Mas gazed unfocused at the tabletop, waiting for Thorrington’s admonishment. Life was hard enough, she thought, and the job was even harder. Particularly these last few years. He didn’t need her blowing a fuse over something like a video glitch, especially not in his office. It was rude, it was unprofessional, and ultimately it was useless. She knew all the reasons, but sometimes it just didn’t matter.
He got up and poured himself a steaming cup of coffee. He knew she chugged water before lunch, and didn’t offer her one. He watched the vapor rising from the mug as it filled up, thinking of what to say to her. He was growing weary, and perhaps she was as well, but at least she had youth on her side. He was pushing seventy, and wasn’t sure how much longer he could fight the good fight. He didn’t need to be worrying about her. Not now.
Several of his officers abandoned the force at the height of the storm, and five years later indictments and trials were underway. Some of them were going to jail and recruitment was still down. Thank God the Feds turned Mas loose on the Branding case, because he had his hands full. The murder rate was soaring, and displaced locals were still staging protests outside City Hall. Privately, he couldn’t blame them, but he feared that if things didn’t finally take a turn for the better, there could be riots. And if martial law was imposed, Washington might send down their damn mercenaries again, and God only knew how things would play out from there, with those Blackwater types running around loose. He had more than enough of those arrogant yahoos already.
Mas knew that fits of temper and flashes of anger weren’t high on Thorrington’s list of admirable qualities, particularly when it came to visitors in his own office. Ironically, it was the only place where he could get away from it all. His wife had been on anti-depressants since the storm, and was just now getting out and about again. He needed Mas to be strong, so any chink in her armor concerned him. Save it for the street was what he had been telling her. She was waiting for him to tell her that now.
He sat heavily at his desk, coffee in hand. She switched chairs to sit across from him, and sipped her water. Thorrington still didn’t think of her as a Fed, and he suspected that she probably didn’t either, despite what her badge said.
An old picture sat on the bookshelf behind his desk. It was of Mas’s father Julian and her mother Beth, and a young Lt. Thorrington and his wife Susie. The men were in uniform, sitting astride their Harley-Davidsons, and a young Chrissy sat on her father’s gas tank.
Thorrington smiled over his coffee at her. “How come you don’t ride a Harley like your daddy did?”
Mas smiled back at him. “The day they make a machine as fine as my baby, I’ll go right out and adopt one. Promise.”
Julian Mas’s daughter was the closest thing that Thorrington had to one of his own. It was daddy time.
“How you doing, Chrissy?” he asked her.
“Fair to middling, all things considered. How you doing, Cap’n?”
“Better than you, I’ll wager.” He blew on his coffee, and took a cautious sip. “How do you find time to work on this case, with everything else the Bureau’s been throwing at you?”
Mas tried to shrug it off, but her nonchalance fell flat. She looked down at her water bottle. “My job is to find the time.”
“You need sleep, young lady. You still having nightmares?”
It was more of a statement than a question. Mas hesitated, and then finally nodded. There was no use trying to hide anything from the Cap’n. She never could. No sense trying now. She kept her eyes on her water bottle and shrugged. “If it’s nighttime, it’s time for nightmares.”
“Johnson had nightmares,” he reminded her.
At the mention of Johnson’s name, she finally looked up. “I saw him at the jump scene, but he drove off before I got to him.”
Thorrington was surprised by the news, but said nothing. She watched his eyes, but he contemplated his coffee, avoiding her probing gaze. They trained her at the Fed Farm for stuff like that, and he didn’t like being under her microscope, or anyone else’s for that matter.
“Did he really go crazy?” she asked.
He glanced at her. “Close. He retired.”
She grinned. “No wonder Daddy liked you.”
His expression softened. “I’m a likable sort,” he said, and leaned on his desk, closer to her. “That man save my life more than once, Chrissy, so me and Susie owe him. You’re not getting rid of us that easy. You and your mamma are the closest thing to family we got.”
She smiled, but she had a sixth sense where he was going next. She was right.
“Why don’t you see someone,” he suggested.
Mas blew a little sigh and sagged in her chair. “A shrink? You’re kidding, right? We’ve been over this, Cap’n...”
He didn’t say anything, and just watched her fidget.
“You’re going to pop a gasket if you keep this up,” he admonished her.
She drained her water bottle, tossed it in the trash, and then picked up her manila file and got to her feet.
“You don’t have to save the world, Chrissy.”
His voice was gentle, almost pleading with her. She cast her eyes downward and turned to the door, opening it. Kaddouri was sitting on the couch across from Helen’s desk, waiting for her, a fax in his hands. He looked up and almost smiled, but she saw the troubled look in her eyes.
She turned back to Thorrington. “No,” she said, agreeing with him. She didn’t have to save the world. “But it sure would be nice to save someone. Just once.”
She went out, quietly closing the door. Thorrington stared at the closed door, ignoring his coffee.