"What are you going to do?"
"Start some fires and burn some bridges down while I'm at it." I didn't wait around for him to try to convince me not to, I just left.
The captains' phone rang, "Hello?"
"How did she take it? Do you think she'll cooperate and stand down?"
"No she's not going to stand down! I told you that! It's not in her to give up!"
"That is unfortunate for her."
"Wait, what are you going to do?"
"That is no longer your concern."
The line went dead and the captain put the phone down shakily. He needed a drink, was his overwhelming thought. He reached for the lower drawer of his desk and the alcohol it contained stashed under some folders.
I was about to hail a cab figuring that would be safer than walking, when a squad car pulled over in place of one. The narcotics detective from the cell crime scene poked his head out the passenger window.
"Heard what happened in there, raw deal! Can I give you a lift to your apartment? Might be safer that way."
I smiled with real appreciation, "Thank you detective."
I opened the back door of the sedan and in stunned horror I felt a tazer jammed to my throat from somebody behind me on the street, and then I was tumbling into the back seat of the car.
I lifted my head off the seat and coughed. I opened my eyes; I was still in the squad car.
"Sorry Lisa, you're a good detective and I hate to do this to you, but the powers that be say you gotta go."
"Then why don't you just put a bullet in my brain and be done with it?" I said slowly as my faculties came unfrozen.
My throat hurt from where the tazer had been jammed into it. I started to reach up to rub it, when I realized my hands were cuffed together. "So, how's it going to be?" I asked, trying to find out more of what was going on.
"Harder than you deserve. Again I'm sorry, it's just the way it's gotta be. No hard feelings."
And that's as much as either of the two men in the front seat would say. I looked around and didn't recognize where we were in the city at all, but it didn't look good. I must have been out for a while.
I saw a street sign and something seized up within me. This was a very bad section of the city. Cops didn't come here and if they did, they certainly didn't come alone and unarmed. I sat up straighter, which is when I saw the items laying on the front seat between the two men. My badge and my gun. So the betrayal went that far up the chain of command.