Chapter Fourteen
Michelle
“This doesn’t look like a police station.”
She got out of the truck carefully. Even if it wasn’t lifted, she was still tiny, and it was a step up for her. So getting out meant slipping from her seat and dangling for a moment until she was clear enough to drop to the ground.
“I never said we were going to the police station.”
The building they’d pulled up to was anything but the squat ugly blob she’d expected of the local police station. It wasn’t huge, but the architecture was old. Tall spires decorated several corners, and arches spanned windows and doorways, with columns of beautifully carved stone supporting overhangs and parts of the building itself. Stained-glass windows painted pictures of various animals in action.
There a wolf stalked its prey. In another, what she thought was a dragon took flight, while in yet another a bear splashed after a fish in the water. Each one was beautifully done.
“What is this place?”
“Where I have to go.” He didn’t elaborate.
“Right. Question for you.”
He shot her a glance. “You can just ask, you know,” he teased.
Michelle stuck out her tongue as sassily as possible “I thought you said you were going out to live in the wild for a bit. Go camping or whatever.”
“Yes.”
“Well, why are you here then?”
“I kind of changed my plans when you showed up at my house. The person here is sort of like a parole officer. I report to them. If my plans change, well, then I have to report that.”
She frowned, pausing, as he pulled open the oversized wooden door. “Wouldn’t a simple phone call have sufficed?”
Kase laughed. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But no, Jerrik is a little old-fashioned. He likes to hear from me in person. He’s come out to my place several times now; I figured it was only polite of me to come to his office this time, you know? Keep everything even that way.”
“Right. So he’s your boss?”
“Hell no. I just… Look, it’s complicated.” He walked past a secretary, nodding to her, and headed into a hallway off to the right. They went past several doors, then he stopped and opened the third one. “After you.”
She walked in and stopped. “This looks like a police station, Kase. An interrogation room, to be precise.”
The room they were now standing in was dark with the minimal light coming through the single rectangular pane of glass in the wall across from them. Inside that room were two metal chairs and a table in the center. Bright lights shone from the corners, illuminating the entire room.
“Don’t worry about it. Just wait here. I’ll be back soon, okay?” He smiled and headed toward a door she hadn’t seen at first, leading between the two rooms.
“That’s it? Just wait here.”
“You wanted to hang out with a bad boy. Sometimes bad boys gotta do what bad boys gotta do.”
“Most bad boys don’t get caught,” she said dryly.
Kase chuckled, winked, and went inside to sit at the table. Almost immediately his eyes closed and she moved closer. He couldn’t actually be asleep…could he?
Behind her, the outer door opened. “Who are you?”
She jumped, spinning around. “Uh, I’m…um. Kase?”
The person standing in the doorway was, if anything, bigger than Kase. She couldn’t make out many details—he was mostly clad in shadow, a lack of light shining on his face—but she could see that his eyes were hard, and focused entirely on her.
“You’re with Kase?”
“Yes. My name is Michelle.”
“Oh, Michelle. Sorry, I’ve not seen a picture of you before. My name is Jerrik.” The big man stepped forward, suddenly not intimidating at all. He engulfed her hand in his and shook it politely.
“You know who I am?”
“By name, mostly. Though I don’t know what you’re doing with him.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the interrogation room.
“Figuring that part out as I go,” she said with a laugh.
“Lots of history there?” Jerrik was surprisingly easy to talk to.
“Not really, to be honest. We met five years ago and hit it off quite well. Went on several dates. Then he disappeared on me in the middle of one.”
Jerrik nodded. “Did he ask to use the washroom and then leave you with the check?”
She laughed. “No, it was worse! I invited him into my place. I walked inside, and when I turned around to hold the door for him to follow, he was gone. Poof. Disappeared.”
“Is that so?” Jerrik turned to look through the window. “He never mentioned that part to me. So rude.”
“Right?” Michelle couldn’t figure out how talking to Jerrik about this wasn’t embarrassing, but it wasn’t. Despite the fact he couldn’t be anything more than middle-aged, she felt a fatherly calm around him that made opening up easier than it should be, considering she’d met him mere moments ago.
“Our Kase is a good man,” Jerrik said, staring distractedly through the window. “Just a little lost sometimes. He needs a good person to guide him, to keep him on track.” His attention swiveled back to her with a sudden abruptness that had Michelle focusing on his words.
Was he trying to tell her something? To say she was that good person, or that maybe Kase needed her to be that good person? Could it have anything to do with the way he’d calmed immediately the night before after starting to freak out? No, she had to be reading too much into it. That was extremely farfetched.
“He’s okay,” she said. “He’d be better if he’d agreed to fund my lab.”
Jerrik’s demeanor changed from one of casual talk to questioner. “Pardon?”
“I work for a scientific laboratory here in town.” She paused. “Well, I used to work for one, until it was shut down the other day. We lost our funding, I guess. The board who oversaw the lab was trying to bring Kase on as an investor to keep us going, but he declined.”
“Oh, he did, did he?” Jerrik turned his gaze from her back to the window.
“Uh, yes? That’s why I’m with him. I went out to see him; I’m trying to convince him to change his mind, so that my team and I can continue to have jobs. To work, you know?”
Jerrik was nodding. “Yes, I can understand that entirely, Michelle. Thank you for that information.”
She looked back and forth between the two men. “Did I just get him in some sort of trouble, Mr. Jerrik? That wasn’t what I meant to do. He’s mostly a good man. I can understand him not wanting to fund our lab; it’s not like it’s a cheap commitment every year. I just…” She shrugged. “I really liked working there, and I don’t want to see any of my team out of work, you know?”
The big man kept nodding. “I know.” He looked at her strangely, then smiled. “You can wait here; it won’t take too long. Unfortunately I must keep the audio off, however, but we’ll be done quickly, I think.” He shook her hand again and pushed inside.
All she heard before the door shut was “Hello, Kase, so good of you to come to me this time.”
Then she was stuck on the outside, watching. Kase opened his eyes and said something to Jerrik, who replied. He kept talking for some time. Kase said several words in response.
Michelle settled in, creating an imaginary conversation in her head of the most ridiculous things she could think of that they might be saying. The dialogue had her laughing, until suddenly Kase slammed his hands on the table hard enough to dent it.
What the hell is going on in there?