None of my shoes fit.
None of them.
My shirts fit. My pants fit. My underwear fit.
My shoes didn’t fit.
Why didn’t my shoes fit?Chapter 1Age has its advantages. Too bad I can’t remember what they are.
-T-shirt
Malachi
Present day- August
My first time to see her, she was at the police department that I worked at filing a police report.
At first, I hadn’t realized she was there.
“So, how did you like your first shift?” Lock Downy, my partner and trainer for the day, asked.
I thought about that for a long moment, then shrugged.
“It was okay, I guess,” I admitted, pulling the bike to a stop in its assigned spot.
Lock pulled his up next to mine, then shut it off, leaving me to follow suit.
“It gets better,” he assured me. “I promise. Not all days are like today.”
Meaning not all days had accident after accident to work.
I was no newbie to death.
I wasn’t sure how I knew that but seeing that dead girl today during the first accident we’d worked hadn’t affected me. Not nearly how it should have had I not experienced death before.
“I hope so,” I admitted, bringing my hands up to remove the helmet from my head.
It ached.
Badly.
I wasn’t used to having something on my head for as long as I’d had today and pairing that with the still painful scarring that hurt when something touched it—it was downright awful.
Lock kept talking, but something caught my eye in the shadows of the parking lot.
A woman.
She moved like a dancer across the cracked and uneven parking lot of the police station.
Lock and I got off the motorcycles, and I automatically moved so that my body was in the shadows so that if anybody looked at me, they’d see my silhouette and not my scars.
A habit that I’d started after getting out of the hospital.
Once I’d realized that people stared, and didn’t care if they were caught staring, I tried to minimize my exposure. As well as hide in plain sight.
The woman stepped up onto the curb and continued to move to the front doors.
I studied her.
She was tall and lithe. Not my height—six foot three—tall, but definitely on the taller side for a woman.
At least five foot seven or eight, if I had to guess.
I took in her attire.
She was wearing hospital scrubs. Hideous green ones that did nothing to hide her figure. Even in the unshapely scrub top and scrub pants, I could still see an amazing ass, generous breasts, and round hips.
Her hair, though, was what had my attention.
It wasn’t a color I’d ever seen before, and something about it struck me as odd.
As if the color wasn’t right.
Memories never flashed at me, because according to my doctor, they weren’t there any longer. But, a sense of knowing told me that the woman’s hair was wrong.
It was a black so deep that it looked so dark that it almost glowed in the quickly-darkening setting sun. She had it up in a high ponytail, and the long, straightened length hung midway down her back.
If it was down, it’d hang well past her ass.
Lock forgotten beside me, I moved into the building behind her instead of using the staff entrance on the side of the station.
At some point, Lock must’ve left because I no longer saw him.
My eyes were all for the woman that had stopped at the front desk and started talking.
“Hi, my name is Francesca Solomon,” she said to the woman who was manning the desk. “I’m supposed to be meeting a Detective Yao.”
The woman held up her finger then picked up the phone, speaking into it in a slow, dramatic drawl.
“He’ll be right… oh, there he is,” she said, pointing.
I allowed my eyes to flick to the man that’d just opened the door that led to the bullpen, and he smiled.
“Come in.” He gestured to the woman.
I allowed the door to close on the two before heading in myself.
When I arrived in the bullpen, it was to find Detective Yao standing next to the coffee—or what they passed off as coffee—asking her if she’d like some.
“Would you care for some coffee?” Yao asked her.
No. She didn’t like coffee.
“No, thank you.” She smiled. “I don’t like coffee.”
How did I know that?
“Understandable,” he said. “At least when it comes to this particular type of coffee.”
I watched her from the shadows.
I couldn’t help myself.
“Francesca…” Yao began.
“Frankie.” She smiled. “You can call me Frankie.”
Francesca Solomon.
Why did that name sound so familiar?
Then it hit me.
Something Gabe had said a few days ago.
Frankie was my best friend’s fiancée.
Though, I guessed with him on the verge of being declared dead thanks in part to me being found with no other survivors, that didn’t make her a fiancée of anybody any longer.
“All right, Frankie,” Yao said. “Do you want to go ahead and tell me what happened today?”
Frankie blew out a disgusted breath, then scrunched her face up into the cutest of expressions before starting her story.