When Darkness Ends (Moments in Boston #3) - Marni Mann Page 0,75

couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see.

That was one of the hardest moments of my life.

I was surrounded by mourning. I’d been to his gravesite; I’d traced my fingers over the engraved letters of his headstone.

Still, it hadn’t hit me because in my mind, there was no way he could really be gone forever.

Dylan had been invincible.

The pilot who had flown through storms. Who had loved to be in the air, who could survive anything.

Even a bombing.

So, every time my phone rang, I expected him to be on the other end. When I looked at our pictures in my condo, I reminded myself to buy more frames for the trips we would have in the future. Every time I checked his last text, my mind created new conversations to fill in the gap of days.

I knew the reality.

I knew it would slam into me.

And when it did, I reached for the bottle, or I went into work to bury myself a little deeper.

Just like I had done this morning—sleep, once again, something I no longer had in my life.

But caffeine and carbohydrates were what I could fill myself with to keep me going, so I stopped at the bodega on the way to the police station to buy their largest coffee and a toasted bagel.

As I got out of the elevator on our floor, rounding the corner into the main space, the captain was heading down the same hallway, several files gripped in her hand.

“Morning,” I said, stopping a few steps into the unit, leaning against the wall as she caught up.

“How’s everything going, Detective Flynn?”

I wondered if she was referring to the dark circles under my eyes that had become a permanent fixture or the booze breath I’d tried to brush away this morning. “I’m all right.”

She crossed her arms, pushing her shoulder into the wall once she reached me. “Are you?” Her eyes told me she had seen straight through my lie. “You know, you did excellent work in Watertown. I couldn’t be prouder of you and my entire Boston team. But since the bombing and the loss of your friend, you’ve been”—her stare turned harder, as though she was assessing which word would better describe me—“off, and in our line of work, that can be extremely detrimental. I want to make sure you’re where you need to be or if you need some time off to let things settle.”

Time off would lead to more sitting around with the shades drawn, covering the pain in morning hangovers. I knew what that would eventually look like after a few weeks—boxes of takeout piling high that wouldn’t make it into the trash, the stench of unwashed skin, empty liquor bottles on every surface, as though my condo were a giant game of booze pong.

But she wasn’t out of line for questioning me. Just because I was here, in this office, on the road, at crime scenes, it didn’t mean my brain was. Parts of me were missing, and I wasn’t sure when I would get them back.

Or if they would ever return.

I sighed, shifting my posture, and the paper that was taped to the wall, underneath where my arm was resting, threatened to tear.

Printouts had lined this area of the department for as long as I had worked here. Ten rows high, running almost the entire length of the unit, were white pieces of paper, spaced less than an inch apart. On each one was a most recent photograph, their name, identifying characteristics, and where they had last been seen.

The missing persons wall.

An area that everyone passed when they came on and off our floor.

A place that every detective, including myself, looked at weekly as a reminder that we weren’t doing our job if these papers continued to grow.

I went to fix the printout that I’d almost torn, and the photo in the center caught my attention. I couldn’t stop staring at it, the face suddenly so familiar. I tried to remember where I’d last seen those eyes, that blonde hair, the look of innocence on her face.

I dug through my brain, trying to locate this girl in my memory.

When it clicked, a chill ran through my entire body.

“Detective?” the captain said.

My gaze slowly met hers again, and my feet started to move. “I have to go. I’ll stop by your office later, and we can talk about this.” I tossed the coffee and bagel into the nearest trash can and jogged to Rivera’s desk, the top of it as unorganized and chaotic