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“Of course,” she says with the air of a mother being lied to by an errant child. “Annika, if you need to talk to someone, you know I’m here.”

“I know,” I sigh, slipping into the seat next to her. “I’m just not very good at sharing.”

“I know.” She smirks. “But you’re not alone, Annika. You never were.”

We sit in silence for half an hour, it’s companiable and calming. In the quiet, I rediscover my ability to carry on and be okay. My family may be unconventional but they’re with me when I need them. Even when it’s two o’clock in the morning.

44

HARVEY

"Você está bem, querido?” I smile at my grandmother as she shuffles into the tiny living room of her small apartment. Her rollers still in and a mug of coffee in her hands as she tuts at my bruised and broken nose—because Annika can pack a punch. My grandmother has tutted at me every time she’s looked at me over the last few days.

“I’m fine,avó,” I say, standing to take her coffee from her, but she bats me away, tutting at my now crooked and still slightly bruised nose.

“Then why are you still moping around here like a puppy with a broken paw?”she continues in her native tongue.

I chuckle, turning back to look out the window where I’ve been stood for the last thirty minutes.“I’m not moping,”I answer in Portuguese.“I’m contemplating.”

“What exactly have you been contemplating these last few days, baby?”

I huff and take a seat on the faded floral couch that’s a relic from the nineties that she picked up at a charity shop twenty years ago. “I don’t know, I feel off kilter. I hurt someone I careabout, and I got what I wanted but I’m not sure I want it anymore.”

She scrutinises me with dark brown eyes narrowed into slits. “This person you care about, would they be a woman?”

“Yes.” I smirk. “Not justawoman, butthewoman.”

She grunts in acknowledgement. “The one who ruined your beautiful face?” When I chuckle and nod, she purses her lips, unimpressed. “You love her?”

I puff out a breath and run my hand over my face. “Yes, ma’am.”

She nods. “I find apologies go a long way, baby. Just find your big-boy pants and tell her you’re sorry.”

I find myself nodding in agreement. “Yeah.”

“There’s something else?”

“I don’t know.” I can’t tell her that I got my job back as I never told her I lost it in the first place. I was that confident I’d have my badge again. “Something isn’t right at work. It feels…it feels like I’m missing something.”

“Trust your instincts, baby. You’ve always been good at following your gut.”

It’s good advice and it’s the same advice she’s been giving me since I was a child, but the problem is I’m not entirely sure what my gut is telling me. Something is niggling in the back of my mind, a question I can’t quite hear. There’s a missing piece to this puzzle and I feel like I’m walking around searching for it while it’s gripped in my hand.

“Did Captain Marks come by while I was away?” I ask, and I’m not sure why.

“Yes, he came by with flowers and stayed for a coffee a couple of times. Why?”

I shake my head, no knowing why that seemed important. “What did you guys talk about?”

She looks at me like I’ve grown two heads. Gary often stops by to check in on myavówhen I’m working late shifts or under cover. It’s not something I’ve ever questioned. “The usual,” she says, her eyes moving back and forth like she’s searching her mind for the memory. “He asked how I was, asked if I’d heard from you. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

I slump back in my seat feeling deflated. I’m not sure what answers I was expecting but I still feel like I’m missing something. It isn’t until three o’clock the next morning that the right question comes to my head and as I lay awake trying to think of logical answers, a building dread churns in my gut.

I’m shaking as I near the Captain’s office, adrenaline and nerves reverberating through my veins and a small sliver of hope slithering at the back of my mind. Hope that I’m wrong. Hope that there’s a simple and innocent explanation for everything. I don’t knock, opening the door and letting it bang against the wall. Gary looks up with a snap, an open wrapper with some kind of burrito half eaten in front of him. That string of hope seems to snap.

“I thought I told you to take the week off, boy.” Gary bends his head back down to screw his face up at his computer like he can’t read the email in front of him without getting an inch from the screen.

“How did Annika Wolfe know your name?” I go straight in with my questions.