Chapter 20: COFFEE WITH A COP

Chapter 20: COFFEE WITH A COP
Mark O’Brien was leaning on my car like he’d been born there, hands tucked into his jacket pockets, posture relaxed in that way cops have when they’re pretending they’re not waiting for you. The streetlight behind him threw enough shadow across his face to make him look like trouble. Not the fun kind. The kind that showed up with paperwork.

“Walking home?” he asked, like he hadn’t been standing there waiting for me.

“I live here,” I said, jiggling my keys.

“In the street?” His mouth curved like he’d already decided I’d walked into that one.

I looked at him flatly. “You always this creepy now, or is it a special occasion?”

“Special occasion.” He straightened, hands still in his pockets. “Thought we could grab a coffee. Talk shop.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Shop talk? At…” I glanced at my phone. “…nine forty-seven at night?”

“Perfect time,” he said. “No distractions.”

“Plenty of distractions. I was going home.”

“Five minutes.” He said it like he knew I’d give them to him. Like high school all over again, when he’d convince me to skip a class under the guise of ‘helping him with notes.’ Spoiler: we never touched the notes.

I blew out a breath. “Fine. Five minutes.”

He didn’t bother replying, just started walking. And I followed because apparently my self-preservation instinct was on vacation.

The café he led me to was one of those hole-in-the-wall joints that somehow survived in Manhattan because the rent had been locked in when dinosaurs roamed. Faded awning. Bell over the door that jingled in a way that made you think it had a name. Inside, it smelled like coffee grounds and history. The lighting was low enough to hide the cracked vinyl on the booths, and the chalkboard menu looked like it had been written by someone who’d never actually met a straight line.

We slid into a booth in the back. Mark leaned one elbow on the table, looking like he belonged there. The waitress came over without a notepad, already knowing what he wanted. “Black,” he said, then looked at me. “You still take yours with way too much sugar?”

I stared at him. “You remember that?”

“I remember a lot of things,” he said, like it wasn’t meant to sound loaded, but it landed like it anyway.

I ordered a coffee, and when it came, I dumped two packets of sugar in it just to prove a point.

“So,” I said, stirring. “Work talk. Let’s have it.”

He wrapped his hands around his mug, letting the steam curl around his knuckles. “You’ve been around Steve Freeman for what… a month?”

“Closer to three weeks.”

“Long enough to see the pattern.”

“Which pattern are we talking about? The one where he irritates people into homicide? Or the one where someone’s trying to kill him every few days?”

“The second one,” he said, dry.

I leaned back. “Yeah, I’ve noticed.”

He didn’t smile. “Whoever’s behind this, they’re not guessing. They know his movements before he makes them. That means someone’s feeding them information.”

I went still. “You’re saying it’s coming from inside Freeman Technologies?”

“I’m saying it’s a possibility you need to take seriously.”

“I already take it seriously. That’s why I sleep like a paranoid raccoon.”

Something flickered in his expression... sympathy, maybe. Or something that looked a lot like it. “I’m not here to scare you, Laura. I’m here because you’re in this now, and if there’s a leak, you’re standing dead center in the blast radius.”

“Comforting.” I sipped my coffee. “Is this how you talk to all the civilians you’re trying to keep alive?”

He leaned in just enough to make the air between us tighten. “No. Just you.”

It was so close to being a moment that I had to physically remind myself that I was here for work talk. I pulled back. “Tell me you have more than theories.”

“I’ve got patterns. The timing. The escalation. The next hit, if it follows the same curve, is going to be even closer.”

“How close?”

He hesitated. “Close enough you should already be thinking about it.”

I swallowed that down with coffee that was too hot to drink. The waitress came by to refill our cups, and for a few seconds, we sat in silence. It was the same kind of silence we’d had at seventeen, sitting on the hood of his old car, watching the sky turn dark. like words weren’t always necessary, but the not-saying could still get loud.

Finally, I said, “So what’s your plan, Detective?”

“Find the leak. Cut it off. Make sure Freeman lives long enough to give his next press conference.”

“Great. Sounds foolproof.”

He smirked. “You always were sarcastic when you were uncomfortable.”

“And you always liked pointing it out.”

For a minute, it was easy. Too easy. We talked about the old neighborhood, about the time he almost broke his arm falling out of the tree behind the football field. He laughed, and it hit me right in the gut... because the laugh was the same. Older, maybe. But the same.

Then his phone buzzed.

He glanced down, and whatever was in his face drained out. His jaw set. He swiped the screen and stared at it too long.

“What?” I asked.

He didn’t answer immediately. Then he turned the phone toward me.

It was a photo.

Taken from outside the café window.

Me and Mark, sitting exactly as we were now. Mid-conversation. His hand on his coffee cup. My hair falling over my shoulder.

Zoomed in so tight you could see the steam rising from the mugs.

The time stamp? Less than sixty seconds ago.