Page 77 of Dirty Daria

“What does that mean, like he won’t be working with you anymore?”

“Not with me, and not here. He moved over to undercover.”

“Undercoverundercover?Like where you pretend to be somebody else? Did you know about this?”

“He didn’t say a word to me about it, I had no clue. When I came in this morning, chief told me Reed moved over to undercover. My guess is we aren’t going to hear from him for a while.”

“Isn’t that dangerous? Isn’t it the undercover agents who are always killed? Will he even be able to come home?”

“I don’t know. But probably not. I don’t have a lot of details. He didn’t even tell the chief about it. Just up and left. I don’t know anything more than that. I don’t think he’s doing too well with David’s death.”

“He didn’t even say goodbye.”

“I’m sorry, Cutie. That’s a shit move on his part.”

“Yeah, it is. What a jerk.”

“You gonna be okay?” I ask her.

“I’ll go cry into my ice cream, call Dar and complain, but overall I’ll be fine. I’m a big girl. Besides he has to come back sometime, right? I’ll just kick his butt then.”

“Right.” I smile even though she can’t see it. “You need anything you call me, all right?”

“Thanks, Mack. I appreciate it.”

“Anything for my Cutie.”

She giggles and then disconnects the call. Talking to her put a smile on my face even if the conversation was a downer. I like Quinn and I think it sucks that Reed handled her this way. He could have at least said goodbye to her, or never gone to see her last night in the first place. But this way, the way he’s done it, is crappy.

I set my phone down on my desk. I need to get past this whole Reed thing and figure out my next move.

The chief calls me back into his office before I get a chance to do anything more.

“I got bad news and I got worse news. Which do you want first?”

“Bad news.”

“The only guy I got to give you right now is Andrews.”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, certain I must have heard him wrong because there’s no way in hell he just said I have to partner with Andrews, right?

“Come again?” I stick a finger in my ear and rotate it, as though I’m cleaning it out to hear him better.

“You heard me.”

“I’ll go solo.”

“You can’t go solo.”

“I work better alone anyway.”

“You know the rules, Murph. And I break a lot of them for you. But I can’t break this one, sorry.”

“Fuck me. When?”

“He’s on his way now.”

“Well, shit. If that’s the bad news, what’s the worse news?”