It’s been two weeks since Locke was dropped into our lives like a hand grenade disguised as backup.
In that time, she’s turned every meeting into a performance review, logged six hours of screen time reformatting Kelsi’s reports, and suggested—twice, out loud—that maybe we should reconsider Dalia’s emotional fitness for fieldwork. Officially, she’s here to “refocus the investigative trajectory.” Unofficially, she’s here to remind us we’re replaceable.
The case has stalled. Not because we don’t have leads—we do—but because Locke’s method of progress involves treating urgency like a resource we have to ration. Every time we move forward an inch, she drags us sideways with an interdepartmental form or a procedural reevaluation.
Dalia hasn’t answered any of Raina’s messages. We’re losing her, slowly, and Locke wants to “reassess contact protocols” before we engage again. Meanwhile, Amberfield’s delivery trucks are still moving. The commune’s still fed and the cult ongoing, without an end in sight. Locke’s solution? Wait for the paper trail to confess. Everett’s hands are tied. Public scrutiny’s too high for him, and Locke came with the kind of departmental approval that arrives pre-insulated. She’s too clean to argue with, too polished to call out. No one wants to be the one to say the machine’s broken when the machine says it’s working fine.
No one’s said it out loud, but the pattern is clear. She’s not here to solve the case. She’s here to control the narrative when it implodes. Which is why, when my phone buzzes mid-afternoon with a text from Locke, I already know it’s not going to be good.
Locke: Dinner tonight? 8PM. You eat, right?
I assume it’s her weak attempt at humour. I stare at the message for five full seconds before the printer next to Kelsi lets out a sound like it’s dying in stages and she curses it with the weariness of someone who’s already done CPR on it twice today. Across the bullpen, Locke is angled just slightly toward me, not enough to be obvious but enough that I can feel the shape of her attention. She doesn’t look up from her tablet. I press my thumb against the lock button and set the phone face-down.
Three minutes later, another buzz.
Locke: Le Poivre. Reservation’s under my name. Dress code applies.
Of course she picked the most pretentious place in town. I can already smell the overpriced wine and hear the pianist who doesn’t take requests. The kind of restaurant where waiters pretend to forget you exist until you order the foie gras and pronounce it correctly.
She has also made it clear it’s not an invitation I can deny. I stare at the message a moment longer, then type:
Sure.
Nothing extra. The bare minimum.
Across the room, Locke shifts in her seat and finally looks up, just for a second. Kelsi exhales loud enough for me to hear it over the clatter of her keyboard. To my left, Dalia hasn’t moved. She’s been sitting with the same file open for half an hour, flipping the same page back and forth like she’s trying to wear a hole through the paper. Her hair’s tied up and her mouth’s pressed into a thin line that’s sharper than it should be.
She hasn’t asked what the text said. She won’t and I won’t tell her for now. Still, I glance over. Her eyes flick to mine—brief, unreadable—and return to the folder. That’s all.
Our second meeting of the day starts at three on the dot. Locke runs it like a TED Talk with none of the charisma. She’s got new maps printed in full color, with bold circles around delivery routes Kelsi highlighted last week. She talks about logistics like they’re the end of the story, not just the packaging. Fuel records. Shell companies that dissolve under scrutiny but still have credit cards that swipe at gas stations near the Ridge.
Clean. Careful. And it’s moving nowhere.
Dalia stays quiet, as per usual. Kelsi offers three counterpoints that Locke scribbles into the margin like they’re footnotes in a playbook she has already decided not to use. I sit and do my allocated job: nod, jot notes, pretend like I’m on the same page. I keep my hands visible and my voice neutral. It’s the same thing I’ve done for fourteen days straight, and the only part of me that rebels is the part already planning what I’ll say when Locke finally pushes too far.
The meeting ends at 3:36pm. Locke closes her file with a snap that feels louder than it should be and says, “Updates in my inbox by tonight. Let’s not lose momentum.”
Kelsi mutters something that sounds like we never had it as she pushes away from the table. Dalia rises slowly. She doesn’t look at me, but her shoulder brushes mine on the way out, and for one second, my heart skips a beat.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
By the time I get home, the sun’s dropped below the rooftops and left the whole apartment washed in that hollow gray that never quite becomes evening. I pull the door shut behind me, toss my keys on the counter, and head straight for the mirror. No time to waste.
The tie’s still on the hook from my last dinner party with Dalia and Markus. I hold it up against my collar, try to picture what Locke expects me to look like. The good soldier. The clean cut. The rising star.
The shower doesn’t help and neither does the scotch I don’t end up finishing. Once I’m ready to go, I look like I belong at the kind of dinner where people say one thing and mean another. I stare at myself long enough to start feeling like a forgery. I don’t know why I’m going.
That’s not true. I do.
It’s because Locke has power and Everett has his limits.
When I pull into the private lot behind Le Poivre, I park under the only tree with any leaves still clinging to it. The branches cast long shadows over the hood, thin fingers reaching across the windshield. I stop the engine and sit there a moment longer than I should, letting the silence crawl in around me.
The restaurant looks like it was carved from marble and tax returns. Quiet lighting and frosted windows, a place where the plates cost more than rent and the servers don’t make eye contact unless you ask them to. I tentatively step inside and immediately feel underdressed, even though I’m wearing exactly what she asked for.
Locke’s already seated, of course. Back straight, napkin folded on her lap. She’s in slate-gray again, a dress tailored to within an inch of precision, no jewelry except a thin gold watch that probably cost more than my last car. Her hair’s pulled back into a smooth, impossible bun. She looks like efficiency made flesh. She doesn’t stand, but offers a small smile as I approach, eyes sliding over me like I’m something to be appraised and filed.
“Elias,” she sounds like she is greeting a colleague at a retirement party. “Glad you could make it.”
Not like I had a choice.
“You picked a nice spot,” I respond, sliding into the seat across from her. The table’s small, the candle between us violently flickering.
“I thought you could use something civilized,” she says, lifting her wine glass with practiced ease. “This case’s been... rural.”
I almost laugh out of sheer revulsion. I lift my own glass and take a sip of wine I can’t afford. It’s dry. Cherry, maybe?
The waiter appears like a ghost and she orders for both of us, because apparently she eats here every night and knows what’s best—roast duck, truffle risotto, paired with something French I can’t pronounce. I don’t object.
We talk about the case in shallow passes. Amberfield’s supply line. Fuel logs. Kelsi’s latest patch into an old shipment route. I bring up the pattern of deliveries shifting toward off-hour windows—1 a.m. drops instead of 6 a.m. Locke doesn’t comment on the logistics, just the optics.
“Could suggest a new tier of internal organization,” she says. “Means we’re closer to the center than we thought.”
“Hmm.”
Locke smiles, but she isn’t amused.
“You ever think about leaving?” she asks suddenly.
I blink. “The table?”
“The precinct.” She lets out a small giggle like I said something really funny and leans forward slightly, resting her elbow just off the table’s edge. “The whole upstate stalemate. You’re overqualified. You know that, right?”
I don’t answer.
“Come on,” Locke says, voice dipped in velvet. “You’ve got instincts I don’t usually see outside of task force recruitment pools. You’re methodical, tactical, and you don’t fall apart under pressure.”
I thought we weren’t meant to operate on instincts but I guess that only goes for Dalia. “You’ve been watching?”
“I observe everyone,” she replies, and it doesn’t sound like a compliment.
Locke sets her glass down carefully. “You’d be a fit for Major Crimes or better. I could make a few calls, and by next quarter you’d be looking at a desk in D.C., badge upgrade, team of your own.”
I keep my posture loose. I don’t say no. I don’t say yes. I reach for the wine again just to buy a second of quiet.
“And Dalia?” I ask.
Locke doesn’t flinch. “Detective Rowe’s made her choices. You don’t have to go down with her.”
The air between us stills.
“You’re not helping her anymore by sticking around,” Locke continues, and this time the softness is gone. “You’re just delaying the inevitable. When she breaks protocol again—and she will—it’s your name on the file too.”
I push the duck around my plate. I haven’t eaten more than three bites.
“She’s excellent at her job,” I say quietly.
“She’s not stable.”
The waiter returns to ask about dessert and Locke declines with a flick of her hand. For a few seconds, neither of us speaks. The candle burns lower. Somewhere in the back corner, someone laughs too loudly and is immediately hushed.
“You’re smart enough to survive,” Locke says after a while. “Don’t waste that on someone who won’t.”
I nod once, as if she’s said something profound. As if I’m thinking it over. In my head, I’m already cataloging everything she didn’t say out loud. Locke didn’t pick this restaurant for the wine or the risotto or the mood lighting. She picked it because here, in this curated hush, things sound better than they are. Offers, ultimatums, roasted ducks.
She dabs at her mouth with the napkin, precise and slow, then folds it once and places it on the table. I do the same, mirroring her without thinking. The candle’s burned almost halfway down, the wax leaning like it’s trying to escape. The check never comes and that’s how you know she is a regular and probably got her on tab. This was always meant to end before it started.
We walk outside together, Locke leading the way. My hands are in my coat pockets, and I refuse to look at her. I try to keep my shoulders loose, expression in deep concentration like I’m just contemplating her offer. It’s what she would expect from a smart person.
Maybe I’m just not that smart.
Her car’s parked two down from mine. Black, of course, government-issue without the branding. She pauses at the door, one hand on her key fob, the other on her hip like she’s not quite ready to call it a night.
“You handled yourself well in there,” she says suddenly. Oh, so that was a part of an assessment?
She laughs softly, but it’s not real laughter. It’s the controlled exhale of someone who’s never once lost her composure and doesn’t plan to start now. Locke takes a step toward me, closing the space like it’s hers to claim.
“I meant it, you know,” she is standing way too close to me. “Everything I said.”
“I know.”
“You could move up fast. You could outrun this place.”
“I like this place.”
She tilts her head, that awful smile still on her lips. “No you don’t.”
Locke steps closer again.
Her fingers reach up—slow, deliberate—and brush something off my lapel. Imaginary lint. Her touch lingers half a beat too long.
“You’re too careful to say yes right away,” she says, almost to herself. “But you’re smart. You will.”
“I said I’d think about it.”
“Thinking’s just stalling with better branding.”
I try to laugh, but it comes out wrong. I’m getting nervous. She’s too close now. Her hand lifts again—this time grazing the edge of my jaw. Just a small, fleeting brush, but it’s enough to leave heat behind. I want to grab her wrist but I’m too shocked by the audacity of the touch to even move.
Her voice drops, not loud but loaded. “You don’t owe her anything.”
I catch the shift in her weight just a second too late and feel it before I see it coming.
The cold precision of her eyes. The way her lips part—not in surprise, but intent. And then she kisses me.
It’s low and calculated, lips soft and slow, pressing on top of mine like this is her signature, like this is her seal on something she thinks she already owns. Her hand grips the front of my coat, just above my heart. Not enough to hold me in place, but enough to let me know she could.
I don’t move.
I don’t kiss back.
I don’t recoil either.
I bet she wants that. She wants flinch, protest, anything she can spin into weakness. I give her nothing. I let it land like a breeze I forgot to feel. Then, as gently as I can, I shift my weight back—half a step. Enough to break contact without creating conflict. My smile surfaces a second later, a little lopsided. I make it look like it’s all fine, like I’ve been here before, like I don’t feel my stomach crawling out of my body.
“Well,” I say, voice light, almost teasing, “maybe once the case is over.”
It comes out smooth, polished. I even throw in a soft laugh, like we’re sharing a joke. I want to throw up.
Locke’s watching me with a weird look and for a second I wonder if I overplayed it. Her fingers linger on my lapel for a second longer. Her expression hasn’t changed, but I see it in the small tilt of her head, the way her lips part just slightly—she’s recalculating. The play didn’t land the way she thought it would and I have no way of telling whether that’s good or bad.
“You’re hard to read,” she says finally.
“That’s why I’m good at my job.”
I adjust my collar casually, like this isn’t the first time a colleague made a move on me, like I’m used to this. She gives me a smile—cool, knowing—and steps back. “Goodnight, Elias.”
“Lieutenant.”
Locke turns and gets into her car like nothing happened, like that wasn’t a fucking ambush. The door closes with a soft, final click, and then her taillights flare and she vanishes into the streetlight haze. I stand there a moment too long, the night thick around me, hum of traffic in the distance. The soft rustle of leaves in the gutter. My hands are still in my pockets, fists clenched so tight I barely feel my fingers. When I finally move, I head for my car without looking at the space where she stood. I get in, shut the door a little too hard and let my forehead rest against the steering wheel.
I exhale once. Slowly.
She wanted submission. Power. She wanted to mark the moment where I became complicit.
Shame simmers under my skin, hot and steady. I reach up to my mouth, wipe it with the back of my hand. There’s no lipstick, no visible trace, only the knowledge that it happened. That I let it happen. That I had to because she is my boss, our handler. I catch my reflection in the mirror and for a split second, I wonder what Dalia will see when she looks at me tomorrow. If she’ll see through the performance. If she’ll notice the hesitation in my voice. God, I hope she doesn’t ask. I hope she does.
I close my eyes and it’s not Locke I see. It will never be her.
It’s Dalia, quiet in the low light, the way she looks when she’s half-listening, pencil tapping against her thigh, hazel eyes distant, decoding the world in real time.
But then the scene shifts—softens—becomes something more fragile. Her hand in mine, fingers entwined. The weight of her against me, not in exhaustion or necessity, but choice. Her forehead resting against my shoulder, breath warming the space between us. I imagine leaning in—not on a rooftop in crisis or a hotel room full of case files, but somewhere safe. Somewhere small and real, her mouth inches from mine, looking at me like maybe she wants it too.
I can feel the curve of her back beneath my hand. The warmth of her thigh brushing mine beneath a table we’ve long forgotten. Her breath catching, then deepening when I touch her jaw. My fingers in her hair...
And then I’m kissing her. Not the way Locke did—cold, mechanical, transactional. This is slow. Earned. Her lips warm and searching, the kind of kiss that doesn’t want to end. Not claiming or demanding. I want to feel her hands slip under my shirt, fingers roaming free. I want to hear her say my name. I want to say hers like a promise.
But when I open my eyes, the mirror hasn’t changed. I’m still alone and she’s still out there, drifting further into the case, into whatever plan she’s making without telling me. Because I know she is plotting something.
I pull my phone from my pocket, drafting a text to Dalia.
Delete it.
Start the engine.
Drive home in quiet shame.
ns216.73.216.95da2
