Theirs to Keep

The laughter ended abruptly at Bryce’s question. While it seemed innocent and casual, I was pretty sure she’d consider it out of line.

“Up north,” Karissa responded very carefully. “New Hampshire.”

Roderick shot me a surprised glance. We were both equally stunned.

“Cool,” said Bryce. “Did you like it?”

“Yes and no.”

Roderick coughed. “You’re gonna need to elaborate.”

“Well you know how I can’t sit s

till?” she smirked.

“Oh yeah,” I laughed. I caught her gaze in the rear-view mirror. “We know all about that.”

“It’s one of the reasons we hired you,” Roderick agreed. “You have boundless energy.”

“Yeah, well boundless energy is great for a police officer,” Karissa said. “You’re constantly doing something new, always moving from call to call. You can’t really get bored, either. Those things appealed to me.”

“So what about the ‘no’ part?” asked Bryce.

I watched as she turned slowly away, to stare absently out the window. As she did, her expression changed. While still heartbreakingly beautiful her face seemed colder now, like it was chiseled from marble.

“Some people…” she began, talking so low we could barely hear her. “Well…”

“Suck?” Bryce offered.

“Yes.”

“I’ll bet you saw your fair share of people that suck,” Roderick said.

Karissa nodded slowly, her gaze still very far away. I felt a sudden sorrow for her. I didn’t even know why.

“When someone calls the police, something’s already gone south,” she said. “That’s the hard part of the job. Imagine showing up to fifteen or twenty calls a day. And every single time, someone’s hurt, or they’re in trouble, or they just had something bad happen to them.”

She looked back at me in the mirror, almost on purpose.

Was it on purpose?

“Bad things,” she said again, softly. “Over and over, they can be tough to deal with.”

Her eyes locked on mine and I could suddenly feel it: the deep-set heaviness in her heart. The pain of something terrible, an experience that somehow changed her. Still, there was more to it than that. Because reflected back in her eyes was also an understanding. It was almost like… like she somehow knew.

I get it.

A thousand words passed silently between us in that single look. A kinship. A shared sorrow. Then she blinked a few times and looked away.

“Sorry,” she chuckled, her voice a little thicker than before. “Didn’t mean to go all doom and gloom.”

“You didn’t,” Bryce assured her. His hand had closed over hers now. “It’s not like—”

“Being a police officer was the two best years of my life,” she said firmly. “All the stuff I did, all the people I helped?” Her face broke into a smile. “It made me feel better at the end of the day. Always made me feel accomplished.”

“Yeah, well you’ve been carrying over the whole ‘accomplished’ thing down here with us,” Roderick informed her. “We’ve hired a lot of people over the years, and no one’s kicked more ass than you.”

“Well I have long legs,” Karissa grinned, extending one for show. At the very end, one of her sexy red heels dangled from the toe of one slender foot.