When she found herself, for the second time that week, scrubbing out the toilet in the unisex bathroom, she took yet another good look at herself in the mirror.

She knew the fuckhead of a manager dumped the bathroom duty on her twice as often as anyone else because she wouldn’t have sex with him. (Married, at least forty, ponytail, so yuck.)

“So screw it,” she told herself.

She walked out of air that smelled like bleach and fake lemons, into the constant hum of espresso machines and conversations pontificating about politics or whining about relationships.

She pulled off the stupid red apron she had to pay to have laundered, got her purse out of the skinny locker—the rent of which also came out of her sorry excuse for a paycheck.

Manager Fuckhead sneered at her. “It’s not time for your break.”

“You’re wrong about that. It’s past time for my break. I quit.”

She strolled out into the world of noise and color, and realized she felt something she’d missed for entirely too long.

She felt happy.

*

Six months after graduating from the Academy, Reed rode patrol with Bull Stockwell. Officer Tidas Stockwell had earned the name “Bull” not only from his physicality, but from his personality. A fifteen-year vet, Bull was foulmouthed, hard-assed, and claimed to have a nose that could detect bullshit from two miles off.

He had several red flags that caused him to charge, including: anything he considered anti-American (a sliding scale), assholes (a wide range of qualifications), and motherfuckers. His top candidates for motherfuckers were anyone who harmed children, beat women, or abused animals.

He hadn’t voted for Obama—he’d never voted for a Democrat in his life, and saw no reason to deviate. But the man was president of the United States and, as such, had his respect and loyalty.

He didn’t have a bigoted bone in his body. He knew assholes and motherfuckers came in every color and creed. He might not understand the whole gay thing, but didn’t actually give a shit one way or the other. He figured if you wanted to get off with somebody built the same as you, that was your business.

He had two divorces under his Sam Browne belt—from the first, a ten-year-old daughter he unabashedly worshipped—and he owned a one-eyed, one-legged cat he’d rescued after a drug bust.

Most days he berated Reed verbally for being too stupid, too slow, a college boy, and a dumbass rookie. And in the six months since he’d been on the job, Reed had learned more about the down-and-dirty and nitty-gritty of cop work than he had in all his college courses or in his months at the Academy.

He’d sure as hell learned, when answering a domestic disturbance call, to put himself between Bull and the offending party (male) before that red flag had his partner pawing the ground and snorting.

So when they rolled up to a potential double D in a townhome they’d visited for the same reason four times before, Reed prepared to do just that.

“She’s got an RO on him now, so his ass is mine.”

Reed recalled the she in question—one LaDonna Gray—had taken her husband—one Vic Gray—back after a black eye and split lip, and again after a broken arm and clear-cut marital rape.

But the third incident—knocking her unconscious, and knocking out two teeth—two months after she’d given birth to their son had been the restraining order charm.

“He better not have touched that baby.” Bull hitched up his pants as they started for the door down a frost-heavy walkway slushy with snow.

A woman ran out of the connecting unit. “He’s killing her! I swear this time he’s killing her.”

Reed heard it now—the screams, the shouts, the wails from the baby.

He had time to think: Oh, shit.

He saw, too, the front door had already been broken in.

He went through the doorway with his partner, noted the signs of violence on the main level, with the overturned table, broken lamp.

Upstairs the baby screamed as if someone had shoved an ice pick through his ear, but the shouts, curses, sobs, thuds came from the rear of the house.

Reed moved faster than Bull—younger, longer legs—and had time to see Vic Gray bolt out the back door. The woman lay moaning, sobbing, bleeding on the kitchen floor.

“I’ve got him.” Reed sprinted out the back. As he ran, he called it in.

“Officer Quartermaine in pursuit of suspect in assault. Suspect is Victor Gray, Caucasian male, age twenty-eight, heading south on Prospect on foot. Suspect is five feet ten inches, a hundred and eighty pounds. He’s wearing a black parka, red watch cap, jeans. Turning east on Mercer.”

Gray cut across a yard, carving a path through the eight inches of snow from the fall the night before, scaled a fence. Reed thought how much faster he’d be if he had his Nikes instead of the uniform shoes.

His breath in visible clouds, Reed went over the fence, dropped into snow. Heard screams, kicked up his speed. He hadn’t lettered in track in high school for nothing.

He spotted a woman sprawled in the snow in her yard beside a half-built snowman. With her nose dripping blood, she clutched a wailing toddler.

“He tried to grab my baby!”

Reed kept going, saw Gray cut east again, reported it as he gained on him. He went over another fence, saw Gray veer toward the open door of another townhome where music and a woman’s laugh pumped out.

Reed heard the woman say, “I don’t need to see how well you shoveled the patio. Close the door. It’s cold!”

His only thought: He’s not getting in there and hurting somebody else. Reed may not have been his father’s football star, but he knew how to tackle.

He leaped, left the ground, and took Gray out at the knees on the narrow patio outside the open door.

When Gray’s face scraped along the stone, he screamed.

“Hey, hey, what the fuck!” A man stepped out, wineglass in one hand, iPhone in the other. “Jesus Christ, he’s bleeding all over the place. I’m recording this. I’m recording this. This is police brutality.”

“You go ahead and record it.” Out of breath, with his own bones rattled from the hit, Reed pulled out his cuffs. “Go ahead and record the asshole who beat his wife to a pulp a few blocks over, assaulted a second woman, and tried to kidnap her child as a hostage. The guy who was heading straight into your house.

“I’ve got him,” Reed reported into his radio. “Suspect’s contained, may require medical attention. What’s the address here?”

“I don’t have to tell you dick.”

“Shut up, Jerry.” The woman who’d been laughing shoved the man with the phone aside. “It’s 5237 Gilroy Place, Officer.”

“In the rear of 5237 Gilroy Place. Thank you, ma’am. Victor Gray, you’re under arrest for assault, two counts, for battery.” He snapped the cuffs on Gray’s wrists. “For attempted child abduction, resisting arrest, and violating the terms of a restraining order.”

“That man has rights.”

Reed looked up. “Are you a lawyer, sir?”

“No, but I know—”

“Then why don’t you stop interfering with police business?”

“You’re on private property.”

“My property,” the woman said, “so shut the hell up, Jerry. You’re bleeding some, too, Officer.”

He tasted it in his mouth, felt it on the stinging heels of his hands. “I’m okay, ma’am. Victor Gray, you have the right to remain silent.”

As he recited the Miranda warning, Jerry smirked. “Took you long enough.”

“Not a lawyer?” Reed pulled Gray to his feet. “Just a dick in general.”

“I’m filing a complaint!”

“That’s it. Out. Get out of my house, Jerry.”

Reed heard the sirens as the woman handed the dick his ass. Since she appeared to have that situation under control, he stiff-walked Gray around to the front of the house.

“I’m gonna sue your fucking ass,” Gray mumbled.

“Yeah, you do that, Vic.”

LaDonna Gray suffered three broken ribs, a broken wrist, a broken nose, two black eyes, a shattered cheekbone, and internal injuries. Her son wasn’t harmed.

Sheridan Bobbett, who’d been in her yard playing with her two-year-old, sustained minor injuries, and the minor child had some bruises on his arms and shoulders. According to her statement, Gray had rushed into her yard, knocked her down. She’d fought him when he attempted to yank her son out of her arms, then he had run away when a police officer had come over the fence in pursuit.

Eloise Matherson, resident of 5237 Gilroy Place, served as an eyewitness of the takedown and arrest, stating she’d seen through her open door the man identified as Victor Gray running toward her house, saw the officer tackle him just a foot away from her door, and restrain him when Gray attempted to resist. She expressed her gratitude for the officer stopping a violent man from entering her home.

And gave Reed her number on the sly.

Bull dumped the paperwork on Reed—that’s how it went for rookies. And Reed overheard him talking to the hospital, checking on LaDonna Gray’s condition.

By the time Reed had filed the paperwork, Jerry the Dick’s phone video hit the local newscasts.