Page 63 of Chasing the Other Woman

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, getting to his feet reluctantly. I’ve seen men look more eager to take the stand in a murder trial.

“Did the sirens near Jenkins Park go off before the storm?”

He looks from the commissioner to me, then back again. “They did not.”

I turn back to the commissioner. “There’s your answer.”

“Fine. But this is going to be⁠—”

“Messy? Expensive? Yes and yes. You should have thought about that before you cut corners on maintenance.”

He mumbles something under his breath as he walks off. I don’t bother wondering what it is.

“Damn. I’ve never seen that man walk away with his tail tucked between his legs like that,” the deputy says. “Nice work, Sam.”

Sam.

Not Mrs. Carlisle. Not Command. Not the woman who used to ride with Brooks.

Sam.

My phone buzzes beside my elbow.

I almost ignore it. Then I see the notification.

Storm Posse has tagged me.

For a second, everything around me keeps moving without sound. Petra talks to someone near the register. A lineman laughs by the jukebox. Deputy Wilkes scratches at his beard with the end of his pen.

I pick up the phone.

The first thing I see is a picture.

Me at twenty-three, sunburned across the nose, hair stuffed under a baseball cap, one boot propped on the bumper of the old blue truck while I argue with Brooks over a paper map spread across the hood.

My throat closes.

I swipe.

There I am in what was the command trailer before there was a real command trailer, wearing headphones too big for my head, a gas station coffee beside my laptop. Another picture shows me crouched beside a probe, tightening something with a wrench while Hershel stands nearby pretending not to supervise. Another is from a conference panel I barely remember, me pointing at a radar image while Brooks sits beside me, looking at me instead of the screen.

I read the caption in pieces.

Storm Posse didn’t start with one person.

No chase, no protocol, no field call, no piece of equipment carries one set of fingerprints.

Samantha Carlisle helped build this operation from the ground up.

I stop there because my eyes are burning, and I hate that they are. I hate that a social media post can make me feel like my chest is about to cave in.

This is not Brooks standing on a digital porch with a boombox over his head. It's not him asking strangers to tell me to forgive him.

It's quieter than that.

Worse, maybe.

He's simply telling the truth.