Mirage - Alice Tribue Page 0,66
a citizen during the course of duty is prohibited, Victoria. I could lose my job.”
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”
“I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. I want you to understand that when I crossed that line, I did it knowing what it could cost me. I did it willingly because I wanted you.”
“You wanted me?” I ask with more than a little disbelief in my voice.
“I did. I wanted you, and once I crossed that line, babe, there was no going back for me. I knew that I had to protect you.”
“You’re a liar. Your whole purpose in my life was to bring me down.”
“Yes, it was, and still, I’m the man who risked his badge to keep your ass out of jail. I’m that guy.”
I shoot up out of my chair, that familiar feeling of anger creeping up.
“Bullshit, you risked your ass… if you had risked your ass, I wouldn’t have been hauled out of my bed and dragged down to a police station in the middle of the night.”
“If that hadn’t happened, I’d still be investigating you today, and we could’ve been stuck in a bad situation for a long time. I needed this shit to end. I did what I did so that I could get you out of this mess.”
“So you could get yourself out of this mess.”
“I’m still in it. This isn’t done for me. I have to make sure none of this shit blows back on me.”
“Nathan,” I call, realizing that’s wrong. “Nathan, that’s not your name, what’s your real name?”
“Eric.”
“Eric,” I whisper, trying it on for size.
“Yeah, Eric Nathan Locke.”
“And the Lennox?”
“My mother’s maiden name.”
“Okay, Eric.”
“Nathan. You call me Nathan.”
I roll my eyes at his crazy request. “Nathan, Eric, whatever. None of this changes the facts. None of this negates the fact that my apartment and business were raided and they were searching for evidence against me, evidence that could put me in jail for years.”
“There was no evidence found,” he says walking over to his nightstand. He opens the drawer, grabs something, and closes it again. “There was no evidence found, baby, because I have it.” He opens his hand, revealing the flash drive that had been in my safe the last time I checked.
My breath catches at the sight of it, at his admission, and I begin to fire questions at him.
“How the hell did you get that? Why do you have it? How did you get access to my safe?”
“You know what’s funny is that you keep the combination to your safe inside your desk. Not a smart thing for a smart woman to do.”
He’s right; I do that. It’s the dumbest shit ever, but it’s in written on one of the pages of an old calendar and I never imagined anyone would put two and two together.
“All those times I’d catch you up in the middle of the night and you said you couldn’t sleep or were getting a drink.”
“I was searching for evidence. It became obvious pretty early on that you were good at keeping your business dealings hidden, but I knew that it had to exist. I knew that it had to be somewhere. I just got lucky with the combination to the safe, found the flash drive, and realized it held all the evidence I needed.”
“Then why haven’t you used it?” I shrug, not understanding why he’s still holding onto it.
“Everything changed for me after you told me about your mother, about what that was like for you, and I could see that this was much more for you than just money, wasn’t it?”
“It was still a crime,” I say shaking my head. “So you found the flash drive and you put it back?”
“I put it back because I wasn’t ready to have this thing between us be over. I had to figure out a way to finish this for you, for me, without either one of us going to jail because, at the end of the day, you are guilty, Victoria. You are what they say you are.”
“I was getting out. I was done with that life,” I yell, defensively. I’m so frustrated with this conversation; I don’t know how much more I can take.
“You were shutting it down?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“So that I could have a normal life. So that I could have you,” I reply honestly, before thinking that I wish I could take the admission back.
“But you were never going to tell me, were you? You would have spent an