Chapter 21: First Ring

Jude's POV

I woke up in the gatehouse with a bruise on my cheekbone and Victoria's hand on my chest.

The woodstove had burned down to orange.

She was awake, and she was looking at the mark Beck had left.

"It's turning purple," she said.

"It's earned."

"It isn't," she said, and she kissed it very carefully.

I let her.

Then I got up, found my jeans and sat down at her table with the laptop.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Writing the report."

She came and stood behind my chair with a blanket around her shoulders.

I had been putting off those words for five weeks.

At the top I typed the date, the tail number and the time, 4:12:03 a.m.

Then I wrote it plainly, the way we are taught to write an incident.

I wrote that I had seen civilian vehicles on Dutch Ravine Road with their lights on.

I wrote that I had been ordered to a non-emergency tasking, and that I had said "copy" and banked away.

I wrote that I had not asked whose cars they were.

"You don't have to put that last line," she said.

"I do."

"They can pull your ticket for it."

"They can."

I kept typing.

At the end I attached the recording from the card.

I sent it to the state inspector and to the federal safety office, under my own name.

The laptop made its small whoosh.

Victoria sat down across from me and took the blanket off her shoulders.

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