Later that evening, she stood in a bathroom in the precinct, waiting to go outside to talk to a room full of reporters about the murder at the apartment on Oak Street. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, this was the only other situation where she got nervous, besides online dates, the only other time when her mouth became dry and her palms began to sweat. She could talk to almost anyone about anything, but add a camera and a room full of people, and her entire body suddenly became a cottony mess of nerves.

She remembered the first time she did an interview on the job. It was a domestic violence case, and a reporter had thrust a microphone in her face, the light of the camera blinding her.

“Tell me about what happened,” the chipper reporter had said.

Claire had felt her blood run cold and her mouth become dry.

“I…um…I…”

Her partner at the time had jumped in, but she’d been called “I, um, I” for a solid year after that.

The bathroom in the police station felt small and confining, but Claire needed a moment to pull herself together. It was a single stall, unisex bathroom, and she’d stepped inside and locked the door before turning on the water and leaning over the sink.

Breathe.

She could ask Greg to do it, or her boss. But she wasn’t the kind of person to ask for help, not for something like this. If she avoided it enough, everyone would pick up on it, and if there was one thing she had learned, people liked to see you uncomfortable. Whether they liked you or hated you, people enjoyed seeing you squirm.

“I, um, I” was proof of that.

So she acted like the press conferences didn’t affect her at all, and she’d been able to ward off too many of them. When they came up, she did what she was doing now: walked into the bathroom, splashed a bit of water in her face, took a few long, deep breaths, and tried to psych herself up.

It was barely working this time.