He nodded. “I get it. Believe me. I do. It’s just a matter of plugging away, while making sure that you find balance in your life.”
“Balance? What’s that?” she quipped.
He looked up at her. “You’ve also hit some pretty hard and ugly cases recently. Do you need to talk to somebody about it?”
She looked at him in horror. “Hell no.”
He laughed. “I’m not kidding.”
“I know. That’s why I’m so shocked,” she explained. “Because really it’s a hell no. I don’t need to talk to anybody.”
He frowned and looked as if he would argue the point but then shrugged. “Just make sure I don’t see any signs of it getting to you.”
“If it doesn’t get to me,” she replied gently, “I’m in the wrong business.” And, with that, she got up and started out the door.
“That’s a good one-liner,” he noted, “but I mean it. You need to have a life outside of this work.”
She looked at him. “I have a life.”
“So maybe you need to make that more important in your world,” he suggested. “I can’t have you wearing down.”
“I won’t wear down,” she argued. “I do need to take more breaks, and I need to get out a bit more. I was thinking about that last night. But it’s also the nature of the job—the hours we keep, the work we do, and the cases we deal with. The victims, their families, the people who have been incarcerated, and the ones who were incarcerated who didn’t need to be.”
“You’re talking about Rick Lord?”
She nodded. “I don’t think he did the murder that he did the time for.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time an innocent man was convicted,” Colby added, “but I sure hope you’re wrong.”
“I do too. The problem is, if he didn’t do it, who did? Because I don’t even have a lead on that yet.”
“If you believe it,” he noted, “then this one should be enough to help you break the other case apart.”
“Should be, yes, and being shot at yesterday definitely adds to its intrigue.”
“I heard about that,” he stated. “I’m glad nobody was hurt. What the hell was Simon doing in the car with you?”
“He’d been out with me,” she replied, waving a dismissive hand. “We were getting the oil in my car changed. And I recognized the kid at the service station. He was the one handling the oil.”
“And you just happened to be there, right?”
She gave him a flat look. “Of course. I’d never involve a civilian in a case like that.”
He groaned. “I’m not a fool, you know?”
“I know you’re not, sir,” she said in a bright tone. And, with that, she walked out of his office. She could feel his eyes boring into her back as she left. He was a good man and cared about his people, and that mattered. There was always a need for somebody to be at the helm, somebody to steer the ship in the right direction and to bring some order to the chaos because, God knows, it had to be like herding cats. They were all off, immersed in their own projects, their own methodologies, their own ways of solving all these problems. And it didn’t help that each of them was a bit of a maverick, but it came with the territory. It should be part of the job description really.
She headed back to her desk, and she saw Rodney there already.
He looked up, grinned, and said, “You look like shit.”
She rolled her eyes. “One of these days you’ll say I look like a million bucks.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he teased, chuckling. “There’ll have to be a hell of an improvement before that happens.”
She snagged a pen on the desk and threw it at him.
He laughed. “So, with all that excitement yesterday, did you end up with anything that makes you think we’ve got some answers here?”