glare at Miles in unison.

Maxine felt a momentary stab of guilt for lashing out, but it couldn’t be helped.

Miles then cleared his throat and again said, “If I may… I don’t think this guy was here on anything other than dumb luck, and if I had to bet on whether he’d ever find you… Well, I wouldn’t.”

Mouth breaking out into a wide smile, Maxine turned to Brooks and said, “See! Nothing to worry about!”

“Oh yeah?” Brooks said with sudden venom, head snapping to face Miles. “How can you be sure? In fact, how do we know you’re not workin’ for ‘em?”

“Sir, I promise you. I have no affiliation with these people. I was just downstairs making a call on her behalf,” Miles said, motioning to Maxine, “and he came walking by.”

She registered that he was maintaining an impressive level of calm in the face of such a sudden and aggressive interrogation.

“Is that right?” Brooks hissed, voice lowering and octave as he stepped towards Miles. “And she’s known you for how long?”

“Not long at all,” Miles said with an earnest shake of the head, “but—”

“And you met her where?”

“Well… outside Diamond Palace, but—”

“Oh, well, isn’t that convenient!”

“Look, you’re makin’ somethin’ outta nothin’, man, I promise you.”

“Oh, you promise? Well then, I can rest easy!”

Maxine couldn’t take it anymore. She stepped between them.

“BROOKS! Just stop, alright? He’s leaving.”

“I am?” Miles said, and she spun around to face him.

“I need to talk to him alone, okay? I’m sorry.”

“All good,” Miles said, stepping back, both hands flying effortlessly into the air. His face was an unreadable mask, for once. As he backed toward the door, Maxine ignored the continued twinges of guilt for having dragged him into this mess. He was such a nice guy, and she was, well, a bit of a tornado at present.

When he finally reached the door, he gave Brooks an awkward wave and said, “Sorry,” before turning and heading down the stairs.

A few moments after he was out of sight, Maxine realized he still had her phone, and gasped. When she instinctively stepped forward to go after him, Brooks moved into her way.

“Oh, would you quit it, Brooks?” she said, side-stepping him, “I gotta get my phone, I’ll come right back.” Before he could protest, she continued past him and stepped into the hall, slamming the door behind her.

When she saw Miles still making his way down the stairs, and registered that Brooks wasn’t going to follow her, she then trotted down the steps towards him, smiling as he stilled at the sound of her footsteps.

“Hi,” she said as she approached him, a strain evident in her voice that had nothing to do with yelling on roller coasters all day.

“Hi,” he replied, somehow still able to wear a kind smile even after everything she’d put him through since they met. His eyes, however, looked tired. 

“Look, I’m really sorry,” she said, “He’s a bit protective of me, and something has him rattled, but I don’t know what.”

“It’s all good—”

“It’s really not, but… thank you. Really. For everything,” she said, feeling a sudden and unfamiliar sensation in her chest and throat as all the events of the last 24 hours flashed through her mind.

A silence fell between them, and Maxine found herself staring down at her sparkly shoes, at a loss for what else to say. She was saved the trouble, however.

“Hey, so, that guy… I really don’t think he has it in him to track you down. He was one of the guys that came out when you were getting in my car, I think. The younger one.”

Her eyes went wide. “Enrico,” she said, mostly to herself.

“Yeah, I think he was also the one who called me. When I got that call from Henrietta’s phone? I bet she asked him for help, and he saw the address the car was going to.”

“That makes sense,” Maxine said, nodding. “Wow, and he thought he’d find me here. That really is dumb luck, but he’s kinda dumb, so… that tracks.”

When she looked back at him, Miles was smirking.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing,” he said, holding back laughter. 

She gave his arm a playful smack. “What?!” she said, laughing despite her grim mood, given the circumstance.

“He, uh… used some colorful language to describe you, that’s all. Were you guys, like, a thing?”

Maxine erupted into a tumult of giggles, but recovered quickly. “I told you, I don’t date!”

“Yeah,” he said, laughing, “I got that message loud and clear, but he made it sound like… ah, never mind.”

“Oh, that!” she said, reveling in how Miles’s eyes widened. “Hey, there are many ways to get information out of people, and I’m pretty versatile in that respect.”

Miles said nothing to this, but he gave her an assessing look that indicated some new understanding, and a hint of being impressed.

Impressed or wary, she wasn’t sure. She would have contemplated this further, but Brooks’s voice cut in from behind his door a floor above.

“You better not be dead out there, Alvarez!”

Maxine turned her head and shouted, “I’m coming!”

When she spun around to ask Miles for her phone, she found he was already holding it out with a wry smile.

“Get back to your boss, Eenie.”

“Oh my god,” she said, her face screwed up in alarm, “did Eash put you up to that?”

“Not exactly,” Miles said with an easy chuckle, “but ask him about the nickname he gave me.”

Maxine could do nothing more than raise her eyebrows and stare. She stayed frozen that way as Miles stepped backward out the door and said, “See you soon, Lady Detective Alvarez.”

After he was gone, she bit her lip, noting how his parting words had made her body tingle. It wasn’t the first time he’d caused such a reaction in her that day. The whole day had been kind of… dreamy.

After a few moments of silence in the stairwell, she shook herself. As she took a deep breath, her mind began to review the situation.

She had to get to the bottom of whatever had Brooks so rattled.

She also had to check herself before she, as it were, wrecked herself.

Whatever this thing with Miles was, she did not have space for it right now. Moreover, keeping it going would only invite him into the path of whatever danger Brooks was so adamant about keeping her away from.

Her initial instinct to tell Miles Pérez to forget this ever happened was correct, and now that Brooks was back, she, too, would get back… to being serious and work-focused.

𓂃🖊

The next three days passed for Maxine like three months.

Brooks was organizing his next move on the case. The memory card was with his tech guy, in a bid to recover anything that may have been left behind. He was working out the finer details on a plan to infiltrate the hall as a vendor with a delivery, which would only be possible to pull off the following weekend when multiple parties would be happening concurrently at the hall.

Meanwhile, Maxine had been instructed to stay out of it and stay inside.

Eash had been great, listening to her vent, going out to get her groceries, anything she needed. He even went to pick up her car, which had been in the shop, and kept his jokes about being prepared for war should it come to their doorstep to a minimum.

Arden and Derek were likewise, endlessly helpful, even in the midst of their honestly adorable infatuation. Maxine kind of couldn’t believe how quickly two had become one. She liked who Arden was with Derek, she noticed. And while it wasn’t completely clear whether this thing between them would go the distance, she sincerely hoped that it at least wouldn’t implode their roommate situation.

If one had a recording of every time she picked up her phone with the idea of texting Miles, and spliced them together into a montage, it would look like a girl trying to bicep-max with an iPhone.

She had to be strong. He was someone she’d just met. It wasn’t like she owed him anything.

Sure, he’d taken her to his sacred opening day at Six Flags and forgone the opportunity to be on the very first public train ride on a brand new coaster, a chance that did not occur often in any lifetime, but that didn’t matter. He said he wasn’t really that into it.

And if she had believed him, then this thought would bring her more comfort.

After the first night, she had tossed out her vape cartridge, after she got a bit too high, and found herself imagining that she could communicate with him telepathically.

He’d really gotten to her, it seemed, and she wasn’t sure what to do about it. Sure, she had close friends; it wasn’t like she couldn’t have any relationships at all. The difference with Miles was that they had entered into this dance of pretending that friendship was all either of them was after, and she couldn’t help but feel that they were both kidding themselves.

Which was an insane thought! She wasn’t after anything!

And if she could believe herself, then this thought would bring her more comfort.

𓂃🖊

It had been three days, and Miles had not heard a peep from her. He was sitting on his Grandmother’s couch watching yet another re-run of Law and Order. His Grandmother had fallen asleep in her chair, just as she always did, and pretty soon he would be carrying her to bed before making his way back to his place.

He supposed it was kind of predictable, not to have heard from her. Based on that last interaction, he would bet that her boss forbade her from speaking to him. Not that Maxine seemed the type to blindly take orders, but it did sound like whatever they were investigating was a level of trouble she’d want to keep others out of. At least, it seemed like she did whatever she could to keep her roommates ignorant of the details of her work life. If he hadn’t insisted on barging in after her when she went to Brooks’s office, he wouldn’t know a damn thing about any of it.

It was for these reasons that he hadn’t reached out to her. She was the kind of person who seemed to like their space, and based purely on instinct, he thought it best to let her make the next move.

As each new day dawned, however, he had begun to realize that he may never hear from her again. The idea gave him a level of discomfort he wasn’t expecting. There was a pang, and a sort of ache in his chest when he thought about it, which he tried to keep at bay. It wasn’t as though this girl he’d just met through happenstance needed to be significant to him. 

They’d met and had a rather dramatic start. They’d spent a day together at one of his favorite places in the world, where he shared with her things that he hadn’t even shared with some of his closest friends. But it didn’t need to be a big deal, it was just one of those things. One of those random, chance encounters with a stranger—one who feels so close for a few sweet moments, before dissolving into nothing more than memory.

Maybe she would just be a memory to him. A really, really great memory.

After getting his Grandmother settled, he checked on his nephews, then texted his brother to say everyone was in bed, and he was heading home. His brother, Louie, a widower since the boys were born, was out on a date, but would be back within the hour.

Once in his car, his text sound went off, but it wasn’t the thumbs up from his brother he’d been expecting.

An unsaved number with a local area code had messaged, but he knew exactly who it was after only seeing the message preview, which began with “Yo, Mai Mai.”

𓂃🖊

“Eashan! Open this door right now!” Maxine cried, the side of her fist stinging with pain as she pounded on the bathroom door.

“I’m doing this for your own good,” came Eashan’s calm, cool voice from the other side of the door.

She was going to commit murder this evening.

Eashan had been in there for quite a while before it had dawned on her what he’d been doing.

They’d been having a heart-to-heart out on her fire escape. The last few days had been stressful for her, as she’d been fully banned from helping Brooks on the case, but was simultaneously scared for him, based on the apparent danger associated with it. On top of that, the restraint needed to not text Miles was causing her duress unlike any her roommates had seen in her in quite some time.

Even Derek and Arden, who were around far less than Eashan, had noticed. They’d sent Eashan in to get information, a plot he’d confessed to Maxine after they had talked for a while about her conflicted feelings. It had all seemed sweet until he passed her his air rifle, which he had taken to carrying around with him with a joking yet serious offer to be her bodyguard, and climbed back through the window.

He’d stopped at her desk a beat too long; she should have known.

Once she put two and two together that he’d seen Miles’s business card there, she had hauled ass to the bathroom door, and there they were.

“Eashan, you have no right to contact him!”

“It’s too late, Eenie. And by the way, you’re the one who started this.”

“How so?!”

“You had him call me! We’re on a shortened-name basis now!”

“Ugh!” Maxine cried, banging on the door anew. “Get out here right now and show me what you said to him!”

“You can ask him, he should be here in a few minutes!” he said.

“What?!”

But she didn’t have much longer to process his words, because the sound of Arden and Derek’s voices coming up the stairs, which she had only been faintly aware of up until then, was suddenly paired with a voice she hadn’t expected to hear ever again.

In the dictionary, next to the phrase deer in headlights, Maxine’s image from that moment could be found, as her lovebird roommates sauntered in with none other than Miles Pérez in tow.

All three of them stared back at her, but unlike her, they were in fast motion, all coming towards her in apparent concern. Derek and Arden spoke in unison.

“Maxine, are you okay?” 

“Yeah, what’s all this about?” 

They reached her first, but her eyes sought Miles, whose tense expression softened as their gaze connected.

“Sorry guys,” Eashan said, finally pulling open the bathroom door and stepping out. “I may have exaggerated a bit.”

Maxine spun around and reached for Eashan, but he was too quick, slipping away from her grasp and scuttling across the room to hide behind Miles.

“Thanks for coming, Mai Mai,” he hastened to say from his spot, where he was hunched behind Miles for cover.

With a bemused laugh, Miles said, “You didn’t leave me much choice.”

With an unamused laugh, Arden said, “Yeah, Eashan, were you trying to give the poor guy a heart attack?” She then turned to Miles and said, “I apologize for my friend, I don’t know what possessed him.”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s a mystery,” Derek said. “He prides himself on being a meddler. Like he’s some kind of puppetmaster, making sure his friends have more interesting life stories because of him.”

At this, Eashan straightened up, his body losing all tension as he regarded Derek with awe. “You finally read my blog!”

When Maxine cleared her throat, all three of her roommates looked at her, then at Miles, and back to her. Finally, Arden linked her arm with Derek’s and said, “Hey Eash, speaking of your blog, Derek decided he wants to start one. Can you help us set it up?”

Derek caught on right away, but it took Eashan a few dumbfounded moments of thinking she was being serious before cottoning on and following both of them into the next room, leaving Maxine and Miles completely alone. But not before throwing Maxine a wink, which she parried with a death glare that she hoped he would see in his nightmares.

For a few moments, she just stared at him. It seemed he’d been put through an ordeal, and yet, the small smile that played at his lips said that he was enjoying at least a modicum of amusement about the whole situation.

Regardless, she stepped towards him and said, “I’m sorry, I should have realized he found your business card.”

“It’s all good—”

“No, it’s not! Okay? It’s not all good, Miles. Not everything needs to be all good all the time! Damn, have you considered not being so agreeable?”

She wasn’t sure what made her say it. The words had erupted out of her almost without her consent.

Over the last few days, however, she’d been bothered by her recollections of him. He’d been so easy-going. Apart from the first hour of their acquaintance, where he’d been pretty forceful with her, from telling her to put on her seatbelt to inviting her to take a walk on a busy highway, he’d been otherwise easygoing.

While she absolutely did not buy Brooks’s theory that Miles was somehow connected to the case, she did find it suspect that he hadn’t been more perturbed by the series of events that had taken place since their meeting. Present situation, not excluded.

Upon hearing her shouted question, his expression didn’t waver. He did, however, take a few steps across the room, hands sliding into his jeans pockets before he squared up to her. Then, with an easy smile and a tilt of his head, he simply said, “No, thank you.”

Maxine did not enjoy the swoop that occurred in her belly.

Pushing past it, she held his gaze and said, “Why did you come here? What could he have possibly said that—”

“He said you were really upset about the case, and he was worried about you. Said you wouldn’t come out of your room or talk to anyone.”

Maxine scoffed. “Bullshit, I was talking to him before he escaped the fire escape to go and text you from the bathroom! So he asked you to come here?”

“No, he asked me to call you.”

Maxine felt her eyebrows rise as she said, “And you ended up coming here because?”

“I happened to be a few minutes away,” he said with a shrug. “Figured I’d stop by.”

“See? This is what I mean, you’re being way too nice.”

“What’s so wrong with being nice?” he asked, and she might have imagined it, but he seemed to step infinitessimally closer to her as he said this.

Transfixed by the way his eyes bore into her, Maxine felt her body freeze like she was trying to run in a bad dream, but her muscles would not respond to her mind’s commands. Finally, she remembered that he had asked her a question, and hastened to answer it.

“I could give a lengthy presentation on the topic,” she declared, hating the way her voice wobbled the slightest bit as she did so. Before she could offer this, however, he spoke again and effectively rid her lungs of air to speak.

“I’m not that nice; I just wanted to see you.”

After a moment of silence that seemed to stretch on forever, Maxine managed to say, “And why is that?”

With a small shrug, Miles said, “I could give a lengthy presentation on the topic.”

The pounding of her heart in her chest must have been audible as she saw his eyes momentarily move down to her lips and back.

It was a good thing that her roommates chose that moment to loudly reemerge from the other room, because she needed that jolt of reality more than anything in that moment.

“Sorry guys, but this actually might be an emergency,” Eashan said.

When Maxine spun around, she saw that her roommate was holding his laptop.

“Well, maybe not an emergency, but definitely urgent. Urgent-adjacent!”

“Eash, just show her!” cried Arden.

“Yeah, man, quit stalling,” added Derek.

Eashan sighed and turned his computer around to face Maxine. Her vision blurred slightly as she took in the words at the top of the page, along with the accompanying photo. It was a photo she’d never seen, but a face she was all too familiar with.

“Holy shit,” she whispered, feeling Miles lean in to read over her shoulder. She didn’t even need to look at him; she could sense his own horrified expression next to hers.

“That’s the catering hall you were working at, right? The job your boss won’t let you work on anymore because it’s too dangerous?”

In the background, she was vaguely aware of Arden and Derek beginning to interrogate Eashan about how he knew that much about Maxine’s work. There was some renewed discussion about him being a meddler, but it faded away as she read.

Enrico Cruz, 27, of Newark, NJ, was killed earlier today in an unfortunate accident while working his shift at The Diamond Palace banquet hall in East Brunswick.

NEXT CHAPTER

a/n: This chapter is done much earlier than planned! I might post another this week if the muse continues to be sassy.

Shoutouts to Mary, Jess, Kaylee, and M for reading so quickly after I post and leaving comments 😭 It's so much fun to hear your thoughts, and it's definitely inspiring me to carve out more time for writing!!!

BUT WHAT SILLY WAY DID HE DIE, I WONDER 🤔