But it wasn’t long that we had to leisurely drive around on the subdivision roads until the speaker mounted to the dash garbled something.
Adam was listening intently.
He seemed to understand something I didn’t from that noise because his eyebrows knitted together and he said, “it’s time.”
“Time for what? Where are we going?” I asked.
He stepped on the gas pedal and the car lunged forward.
“Jeez, you could’ve given me a warning!” I fussed, looking over at him.
His face was pointed forward, his strong nose focused on his goal: The horizon. A grin was spreading across his face.
I knew that the man I was seeing in front of me was a man in his element. He was experiencing as much joy as a person could.
He was doing what he loved doing.
And right then, I knew that Adam had found something he would do until the day he was forced to retire.
I wondered if I’d ever find anything like that. All I was doing when I returned to school was finishing up a degree in English. But I’d only fallen into that because I wasn’t really passionate about anything.
Watching how Adam’s eyes fixated on the horizon as the car sped up, I was drenched in admiration and envy. I wanted something that caused that feeling for me, too.
“Mind hitting that switch?” Adam asked me, gesturing to a small switch among the zillion buttons on the console.
“Uh, yeah, sure,” I said lamely, then flicked it.
The sirens roared to life, filling the area around us with this high-pitched wailing. The lights turned on, and everything we passed was shimmering red and blue.
Excitement fluttered in my chest. I could see why Adam lived for this.
He pointed the car down the smooth two-lane road, and cars pulled over to the side to let us pass.
Get out of the way, bitches… I thought to myself as I watched them, getting a little carried away on the power of authority.
We whizzed all the way to the other part of the town — the part that was nestled in the woods away from the lake when Adam finally slowed down. He hit another combination of switches on the console and the siren ceased. Though, everything around us was still flickering red and blue.
Adam pulled the car up into the driveway of a modest-looking house.
“Stay here,” he said.
I was suddenly seized by panic. I didn’t want to be alone in here with this… this cage! But I told myself that I’d only look forward and try to focus on solid things.
Thankfully, I could focus on the drama unfolding before me as Adam got out of the car and knocked on the door. A woman answered, and it was clear from her demeanor that she wasn’t dangerous. She was hunched over slightly and kind of cowed down to Adam.
Something about her didn’t seem right though. The way she was holding her arms to her chest as she talked to him, the way her eyes kept darting back inside the house…
Then she looked up at him and I saw that a big, purple bruise was forming just below her eye.
Adam pushed past her into the house.
I sat up, fighting the urge to get out of the car and follow him.
I counted to ten. Then to twenty, my heart in my throat.
Then Adam reemerged from the house, pushing some slob-looking guy towards the car.
I watched in excitement as he bent the guy over the hood of the car, read him his Miranda Rights, and then cuffed him. Then he led him to the back seat of the car as the woman screamed from the front porch.
There was some shuffling as the handcuffed man squeezed into the back seat, then Adam shut the door behind him.
Adam got back into the front seat, his eyes full of the fire of life.
“Domestic abuse,” he explained. “It isn’t pretty—”
“I didn’t mean to hit her! Just the bitch wouldn’t shut up—”
Adam slammed his elbow against the cage mesh to get the guy to quiet.
I jolted, trying not to look at the mesh.
Adam raised an eyebrow at me.
That’s when I knew I’d have to tell him about the incident, and I’d have to tell him soon.
14
Adam
We drove back to the station with the guy I’d arrested in the back seat. Thankfully he was quiet.
I’d been watching Luke carefully this entire time, watching for signs of a panic attack. He seemed okay, but I couldn’t miss how he wouldn’t look behind him in the car.
Did he… did he know this criminal?
I narrowed my eyes at the road ahead.
Back at the station, I got the guy processed and turned him over to my buddy Nick. Then I finally got some alone time with Luke as we took a break.
In the break room, I pulled out a fresh apple juice from the fridge and some crackers from the cupboard. It was just us two alone at the table.
“You feeling okay?” I asked as I tore open the packet of crackers.
He looked up at me with a concealed pain in his eyes.
“Yeah, mostly…”
“What does ‘mostly’ mean?” I asked, leaning forward in my chair.
“Well, I’ve got to let you know sooner or later…” he said, his eyes darting around the room.
I leaned back, peering into the noisy hallway outside of the break room.
“Do you want to go somewhere more private?” I asked.
“No… it’s fine here,” he said, taking a deep breath. “If I delay it any longer, it’ll just get worse.”
I sat up straight, listening intently. “You can tell me, Luke. You can tell me anything.”
There was a pause, and in that pause, there was no noise except the rustling out in the hallway.
He took in a deep breath, then said, “The reason I couldn’t finish my last semester of college was because of… someone.”
My eyes narrowed. This couldn’t be anything good.
“He was… we were, like, sort of dating for a few months. He seemed like a good person and everything… but we kept our
