Code Blue

Lexi vs. The Debrief

I didn’t bother announcing myself as I opened the door of Evan’s apartment using the key he gave me for emergencies and stepped inside to find him lying curled onto his side on the couch, watching a movie from his laptop, which was placed strategically on top of the coffee table. He didn’t bother commenting on my intrusion either, instead shutting his laptop and sitting up straight. “So, how’d it go?”

“It was definitely eventful,” I replied, plopping down beside him once he’d crossed his legs.

He pulled up the fleece blanket covering his legs to his chest and glared at me. “Care to elaborate?”

“I guess the most important piece of information to relay is that Daniel officially named Max his number two.” I said those words extremely casually for someone who hadn’t stopped thinking about Max’s predicament since leaving the party the previous night. Ever since he’d confessed to me how frightened he was at the whole prospect of taking over the family business, I’d been thinking that maybe I’d misjudged him this whole time. I’d come in to this operation believing that Max was raised to be a criminal mastermind, and maybe my suspicions about his upbringing were true, but any lessons he’d been taught hadn’t actually sunk in. Because in the moonlight beside that fountain, he was just a scared kid who didn’t want to disappoint his father.

“Yikes,” Evan scrunched up his nose apologetically. “And how does Max feel about that?”

“He’s not exactly thrilled.” That was an understatement.

Evan relaxed a bit against the couch, shrugging his shoulders. “Well, that’s good.”

“It is?” I lifted my eyebrows in surprise. I’d been so caught up in feeling awful for Max that I hadn’t really seen an upside to the situation.

“If Max is resisting, then Daniel might not be in such a hurry to make a move, which buys us more time to figure out exactly what they’re going to do next,” Evan explained. I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but I supposed that was true. Just like any organization, the stability of the leadership in a crime syndicate was important, so it wouldn’t be wise for them to do anything major without certainty that Max was one hundred percent committed. If they moved before Max made up his mind, then they risked all of the operations falling apart if he decided it wasn’t what he wanted. Evan continued with the world’s most casual tone. “And it’s good for you because it means the guy you like isn’t a massive creep.”

“I don’t…,” I began to protest immediately, but I figured that at his point, there wasn’t any use in denying my feelings. So I settled for shrugging off his comment. “Whatever.”

I could tell Evan was trying not to laugh when he spoke again. “Did you find out anything else?”

Nodding, I tried to recall the details of the circumstances which led up to my interaction with Daniel’s tank of a security guard. “I snuck into Daniel’s personal study and I got a look at some of the papers on his desk, but I didn’t get a chance to photograph any of it.”

Having actual photographic evidence would have been extremely useful for the sake of the mission, but if Evan was disappointed in my inability to get it, he didn’t let on, instead grabbing a notepad and pen from the side table and furrowing his brow in concentration. “Do you remember what they said?”

Wanting to be as helpful as I possible, I squeezed my eyes shut as I tried to recreate the image of papers I’d seen on the desk in my mind. “It was like, letter and number combinations. 315B, 403K, 126P, and so on.” When I finished repeating all that I could remember, I reopened my eyes to see Evan still writing down the last of the combinations. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“Not right off the bat,” he admitted, setting the pad and pen down on the coffee table. “I’ll have our analysts see if they can make sense of it.”

“Okay,” I nodded, my mind sparking as I recalled the conversation I’d heard while eavesdropping outside the office, “Oh, also I overheard two of Stafford’ men talking about storing something at Ricky’s. Does Stafford have any known associates named Ricky?”

Evan shook his head again, pursing his lips as he racked his brain for any known associates who might have that name or nickname. “Not that I know of, but I can double check. Did you meet anyone at the party with that name?”

“No….,” I said slowly. At least, not that I could recall. After the announcement was made, I’d met so many people, that I couldn’t really keep track, but as far as I could remember, none of them had that name. In fact, the only time in my recent memory that the name Ricky popped up was from a couple weeks ago. My eyes widened as I made the connection. “Unless….

Evan stayed silent, allowing me to explain my epiphany. “On our first date, or I guess our only date, Max took me roller skating at this place called Triple R and I didn’t overthink it at the time, but I’m pretty sure the placemats read ‘Ricky’s Roller Rink’.”

I only vaguely remembered because I’d lowered my eyes to hide my reddening cheeks after Max said something that sent my heart racing.

“A roller rink, huh?” Evan replied, “I guess it’s as probable as anything else.”

“Max did tell me that his father used to bring him to that roller rink a lot when he was younger.” At the time, that story had been sweet, but if the only reason Daniel had taken Max to that roller rink was because he was doing business there, it made the entire situation, well, shitty. Max thought he was spending quality time with his father and making memories which would last forever and Daniel just needed an excuse to be there so he didn’t look sketchy.

“Okay. I’ll look into it,” he nodded, leaning forward to make a note of it on the pad.

While he was distracted, I took the opportunity to bring up a topic I’d been considering since witnessing Max’s near breakdown last night. “Hey, Evan, what would you think about me telling Max the truth?”

As I was hoping, he was only partially paying attention. “The truth about what?”

“Who I am.” I said the words soft enough that he might not actually hear. Or maybe I said them at a normal volume, but couldn’t tell because I couldn’t really hear anything over the sound of my heartbeat.

Either way, his response was exactly as I expected, his head shooting up and his gaze becoming icy. “Absolutely not.”

“Okay, but hear me out,” I said, my voice becoming more confident as I slowly spoke the plan I’d been cooking up this entire morning. “You said that Max being resistant to take over the family business is good for us because it means they’ll be slower in making their moves, but it also means that we might be able to use his hesitation to our advantage. Convince him to come to our side.”

I knew it was a little farfetched, but I didn’t think it was entirely impossible to convince Max that taking over the family business wasn’t in his best interest. He was already terrified of becoming his father, all he needed was some gentle persuasion.

I expected Evan to shut down the idea again, but instead he sighed and shook his head and spoke softly. “You like him a lot, huh?”

“What are you talking about?” I furrowed my brow, genuinely confused as to why he was changing the subject. “This isn’t about my feelings for him.”

But of course, Evan always had insights into me that I didn’t have into myself. “It is, though. Because you’re looking for a way to salvage your relationship with him, so that maybe, when this is all over, the two of you might have a shot at a happy ending. But Evie, even if you do manage to convince him to join our side, it’s not like the two of you can just pick up where you left off. He’s not going to trust you anymore.”

Maybe he was right. Maybe subconsciously, I was hoping that convincing Max to help us would mean that he would understand why it was that I was in this situation in the first place. That maybe he wouldn’t be pissed that I was putting his father behind bars. But Evan was right, that was unrealistic. People didn’t just get over the fact that their parents were imprisoned or that their girlfriend was only dating them to get intel on their families. Chances were that even if Max made the decision to help me on his own, he would never be able to look at me the same way.

“I know,” I sighed, “But that’s better than the alternative.” The alternative being that Max does as his father wishes and I end up having to arrest him too. “Please don’t pull me off this case, Evan.”

He’d been very vocal with his concerns about how my feelings for Max would affect the mission before, so now that I wasn’t bothering to counter his accusations, I figured it meant certain death for my undercover career. But instead, he said, “I wasn’t going to.”

“You weren’t?” I immediately mentally slapped myself for questioning that decision.

“I can’t,” he shrugged. “Not now that you’re Max’s girlfriend and you’ve met his entire family. Someone would definitely notice if you randomly disappeared.”

That made sense. And it was a strangely comforting thought that the Stafford family would be worried about my absence. “Right. So what now?”

“Proceed as normal,” Evan advised. “When do you see Max again?”

I had thought we’d come back to campus together, but when the guests started to leave, he told me that he should stay the night with his family and kissed me goodbye and sent me on my way. This morning, I woke to a text saying that his mother was making the most of having the whole family together, so he wouldn’t be back today either. “He said he’s going to be late getting back to campus tonight, so I told him I would just see him in class tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he nodded. “Well, like I said, everything’s perfectly normal.”

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what normal meant anymore. It was one thing to pretend everything was fine when I had no idea where Max stood with his family but that he was on the verge of being the country’s next most notorious crime lord, it would be much harder to play the part. But this was my job and I had to prove that I deserved to be here, so I would take on the challenge as best as I could. “Okay.”

Lowering my feet to the floor, I pushed myself into a standing position and headed for the door, pausing when Evan called out after me.

“Hey, Evie?” he said, his voice soft, and if I didn’t know him better, I’d think he almost sounded sad. “I know that you’re not really big on taking my advice, but you do need to be realistic. You can’t control that you have feelings for Max, but you do need to seriously consider what’s going to happen if all of this ends the way we want it to.”

The way we want it to. It was so much easier to be on board with the ending objective of the mission when Max was just a person I didn’t know. But now…now he was a person who had begun to worm his way into my heart and it wasn’t easy to accept that he would undoubtedly end up hating me.

Nodding in response to Evan’s plea, I opened the door and stepped outside, thinking that it was such a cruel twist of fate that my mission was to break down Max’s walls, but instead, it was he who ended up breaking down mine.