Chapter Text
“Posen!”
The blonde whipped her head around and saw their supervisor, Sergeant Abernathy, standing outside her office.
“Yes, sergeant?”
“I need to see you in my office. Now.”
Aubrey pushed herself off the edge of Chloe’s desk, where she’d been perched while the two of them picked apart witness statements for the last hour. She exchanged a quick glance with her partner and best friend.
Chloe raised an eyebrow. “That sounds ominous. You don’t think this is about the Jenkins complaint, do you?”
Aubrey rolled her eyes. “If that guy files one more complaint because I bruised his ego during an interrogation, I’m framing it.”
Chloe laughed under her breath. “I’ll save you a spot on the wall.”
Aubrey pointed a finger at her. “If I’m getting yelled at, you’re absolutely coming down with me.”
“Hey, I didn’t threaten to arrest him for wearing that ugly tie.”
“I threatened to arrest him for lying. The tie was collateral damage.”
Aubrey fought a smile as she turned toward the sergeant’s office. Chloe always had a way of making even the most stressful moments feel manageable. She knocked once before stepping inside.
Sergeant Gail Abernathy gestured toward the chair across from her desk. “Sit.”
Aubrey lowered herself into the chair, straight-backed, hands folded in her lap. “You wanted to see me?”
Abernathy leaned back with a tired sigh. The woman looked like she’d aged five years in the past week. “The Mayor’s office called again this morning.”
Aubrey’s stomach sank. “The Donovan case?”
“The Donovan case.”
Five days ago, Manhattan real estate developer Charles Donovon had been found murdered in his penthouse overlooking Central Park. At first glance, it looked like a robbery gone wrong. But within forty-eight hours, two more bodies had turned up. Different boroughs, but same signature.
The media had exploded. Every news station in the city had a different theory. Every politician wanted answers yesterday. Every department head wanted results. Aubrey and Chloe had been buried in the middle of it.
“We’re making progress,” Aubrey said.
“I know.”
“We’ve got forensic evidence still processing and we’re in the middle of narrowing down our suspect list.”
“I know.” Abernathy rubbed at her temple. “But this case is bigger than our department.” Aubrey already didn’t like where this was headed. “The Bureau’s getting involved.
“Excuse me?”
“The FBI.”
Aubrey actually laughed once. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“They’re taking over?”
“They’re assisting.”
“Please. That’s the same thing.”
“They’re assisting,” Abernathy repeated firmly. “This has crossed state lines. Financial crimes are involved. Organized crime may be involved. Washington signed off on it last night.”
Aubrey scoffed. “We don’t need babysitters.”
“No, what we need is every resource we can get before another body drops.”
Aubrey clenched her jaw. “We’ve been working this case around the clock. We know the victims, we know the city better than anyone.”
“You do. And you will keep doing that.”
“So why are they coming?”
Abernathy didn’t respond immediately. Finally she quietly spoke. “Because if this goes sideways, it’ll become national news.”
Aubrey looked away. She hated that answer because she knew it wasn’t entirely wrong. “When do they arrive?”
The sergeant glanced at the folder on her desk. “Tomorrow morning.”
“So we’re just supposed to hand over weeks of work?”
“They’ll need a full briefing.”
Aubrey scoffed again. “Fantastic.”
Gail leaned forward. “Listen to me. I picked you and Beale for this case because you’re my best detectives. I’m trusting you to stay my best detectives.”
Aubrey stood. “I’m not the one inviting outsiders.”
“No,” Gail agreed. “You’re the one who gets to decide whether working with them is a problem.”
Aubrey continued toward the door and reached for the handle.
“One more thing,” Gail stopped her. “The agent leading the task force has one of the highest clearance rates in the Bureau.”
“Good for them.”
“She’s good.”
“I’m sure she thinks she is.”
Gail couldn’t help the tiny smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Dismissed.”
The moment Aubrey stepped back into the bullpen, Chloe looked up from her computer. “Well?”
Aubrey grabbed her coffee mug, realized it was empty, and set it back down a little harder than necessary.
“We’ve got company.”
Chloe frowned. “What kind of company?”
“The federal kind.”
Chloe’s eyes widened. “The FBI?”
Aubrey nodded once. “They’re sending someone to ‘help’,” she said, making exaggerated air quotes.
“Ouch.”
“Apparently our case is too complicated for us.”
Chloe gave her a patient look that she’d perfected after five years of working with Aubrey. “I don’t think that’s what they’re saying.”
“It’s exactly what they’re saying.”
Chloe stood and walked over beside her. “You never know, maybe they’ll be nice.”
Aubrey stared at her. “Whose side are you on?”
Chloe smiled. “I’m just saying maybe we shouldn’t judge them before they get here.”
“Too late.”
Chloe chuckled before sliding a folder across the desk. “Come on.”
“What?”
“We’ve still got work to do.”
Aubrey looked at the folder. “New evidence.”
Chloe nodded as she took a sip of her stale coffee. “The lab finally got back to us while you were rendezvousing with Abernathy.”
Aubrey rolled her eyes, but sat down immediately. “What’ve we got?
Chloe pulled her chair alongside Aubrey’s instead of sitting across from her. It was something they always did when they were trying to puzzle through evidence together.
“Partial fingerprint from the second victim’s apartment.”
“Usable?”
“Not enough for a full match, but they found traces of industrial machine grease on the victim’s jacket.”
That caught Aubrey’s attention.
“The victim didn’t work in manufacturing.”
“No.”
“Neither did Donovan.”
“Nope.”
Aubrey leaned over the crime scene photos spread across the desk. “What about victim three?”
Chloe flipped through another report. “Same residue.”
Aubrey grabbed a pen and circled a note she’d written days earlier. “Remember the warehouse?”
“The abandoned one in Brooklyn?”
“The one our anonymous tip led to. There was grease everywhere. And we ignored it because abandoned warehouses are supposed to be filthy.”
Chloe’s eyes widened just a little. “So what if it wasn’t random?”
Aubrey looked at her. “What if whoever did this works around industrial equipment everyday?”
Chloe was already pulling up employment records on her computer. “That narrows things.”
“It narrows a lot.”
For the next forty-five minutes, neither of them spoke about the FBI. The world disappeared around them. Detectives wandered past carrying files as phones rang.
“You know,” Chloe said, spinning her monitor slightly toward Aubrey. “There are only six major industrial facilities within twenty miles of every crime scene.”
“Cross-reference employees with criminal records.”
“Already started.”
Aubrey smirked. “Show-off.”
“I learned from the best.”
“Oh you absolutely did.”
Chloe glared at her. “That was not permission to get cocky.”
Twenty minutes later, Chloe sat back with a groan. “No matches.”
“Dammit. We’re missing something.”
After a long silence, Chloe spoke again. “We’ll figure it out.”
“We have to.”
There wasn’t another option. Not with another family waiting for answers. Not with the mayor calling every few hours. Not with the press circling like vultures. And certainly not before the FBI walked into her precinct tomorrow morning. She turned back to Chloe.
“We’re done.”
Chloe blinked. “What?”
“If we’re going to prove we don’t need federal help, we can’t do it without passing out from low blood sugar. Or no sleep while staring at the same pictures for hours.”
Chloe sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”
They grabbed their jackets and headed for the elevator that would lead them to the parking garage as they still debated theories about the case. Neither of them noticed Gail Abernathy watching them leave from the window of her office with a knowing smile.
She absolutely had confidence in both her detectives. She only hoped they’d eventually realize that accepting help didn’t mean admitting defeat. Tomorrow morning, that lesson would arrive wearing an FBI badge.
___________________
By the time Chloe finally stepped through the door of her apartment, Manhattan was glowing beneath the windows. The city never really slowed down. Normally she loved the chaos, but tonight it just made everything feel lonelier.
She quietly shut the door behind her and leaned against it for a long moment with her eyes closed. Her shoulders ached from hunching over evidence all day. Her head throbbed from staring at photographs and reports for nearly twelve hours straight.
She kicked off her heels, letting them tumble haphazardly across the hardwood floor before padding into the kitchen. The bottle of cabernet she’d opened a few nights ago was still sitting on the counter.
“One glass,” she muttered to herself. She poured a generous amount anyway.
Wine in hand, she wandered into the living room and collapsed onto the couch with a long sigh. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and stared at it for several seconds before opening up the message thread. Her stomach twisted as she looked at the last message that had sat there all day.
- Tessa ♥️ : I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I don’t think this relationship is working anymore. I think we want different things, and I don’t wanna drag this out. I’m sorry, Chlo. I think it’s best if we end things here.
That was it. There was no phone call or conversation. No further explanation beyond those five sentences. After nearly a year together, she ended it over text during Chloe’s morning commute. After kissing her goodbye and acting like everything was normal.
Chloe remembered reading the messages in the parking garage before work, staring at the screen in complete disbelief until Aubrey had walked up asking if she was okay. But she had shoved the phone in her pocket, saying she’d explain later, and thrown herself into work.
When she eventually showed Aubrey the text, Aubrey spent approximately five minutes calling Tessa every name under the sun for breaking up over text after eleven months together. It was the topic of conversation for most of the day between case files before Sergeant Abernathy called Aubrey into her office.
Now she was alone and it all hit her at once. Chloe swallowed hard before pressing the call button. The phone rang before Chloe heard her familiar voicemail.
“Tess, it’s me,” Chloe said quietly after the beep. “I don’t understand. If this is really what you want, okay. But almost a year together deserves more than a text.” Her voice cracked. “So, please, just call me back.”
She hung up and completely lost it. She hit redial, but it didn’t even ring this time.
“You blocked me?” The words came out as barely more than a whisper. “What the hell, Tess?”
She tried again with the same result. “Bitch,” she muttered through tears, tossing her phone to the side before taking a large sip of her wine.
But then she felt the phone buzz and for one impossible second, hope flared that it was her. Instead she saw Aubrey’s name across the top.
“Hey,” Chloe said as she answered the phone.
“Hey,” Aubrey replied. “You try calling her yet.”
Chloe’s lips trembled. “Yup.”
“And?”
“She blocked me.”
“Oh, Chloe.”
That was all it took. The tears she’d spent all day holding back finally escaped. She covered her mouth, trying to keep herself quiet, but a broken sob slipped through anyway. Aubrey didn’t say anything for a few moments, she just stayed on the line.
“I’m sorry, Chloe,” Aubrey muttered, not knowing what to say.
“It’s fine. That relationship clearly wasn’t going to last. It's whatever. I’ll be fine in the morning.”
“It’s still allowed to hurt,” Aubrey reassured. “You don't end an almost one-year relationship over text. And you definitely don’t block someone immediately afterward.”
“No,” Chloe agreed. “I would’ve at least understood if we talked. I had no idea she was unhappy.”
Aubrey sighed softly. “Sometimes people make decisions long before they tell anyone.”
“I loved her, Aubrey.”
“I know you did, honey.”
Another sob escaped Chloe before she could stop it. “I hate crying.”
“I know you do.”
“I especially hate crying because of someone who couldn’t even say it to my face.”
Aubrey smiled sadly. “Now that is the Chloe Beale I know.”
A water laugh slipped out. “You know what’s really unfair?” Chloe continued.
“What?”
“This had to happen the same week we’re working the biggest case of our careers.”
Aubrey groaned. “I know.”
“As if dealing with a serial homicide investigation wasn’t enough. Now we get to meet the FBI tomorrow.”
Aubrey groaned louder. “Don’t remind me.”
Chloe wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt as she laughed. “It won’t be that bad.”
“I beg to differ. I heard the lead investigator is a five-foot-something brunette with a snarky attitude who thinks she’s better than everyone.”
Chloe smiled. “Well that doesn’t sound like someone who’ll intimidate you.”
“No, but it does sound like someone who’s gonna be a pain in my ass.”
Chloe laughed again, she always found humor in her best friend’s antics. Neither of them could have guessed that by the end of the week, the lead FBI agent assigned to the case would have both challenged everything Aubrey thought she knew, and quietly became the person Chloe looked forward to seeing most each morning.