“You’re sorry?” Caprice scoffed. “You didn’t seem very sorry a minute ago on the phone. And asking for some detective by name? Since when the hell are you friends with anyone on the force?”

Micah swallowed. “Since my dad is the captain.”

They may have been standing outside in the tail end of December, but somehow, Micah still felt it drop about ten degrees at his confession.

“What did you just say?”

Something inside Micah screamed for him to stop – to fucking take it back – before he ruined everything. But he’d known what was going to happen – what was inevitable – when he’d made the call, and it was only a matter of time until Caprice did too. Until Damon knew. “My father’s the captain of the 105th precinct in Queens.”

And I’m a police detective.

Micah was too much of a coward to admit that part out loud.

Unfortunately – or maybe, fortunately – he didn’t get a chance to see how Caprice would react to the revelation about his dad, because a moment later, the sound of sirens filled the air, and there simply wasn’t time.

“Listen,” Caprice all but snarled at him, grabbing him by the front of his sweater. “I invited you over to my place to… to-”

Realizing she was attempting to come up with a cover story, Micah quickly finished for her, “-to help plan Damon’s birthday party.”

Caprice scowled, but acquiesced. “I invited you over to help plan Damon’s birthday party. Jason walked in on us in a compromising position and assumed we were having an affair. In a jealous rage, he went mad – tied you up and beat you bloody. Eventually, I was able to take him off guard, and we flipped the tables on him. That’s the story. If you know what’s good for you, you won’t stray from it.”

“I won’t,” Micah assured. It was the least he could do.

The flashing red and blue lights visible down the block were quickly approaching.

Intimately familiar with police procedure, Micah plucked Jason’s gun from Caprice’s hand before she could protest and kicked it down the sidewalk a good distance away from them. He had his hands in the air above his head before the first cop even got out of his patrol car, Caprice reluctantly following his lead.

From there, things were a blur.

Micah was led to the back of an ambulance, where his head wound was examined. The medic, a lovely middle-aged woman named Tracy with a prominent streak of gray in her hair and an excellent bedside manner, made him lie back on a stretcher so she could shine a light in both of his eyes. He winced at the brightness, his brain screaming in protest.