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Chapter Text

Lucy scanned the roll call room as she waited for the morning briefing to begin. The buzz of conversation from the experienced cops sitting behind her was friendly, and LA’s sunlight shone freely through the glass walls.

The roll call room seemed almost too nice to be in a police station, but Lucy wasn’t fooled by appearances. The friendly conversation and natural light didn’t mean the station’s cops weren’t dirty.

“Settle down.” The Watch Commander, Sergeant Wade Grey, took his place at the podium in the roll call room.

Officers hit their seats and quieted down near instantaneously. Grey had clearly won the respect of the patrol officers in the room.

“We got some new blood this morning and some pushing the expiration date.”

Grey glared at the rookie to Lucy’s left, John Nolan. Nolan was the oldest rookie in LAPD history. Lucy, old for a rookie at thirty, looked young by comparison next to him. It was part of the reason she had befriended him at the Academy.

“Stand up,” Grey ordered the rookies.

Lucy, Nolan, and Jackson West, the rookie to her right, all stood as one, presenting themselves to the rest of the patrol officers in the room. They were met with expressions of skepticism and open derision - the same reaction that LAPD rookies were experiencing around the city at this exact moment.

“After six months together at the Academy, you have earned the right to be here.”

Grey paused, something like approval in his eyes before he continued.

“But you will have to earn the right to stay. The way we do things matters. Protocol and tradition are the metal from which every cop in this city is forged. Understand?”

Lucy eagerly nodded at Grey, the skin of Portia Lin pulled over herself like a mask. Underneath Portia’s blonde highlights and optimistic expression, Lucy felt a surge of bitterness. Her first Watch Commander had said something similar - but when push came to shove he hadn’t cared about officers under his watch abusing their power.

“Sit down.”

Again, Lucy, Nolan and Jackson sat as one unified group. Despite herself, Lucy felt a wave of affection for the men on either side of her. Both had the potential to be good cops, if Mid-Wilshire let them.

“Time to play the training officer match game. Contestant number one is Portia Lin. A hotshot who made her first arrest before clocking in for work.”

Portia’s shitty car had broken down earlier in the morning and she’d arrested the guy who tried to steal it. The shitty car was part of the cover - shitty car, shitty apartment, and a credit score just high enough that it wouldn’t raise red flags when the LAPD ran Lin’s financials. Portia Lin was the kind of rookie who could be open to making some extra cash on the side.

“The winner is… Officer Bradford,” Grey said.

Lucy turned to see a white man in his late thirties or early forties shift in his chair. To her eyes, he read as former military, and his crossed arms made him appear utterly unimpressed with Portia.

Lucy smiled Portia’s nervous smile in his direction. His bearing and expression didn’t change. Lucy notched up the nerves in Portia’s expression in response. She really hoped he wasn’t an asshole like her first TO had been.

***

“Why aren’t you taking notes, Officer Lin? You think I’m impressed because you picked some low hanging fruit on your way to work?” Officer Bradford screamed at her as she inspected the shop.

Shit. He seemed to be an asshole exactly like her first TO.

Lucy scrambled for her notebook, as if his instructions weren’t already written in neatly typed font in her Rook Book.

She knew she should make small mistakes to keep her cover, even though that warred with the perfectionist part of herself. She settled for holding the shotgun awkwardly during the shotgun check, as if she had little experience or comfort with firearms.

She could see Officer Bradford grind his teeth as she did, and she hid her amusement at how predictable his reaction was. Predictability would make her job easier.

As they hit the road she could see that Bradford held his stress in his arms and shoulders as he drove. The anger and intensity he’d directed at her earlier now seemed to be directed at the streets around them.

“So, why do you want to be a cop?” Bradford demanded, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

“Oh, good question! Fun fact about me: I was actually an English literature major and a musical theater minor.”

Lucy began telling Bradford Portia’s backstory in Portia’s voice - higher than her natural tone, but as easy to her as breathing after playing Portia all through the Academy. She widened her eyes and spoke quickly to emphasize Portia’s naivety.

“I traveled after I graduated, picked up work here and there but nothing felt right. Realized I wasn’t making much of a difference in the world. Going to the Police Academy was the first time everything clicked into place.”

“Hold up. Musical theater?” Bradford said, incredulous.

Lucy smiled and launched into one of the many show-tunes she’d memorized on the road between Sacramento and LA.

“Good mornin’
Good mornin’
We’ve talked the whole night through-”

Her rendition of the Singin’ in the Rain song abruptly stopped as Bradford slammed on the brakes and she jerked forward against the seat belt, hard enough that it would leave a bruise.

“I’ve been shot! Where are you, Boot?” he yelled.

“What?”

Lucy began to outwardly panic, as she knew Portia would.

“I’m bleeding to death, you have to call for help. Where are you?” he continued.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said, still pretending to be a confused rookie.

“Where are you?” he yelled again, dialing up the volume even further.

Bradford would lose his voice by the end of the day if he kept yelling at her with no vocal control. Lucy stopped herself from rolling her eyes.

“Now I’m dead, and it’s your fault. Get out and walk.”

“I’m sorry,” Lucy said, letting her eyes well with tears to match Portia’s inexperience.

“Get out!” he demanded. “You can get back in when you know where you are.”

She meekly obeyed, and began to walk, trying to calculate just how long it would take the average rookie to figure out where they were.

“You know where you are yet, Officer Lin? No? Then I’ll fill in the edges of your off-off-off Broadway story.” Bradford said, disgust in his tone, as he rolled the shop alongside her.

“You figured being a cop was a steadier paycheck than bartending or teaching, and you couldn’t do anything else with your degree. Maybe you’ll even get a script out of it? A hit song? You figure the LAPD takes anyone. But it turns out-”

His diatribe was interrupted by aggressive honking from the vehicle behind them. Genuine rage flickered across Bradford’s face.

He exited the shop and approached the truck that had the audacity to honk at a police car. Lucy followed his lead.

“Gentleman, I have a serious question for you. Were you grown in a petri-dish of stupid?”

“Por favor, no hablo ingles,” the driver told him.

“Don’t pull that crap with me.”

Bradford addressed the inhabitants of the truck, clearly immigrant laborers, with the same disgust he had directed at her earlier. She could see that two of the men in the truck, possibly more experienced at dealing with American cops than their companions, looked genuinely worried.

Lucy switched to Spanish and asked for the driver’s license and registration, attempting to de-escalate the situation.

“Tell him that it’s immigrants like him that make Americans like you look bad. If it was up to me, I’d send them all back by catapult,” Bradford said.

Bradford looked utterly serious as he glared at her and the driver.

Lucy paused for a second, slightly stunned by both the racism and level of entitlement Bradford was displaying in his first morning with a new rookie. Even her first TO had ramped it up over time, like easing a frog into slowly heating water before it boiled.

“Tell them what I said,” he said, dead-eyed as he looked at her.

Lucy leant down, returned the license and registration information to the driver, and used her bare bones Spanish to tell him to avoid honking at the police, especially when his truck was in violation of half a dozen state vehicle codes.

Bradford strode around the truck, legs eating up the ground in just a handful of steps, and stopped uncomfortably close to her - turning off her body camera at the end of his movement. A clear violation of LAPD policy that was all too common in veteran members of the force who remembered a time pre-body camera and knew they were pretty much untouchable thanks to the police union.

“Officer Lin, do I strike you as a man who means what he says?” Do I seem laid back to you? Wishy washy in any way?”

“No sir,” Lucy stuttered.

He switched to Spanish - “Entonces por qué cambiarías las palabras que salieron de mi boca?”

So the white boy could speak Spanish and thought that was a surprise - in LA.

“Everything is a test, Officer Lin. You just got another F,” he told her, cruelly satisfied as he watched Portia flounder.

Lucy saw red.

“I think I passed that test, sir,” Lucy told him, too pissed off to hold onto Portia’s first day on the job diffidence.

It was his turn to be taken aback.

“I de-escalated the situation when my superior officer put the LAPD’s reputation at risk with his casual racism - including what could be interpreted as a possible threat against the city’s residents,” she said.

“Don’t do that Lin,” he said.

“Don’t do what?”

“Think.”

He turned around and motioned for the truck to depart. Lucy went to open the passenger door to the shop, using the motion to hide the movements of her right hand as she turned her body camera on and off again.

Any time the body camera was turned on it automatically recorded and uploaded the last two minutes of footage. Everything Bradford said to her and to the immigrants in the truck would be available and accessible in the LAPD records.

“Did I say you could get back in? You’re still walking Boot,” Bradford said, shaking his head in theatrical disappointment.

She glared at him and started to walk down the palm-lined street. Sweat built under the wool of her long sleeved rookie uniform as the LA sun beat down on her from above and reflected off the surface of the sidewalk below.

Lucy took a deep breath and put her anger back on a leash. She couldn’t afford to break character, even if her TO was more aggravating than the drug dealers she’d dealt with when last undercover. Bradford was on her shit list and quite possibly a dirty cop, but he seemed a poor fit to be the focus of Internal Affairs’s investigation into Mid-Wilshire.

Lucy wouldn’t get distracted - there was a mole for Southern Front somewhere in Mid-Wilshire patrol - and Officer Lucy Chen was going to find them. Of course, if she gathered evidence on any other dirty cops she found along the way - including her borderline abusive TO - that was just a bonus that would get her to Detective even faster.

Chapter Text

“A fucking Disney princess. She tried to sing a song from a musical in my shop. Animals are going to start following us around when she bats her eyelashes,” Bradford told Lopez.

“If you get eaten by coyotes I’ll make sure she gets a blue page,” Lopez said with a laugh.

Lucy and Jackson walked up to their respective TOs, delivering lunch on the second day of rookie training as the hazing continued.

Bradford had stopped talking as he noticed their approach in his blindside, but didn’t seem ashamed at the possibility she’d heard him. Caring about a rookie’s feelings was clearly beneath him.

“Thanks, West, Pollyanna,” Officer Lopez said with a wink as she tore open the bag Jackson had delivered to her.

The two TOs shared a look, and Lucy realized she’d just been assigned her nickname. As rookie nicknames went, it wasn’t terrible.

“Pollyanna, we’re taking this to go,” Bradford said, rising from the table. “I’ve decided your punishment.”

“My punishment for thinking?” Lucy asked, skeptical.

“Exactly,” he answered.

“You’re a rookie. You don’t get to think until month two - if you don’t wash out by then,” Lopez added, only half-joking.

Portia would be too awed by the TOs to respond, so Lucy made her way back to the shop in silence.

The silence lengthened from awkward to stifling as Bradford began to drive them to god knows where. Was the silence and subsequent feeling of social exclusion part of her punishment?

Lucy Chen had read the literature around hazing in an undergraduate social psychology course. Due to a quirk in the human brain, the worse the indoctrination ritual, the more connected the recipients felt to the organization. Group social bonds were so important to humans that people would undergo abuse to forge them. This was true whether the organization in question was a gang, fraternity or sports team - in Lucy’s view the LAPD bore characteristics of all three. The worse the abuse, the harder humans grasped on. Evolution had a lot to answer for.

Portia Lin hadn’t read psychology journals, and was bought into the LAPD bullshit, so Lucy would grin and bear it. The Mid-Wilshire hazing hadn’t been serious so far - just enough to induce an in-group (cops) out-group (everyone else) mentality.

“So, why did you become a cop?” she asked Bradford once she realized he wasn’t going to break the silence first.

“Did I give you any indication it was okay to ask me personal questions, Boot?”

Lucy stopped herself from hitting her head against the dashboard in frustration. He was playing the hardass TO routine to the hilt and she was already bored of it on day two.

At least she was getting danger and overtime pay on top of her regular salary for being undercover - a major reason why she had agreed to the dubious honor of a rookie experience a second time round. Lucy’s credit score wasn’t much better than Portia’s.

Bradford pulled into a convenience store parking lot. A large man with the hygiene and bearing of a low-end drug dealer stood in front of the automatic doors - this was clearly his patch.

As soon as the man saw the shop pull up he began awkwardly speed walking away.

“Yo hold up a minute, Ghost-Head,” Bradford ordered, falsely jovial.

“This is harassment,” the large man, apparently named Ghost-Head, said.

“No, this is just good customer service. Kind of like a frequent flier program for dirtbag drug dealers. Search him, Boot.”

The closer she got to Ghost-Head, the bigger he got. His gaze was unsteady and his movements imprecise. He could be dipping his own supply or dulling his reflexes with alcohol and junk food. Either way, her speed would be the key in taking him down if it came to a confrontation.

“Turn around and grab the wall,” Lucy ordered Ghost-Head.

“Make me, Boot.”

Ghost-Head sneered at her. He was clearly taking cues from Bradford when it came to the lack of respect he showed her.

Lucy raised an eyebrow at him in response.

“Really? You want to play it that way and pick up a charge for assaulting a police officer?” she asked.

“Like I’m going to let a girl search me,” he sneered.

Bradford smirked, silent as he watched the interaction.

Ghost-Head tried to swing at her. Rookie cover or no, Lucy couldn’t afford to let him hit her - he was big enough that just one blow could do serious damage. She used the momentum of his swing against him, twisting away and tripping him to the ground.

“Hands over your head, you’re under arrest,” Lucy ordered, a hand on her taser.

She hadn’t seen any weapons, but she couldn’t be sure he was unarmed. She was planning to taze him the second he so much as reached for a knife or a gun. Instead, Ghost-Head pulled himself up and tried to rush her, empty handed.

She took her hand off the taser and again used his momentum against him to put him on the pavement. This time he stayed there as she cuffed him.

“Why put your hand on your taser and not use it?” Bradford asked as she hauled Ghost-Head to his feet.

“A taser is a less-lethal weapon, not a non-lethal weapon, sir,” Lucy said, still breathing hard from the altercation. “If he’d reached for a weapon, I would have used it, but he attacked unarmed. A police officer should be able to take down an unarmed suspect without use of lethal force.”

Bradford nodded but before he could continue to question her, a blonde woman flew out of the store towards them.

“Hey, let him go,” she demanded.

To Lucy’s eye she looked like a strung-out, unkempt junkie.

“Isabel?” Bradford said softly.

He looked shocked. The smug TO had disappeared and in his place there was a man who seemed almost desperate.

“Leave him alone,” the junkie whined at Tim, ignoring Lucy.

“Isabel, it’s me. It’s Tim. I’ve been trying to find you. Are you okay?”

Bradford had angled his body to block Lucy’s vision of Isabel, but their conversation was still audible to Lucy’s ears.

“I’m fine. I’m fine, get off me,” Isabel said.

“I just want to help,” Bradford said.

Apparently Bradford knew this woman - Ghost-Head’s customer or girlfriend.

Ghost-Head chuckled behind Lucy, still cuffed.

“Get in the car,” she told him, blocking his view of the intense conversation between Bradford and Isabel.

She shut the door in his face and turned back around to witness whatever was unfolding between Bradford and Isabel.

“Give me all your cash,” Isabel whined at Bradford.

Lucy watched open mouthed as Bradford reached for money in his pocket. Surely he wouldn’t give a junkie cash?

“No, I’ll get you to rehab,” he said, his words belying his movements.

Lucy couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the heartbreak in his tone.

“I don’t need rehab,” Isabel said.

She snatched the cash from his hands and ran without a backwards look. Bradford stood completely frozen, staring after her.

“Let him go,” Bradford told Lucy, quieter than she’d ever heard him speak.

“He took a swing at me,” Lucy protested.

“Just let him go,” he said, louder this time.

“Fine.”

Lucy opened the door to the shop reluctantly.

“I’m sure I’ll see you soon,” Lucy told Ghost-Head as she uncuffed him.

“Yeah, whatever,” he said as he scampered away.

“What the hell was that?” Lucy asked Bradford.

Hazing a rookie was one thing, but essentially forcing her to fight someone and then letting him go? What was Bradford playing at?

“That was my wife. I haven’t seen her in almost a year.”

Fuck. No wonder Bradford was such an asshole.

What would Portia say?

“I’m sorry, Tim. That’s-”

“Shut it, Pollyanna. You call me sir, or Officer Bradford. Now get in the shop.”

The radio crackled to life before they could pull out of the convenience store parking lot - a dangerous drug runner named Richard Shelby had been located.

Bradford switched into business mode, as if he hadn’t been devastated by the reappearance of his junkie wife minutes before. He began to give Lucy concise instructions around the different scenarios they could face once they reached Shelby’s location.

“Looks like Nolan and Bishop will arrive at a similar time to us, given their location,” he continued, sirens blaring above them. “Follow my instructions to avoid possible intersecting fields of fire when we apprehend the suspect.”

“We don’t have to respond if you need to take a break. Multiple other units are responding.” Lucy said.

“We don’t get to choose when the city needs us, Boot.”

“Sir, you just saw your wife for the first time in months. And she wasn’t in great shape.”

“Again with the personal talk Boot. You owe me ten push-ups after this call.”

Lucy gave up. At least her objections were on record via the shop cam if he got her killed.

They beat Bishop and Nolan to the location - unsurprising given Bradford’s reckless driving.

Shelby was already outside the residence with another man, in front of an open car trunk that could be holding anything.

Lucy called in the sighting on their shop radio, then got out of the shop and began to walk towards the two suspects.

“Stay behind until we get them away from the car,” Bradford ordered her, crouching behind the door on the other side of the shop.

She caught a glimpse of what looked like a semi-automatic weapon in Shelby’s hands and hurried to obey, using the shop’s door on her side for cover.

“LAPD. Show us your hands,” Bradford called out at the suspects.

Both Tim and Lucy unhooked their holsters, ready to draw their weapons at a moment’s notice. The distance was too far for tasers or pepper spray. Against armed suspects, it was guns or nothing.

“Show us your hands, now!” Bradford ordered them again.

Shelby looked down the street towards them, and for a moment Lucy thought he’d surrender rather than turn this confrontation into a shootout in a residential area. She’d thought wrong. Both of the suspects opened fire and Lucy ducked as bullets flew around her.

For half a second she froze - terrified out of her mind. Then she remembered all the families that lived in the area - she had to act.

She returned fire, aiming for Shelby’s foot - the only part of him visible behind the car he was using as cover. He went down instantly with a soft thud. Had she just shot someone? Her pulse skyrocketed as adrenaline hit her system with a vengeance.

The second suspect started to run away as she heard a groan from the other side of the shop. She glanced over - Tim had been hit as well.

She reached for the radio at her belt. “Officer down, I repeat officer down. Requesting back-up and ambulance to this location.”

Lucy ran to where Shelby had fallen. He was crawling towards his semi automatic. She kicked it away and cuffed him.

“Bitch! I’m not going back to prison,” Shelby spat at her.

“Yeah you are,” Lucy said, in her own voice.

The bullet had entered his foot and his blood was dribbling down the pavement.

Where the hell were Bishop and Nolan? Lucy raised her personal radio again, remembering to use Portia’s voice this time.

“One suspect, male, fleeing on foot. One in custody with a gunshot wound to his left foot. Requesting an additional ambulance to this location.”

For a long second she stood there as Shelby groaned on the ground, feeling her heart rate come down and her breathing slow. Then she remembered Bradford - she ran back to where he was still lying on the ground, a puddle of blood already forming around him.

“What are you doing, Boot? Chase the suspect,” he ordered, the words coming out as a croak.

“Negative, sir. After a shooting my first responsibility is to render first aid to all injured parties. You are an injured party.”

She began to put pressure on the gunshot entry wound, the distant sound of sirens giving her hope the back-up was close. It didn’t appear to be a lethal wound but she had no way of knowing what organs and arteries had been hit by the bullet.

“Disobeying a superior officer is a serious offense, Boot,” Bradford said.

“You can punish me with a fistfight with a different drug dealer if you survive. Now stay still!”

“That might be a problem,” he told her dryly, his eyes locked on something behind her.

Lucy glanced behind her to see the hood of their shop flame alight, damaged from the earlier exchange of gunfire.

“Shit!”

“Situational awareness, Boot,” Bradford said with a laugh, smug even as the blood from his gunshot wound welled through her fingers.

Lucy began to drag Bradford away from the shop and outside the potential blast radius if the tank blew, hoping she wasn’t making his injury worse. She could hear him exhale in pain, but he made no complaint.

She returned to putting pressure on the wound as the approaching sirens got louder until they became deafening. Ambulances and police units pulled around the corner - backup had arrived.

She closed her eyes in relief. But, instead of blackness behind her eyelids, all she could see was blood.

Two paramedics rushed to Bradford, raising him onto a stretcher as she continued to hold pressure - doing her best to keep his blood inside his body. One paramedic gently pushed her aside to take her place.

She looked at the blood on her hands, transfixed. There was so much of it, dripping on the ground, her shoes, uniform.

“You still owe me ten push-ups, Boot,” Bradford said as he was carefully deposited into the back of the ambulance by the paramedics.

His words - and her kneejerk irritation - brought her out of her reverie.

“With all due respect, you’re a pain my ass, sir.”

“That’s my job,” he said, just before the doors to the ambulance slammed shut, ensuring that he had the last word.

Chapter Text

Lucy forced herself to eat the bland veggie burger in front of her - Portia Lin wouldn’t waste food in her financial situation. The patty tasted like it had sat in the back of a freezer for two years, but it was still edible. Barely.

She had been cleared to return to work after shooting and injuring Shelby - a mere week earlier than Bradford was due to come back from his gunshot wound. The LAPD bureaucracy had determined that the physical and psychological impact of a gunshot wound was worth less than two weeks of leave. Lucy wasn’t sure if she agreed.

Lucy had been eager to ride with a new TO when she had been introduced to Officer Wrigley. He had a different set of acquaintances than Bradford - more people to assess and investigate to get a sense of how Mid-Wilshire worked.

The reality had been disappointing. Riding with Officer Wrigley was like being wrapped in bubble-wrap while watching paint dry. She’d seen more possible criminals on the way out the door from her shitty apartment building than she had in half a day of writing speeding tickets.

Fortunately, the complete monotony of the day gave her plenty of spare time. Lucy had texted Erin Cole, a rookie who’d trained with her at the LAPD Academy, to meet her for lunch on Cole’s day off. Something had been off about her at the Academy - she seemed vulnerable in a way that was dangerous for a police officer. Lucy, in her role as the eternally optimistic Portia, had befriended Cole.

“Erin! It’s so good to see you,” Lucy said, giving Cole a hug.

Cole returned the hug, holding it a fraction too hard for a fraction too long.

“Thanks for inviting me out to lunch. The first couple of weeks of training have been intense,” Cole said.

Lucy nodded in fervent agreement, noting how Cole’s red rimmed eyes darted from side to side. Something was badly wrong.

“Is everything okay?” she said.

Cole burst into tears.

“It’s okay, just talk it out. We can figure it out,” Lucy said.

“I fucked up. I fucked up bad, Portia,” Cole said.

From there it took only minimal prompting from Lucy before Cole began spilling everything. Cole had been blackmailed by the Derian gang, and was now on the hook for providing them information and favorable treatment on a regular basis.

“They said it was just going to be once,” she sobbed into Lucy’s shoulder.

Naive idiot. It was never going to be just once.

“How were you supposed to know? It’s going to be okay. I’m friends with Jackson West - his dad is the head of Internal Affairs, remember?” Lucy said.

At the mention of Internal Affairs Cole tensed up. Lucy continued talking to put her at ease.

“He said I could talk to him about anything. He can get you into witness protection - you can be free of the Derians.”

“I can’t,” Cole said, tears still wet on her face.

“You can. Do you want the Derians to own you forever? This is the only way where you don’t end up dead or in jail. I can go with you to talk to Jackson’s dad and explain that you’re not a bad cop.”

Cole was a terrible cop who probably never should have graduated the Academy, but this wasn’t the time to say that.

Lucy held Cole’s hand, radiating sympathy. Cole eventually nodded her acceptance of the situation.

Lucy called for an Uber to her safehouse - more than willing to burn the location if it meant securing Cole’s confession.

On her way out of the restaurant, Lucy texted Wrigley. Really bad case of food poisoning. Heading home.

Rest up, superstar. See you tomorrow was the response.

As she left the restaurant she couldn’t help but feel like she was missing something. This was way too easy. Was Cole followed? She scanned her surroundings but couldn’t see anyone watching them.

The Uber came quickly, and Lucy kept an eye out for a tail the entire way to the safehouse - nothing.

She texted Detective Murphy, her handler, on the way. Both Murphy and Commander West were already waiting in the safehouse by the time Lucy and Cole arrived.

Cole was duly promised witness protection, and her confession was enough to put key members of the Derian gang and a Detective Nick Armstrong from a station on the other side of LA behind bars.

Lucy bought herself tacos at her favorite LA food truck on the way home to celebrate. She had already secured first big arrest undercover for LAPD’s IA, and it wasn’t even in Mid-Wilshire.

**

When Lucy arrived at the Mid-Wilshire precinct for her final day riding with Wrigley the atmosphere of the station was subdued - the detectives’ corner seemed particularly grim. She’d received a heads up from Murphy that Armstrong had been walked out in cuffs as soon as he arrived for work at his station, triggering the cop rumor mill.

Officer Smitty seemed immune to the grim atmosphere radiating from the detectives. He was happily eating a donut from a box, crumbs flying everywhere.

“Want a donut?” he asked Lucy.

Only two donuts remained in the box - both novelty flavors that always seemed to end up unclaimed.

“No thanks,” she said. “I don’t want Officer Bradford to hear I’m eating anything other than protein shakes and greens,” she joked.

“What have I told you about situational awareness, Boot?” Tim Bradford’s voice asked from behind her shoulder.

Lucy jumped, startled. A man that tall shouldn't be able to move that quietly.

She turned to see Officers Bradford and Wrigley behind her - Bradford in civvies glowering at her and Wrigley in his uniform. Both men were carrying coffee from the same coffee truck. Had they taken time before work to discuss her training? The thought was strangely warming.

“Donut?” Smitty offered the box to Bradford.

Lucy looked at Bradford closely as he demurred - he seemed paler than usual, clearly still little worse for wear from the gunshot wound. He had let his hair grow while on leave and it was almost fluffy.

“Are you feeling okay after yesterday, Lin?” Wrigley asked.

“Never ordering a veggie burger at that restaurant ever again, but ready and reporting for duty, sir.” Lucy favored Wrigley with Portia’s open smile.

“Glad to hear it - although I’m sad it’s our last day together,” Wrigley said.

“Can I have a moment with my rookie?” Bradford asked Wrigley.

Technically she was Wrigley’s rookie too, even if Bradford didn’t see it that way.

“Sure thing,” Wrigley answered Bradford cheerfully, clearly not too concerned about the technicalities.

Wrigley headed to the equipment room. He was no doubt preparing the shop before roll call so she didn’t have to. She wondered what would make Bradford prepare the shop for his rookie, and genuinely couldn’t think of a circumstance short of expert hypnosis.

“You and Wrigley seem friendly,” Lucy observed.

“Is there any reason why I wouldn’t like Wrigley?” Bradford asked.

“No, you just seem like two very different types of cops,” Lucy said.

Everything was a test, and she could sense he was evaluating her. She just couldn’t figure out what he was evaluating.

“Do you know what Mid-Wilshire’s monthly ticket quotas are?” Bradford asked, leaning back against a desk with his muscular arms crossed, TO glare firmly in place.

“No,” Lucy said.

“Me either. I know we have them, but I have no idea what they are. Cops like Wrigley take care of that for me. Not to mention, Wrigley has gotten more drunk drivers off the streets of LA than any other cop in this precinct.”

“Oh,” Lucy said.

Ticket quotas hadn’t even been mentioned in the Rook Book she’d memorized to play the role of eager rookie, Portia Lin. Not working to a quota meant that she had discretion when pulling someone over - she knew how a ticket could ruin someone’s week, month, or even their future, depending on their financial situation.

Riding with Wrigley might be boring, but Wrigley had been kind to her. She vowed to not judge him today when he left the dangerous calls that came over the radio for other officers.

“And Wrigley passed his rookie year - which means he has my respect. You’re less than a month in and thinking too hard, Boot,” Bradford continued, the amusement dancing in his eyes taking the sting out of his words.

“And I’m not allowed to think until month two,” Lucy said, just barely keeping her cynicism out of Portia’s voice.

“See you tomorrow, Boot. I’m charging interest on those push-ups by the way - I checked your body cam footage and I didn’t see any push-ups.”

“The paramedics were examining me for shock!” Lucy protested.

“Fifteen after every call tomorrow. Twenty if I hear another word.”

She grimaced - but cheered herself up with the thought of what she would do once she was back in Sacramento with all of her overtime and hazard pay from this mission accrued into one big paycheck. First-up, margaritas in the shade. Lucy missed tequila - Portia’s favorite drink was a glass of the house red, which she only ever sipped slowly to keep a cool head while undercover.

Chapter Text

As Lucy prepared the shop for Bradford’s first shift back, the duty belt at her waist felt heavier than it had when she’d been a rookie the first time round. It felt like her service weapon had become her center of gravity.

It hadn’t been a problem when she was riding with Wrigley; with him the weapon had been an accessory, nothing more. But with Bradford there was always the chance she might need to use it again.

On an intellectual level she knew her aversion to her gun was foolish. The man she'd shot was a first grade asshole with a rap sheet a mile long, and he’d ended up only losing a foot - not his life. She had been acting in defense of herself and another, and had no reason to feel guilty for shooting him. Still, the phantom scent of gunpowder lingered in her nostrils.

Bradford - hair back to being close cropped in a pseudo-military haircut - was silent as they hit the streets. His gunshot wound clearly hadn’t made him any more chatty.

“It’s good to have you back, sir.” Lucy said, in full Pollyanna mode.

“If you’re happy to see me, I clearly didn’t make you work hard enough in your first two days.”

Bradford passed on two calls that came in, leaving them for other units.

“Sir, shouldn’t we take those calls?” Lucy asked.

“As your TO I have discretion on how we spend your training hours, and I’ve determined that you should spend more hours here.”

He turned into the parking lot for the public shooting range the Mid-Wilshire station used for firearms certification.

“Are you saying shooting Shelby and saving your ass didn’t demonstrate my firearms proficiency?” she joked.

“Your shot to hit Shelby was excellent,” he admitted.

“Is that a compliment, Officer Bradford? If so, can I get it signed and in writing?”

“It’s not a compliment, Pollyanna. At the Academy you barely scored above average in your firearms and hand to hand combat training, but in the field you’re well above average for a rookie. Outperforming your Academy scores on the streets shows that you lacked focus and the instructors didn’t get the best from you. Fortunately for you, Boot, I’m not an Academy instructor.”

“I finished twenty-second in the class!” Lucy protested.

“Not good enough, Boot. For every test you fail at the range today, you owe me a sparring session. For every sparring session you lose, I’m volunteering you for drunk tank duty.”

The shooting range was half-full, even in regular business hours. In addition to the usual overweight middle-aged white guy gun enthusiasts, there was an elderly woman shooting a gold handgun and a woman dressed as a Catwoman in a purple leather suit shooting a grappling hook.

Lucy was tempted to take a photo of the cosplayer for Jackson and Nolan, but Bradford’s fast walking pace meant there was no time to stop and ask for a photo.

“Let’s start with the basics,” he said, once they reached the shooting ally he’d booked. “Shoot the target center mass, no more than three inches between each bullet. You have thirty seconds - go.”

It was a stationary paper cutout against a board. She could do this in her sleep, and so could Portia.

Lucy slipped on her ear and eye protection, and began shooting. Her grip was just slightly off - the kick of the weapon jarred her wrists and her gun wavered slightly. All of her bullets ended up in the center mass of the target - but just barely.

“Disappointing, Boot. That’s a sparring session,” Bradford said.

Bradford demonstrated correct technique on his own target, bullet holes clustered together much more neatly than hers.

“You’re overthinking, Lin. Again,” Bradford demanded.

She took a deep breath - it was one thing to whiff on purpose to maintain her cover, but it was another to do it accidentally.

She reloaded the magazine into her gun, let her heart rate settle, and tried again. This time the bullet holes were so close together they formed one large hole.

“Acceptable, Boot. Now that the baby stuff is out of the way, let’s move to the real tests,” Bradford said.

“Do I win anything for shooting better than you?” Lucy asked, unable to resist teasing the gruff TO a little.

“No. Now hit the left ear with a single shot. You have five seconds.”

Bradford put her through her paces and, before she knew it, an hour had passed, the kick of a weapon in her hand felt normal and she was shooting like Lucy Chen, not Portia Lin. Bradford had not let her get away with mediocrity - and that was one part of her cover she was happy to shed.

“Decent shooting, Boot,” Bradford told her, with the slightest smile.

For the rest of the shift she felt lighter. She no longer hesitated when she looked at the gun on her belt. Bradford had put her back on the horse and, despite herself, she was grateful.

***

The next few shifts passed quickly, with thankfully no use of force required from either Bradford or Lucy.

Bradford had been talking with the owner of a hardware store for a solid fifteen minutes. It should have been a simple matter of requesting surveillance tape footage of a nearby traffic accident, but the owner was telling Bradford about his kids, and there were apparently a lot of them.

Lucy had to admire Bradford’s citizen informant network across the Mid-Wilshire patrol zone, in addition to his shadowy confidential informant network. It seemed he remembered the names of everyone’s spouses, children and pets with no visible effort. He was rooted in LA like a tree - or a weed.

Bored of waiting by the shop, she began singing softly to herself and scanning the surrounding area. Maybe she’d get lucky and another major case would fall into her lap, just like Cole and Armstrong had.

“He had it comin'
He had it comin'
He only had himself to blame
If you'd have been there
If you'd have seen it
I betcha you would have done the same.”

“Any more musical numbers on duty and I’m volunteering you to give Smitty singing lessons,” Bradford said.

She jumped. She’d been so focused on watching the street that he’d crept up on her.

“Situational awareness, Boot.”

She ground her teeth. Before she left, she was going to figure out a way to get him back for all the times he snuck up on her that didn’t jeopardize her cover as Portia.

His personal phone rang as he swung into the driver’s seat. His face fell almost immediately after answering. It was the same expression he’d worn when he’d interacted with Isabel at the convenience store.

He grabbed the radio and called them in as away on personal business. He steered the shop back onto the road with his hands clenched the steering wheel, white knuckled.

“I can drive,” Lucy offered.

“No.”

He drove them to the Shaw Memorial. They rushed into the ER, past groaning patients, crying family members, and beeping monitors.

Bradford had the head nurse’s attention as soon as he strode into the room, his stature and uniform commanding attention. She quickly directed Bradford to a curtained off treatment area. Lucy caught a glimpse of Isabel before he pulled the curtain shut.

That’s when it finally clicked for Lucy - Isabel Bradford, UC officer extraordinaire. She’d been a legend before she’d abruptly disappeared from the UC community about the same time Lucy had finished her training. Now she knew the reason behind the disappearance.

Lucy couldn’t hear most of the murmured conversation between the Bradfords, but it was clear Isabel had ODed. Hopefully this was rock bottom and Tim could get her to rehab - no one deserved to die in a back room of an overdose, but especially not a former cop who’d gotten so many dealers off the streets herself.

Then Bradford lost his temper, and his words echoed around the waiting room.

“If you keep doing this, you are going to die.”

Lucy winced - she couldn’t imagine being trapped in a marriage with someone you loved and an addiction, always wondering if the next phone call was going to be from the morgue.

Isabel left the ER without giving either Lucy or Bradford a second look. Lucy checked in on Bradford, only to see him remove his fist from the wall.

“Are you okay, Bradford?” she asked.

“I’m fine. Time to get back out there, Boot,” Bradford told her.

Lucy thought carefully as he drove. Last time he’d talked with his wife he’d ended up getting shot. She didn’t want to be collateral damage for whatever he did next.

The shop radio crackled to life as a call about a disturbance at a biker bar came through.

Lucy closed her eyes in resignation as Bradford responded, attaching them to the call.

“A biker bar - how exciting. I’ve never been to one of those before,” Lucy said, Portia’s sunny optimism feeling fake on her tongue.

He glared at her and launched into an explanation of LA’s bikers and their criminal activities. She had hoped that correcting Portia would pull him out of his funk, but he reverted to sullen silence the closer they got to the bar, fingers tapping restlessly on the steering wheel.

Outside the bar at least a dozen bikers congregated - big, mean and covered in a small ranch’s worth of leather.

“Wow, that’s a lot of guys,” Lucy said, and reached for the shop radio to call for backup.

“What are you doing, Boot?” He grabbed her hand before she could touch the radio.

“Calling for backup.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

He left the shop without waiting for her response. She reluctantly followed and watched as he picked a fight with one of the younger bikers - one of the pledges.

A smaller, greyer, biker reached for a weapon hidden in his jacket, but stopped as Lucy raised an eyebrow at him.

Her instinct for self-preservation warred with her desire to maintain her cover. Ultimately she decided against calling for backup, as a nervous rookie instructed by her TO would no doubt do. She winced as the pledge swung at Bradford, but Bradford had the pledge in cuffs seconds later. It wasn't much of a fight at all.

Lucy retreated back to the shop with an eye on the crowd. The bikers seemed happy to watch the cops go. Backup was no longer required - watching a cop arrest one of their own had also stopped whatever intraclub disturbance that had been underway and caused Bradford and Lucy to be dispatched.

They drove the pledge back to Mid-Wilshire in silence. Eventually, she could hear Tim hum under his breath - the same Chicago tune she’d be singing earlier.

She smiled openly in victory as he stopped humming abruptly as he realized what he was doing.

“Goddamnit, Boot. No more singing musical numbers on duty.”

“Of course not, sir,” Lucy said.

It was a simple matter to book the pledge and leave him in holding. He’d seemed bizarrely happy to be arrested - committing a felony and earning his patch worth the jail time in his eyes.

Lucy idly wondered how Bradford would react if she compared the biker gang’s initiation rituals to that of the LAPD.

She looked for Bradford, only to see him acquiring Narcan from the equipment room - no doubt for his wife. It was technically an abuse of police resources for him to requisition it for personal use, but community centers all over LA gave Narcan away to the public for free in an attempt to stem the overwhelming number of overdose deaths. She wasn't going to stand in the way of getting as much Narcan out on the streets as possible - especially to people like Isabel who needed it and socialized with others who needed it just as much.

So Lucy turned a blind eye when Bradford dropped the Narcan off at his wife’s apartment, and pretended not to see that Bradford’s eyes were suspiciously wet when he returned to the shop.

***

Lucy had made it to Sunday, Portia’s first day off after four twelve hour shifts in a row with Bradford. It was the West family’s monthly barbecue, to which Portia had a standing invite as a friend of Jackon’s (and to which Lucy had a standing invite as a Sacramento PD UC seconded to LAPD’s Internal Affairs division).

She kicked off her sandals once she and Jackson reached the West’s backyard, grateful for the grass under her feet cushioning the blisters she’d developed from chasing a dozen suspects earlier in the week. She knew for a fact Bradford could have used the shop to cut some of them off, and had chosen not to so she had to run further. Sadist.

Commander West and his wife embraced her, as if Lucy were any other friend of their son.

“Portia! Always glad to see you,” Commander West said, a touch too loudly to be natural, but Jackson didn’t pick it up.

As always, the food was delicious. She was happily full of ribs and LA’s best mac’n’cheese by the time Jackson left. There was still an awkward tension between him and his mother due to history she wasn’t privy to. She felt bad for them, but Jackson's abrupt departures did give her cover to discuss her undercover progress with Commander West as Jackson's mom left them to talk shop.

She and Commander West had their usual five minute discussion while Jackson’s mother left them to talk shop. This time he presented her with a silver necklace with a small silver icon.

“It’s Saint Michael - the patron saint of police officers. Each West receives one once they complete their rookie year. I thought you might appreciate having him look out for you after your training officer was shot and you had to shoot someone on day two in the LAPD.”

Surprised at his kindness, she let her voice drop from Portia’s into Lucy’s lower register.

“Thank you, sir.”

He lowered his voice before he continued.

“It also functions as a GPS tracker. Both Detective Murphy and I will have access to your location, just in case. Here are the keys to your new safehouse.”

He slid a key and a paper map to her. She committed the location of the safehouse to memory and shredded the map out of habit.

“You're an impressive officer, Lucy Chen.” he said

“I got lucky with Armstrong,” she said with a modest shrug.

“No - although Armstrong's the reason why you’ll make detective. That, and my glowing recommendation letter no matter the outcome of the Mid-Wilshire investigation. But, while it won’t come up in your detective’s interview, taking down Hawke at the Academy was even more impressive. No arrest, just meticulously documented frequent minor misconduct leading to a forced retirement.”

Lucy was surprised - she barely remembered Hawke. She knew Internal Affairs had made a deal with him so he would quietly retire and keep his pension rather than pursue him for misconduct. The instructor who’d replaced him for tactical instruction at the LAPD Academy had been a clear step up.

“There is no point in taking down dirty cops if we’re replacing them with cops who are dirty or incompetent. Thanks to you, we’re replacing them with well-trained cops like you and my son.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Lucy felt the back of her throat tighten. Her relationship with Commander West was primarily professional, but it was the closest thing she’d ever gotten to fatherly approval for her actions as a police officer.

“Good luck. Murphy will check in with you in a couple of weeks. Until then, check-in texts only,” West said.

“Understood, sir.”

Lucy nodded goodbye and then headed to the shitty apartment Portia called home.

Chapter Text

The problem with going undercover as an optimistic Pollyanna type who showed wide-eyed interest in every Mid-Wilshire patrol officer was that Lucy had to listen to the most inane nonsense with a smile on her face.

It was almost time for roll call and Smitty - the kind of cop that should have retired years ago - had been talking about his turbulent relationship with ‘Glinda’ for the past ten minutes to anyone in the roll call room who cared - so only Lucy. She wasn’t sure if he was talking about his pet turtle or his on and off again girlfriend, and at this point it was too late to ask directly. So Lucy asked indirectly.

“Do you have a photo?”

“Here,” Smitty said cheerfully.

He flicked through several photos of a blonde woman who looked like she’d been prematurely aged by years of hard living. He stopped at a barely safe for work photo of Glinda in a bikini.

Lucy glanced at the photo - Glinda was skinny, with a six pack and a black 83 tattooed above her heart.

“She loves Willie Gault, but she tells me I’m even sexier,” Smitty said, flexing his biceps.

“Who is Willie Gault?” Lucy asked.

“Who Willie Gault?” Bradford repeated behind her. “Only one of the fastest NFL players of all time, and a wide receiver for the Los Angeles Raiders.”

Lucy gratefully took the opportunity to exit the conversation - as one sided as it was - with Smitty.

“That must have been before my time,” she told Bradford with a wry smile, probably letting a little too much Lucy into her voice.

Bradford’s eyes widened, but before he could deliver a response, she caught a glimpse of Jackson walking into the roll call room with only seconds to spare.

“Hey Jackson, what happened to ‘if you’re not early you’re late’?” Lucy asked, parroting one of Jackson’s favorite sayings.

“I’m trying a new thing, trying to be more chill,” he said as they moved together the front of the room.

“You’ve never been chill a day in your life, my friend,” Nolan said, butting in with a smirk.

Jackson caught a glimpse of Portia’s new necklace.

“Is that a Saint Michael’s necklace?” he asked.

“Yeah, your dad gave it to me after Bradford was shot,” she said.

“Very cool,” said Nolan, approvingly.

“What?” Jackson asked, a mix of surprise and jealousy written on his face.

“Please take your seats,” Sergeant Grey said as he strode to his podium, his typical no-nonsense demeanor in place.

Lucy and her fellow rookies sat obediently, a beat ahead of the rest of the patrol cops.

“I’ll keep it quick. Night shift has left us with an unusually heavy caseload, even for them. I need everyone in their shops pronto,” Grey said, leaving his podium to hand out thick stacks of folders to his officers.

The folder in front of Bradford seemed especially thick, which hopefully meant they would be too busy for Bradford to get her back for the ‘before my time’ crack at his age.

“That necklace is for officers who complete their rookie year,” Jackson said as they ran to get their war bags.

He wasn’t looking at her as he said it, but she could tell by his tone he was upset.

“Your dad said I needed Saint Michael watching over me after my TO was shot the second day on the job.” Lucy’s voice trailed off as Jackson hurried away with his warbag without responding.

“We don’t have time for your rookie drama, Boot. Grab the bag and let’s get going,” Bradford ordered, face impassive.

Lucy did as instructed, feeling like she might have lost a friendship. It shouldn’t hurt - Portia was leaving them all behind soon anyway. She resolved to do a better job of compartmentalizing - just because she was undercover with cops instead of criminals didn’t make them her friends.

“So Commander West gave you a Saint Michael’s necklace?” Tim asked, once they were in the shop and on the road.

“I guess he figured I needed it with you as my TO,” she said.

“He could have given you credit for Armstrong’s arrest instead,” Tim said.

Lucy choked and turned in her seat to face him, trying to not show any fear. She was locked in a vehicle alone with him and no back-up. Their body cams were off and the shop cams had to return to the precinct to be uploaded. If he was the mole, she was in very real danger.

He was facing forward - watching the road as he drove, face impassive.

“Fun fact about Wrigley, Boot: he takes all his rookies to the exact same restaurant at the exact same time. I was coming to check up on you when I saw your heart-to-heart with your informant.”

“Sir,” Lucy said weakly.

How much did Bradford know? From the street signs flashing past it appeared he was driving to canvas the neighborhood they’d been directed to by Grey, but that didn’t mean much.

“Good work, Lin. One month in, and you gathered the intelligence to make an arrest bigger than most patrol officers ever get in their entire career. Just by being nice.”

He said the word nice like it was an insult.

“Who else knows?” Lucy asked.

She was going to be furious if she had to end her mission before finding the Mid-Wilshire mole just because Bradford was a workaholic who stalked his rookies when he was supposed to be on leave.

“No one. Don’t want you getting too cocky - Wrigley is already calling you a superstar because you winged a drug-runner and dragged me a few meters,” Bradford said.

“Not even Lopez?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bradford asked.

“It’s just, you seem like friends, that’s all.”

“Yeah, on our days off we braid each other’s hair, talk about boys and tell each other our deepest secrets.”

He was hiding laughter, not anger. That seemed to suggest that she wasn’t about to end up in a dumpster with a bullet in her head.

Lucy had thought that Bradford was distracted by his marital issues. Instead, he was annoyingly perceptive, poking holes in her cover without even realizing it. She was going to have to be more careful.

“I’d rather be known as the superstar rookie who saved her TO’s life - even if he doesn’t admit it - than as a rat,” Lucy said, watching him closely to gauge his reaction.

“Sensible.”

”Blue protects blue.”

He winced at that. An interesting reaction from an old-school cop.

“Blue protects blue when they’re not selling out other cops to literal gangsters. You did the right thing, Lin. But I won’t spread it around - your informant’s name has stayed out of the rumor mill and it makes sense to keep it that way.”

Lucy stopped herself from taking a visible sigh of relief. Not only had he not told anyone, but he was deliberately not saying Cole’s name where the shop cam could pick it up.

“But it’s another example of you over performing your Academy results. Your file says you were only good in the de-escalation, negotiation and persuasion unit. I’m not accepting anything less than excellent from you, in any aspect of your training, Lin. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Commander West might be your friend’s dad, but IA is where careers go to die. Once you’re in, it’s difficult to get a transfer out. If you survive your rookie year, patrol can launch you to Robbery/ Homicide, Intelligence, any path you want.”

“What if I wanted to try to join SWAT like Jackson?”

He paused, taken aback for a moment.

“You could do it if you were willing to train hard for years. Most of the guys I know on those teams are combat veterans or former DI college athletes.”

She had expected him to scoff and dismiss her - instead he’d given her a thoughtful answer with no false hope attached.

“Well, I have survived community theater directors - that’s almost as badass, right?” Lucy joked, keen to reinforce her Portia cover.

He didn’t dignify her joke with a laugh, but she was able to secure a small twitch of his lips.

“Regardless, patrol will be better for your career than jumping straight into IA, no matter what Commander West says or what fatherly advice he gives you. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, tell me, how do we prioritize witnesses when canvassing?”

For just a few moments he’d talked to her like a colleague and had signs of life in his eyes. But then he’d gone back into grim TO mode like an LAPD-programmed robot.

***

Checking in with Murphy took the form of Murphy running into her at a cafe near her cover’s apartment.

“Portia Lin, I’ve heard good things about you - especially for a rookie,” Murphy said.

“Thanks,” she said, as if she were meeting Murphy for the first time.

“I’m Detective Murphy. The LAPD can be a challenging place for women - let me buy you coffee,” she said.

“That’s so kind,” Lucy said, innocence personified.

Meet-cute established, they went for a walk in the nearby dog park. Lucy wished she had the kind of lifestyle that was conducive to dog ownership, but instead she had to settle for admiring dogs of all shapes and sizes that went by.

Lucy waited until the dogs’ owners were out of earshot before she started talking business with Murphy.

“I’ll need to switch TOs. Bradford has seen too much - he was watching the Cole meeting at the restaurant.”

“That’s not ideal.” Murphy said. “Did he see the safehouse meeting?”

“I’m not sure, he didn’t mention it, so I don’t think so.”

“Do you have anything on him? If he’s suspended you’ll get a new TO by default.”

Lucy hesitated before she answered. Murphy seemed almost too eager to get dirt on Bradford, but it was a fair question.

“If there is so much as a whiff that I complained about him I’ll be frozen out by the rest of Mid-Wilshire’s patrol and the mission will be over,” Lucy warned Murphy. “But I do have some dirt. So far he’s misused police resources - giving Narcan to his wife. There was also one incident where he racially abused migrant laborers at a traffic stop. But both together would barely get him a rap on the knuckles, if that, given his tenure in the LAPD.”

The women shared a knowing look. Both of them knew firsthand just how badly a police officer had to screw up to be suspended with the police union protecting them. The LAPD protected its own - even when they were incompetent and dangerous.

Lucy felt a touch of guilt telling Murphy about the Narcan, but she didn’t owe Bradford anything. He wasn’t her friend.

“Could Bradford be the mole? The racism incident indicates shared ideology with the Southern Front.” Murphy said.

“Unlikely. The racism was first day hazing - unacceptable, but not repeated. As far as I can tell he uses the same level of force, and applies the same level of discretion, on suspects regardless of their race.”

“Still, see if you can dig up more dirt on him, just in case we need to discredit him in the future,” Murphy said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Meeting in person is now a no go now that Bradford could be suspicious. If we need to talk, I’ll call you as your father’s caretaker, Wanda Peterson.”

“Understood.”

Lucy changed Murphy’s details in her phone to Wanda Peterson.

“That reminds me: in three weeks Portia Lin’s father will receive a serious cancer diagnosis. Even under the FTO program’s restrictions, you’ll receive a week of leave. You’ve been under for a while now, you’re due a break.”

Lucy smiled, relieved. Breaks were good practice for UCs - it helped stop them from going native.

“Thanks, Murphy - I can almost taste that margarita. Any progress on narrowing the suspect pool on your end?”

“No. When we’ve gotten the opportunity, we’ve planted relevant information with different officers to see if the mole will reveal themself, but Southern Front hasn’t reacted to any of it. As far as we can tell, the mole has completely gone to ground - no information from Mid-Wilshire is seeping into the Southern Front according to our CI.”

“We might need to bring in Grey if we want to make progress,” Lucy suggested.

Sergeant Grey struck her as one of the finest officers she’d seen wear the uniform. If he was the mole, she’d eat the long-sleeved rookie uniform, complete with hat and tie.

“We him in only if we have no other choice. He might have a sterling reputation, but so did Armstrong.”

“Great. I guess it’s back to being a rookie for the next three weeks.”

“Better you than me,” Murphy said.

Margaritas. After just three more weeks of Bradford running her ragged she was going to be sipping margaritas in the shade of Sacramento’s trees.

Chapter Text

In the days since her meeting with Murphy, Lucy did her best to keep her head down and play the part of an optimistic, impressionable rookie. She still couldn’t hide her scepticism when Bradford, in true workaholic fashion, decided to go on patrol despite the fact his wife had just been arrested.

Lucy and Bradford had seen Isabel come in at the start of their shift - apparently her OD hadn’t been rock bottom. Bradford had disappeared into Grey’s office and when he’d emerged he’d been furious the shop wasn’t already prepared.

Bradford drove them around a residential area in their patrol zone, but the criminals of LA were remarkably inactive. No one was so much as speeding. She thought about using the word ‘quiet’ just to mess with Bradford but stopped herself - no need to jinx them both.

About an hour into their shift, Lucy caught a glimpse of a homeless guy peeing against the wall of an alleyway and looked away.

“Looks like indecent exposure. Lin, go arrest him.”

“Really?” Lucy asked.

Where else was the guy supposed to piss? It wasn’t like LA maintained public toilets on every corner, or really any corner.

“That’s public urination. That’s a citation, maximum,” Lucy said, confused.

“Disobeying a direct order from a superior officer, Boot?” Tim asked, a hint of anger in his voice.

“The charge will never stick,” she told him.

“It doesn’t need to stick. Loosen up, Boot, he’ll get water and a solid meal in holding before release.”

“And how much of his stuff will he lose while he’s there?”

“Arrest him, Boot, before I write you up,” Tim said, his anger well and truly simmering.

Lucy sighed and got out of the shop. Choosing to criminalize homelessness didn’t make Bradford a dirty cop, but it was disappointing. Despite his rough edges, she’d thought he was a better man than that.

Lucy approached the homeless - unhoused, she reminded herself - man, who was shuffling towards his trolley.

“Hi there, I’m Portia. What’s your name?”

He stared at her silently, uncomprehending.

“I have to arrest you and take you to the police station - are there any effects you want to take with you?” she asked, pointing to the trolley piled with misshapen lumps in plastic bags.

Police station must have rung a bell - he started shuffling faster towards the trolley, looking over his shoulder at her with fear.

She speed-walked after him, easily keeping pace. She deliberately stayed wide, out of his reach, with her hands open to demonstrate the lack of threat.

“We can take whatever you can’t stand to lose,” Lucy told the man.

“Hurry up, Boot!” Bradford called from the shop.

Lucy ignored him, her focus on the unhoused man in front of her.

His trolley was a mess - the topmost plastic bags appeared to be full of hundreds of fun size Snicker bar wrappers. She put on her rubber gloves but, instead of investigating the trolley herself, she waited for the man’s consent.

Eventually the man pulled out a small keepsake box nestled under a plastic bag of clothing and shoved it towards her. Lucy took it - inside were five pieces of sea glass and a Californian identification card.

According to his ID, the unhoused man’s name was Clive Danson. He looked ten years younger in his identification photo, but it had only been taken four years before.

“I’ll take this with us to keep it safe, Clive,” she said, keeping her voice calm and even.

She bagged the keepsake box in a plastic bag and tied it to her belt. Clive let out a strangled cry, but didn’t make any aggressive moves.

“I’m just going to move your trolley out of sight, so no one picks it up.”

He cawed at her wordlessly, with what she thought was understanding, or at least implicit consent. She pushed the trolley deeper into the alley, ignoring the dusty smell of the cart and the smell of fresh urine as she did.

She turned back to Clive who hadn’t moved. His eyes seemed to bore into hers. Arresting a homeless man for existing wasn’t even close to the worst thing she’d ever done to maintain her cover as UC, but she still felt the guilt bubble in her stomach.

“Now, you’re under arrest, so I’m going to handcuff you. This body camera catches everything - I’m not going to hurt you, and neither is my loud partner over there,” Lucy told him, still calm.

Clive looked at her, resignation in his eyes, and held out his hands. She cuffed him on the loosest setting but he still flinched as if the handcuffs were burning him.

“These will be off soon,” Lucy promised. “We’re going to take you to holding. I’ll make sure you get something to eat, plenty of water and a visit to a real bathroom.”

Clive was tracking her words but remained non-verbal. There could be half a dozen reasons for it - including that he may not want to speak around cops - but she kept talking in her Portia voice as she would to any other adult. Non-verbal didn’t mean stupid.

“I can call around to see if I can find a shelter for you,” Lucy offered.

He shook his head vehemently at the word shelter.

“Or not.”

There was no use in forcing someone to stay at a shelter when they didn’t want to.

Lucy gently walked Clive back to the shop while Bradford glared at her impatiently.

The drive back to the station was swift and painless. Processing Clive was easy - he offered no resistance.

Later, on her way to find some clean clothes for Clive to choose from sourced from the Lost and Found, Lucy caught a glimpse of Bradford in his wife’s holding cell.

Her lips tightened as she struggled to keep her anger out of Portia’s typically happy expression. Bradford had forced her to arrest someone just so he could get back to the station and have a conversation with his wife. Not illegal, but police entitlement at its worst - one more thing for the book she was keeping on Bradford.

She saw Isabel plead with Bradford, and Bradford reluctantly agree to something with a curt nod.

Lucy’s brain started to tick. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that if drugs had been found in the car Isabel was driving, then there were probably also drugs in her apartment. With her boyfriend in jail, who else could she ask to remove them before the investigating detectives got a warrant and searched the place, except for her cop husband?

Lucy pulled Wanda Peterson up from her contacts and began texting.

***

Lukewarm convenience store coffee was the worst, but it was also the only thing keeping Lucy awake after a long day on patrol, so she took another sip.

She grimaced and added another packet of sugar to the cup in a futile attempt to combat the coffee’s bitterness.

Lucy had been waiting in her car for two hours on the street outside Isabel’s apartment, wire firmly in place under her civvies and Murphy in her ear. So far Bradford was a no-show.

“We could take a surveillance-only approach,” she told Murphy, not for the first time.

Murphy, who was safely in a van five blocks away, snorted at her suggestion.

“Anything short of a confession and he’ll walk. This is LA - you can exploit black people for decades, but you have to be caught on tape saying the n-word before anyone will care. Let’s get him on tape.”

“It might read as entrapment,” Lucy pointed out.

“It won’t, if you’re as good as Commander West thinks you are.”

Lucy was beginning to suspect Murphy had a vendetta against Bradford. Not a good trait in a handler - the best handlers stayed detached and provided perspective to their UC operatives rather than the other way round.

Bored, Lucy took another sip of her awful coffee and started playing her showtunes playlist. She was in the middle of singing You Can’t Stop the Beat from Hairspray and tapping her steering wheel in time with the music when someone tapped on her car window. She jumped in her seat.

“Situational awareness, Boot.”

Bradford, dressed in dark civvies that blended into the night, stood glaring at her.

Lucy rolled her eyes, turned off the music, and met him outside her car, keenly aware her backup was ninety seconds away, and a lot could happen in ninety seconds.

“What are you doing here, Lin?”

“I’m here to help. I can be a look out for you, sir,” she said.

“Rule one of being a lookout: don’t get distracted,” he said.

“I wasn’t distracted,” she protested.

“Yes you were and, now that you’re not, you need to leave.”

“Hold firm, Chen. Get that confession,” Murphy said, a tinny voice in her ear.

“I’m not leaving. I’m your rookie, and I’ve got your six,” Lucy told Bradford.

She crossed her arms firmly to emphasize her point. The tape securing the wire to her chest chafed against her skin.

“Damnit, Pollyanna. Are you trying to collect brownie points with your TO right now? Is that what this is about?” he asked.

“No, sir. Blue protects blue, and Isabel is your family,” Lucy said.

He continued if he hadn’t heard her.

“Never put your career ahead of doing the right thing, never. Trust me, Boot, you’ll regret it.”

His eyes looked haunted as he spoke.

“I’m sorry - I shouldn’t have come. I can leave,” she said.

“What are you doing, Chen?” Murphy demanded.

Lucy ignored the voice in her ear. Better Bradford think of her as an over-eager rookie than as a potential spy for IA.

“What were you thinking, coming here alone? There are cops on the force who would disappear a nosy rookie without thinking twice.”

Whatever was haunting Bradford disappeared as he went right back to righteous rage.

“Yes, sir,” Lucy said. “Won’t happen again, sir.”

She sniffed the air. Bradford smelled wrong - almost rank. She’d shared the shop with him for weeks and he’d never smelt strongly of anything - just the boring smells they put in men’s shampoo and deodorants. She took a step closer to him and sniffed again. He backed up awkwardly but it was too late - in the midst of the rank smell she caught the edge of too-sweet confectionary.

“Why do you smell like Clive Danson and Snickers?” Lucy asked.

“None of your business, Boot.”

“You drove Clive back to his trolley, didn’t you? That’s why you took so long to get here.”

“You need to go,” he told her.

“Yep, leaving now, sir.”

He grabbed her arm.

“This conversation never happened.”

“What conversation, sir?”

She got into her car carefully and gave Bradford a nod. He was already walking away, towards Isabel’s apartment. So Lucy drove away in her shitty cover car, leaving the dark street and Bradford behind.

As Lucy merged onto the nearest highway, Murphy cursed in her ear.

“He just left without going in. You were right, Chen, we should have stuck to surveillance only. The charge might not have stuck, but at least Bradford would have lost his badge.”

“We’ll get him next time, Murphy,” Lucy said.

The words tasted like ashes in her mouth. She was watching a veteran cop disintegrate in front of her eyes and instead of helping, she had done her best to push him off the edge.

***

Lucy started her pre-run stretches on Venice Beach, bleary-eyed after her failed operation the previous night. She felt a little bit like a tourist, using the beach as her workout location, but it was an easy drive to the precinct.

Lucy had agreed to go for a pre-shift run with Jackson and Nolan because she hadn’t been able to pin down Jackson to talk about the necklace. She was already regretting not calling in sick as she felt the fatigue in her muscles. It was going to be a long day.

Jackson and Nolan arrived for the run at the same time.

“Ready to sweat?” Nolan asked them both, unreasonably cheerful for this hour of the day.

“Yep,” said Jackson.

“Look, can we talk?” Lucy asked Jackson.

“Only if you can talk and run,” he said, and took off.

She followed him and, to her surprise, she found she could keep up.

“Jackson, I’m sorry if you feel like I stepped into your family business. It was just really nice to be around people who support my choice to be a cop.”

“My mom is barely talking to me, Portia, but you got your necklace a year early? How is that fair? Just because you were lucky enough to be in a shootout - I would have done the same thing if I’d been there.”

Lucy sometimes forgot how young Jackson was - he still lived in a world where things should be fair. Only six years separated them, but it was a lot of life experience. He would get over it eventually, she knew he would.

“There was nothing lucky about being in a shootout. I could have died. Tim could have died.”

“It’s okay, superstar. See you at work,” Jackson said, ending the conversation by putting his headphones in.

Lucy dropped back to a jog - breathing heavily and unable to keep pace with Jackson any longer. Before she’d arrived at Mid-Wilshire, she wouldn’t have been able to keep pace at all.

She jogged, recovering her breath as she did so. She could admit, in the privacy of her own mind, that she was in the best shape of her life due to Bradford’s ridiculous standards. She was maintaining a good distance ahead of Nolan - over her shoulder she could see him cheerfully nodding at the other early morning runners.

Portia’s personal phone rang - Wanda Peterson appeared on the screen. Lucy picked it up.

“Portia? I’m calling regarding your father. He’s really sick,” Murphy’s voice said.

She stopped in place and acted appropriately shocked. Nolan, eventually catching up, stopped to check on her.

“It’s my dad. It’s cancer,” Lucy told him.

Nolan drew her into a hug, run forgotten.

Lucy let herself be held and comforted - the human contact welcome after so much time undercover and alone.

Chapter Text

Morphing back into Portia Lin after a week of vacation was uncomfortable. Waiting for the morning brief to start in the front row of the roll call room next to the rookies just felt wrong after precious days spent as Lucy Chen.

In Sacramento she had been treated like the competent professional and human being she was, but in LA, she was treated like a-

“Boot. Glad you made it back,” Bradford said, tapping his watch.

“Thanks, sir. Happy to be back,” she said, lying through her teeth.

It was a solid five minutes until roll call and she already had her uniform on. She wasn’t late.

“Portia! It’s good to see you,” Jackson said as he entered the roll call room.

Whatever bitterness Jackson had been holding onto seemed to have dissipated over the week she was away. He was beaming at her like they were the best of friends.

He hugged her, and she hugged him back.

“The Three Amigos, back together again,” Nolan said.

He turned Jackson’s and Lucy’s hug into a group hug, his arms encompassing them both.

“All for one,” Lucy said, a little breathless from the strength of the Nolan dad hug.

“And one for all,” Jackson finished.

Smiles all around, they sat down together. She had missed these two, just a little.

“First of all, you’re cops. Never give yourselves a name unless you want to be indicted. Second of all, you realize that’s the Three Musketeers’ catchphrase, right?” Bradford said.

“Officer Bradford, you’re kind of killing the moment,” Lucy said, just respectful enough to not be accused of insubordination.

He gave all three of them a judgemental shake of the head and moved back towards the TO table.

“Give me all the gossip from last week in the five minutes,” Lucy whispered to Jackson.

“You missed so much! I’ve been killing it in my personal and professional life: my mom and I are good now. Everything happening with your dad made us realize life is too short.”

Jackson squeezed her shoulder, offering her support, and she smiled sadly at him. If only her real parents could come to the same realization.

“And Lopez, Bradford and I broke a big medical supply case while you were away. We’re talking millions of dollars in stolen hospital property and half a dozen solid arrests.”

“Wow, that’s awesome, Jackson,” Lucy said.

“Right place, right time,” he said with a modest shrug.

No wonder he wasn’t jealous of her anymore - he’d had his own taste of the limelight and opportunity to build his rep.

“Word on the street is they’ve tapped Lopez for detective, and Bradford is going to take the sergeant’s exam,” Jackson added.

“That’s big - they’ll both be trying to make a name for themselves. Lucky us,” Lucy said.

“I, sadly, did not break any big cases, nor do I have big news, but I did rescue a litter of puppies from a dumpster,” Nolan whispered from Lucy’s other side.

“You should have led with that! That’s amazing - do you have photos?” Lucy asked.

Nolan pulled out his phone and the three of them spent the remaining minutes before roll call looking at photos of cute puppies.

***

Bradford didn’t discuss the reason for Portia Lin’s absence in the shop that morning, but he did roll up the windows and start the air conditioning a full hour earlier than usual, which was compassion coming from him.

They had been assigned to re-canvass parts of Melrose Hill after a spate of high-end car thefts from wealthy homes whose owners were on vacation. The most recent victim had returned home early from Paris only to be threatened at gunpoint by two masked men. That bumped up the priority ladder as an armed robbery case, which meant more work for patrol.

Their final interview was Mrs Latif, a housewife who lived six houses down from the fourth victim. She was dressed in stretchy activewear that showed off her sculptural form, and had the LA face: high quality plastic surgery and expensive dermatology meant she could be anywhere between thirty and fifty-five years old. She also wasn’t the shy or retiring type.

Lucy had been hiding laughter for the past five minutes as Bradford became increasingly flustered at the woman’s blatant flirting.

“My husband goes away on business and leaves me alone so often. I’m just so scared with all of these car thieves running around,” Mrs Latif said, playing with her hair and looking at Bradford wistfully.

“I understand ma’am. Make sure you arm your security system, and make sure your husband doesn’t post any photos of himself away from the house on social media until he’s returned.”

“Thank you, Officer Bradford,” she said.

Mrs Latif angled her chest so Bradford could look down her low cut sports bra. He didn’t.

“Thank you for your time ma’am,” Bradford said, obviously relieved the interview was concluding.

Mrs Latif stepped closer to Bradord and reached out to grab his shoulder.

Lucy stepped in between them, forcing Mrs Latif to awkwardly abort the gesture. Women expressing their interest was one thing - and something she was already well used to riding with Bradford - but there was a line. Bradford didn’t deserve to be fondled on the job.

“Here’s my card, ma’am, if you remember anything else,” Lucy said.

The housewife snatched the card from Lucy’s hand and pouted in Bradford’s direction.

“We’ll find our own way out,” Bradford said with a professional nod.

“I don’t think any of that will be useful for the detectives,” Lucy said quietly to Bradford as they walked back to the shop.

None of the residents near the fourth victim had remembered seeing anyone suspicious or out of place in the neighborhood.

“Better nothing new than pushing for bad intel and chasing down red herrings,” Bradford said.

“How do the thieves know which cars to target? This is a wealthy neighborhood - they’re all in garages. And no similarities between makes and models, so unlikely to be an employee at a dealership or mechanic.”

“How else do people know anything these days? Social media. It’s the new classifieds for thieves.”

“The classifieds? You’re so old.”

“Excuse me, Boot?”

“I mean, thank you, Officer Bradford, for sharing the wisdom from your many, many years of experience with me,” Lucy said, unable to keep the teasing tone from her voice.

He was so serious all the time - she was going to live up to her Pollyanna nickname and lighten him up before she left for Jackson’s and Nolan’s sake.

“Hmm, I think another sparring session is in your future, Lin. Hope you enjoy cleaning the drunk tank.”

Lucy pulled out her phone, planning to research the car theft victims.

“Why is your phone on face lock?” Bradford asked.

“It comes that way,” Lucy responded, amused.

“Face lock? Not a secure way to store your life, Boot. What if a criminal knocks you unconscious and gets access to your phone?”

“What if a victim needs to use my phone to call for help?”

“Then they can use the emergency function while it’s still locked.”

She had no response to that. He was right - she had gotten lazy and should have turned off the face recognition.

Ignoring Bradford, she pulled up the victim’s social media profiles on her phone as Bradford drove their patrol circuit. Two of the five victims had a minimal presence. No photos of their cars, holiday details or any other information useful to car thieves. She investigated their friends’ pages and text discussions as well with a shadow account - nothing.

“Any reason why you’re on your phone while we’re patrolling, Pollyanna? Do you know where we are?” Bradford asked, tone dangerous.

Lucy glanced up - hoping to avoid a repeat of the day one ‘I’ve been shot’ play-acting.

“We’re on Waring, passing Seward. For your information, I was checking the robbery victims’ social media. Two of them have almost nothing online. No sign of their cars or vacations anywhere - the thieves aren’t getting their intel from the internet, they must know the victims, or at least know of them.”

“That’s what the detectives on the case have concluded too. They’re interviewing some shared acquaintances today,” Bradford said.

Lucy threw down her phone in disgust.

“Why did you let me spend the past forty minutes looking this up, then?”

“Everything is a test, Boot,” he said.

She turned her head to the passenger side window and mouthed the words with him.

“I can see your reflection,” he pointed out, smug.

She ground her teeth. Pretending to be a rookie was becoming increasingly intolerable, not to mention a waste of her time and Bradford’s. It was time to play offense on the Mid-Wilshire mole.

She was ninety-nine percent sure Bradford wasn’t the mole. He couldn’t lie worth a damn and he viewed criminals as below cops in the moral order of the universe - giving information to criminals would run contrary to the fiber of his being.

“What do you think about Southern Front?” she asked.

“The Southern Front? As in the gang? What does that have to do with car theft?”

He seemed surprised, and she briefly gloated to herself that she’d successfully thrown him a curveball.

“It doesn’t, but I overheard a couple of cops talking about them and saying they weren’t so bad, as far as gangs went.”

“Who?” he said, visibly angry.

“Just some cops from a different station when I was picking up coffee on the way to work. I didn’t catch their names.”

“The Southern Front is a white supremacist gang that deals in just about everything except stolen cars. They profit off human misery - the scum of the Earth. If you see those cops again, point them out to me,” he said.

“Will do,” Lucy said cheerfully. “Did you know that Nolan rescued a litter of puppies last week? I can send you some of the photos.”

“Yes, I know about the puppies, as does every single other cop in the station. That’s a job he should have left for Animal Control - they could have had rabies.”

He handed her a book titled Split Second Leadership: Leading Men in the Line of Duty.

“Here, You can read this to me aloud and we can avoid any inane conversation in the shop.”

“So you are going to take the sergeant’s exam?” she asked, pretending to be excited for him.

If only she had a TO studying for the LAPD detective’s exam, then it might have had some overlap with what she needed to study for Sacramento.

“Obviously. Now read.”

She sighed and took it as an opportunity to flex the vocal training she’d received in her UC course and began talking in a Scottish brogue.

“Please read without the funny voices,” he directed her.

She switched to a Mid-Atlantic accent because it reminded her of 1940s Hollywood.

Bradford shifted in his seat and glared at her, but evidently decided the new accent was acceptable.

***

The West family barbeque had become the West family dinner with the rare advent of rain in LA. Lucy and Commander West were sitting inside his office, finishing up the last of a pecan pie and watching the water bead on the window from the drizzle outside.

“We’re nowhere on this. We should bring in Grey,” Lucy told Commander West.

“It’s a possible next step,” West admitted.

“None of the Mid-Wilshire patrol officers are obvious suspects - no windfalls, no secret trips, no one appears to be benefitting from unexpected sources of income. I’ve talked to everyone, kept my ears open, and still no leads,” Lucy said.

“What about Bradford? Murphy mentioned that there are significant stresses in his personal life. That could make anyone act out of character.”

“Murphy’s judgment may not be completely solid when it comes to Bradford. He might have been tempted to break the law for his wife, but he’d put a gun to his head before he sold out the LAPD to a gang.”

“A cop’s cop,” Percy West said wryly.

“Yes. He’s not hard to read,” Lucy said, as diplomatically as she could.

“I agree with you that Grey and Bradford are both unlikely to be the culprit. But we’ll maintain operational security and hold off on bringing in anyone for now. First, let’s turn up the heat a different way and see what shakes out.”

“A different way?”

“We’ll bring forward our planned integrity tests. I understand Murphy has some special reversals planned for Mid-Wilshire.”

“I’m sure she does,” Lucy said dryly.

“You’ve been under for a while, Chen. Check yourself - make sure you don’t go native,” West told her, eyes searching her face.

“Of course, sir.”

Chapter Text

“Reversals.”

Tim spat the word in the shop like it was a curse.

“Surely it’s not that bad, we’ll just do the right thing,” Lucy said, dialing up the Pollyanna personality to 11.

“You’re thinking of Internal Affairs as Jackon’s dad and his friends. That’s a mistake - at the end of the day, IA are cops trying to trick other cops into screwing up.”

Lucy winced, remembering the night outside Isabel’s apartment.

Texts about reversals came in thick and fast before lunch. Jackson stopped Mario Lopez for running a red light, while Nolan arrested a belligerent suspect who mocked his race, his age and his haircut who turned out to be from Internal Affairs. In fairness, Lucy felt the dig at the haircut was warranted.

“Where’s our reversal?” Lucy asked. “I feel a little left out.”

“I’m sure it’s coming - IA’s budget was pumped up as part of the ‘extreme measures’ against police brutality the mayor announced last year - it’s a whole week of fun and games.”

Tim’s bitterness towards IA was practically manifesting in the shop. She had to change the subject, fast, before he started suspecting what else IA’s increased budget could have bought.

“I guess I’ll just go back to reading,” Lucy said, tapping Split Second Leadership.

Arms still tense on the steering wheel, Tim nodded his assent.

She slipped into the old fashioned movie star Mid-Atlantic accent she’d perfected over the past few days of reading to Tim.

“Chapter 8 - the modern leader identifies the strengths and weaknesses of his subordinates, and allows them to play to their strengths’ before addressing their weaknesses.”

***

The diamonds glittering on the black velvet inside the suitcase were, collectively, worth at least two million dollars. A life changing amount.

Lucy took a photo, snapped the suitcase shut, and then put the diamonds straight into the safe in the trunk of the car. No reason to let that kind of temptation sit out in the open for long.

Tim was arresting a diamond thief straight of central casting, with slicked back hair, designer clothing and overwhelming cologne. The suspect practically had Internal Affairs tattooed on his forehead.

“C’mon man, you look the other way and I’ll cut you in,” the suspect said.

Tim scoffed.

“Get in the shop. This is the least original or entertaining reversal I’ve experienced to date. What happened to ‘extreme measures’?”

“Your lady is hot - she would look even better with some diamonds,” the suspect said, nodding at Lucy.

“My partner is a police officer, and you will address her with respect.”

“Aww, you called me your partner. Usually he just calls me Boot,” Lucy said to the suspected thief/ undercover officer.

The suspect broke character for just a second with an understanding expression. His lack of commitment to his role rankled - he never would have passed the UC Academy in Sacramento.

“Do we have to keep arresting him once we’ve identified him as an undercover officer?” Lucy asked Tim.

“Yep. We gotta treat them like suspects, including wasting time in processing. Because the real criminals will have, of course, taken the day off so IA can play pretend.”

Tim bundled the suspected Internal Affairs cop into the car, not particularly gently.

“I can’t believe Jackson got Mario Lopez and we got an off-brand sleazy diamond thief,” Lucy complained.

“Hey!” the UC in the shop protested.

“Don’t worry, Officer, you’ll get your excitement,” a male voice said behind her.

A gun safety clicked behind her, and a metal barrel pressed into her back. Lucy froze.

Tim reacted instantly, wheeling around the shop for an angle to shoot the suspect that wouldn’t endanger Lucy.

“Drop your weapon!” Tim yelled at the suspect.

“Keep moving and she dies!” the male voice yelled back.

“Everyone stay calm,” Lucy said, raising her empty hands. “No one needs to get hurt here.”

“No one will get hurt if you open the trunk and give me the diamonds,” the male voice ordered her, jabbing her in the back with the presumed gun.

“Okay, I’m happy to do that, let’s all just stay calm and breathe,” Lucy said, taking a step forward to put a gap between her and the suspect.

“Drop the weapon now!” Tim shouted.

The second she felt the man behind her switch his attention to Tim she spun and took control of the arm wielding the gun, breaking his grip and forcing his gun to the ground. She heard the suspect’s elbow pop as she did so.

“You’re under arrest,” Lucy told the man.

She quickly cuffed him with Tim covering her, his gun still out.

Detective Murphy stepped out of an alleyway, Tim pointed the gun towards her and then holstered it as he realized who she was.

“Relaxing your guard because you thought you identified a reversal. Is that good policework, Officer Lin?” Murphy asked.

“What the hell are you playing at? Your guy could have been seriously hurt ambushing armed officers like that,” Tim said, holstering his weapon.

“Are you saying you would have escalated to deadly force over a property crime?” Murphy said.

“Your officer held a gun to my back. Bradford would have escalated to deadly force to protect me from grievous harm and possible death, as per LAPD policy,” Lucy said.

She could feel her hands shake - she wasn’t sure if it was suppressed fear or rage. She’d dislocated a man’s elbow for no reason. What the hell was Murphy doing?

“It’s not our fault you didn’t properly sweep the alleyway,” Murphy said, looking down her nose at Lucy.

“Stop bullying my rookie, Murphy. Whatever problem you have with me, keep it with me,” Tim said.

“But where is the fun in that? You have a decorated career and dozens of friends willing to cover for you. She doesn’t have any of that,” Murphy said.

Murphy was using a mocking tone of voice Lucy had never heard from her before. How was Lucy supposed to work with her as a handler after this?

“She might be a rookie, but she does have friends in the department,” Tim said.

Tim strode towards Murphy, the intense anger rising from him an almost tangible force. Lucy moved to intercept him but she was too far away. Tim and Murphy were nose to nose, staring each other down.

“Is this an attempt to threaten me? That’s conduct unbecoming of a police officer,” Murphy said.

“Tim, let’s get back in the shop - we have a job to do. The real criminals haven’t taken the day off,” Lucy said, echoing Tim’s earlier sentiment and ignoring Murphy’s presence.

Murphy and Tim kept staring at each other, expressions murderous.

Lucy tugged at Tim’s elbow, hoping the physical contact was enough to bring him back from the edge. If he took a swing at Murphy then he would never make sergeant, regardless of the provocation.

Tim broke the staring contest with Murphy to look at her.

“You’re right, Boot. Uncuff the idiots that almost got themselves killed and we’ll hit the streets.”

In the silence that followed Lucy could hear the first Internal Affairs officer they’d arrested - still cuffed in the backseat of the shop - whisper to himself.

“I’m an on-brand diamond thief.”

***

Lucy wanted to be Captain Zoe Anderson when she grew up. Anderson was such a badass - she could eviscerate egos with a single look and command respect just by walking into a room. While Anderson was at least half a foot shorter than Tim, the sheer force of her presence made them seem almost the same height.

“I’ve already reviewed the body cam footage and spoken to Commander West. That reversal was completely unacceptable and could have resulted in a loss of life,” Captain Anderson said.

Lucy could feel the curious stares from officers passing by as they looked through the glass walls to see Tim and Lucy in the Captain’s office.

“I couldn’t agree more, ma’am,” Tim said.

“However, Murphy wasn’t wrong. Lin, you should have cleared that alleyway.”

Lucy hung her head - genuinely ashamed. She’d relaxed once she’d clocked the “thief” as Internal Affairs. She’d gotten lazy, and it had all been played in technicolor for the Captain to see.

“Yes, ma’am, won’t happen again ma’am,” Lucy said.

“Bradford, I’m going to ask you and the other TOs to improve our rookies’ tactical education. What they get at the Academy isn’t enough - clearing that alleyway needs to be so automatic that the rookies aren’t even thinking about it, even in the case of a suspected reversal.”

“Yes ma’am. Do you think Metro will let us use their set-up for a day?” Tim asked.

Anderson laughed at that. Metro was notoriously insular.

“No, but feel free to access the training budget to book out a paintball field.”

“Ma’am, for what it’s worth, I think Murphy might have a personal animus against Bradford,” Lucy said.

However she left Mid-Wilshire, she wanted that on the record.

“Lin, don’t-” Tim said in warning.

“Yes, I picked that up from the body cam too. Care to explain, Officer Bradford?” Anderson asked, steel in her gaze.

Tim paused, and Anderson raised an eyebrow.

“Murphy was my wife’s arresting officer,” Tim said finally, clearly unwilling to divulge more.

“Ah. Well, not much we can do about that. Tread carefully for the rest of the week but, rest assured, I have your back. And yours as well, Lin, no matter what Murphy might think,” Anderson said, pointedly.

“Yes, ma’am,” Tim said.

“Thank you, ma’am.” Lucy said.

“Dismissed.”

***

The Mid Wilshire gym was empty, with the exception of Lucy and Tim. Lucy took a deep breath and double-checked the wrapping on her hands. Her hands were already sweaty from their warm-up and earlier rounds.

Sparring with Tim was like fighting a terminator. The man was tireless and barely seemed to feel pain.

“So, who am I fighting now?” Lucy asked brightly. “A drunk grandpa? Knife wielding gang member? Coked out sports fan?”

He took on different personas, forcing her to fight in different scenarios. She only won when she was able to get him into a position to arrest him.

“No, Boot. For this round, you’ll be fighting me,” Tim said.

He was utterly confident in his athletic gear, the gray of his shirt bringing out the intensity of his eyes and a small smile at the edge of his mouth. Her heart fluttered and Lucy realized what the housewives of LA had known all along: her TO was hot.

Smug Tim Bradford lecturing her on correct procedure? So irritating that his attractiveness was irrelevant.

Flustered Tim Bradford avoiding the flirtations of bored housewives? Kinda cute.

The confident Tim Bradford in front of her? Devastating.

Lucy raised her hands, trying not to let this inconvenient burst of attraction distract her from the sparring match.

Absent trickery, or moves that she couldn’t pull without risking permanent injury to Tim, she was unsure of what she could do to win. He was faster, stronger and fitter, with more experience.

When he moved towards her, she stayed on defense, hoping to use his momentum against him, but instead of swinging, he jabbed. She couldn’t see an opening.

She dodged and blocked as best she could, but some hits were getting through. To his credit and her annoyance, he was holding back: tapping her collarbone, her chin, her ribs instead of doing real damage.

“Keep your hands up!” he said. “Always protect your head.”

She went for the leg sweep, but he saw it coming, grabbed her foot, and tripped her instead. She hit the ground hard, the breath expelled from her lungs.

“C’mon, Boot, get up.”

She got up slowly - he’d backed too far away for her to take a cheap surprise shot as she moved reluctantly to a standing position.

This time she went on the offensive, ducking under his longer reach to land a blow to his ribs before he was able to grab her and take her to ground. She tried to twist her body to be on top as they fell but it was no use, he had her firmly held in less than a second. Short of using the back of her head to break his nose, the fight was done.

She reluctantly tapped out and he released her. Despite herself, she missed the warmth of his body on hers as he stood up.

“When you’re confronted with a superior opponent who can do grievous harm with his fists, it’s okay to run away. Or use the taser,” he said, offering her a hand up from the mat.

“Thank you, sir,” Lucy said, ignoring his hand.

She stood up by herself - she’d expect nothing less than him dropping her if she accepted his hand for support. He smirked in approval in response.

“And I’ll let Sergeant Grey know you’re next on deck for drunk tank duty,” he said, sauntering out of the room.

Lucy stole a look at his ass and then, once she realized what she was doing, covered her face with her hands and groaned.

Officer Bradford was just another person she had to befriend and learn about as part of her operation. A married person. She took a deep breath and imagined putting him behind the glass walls of a display case, visible but untouchable.

She took her hands away from her face and opened her eyes, newly centered. Time to hit the showers.

Chapter Text

“So, you have a sister?” the guy in front of her asked, straining to be heard over the background noise of the bar.

He was a perfectly lovely accountant and aspiring actor, named Mark. She could feel intense boredom seep into her bones after less than two minutes of conversation with him.

“Nope. Only child,” Lucy said in response, voice flat.

“Ahh. This isn’t working, is it?” Mark asked.

“It’s really not.”

They shared an awkward laugh before he moved on to hit on someone in a more forgiving frame of mind.

Lucy turned to survey the bar, sipping the red wine that went with her cover as Portia. The bar was filled with hot people - one of the benefits of living in LA - she just wasn’t attracted to any of them.

She briefly considered approaching a muscular blonde man who looked like he was in his early thirties, but from the way he moved the muscles were more cosmetic than practical, and likely enhanced by pharmaceutical means. Not her type.

She had worn a near backless green dress with the full intention of finding someone tonight to break her dry spell. Instead she found herself at a loss.

The rules governing undercover officers’ behavior were strict. Plenty of UCs broke them - sometimes with devastating results - but Lucy didn’t intend to be one of them. One of the most important rules was to never sleep with the people you were investigating. It threatened any case being built, and it was deeply unethical.

For a UC, one night stands and casual relationships where someone’s consent wasn’t contingent on your role or identity were the norm. But Lucy was terrible at casual.

“Hey, you must be a famous actor, I’ve definitely seen you in something,” another man had approached her, this one with too-white teeth too big for his mouth.

“Yeah, move on buddy, I’m not interested,” Lucy told him.

The ‘what have I seen you in’ pick up line in LA was almost as cliched as the ‘did it hurt when you fell from heaven’ line elsewhere.

Lucy downed the last of her wine, not caring if it was unmannerly or out of character for Portia to drink wine that fast. Why care what anyone in this bar thought of her? She wasn’t likely to see any of them again.

Lucy wrote off her mission to end her dry spell as a failure and called a Lyft to head home. She had to be at the station bright and early tomorrow anyway.

***

The LA morning felt inappropriately sunny as the word spread: Isabel Bradford had been found half-dead in a dumpster with a bullet wound in her head - likely shot by a heroin supplier named Marcus Vance.

It was a chilling reminder of what happened when CIs or UCs made mistakes, or were just unlucky.

Given Bradford’s track record of finding a fight immediately after every time Isabel reappeared in his life, Lucy was relieved when their kit for the day included reinforcements for their vests. She signed out an additional magazine for her duty weapon as well, just to be prepared for whatever madness Bradford dragged her into.

Lucy kept a close eye on Bradford as they drove to the Bronson Estates. According to Intelligence, Marcus Vance had stashed his girlfriend, Cesiah Olivo, at the Estates. Bradford appeared calm, but from the tightness of his mouth she could tell that calm was brittle.

As she and Bradford geared up to enter the Estates they were joined by Bishop, Lopez, and Jackson.

“You know why they call this place the Bronson Estates?” Bradford asked her, likely finding refuge from his feelings by staying in smug TO mode.

“Because a guy named Bronson built it?” Lucy responded.

“No. Back when you were in short pants, there was a movie called Death Wish. Starred Charles Bronson,” Lopez said.

“Yeah. For a long time, responding to a call here meant that you had a death wish,” Bishop added.

Lucy looked at the unimposing apartment building in front of them - appearances were deceptive.

“No time to waste, let’s split up and get canvassing,” Bradford said, still oddly calm.

Regardless of who was in the apartment building, Lucy was confident he’d find a way to pick a fight with someone. Of course he volunteered Lucy and himself for the third floor, and made them both take the stairs.

It took until the fifth door from the stairwell before they found anything.

“Who's there?” a young woman’s voice called out.

“Gas company,” Bradford lied.

The woman inside opened the door, then immediately tried to shut it as she saw them. Bradford jammed his foot against the door before it closed and entered, Lucy following fast behind.

“Cesiah Olivo. Just the woman we're looking for,” Bradford said.

In person Cesiah Olivo looked too young and too fragile to be involved with someone like Vance. She was also heavily pregnant. LAPD Intelligence either hadn’t known, or left that detail out.

“Marcus isn't here,” Cesiah said.

“Yeah, we're gonna need to be sure,” Bradford said.

Working together, they cleared the small apartment in seconds. No other inhabitants.

“Hi Cesiah - my name is Portia. Just take a seat and relax - we’re not here to arrest you. When are you due?” Lucy asked, voice syrupy sweet, as Portia would be with any pregnant woman.

“A week ago,” Cesiah said, her voice tight with anger or fear.

She looked between Lucy and Bradford, cradling her belly protectively.

“When was the last time you saw Marcus?” Lucy asked.

“A while ago. He doesn’t visit very often,” Cesiah said.

There was no conviction in Cesiah’s words and she couldn’t meet Lucy’s gaze. Despite the company she was tangled up with, she was a bad liar.

“Do you love him?” Lucy asked.

Cesiah flinched, and Lucy could see a flicker of fear in her eyes. Being the girlfriend of a violent drug lord was not an occupation with a long life expectancy.

Bradford was impatiently shifting his weight as he watched the two women talk, but he didn’t interrupt.

“We can keep you and the baby safe. All you have to do is tell us where he is,” Lucy said.

Gunshots echoed through the building from a floor below them, as if to contradict Lucy’s words.

“7-Adam-19. Shots fired at Bronson Estates,” Bradford said into his radio.

No response from his radio - unthinkable for a shots fired call.

Lucy’s hands went to her personal radio - just static.

“They’re jamming us,” Lucy said. “We need to get to the shop before they reach this level.”

Lucy pocketed the crappy Walmart doorstopper lying on the floor of the small apartment's entryway and took a quick look outside. She could see from the digital display above the elevator doors that the elevator was on the ground floor. There appeared to be no other movement, as the Estates' residents seemingly took the logical decision to stay inside their apartments until the gunfire ceased.

“You’re coming with us, Cesiah,” Bradford told the young woman.

Lucy took point as Bradford bundled Cesiah through the hallway to the stairwell.

“I need things for the baby!” Cesiah complained.

“You need to be alive to deliver the baby,” Bradford pointed out.

“We’ll buy you new things - part of the witness protection deal,” Lucy promised.

“I never agreed to rat,” Cesiah said, her face a mask of fear as she frantically looked around the hallway at the apartment doors around them.

No doubt residents were snooping on the conversation from inside their apartments and would snitch to Vance. Now that Cesiah was seen leaving with the cops, her life expectancy had just gotten that much shorter - unless Lucy could secure her a good deal.

As they entered the stairwell, without needing to talk, Lucy and Bradford switched positions. Lucy guarded Cesiah, while Bradford moved to point position. If there were shots fired at them from downstairs, it would go through him before it hit Cesiah or Lucy.

Lucy used the butt of her gun to hammer the doorstopper into the foot of the stairwell door - blocking it from the outside. She wasn't sure how long the commercially available doorstopper would hold, but it was better than nothing.

It took her only three steps to catch up with Cesiah and Bradford - Cesiah was moving agonizingly slowly.

“No matter what happens, get to the shop. Get Cesiah to safety and get outside the jammer’s range so we can call for help,” Bradford instructed Lucy.

She nodded in response. Whatever happened, Lucy knew Bradford would do everything he could to ensure she and Cesiah made it out of here alive, but she had no intention of letting him die heroically for either of them.

The sound of gunshots echoed through the thin walls of the building as the group of three made their way down the stairs - Cesiah almost a dead weight in between Bradford and Lucy.

They arrived on the ground floor - the stairwell had an exterior exit locked from the outside that set off the fire alarm when opened. Bradford counted down with his fingers before he flung the door open, and Lucy moved through, gun drawn and raised.

“No suspects visible outside,” Lucy said quietly, almost drowned out by the deepening bell of the fire alarm.

Lucy prayed that the alarm connected automatically to the 911 system as she continued forward. The LAFD would at least have paramedics that could treat the results of the unfolding battle.

Lucy began to cautiously advance towards where the shops were parked when gunfire erupted around them.

“Don’t shoot, you idiots, you’ll hit Cesiah,” a man shouted.

“We’re taking her to the hospital where she’ll be safe,” Lucy shouted, retreating back behind the cover of the fire door, covering Cesiah with her body as they found themselves back on the ground wall of the stairwell.

“You’re not taking my kid,” the man - obviously Vance - shouted back.

Again, Lucy and Bradford switched positions, with Lucy covering the stairwell entrance from the interior hallway while Bradford covered the exterior door. They were trapped and surrounded. All it would take would be Vance’s men coming from the second floor above them, and they would all be dead in a matter of moments.

“Portia,” Cesiah said.

“Yes, Cesiah,” Lucy said, with her ear at the interior door as she listened for signs of movement.

“My water just broke.”

Lucy looked at Cesiah's flushed and fearful face, and then the dampness on the concrete beneath her. Cesiah wasn't lying.

“It’s okay, we’re going to get you out of here.”

Lucy tried to radio for backup - still nothing but static.

The end of the jammer’s range was likely only meters away, but it might as well have been miles.

Desperate, she queued 911 texts to Nolan, Grey and Commander West on her phone - which automatically waited 15 seconds to send so she could recall and re-edit them. She handed the phone to Tim and mimicked throwing it.

He nodded, and gently lofted the phone away. She could see it land softly in the dirt next to the car park. The screen lit up and she let out a sigh of relief - her promises to Cesiah of help had not been hollow after all.

Now they just had to survive long enough for back-up to arrive.

Bradford closed his door and braced against it, and gestured at Lucy to do the same to the interior door.

Lucy could hear Vance call out to his men from the ground floor interior hallway, voice partially muffled by the door and the din of the fire alarm.

“Ten thousand to whoever kills a cop without harming Cesiah.”

Lucy thought fast. Vance’s men were gathering their courage, and would try to rush the cops from all angles soon. They couldn’t be seen to be backing down to cops - especially not to a lady cop. She had to give them an out so they could save face.

The fire alarm softened slightly in intensity, and Lucy used the lull to call through the door, using her natural deeper timber. She figured Vance’s men would respond better to that than Portia’s higher girlish voice.

“I called for backup - SWAT will be here in minutes. Have you met the mouth breathers in SWAT? They’re jocks who hang around all day waiting for an excuse to shoot people. You’ve shot at cops and given them that excuse. I don’t want to get shot in the crossfire, and I don’t want Cesiah and the baby to get hurt.”

“Don’t listen to the bitch. Fifteen thousand to the one that kills her,” Vance shouted.

“Stay down, Cesiah,” Bradford instructed, gesturing for her to hit the floor.

A headache began to pound in Lucy’s skull, whether from the noise of the fire alarm or the stress of the situation, she couldn’t tell. She could hear footsteps coming from Bradford's door now. They were well and truly surrounded.

Cesiah slid down the cold concrete wall of the stairwell until she was seated - more of a fall than a controlled movement as she clutched at her stomach

“SWAT average response time is five minutes, which means they should be here in two. The LAPD can’t pick you all up if you leave now,” Lucy shouted.

Bradford laughed softly. The average SWAT response time for a Priority 1 call was eighteen minutes - but Vance’s men didn’t know that.

Lucy heard a close-by gunshot and jumped, but there wasn’t a bullet hole in either door.

“No one leaves until I get Cesiah,” Vance threatened.

That threat wasn’t directed at her, Bradford or Cesiah. Had he shot his own man? Jesus.

“Me, Connolly and Pony are leaving, and if you try to shoot us, we’ll shoot back,” Lucy heard a man, clearly younger than Vance, say through the interior hallway door.

Lucy closed her eyes in relief. Vance had overplayed his hand. Lucy said nothing and just waited, bracing the door to the interior hallway on her left side, with her right hand still on her gun. Once Vance had broken the sanctity of the group by shooting his man, basic human psychology had kicked in - Vance’s men were no longer a united group willing to charge armed cops they weren’t allowed to shoot back against. Instead, the suspects started thinking like selfish individuals.

Lucy could hear footsteps from both her door and Bradford’s as Vance’s former men started to leave.

“I’m coming for you, Cesiah,” Vance promised before footsteps disappeared down the interior hallway.

Then, in the distance, sirens sounded. Lucy let herself lock eyes with Bradford and give him a smile. They were almost out of harm’s way.

“He’s not getting near you or the baby ever again. The ambulances are almost here,” Lucy whispered to Cesiah, offering her a hand so she could get off the floor.

“Portia, can you come with me to the hospital?” Cesiah asked, slowly making her way to her feet with Lucy's assistance.

“Of course. Did you want me to call anyone once we’re out of this mess?”

“I don’t have anyone.”

Lucy wasn’t surprised. Cesiah was the perfect baby mama from the perspective of a man like Vance - disposable with no way out.

“You’ve got me for now - and you can make friends and family someplace else. It just takes time,” Lucy said, still holding Cesiah's hand.

Cesiah let loose a cry of pain as another contraction rippled through her. Lucy winced as Cesiah crushed her hand, but held on. It was the least she could do after the LAPD had come crashing into Cesiah’s life, exposing her and her baby to danger.

Chapter Text

Lucy lightly dozed next to Cesiah’s bed as the younger woman slept, only the duty belt digging into her hip preventing her from falling asleep entirely. Lucy had stayed with Cesiah for her entire labor and was exhausted. Thankfully, it had only taken a mercifully short five hours at St. Stephen’s Hospital for Cesiah to give birth to a healthy baby girl, Elena.

It was past visiting hours at the hospital, and calm. Cesiah had a private room, and there was little activity outside. The beeps from equipment were muted, televisions in other rooms turned off or on low volume, the lights dim, and hospital staff walked by unhurriedly.

The LAPD had assigned round the clock police protection to both Cesiah and baby Elena, but Lucy was staying as additional insurance. Vance’s obsession has been clear - he wouldn’t leave town without the baby and he had shown no hesitation in confronting cops.

Lopez knocked gently on the door to Cesiah’s room - loud enough to shake Lucy from her doze, but not so loud to wake Cesiah.

“How’s she doing?” Lopez asked.

“Healthy mom, healthy baby.”

“That’s great,” Lopez said.

They paused for a moment to look at Cesiah, sleeping peacefully. Lucy weighed her options - would a rookie like Portia advocate for Cesiah? Could Lucy live with herself if she didn't?

“Hey, you’re dating a defense attorney, right?” Lucy asked Lopez, keeping her tone casual.

“What about it?” Lopez crossed her arms in front her, instantly defensive. Lucy knew that Lopez’s choice of romantic partners probably hadn’t made her any extra friends in the department.

“Do you think he could help Cesiah negotiate the best possible deal for witness protection? She can identify and provide intelligence on a lot of Vance’s crew who are in the wind right now.”

Lopez let her arms fall to the side.

“Sounds right up his alley. I’ll give him a call - but first you need to take care of yourself, Lin. Go home, shower, and get some sleep.”

“Look, Office Lopez, Vance is unhinged. He could come for them at any time,” Lucy warned her.

“I know - I was a few feet away from death back there as well. And it’s Detective Lopez now,” Lopez added with a smirk.

Lucy paused for a moment, surprised and more than a little jealous. Thankfully, her Portia instincts kicked in fast.

“Congratulations! We need to do something to celebrate,” Lucy said, all smiles.

“And we will, at some point in the future. Go home - you can’t keep watch forever.”

Lucy took one last look at Cesiah, who was now snoring gently. Despite fleeing from her apartment and surviving a gun battle, Cesiah looked like any other exhausted new mother.

“I’ll be back soon,” Lucy promised Lopez, and herself.

“No less than ten hours - I’ve got some reading to catch up on,” Lopez said, tapping the cover of what looked suspiciously like a romance novel.

“Yes ma’am.”

Lucy left the room, stifling a yawn. She trudged towards the elevator, already planning on what food she was going to pick up on the way home, when she saw a flash of curly auburn hair that reminded her of the mop of curls she’d seen in Vance’s file. She turned, hands already reaching for her backup piece, before she identified the source: a female doctor slowly making her way from one room to another.

Now wide awake, Lucy turned the gesture into an unconvincing stretch. She waited for the elevator, cheeks burning in embarrassment. It was past time for sleep.

***

It was exactly 10 hours after Lucy left the hospital when she arrived back in Cesiah’s room, freshly showered, in her civilian attire, and bearing a tray of cupcakes covered with pastel pink icing.

Portia was a baker, so the cupcakes fit with her cover. Lucy was exhausted after being undercover for so long, so the cupcakes were made from a Betty Crocker cake mix, with a little extra vanilla in the batter and red food dye in the store-bought icing to make them seem baked from scratch.

“Congratulations again, Detective Lopez!” Lucy said, presenting Lopez with the cupcakes.

Angela accepted the cupcakes with a grin. “Don’t tell Jackson, but you’re my favorite boot."

“My lips are sealed,” Lucy said with a smirk.

Cesiah, now awake, looked suspiciously at Lucy. Her face was shuttered, as if she regretted the vulnerability she’d shown before. Lucy knew that it was normal for Cesiah to associate Portia with the trauma she’d suffered, but it still hurt. She hoped that Cesiah also associated Portia with the safe birth of her child.

“Hi Portia. Nice to see you,” Cesiah said.

“I had to head home to get some rest and some clothes. How is everything going?” Lucy asked, attempting to project kindness with a smile.

“Fine,” Cesiah said with a sniffle, stretching to grab a cupcake from where Lopez held them.

“I’ll leave the cupcakes here. Mama’s gotta eat,” Lopez said.

Lopez set down the cupcake tray on the small table adjacent to the hospital bed, but wrapped one cupcake in tissues and shoved it into her purse, and started snacking on a second.

“See you around at the station, Portia,” Lopez said, mouth full.

"See you," Lucy said.

She was bolstered by the comfort Lopez had shown around her, despite her rookie status: Portia was making friends. Still, Lucy was no closer to the Mid-Wilshire mole.

"So, where's the old guy?" Cesiah asked Lucy, almost accusingly.

Lucy focused on the woman in front of her - no use worrying about the mole when she had a job to do.

"I don't know, we have the day off," Lucy told Cesiah.

"He was kinda cute, if you're into that kinda thing," Cesiah offered.

Lucy let herself blush, just as Portia would. "He's my TO, and married," she informed Cesiah.

"What does TO stand for? Tall old man?" Cesiah said with a mocking laugh.

"Training officer." Tim Bradford appeared at the door to the room, freshly shaved and in a clean short-sleeved uniform.

"Speak of the devil," Lucy said, under her breath. He looked good - which was unfair considering the long series of shifts they'd just come off.

“Good to see you again, gringo,” Cesiah told him, completely undaunted by the fact he might have overheard their earlier conversation.

Bradford ignored her and fixed Lucy with a steely glare.

“Working off the clock, Boot?” he asked. "What have I taught you? Put in for overtime if you want to play hero."

Lucy rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to respond, her words cut off by sound of gunshots echoing from down the hall - from the direction of the nursery where the newborn babies were held.

“Elena!” Cesiah cried out, starting to rise from her bed.

“I’m going to go get her,” Lucy promised.

Lucy removed her backup piece from her calf holster, and started to open the door so she could run towards the nursery. The uniformed police officer posted outside of Cesiah’s room was already sprinting down the hall.

“Shut the door and stay here, Boot,” Tim ordered her, voice quiet but intense.

Lucy obeyed, flinching as a second series of gunshots sounded out. Tim walked to the blinds blocking line of sight into the patient room, holding himself sideways to present a smaller target, and looked out in between the small gaps.

“Portia, what are you doing?” Cesiah demanded.

Lucy held a finger to her lips and gestured for Cesiah to get down.

“Suspect approaching from the right,” Tim told Lucy, backing up behind the door so he could take anyone entering the room by surprise.

Lucy’s blood ran cold. Vance was going after both Cesiah and Elena. If Lucy had run down the hallway, and Tim hadn't decided to come to the hospital, Cesiah would have been completely defenseless.

The door opened slightly, and a gun held steadily in two large hands poked into the room. Lucy held her breath, and then Tim slammed the door shut, jamming the suspect’s arms against the wall, so fast Lucy could barely follow the movement. The suspect grunted in pain, and dropped the gun.

Lucy was dimly aware of Cesiah screaming, but was focused on the suspect. She rushed him, kicking the gun on the floor deeper into the room, cold-cocking him with her own gun and flipping him on his front before he could react. He struggled weakly against her as she cuffed him with her back-up cuffs, dazed by the blow to the head.

Tim stepped back from his position at the door, gun drawn, covering Lucy and her suspect, and the entry to the room. Lucy pulled the suspect into the corner of the room, and used a second set of hand-cuffs Tim threw her to cuff the suspect's ankles - unorthodox but she wanted to be sure he was no longer a threat to Cesiah. He had no ID on him, but plenty of tattoos, so identification should be simple once he got back to the station, assuming he had priors.

In her peripheral vision, Lucy saw Tim take a quick look outside the room to check no one else was coming and then close the door, still wary as he called the attack in on his radio.

Satisfied they had a moment to collect themselves, Lucy used a pair of the medical gloves from the wall dispenser to pick up the suspect's weapon.

"A Taurus GX4, poor condition," Lucy said, inspecting the battered weapon briefly before dropping it into the evidence bag Tim offered.

"What does that tell us about the suspect?" Tim asked, somehow still in TO mode.

"He's an amateur - Taurus handguns are notoriously inconsistent, and he hasn't bothered to maintain it," Lucy answered, almost by rote, shaking slightly as adrenalin from the brief fight coursed through her system.

"Who cares about the gun? What about Elena?" Cesiah asked. Her eyes were wide in fear, an expression too familiar to Lucy from the past twenty-four hours. So much for keeping her safe.

Tim and Lucy shared a long look. The fact that there hadn't been an update over the radio from the team guarding Elena didn't bode well, but Lucy knew Tim would be reluctant to leave Cesiah, or trust a rookie to enter a potentially dangerous situation alone. He looked between Cesiah and Lucy for a second, and let out a frustrated sigh.

“You go, I'll hold down the fort here,” Tim said.

“Make sure the paramedics know the suspect sustained head trauma and he gets a CT scan,” Lucy threw over her shoulder as she opened the door, scanning the hallway. No use in protecting Cesiah only to blow her operation by accidentally killing a suspect with untreated head trauma.

Lucy ran down the empty hallway as fast as she could without launching into an uncontrolled run. The gunfire had stopped, and she couldn’t hear any signs of struggle. The blinds were shut.

Lucy took a breath and then yelled "Police," and kicked open the door to the nursery in the same instant, hoping to catch any suspects by surprise.

"Drop your weapon!" a man yelled.

"She's a cop!" Lopez shouted.

Lucy holstered her back-up piece as she took in the scene in front of her. One of the two uniformed cops rostered on guard duty was holding a gun pointed at her, his hands shaking. Deeper into the room, Lopez was cradling baby Elena, two men cuffed at her feet. Neither were Vance. The second uniformed officer looked shell shocked, leaning against the wall, but didn't appear wounded. Pink icing was smeared on the ground, and several of the babies were fussing in their bassinets, but there was no sign of blood.

"Would it have killed you to use the radio?" Lucy demanded of the uniformed cops, completely forgetting to stay in character as a rookie.

"Hey-" one of them began to protest, but Lucy ignored him.

“Tim's with Cesiah. Let’s get Elena to her room so we only have one location to protect,” Lucy said, speaking to Lopez.

“Are the cupcakes still there?” Lopez asked, looking up from the baby.

“They should be.”

“Good, I need to restock,” Lopez said, voice carefully casual despite the chaos.

Lopez, Lucy and one of the uniformed officers took Elena back to Cesiah’s room, leaving the second uniformed officer (who Lucy was privately thinking of as completely useless) to guard the two cuffed suspects.

Lucy kept her head on a swivel as they walked the short distance back to Cesiah's room - but there was no sign of any more attackers. Vance was rumored to have plenty of guys in his crew, but even his resources must be strained at this point.

Lucy knocked on the door to Cesiah’s room.

“Ti- Bradford, it’s us,” she said, stuttering slightly on his first name, and opened the door.

Inside, Bradford (his name was Bradford, not Tim, and he was someone she was investigating, not a friend or a colleague, not really) stood sideways to the blinds, and the suspect Lucy had cuffed earlier was still semi-unconscious against the wall in the corner of the room, but Cesiah was nowhere in sight.

“What the hell, Bradford?” Lucy asked.

He smirked at her. Cesiah emerged from under the hospital bed to collapse back into bed, and take Elena into her arms.

“Took you long enough, Boot,” he said.

Backup arrived in less than ten minutes in the form of Grey, Smitty, Nolan and Angela’s partner, Wesley the defense attorney.

Wesley took one look at the scene before launching into lawyer mode, speaking directly to Grey. “My client has likely been traumatized by the insufficient police protection provided by the LAPD. I demand she is provided stronger security and compensation-.”

Grey put his hands up to stop Wesley before he could continue. “We will be increasing LAPD presence until WitSec can take Cesiah into their custody. No one will be able to get to her without passing at least three officers.”

There was a brief pause, as no one knew quite what to say.

“Do you think I can get house with a pool in witness protection?” Cesiah asked Wesley, gently rocking Elena, voice oddly loud in the silence.

Lucy saw Bradford and Lopez both hide smiles at Cesiah's open avarice. That boded well for getting strong testimony from Cesiah if Vance could be found and brought to trial.

“After the additional trauma you suffered, we are definitely getting you a pool. I also hear Hawaii is nice this time of year,” Wesley told Cesiah with a wink.

Grey shook his head in disdain before turning to his officers.

“Lopez and Lin, give Nolan your statements. Bradford, take the unconscious suspect for medical treatment before giving yours. Then go home. Smitty, you’ll stand guard with me and the rostered-on guards until additional backup arrives.”

Lucy could hear a slight emphasis as Grey said 'rostered-on', but she was very glad that she, Lopez and Bradford had been at the hospital when the attack came.

Cesiah and Wesley were still talking, Cesiah now pointedly ignoring Lucy and Bradford.

Lucy was too tired to be offended by Cesiah's mercurial moods. Relieved that Cesiah and Elena had Wesley to advocate for them now, and her job here was done, Lucy made her way to the elevator, alongside the other officers.

“I still can’t believe you brought cupcakes to guard duty,” Bradford said, easily hauling the still half-unconscious suspect down the hall with just one hand.

“Really, because you’ve got a smudge of icing right there,” Lucy said, gesturing to the corner of his mouth.

He reached for the non-existent icing before stopping himself with a glare at Lucy.

“Got you!” Lucy said, laughing.

He looked at her, baffled.

“You’re clearly not afraid enough of me. Even if you're working unpaid, I’m your TO,” he told her.

“She’s handled herself pretty well,” Lopez interjected.

“If I hadn’t been here, Cesiah could be dead right now,” he pointed out, voice grim.

“I know,” Lucy said, quietly. Rushing from Cesiah’s room towards the gunfire had been a rookie mistake, and she wasn’t a rookie, not really.

“Portia, when you make those kinds of mistakes as a cop, people die,” Tim said.

“I know. I’ll do better in the future.”

“For future reference, the first principle of being a bodyguard is to stay with the body,” he continued, relentless.

“Yes, sir,” Lucy said, glum.

Her training as a cop in Sacramento clearly hadn’t given her all the experience she needed to be a successful cop in LA. Bradford was probably going to treat her like an idiot for at least a month.

"We'll talk about this again next time we're at the station," Tim told her.

Lopez silently handed Lucy a squished cupcake from her purse, which Lucy took gratefully, needing the sugar. The cake was a little too dry and the icing was a little too sweet, but it was still good. All four cops, Lopez, Nolan, Bradford and Lucy, stood quietly in front of the elevator bank for a second, the only sound the mumbling of the suspect Bradford was holding.

Bradford claimed the first elevator - “I'll head down to the ER with our John Doe. Also, Lin, good thinking on throwing the phone out of jammer range. You saved both of us,” Bradford said.

“You notice he waited until your mouth was full before complimenting you,” Lopez teased Lucy, the elevator doors still open enough that Bradford had to have heard.

Nolan waited until the elevator doors were fully closed. “I think that’s the nicest thing I’ve ever heard Bradford say to a rookie,” he said.

Lucy and Nolan shared a fist bump. Lucy intended to smile Portia's sunny smile and say something inane, but instead found herself trying to suppress hysterical laughter. The adrenaline had left her system, and she was crashing out in front of people she absolutely had to hold her cover in front of. As she began to laugh, pieces of cupcake stuck in the back of her throat, choking her. The hysterical laughter turned into wheezing, and tears gathered at the corner of her eyes.

"I'm not going to miss babysitting you two and Jackson on patrol." Lopez joked, her eyes kind as she witnessed Lucy lose her composure.

"I, for one, already feel bereft without your wisdom," Nolan volleyed back, calmly patting Lucy on the back as she coughed out the rogue cupcake pieces.

Airway clear, Lucy sucked in deep breaths, relieved she hadn't been rendered unconscious by her own indifferent baking efforts - she'd never live it down as long as she stayed at Mid-Wilshire.

"Next time, I'm not baking," Lucy told them both, voice still a little breathy.

"Keep saving lives, Portia, and I'll buy you all the cupcakes you want. Well, all the cupcakes my rookie salary can afford," Nolan said, continuing his joking tone as if Lucy hadn't almost had a public breakdown.

This time Lucy's laughter was genuine. For a brief moment, everything was okay.

Chapter Text

Lucy looked up from the pile of papers on her desk to see four more folders thud into her inbox, courtesy of Officer Jackson West.

“Sucks to be you,” Jackson said with a cheeky smile.

“Yeah, yeah. Have fun with your new TO,” Lucy told him.

“Oh, I will. Don’t get a papercut!”

Grey had relegated Portia and Bradford to desk duty for a week for the “stunt” they’d pulled by guarding Cesiah. Lopez, now a detective and not in his line of command, was completely exempt.

“Enjoying the glamor of police work, Lin?” Bradford asked from the desk next to hers.

She spun in her chair to look at him. Less than an hour into their shift and he was already fidgeting, tapping his feet, utterly unsuited for a desk job.

“Every day is a joy,” Lucy told him, unable to hide her amusement.

“Typical response, Lin” he said, eyes searching hers.

“What have you heard about Cesiah?” Lucy asked, attempting to deflect his scrutiny.

“Nothing. Now that WitSec has her, that’s a good thing. We will hopefully never hear from her ever again.”

“Oh,” Lucy said, projecting Portia’s disappointment.

Lucy knew that she was unlikely to cross paths with Cesiah in the future, but she’d had been with her during the birth of her kid. Any rookie in that situation would form a strong emotional attachment.

“I’m glad she’s somewhere else. You don’t need a drug trafficker’s girlfriend as your first puppy,” Bradford said.

“Puppy?”

“Rookies pick up puppies - people that they think they can save,” he explained.

“We did save her,” Lucy pointed out, every inch the optimistic pollyanna. She had let the Portia role slip at least twice in the stress of rescuing Cesiah, and needed to lock back in.

“It was a close thing - thanks to your less than stellar bodyguard work.” Bradford pointed at her pile of paperwork. “Back to work, Boot.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lucy sped through the paperwork she was supposed to process, and spent the rest of the shift digging through as much of the paperwork in the archives as she could on the pretense of learning from past cases. The focus of her investigation was simple - she would note which Mid-Wilshire patrol officers had an extensive history with Southern Front and then shrink the suspect pool from there. Anyone who had an unusually lenient approach to a Southern Front member would go to the top of the suspect list. Theoretically Murphy would have already done this work, but Lucy wanted to see if a fresh set of eyes could shake something loose.

The problem with using files to identify a suspect pool soon became obvious: due to Southern Front’s wide range of criminal activities more than ninety percent of Mid-Wilshire patrol officers who had served more than three years - including Bradford - had made multiple arrests of suspected and confirmed members. Her suspect pool was the entire group of veteran patrol officers who had been at the station at the time of the leak.

Only the past six years of records were digitised, which meant as she went back further in the past she had to sift through physical files, and the dust that came with them. Lucy found herself stifling sneezes as she investigated, alone in the file room, Bradford’s words about the glamor of police work echoing in her ears.

After several hours of looking through files, Lucy had to stop herself from kicking one of the file cabinets in frustration - it would just stir up more dust. No one had jumped out at her as a clear suspect for the Mid-Wilshire mole - although Smitty should probably be fired for his barely legible reports that markedly decreased in quality as soon as he got past the 20 years of duty required to receive the full LAPD pension.

Lucy threw down the file she was looking at - an arrest for breaking and entering by someone who was a known associate of a known associate of the Southern Front second-in-command. Nothing there: the story of her investigation so far.

As long as the mole stayed inactive, they were going to be near impossible to find. Standing in the middle of the dusty file cabinets, cobwebs covering her formerly regulation shined shoes, Lucy made a promise to herself: if she hadn’t made progress by the six month rookie exam, she was going to call the operation. If she wasn’t going to generate arrests for her efforts, then there was no point in wasting her talents when they could be used elsewhere.

Her investigation in Southern Front stymied, Lucy still had thirty minutes left of her shift, and she might as well snoop. Bradford’s name had been prominent in many of the files she’d examined: he’d seen more than his fair share of action for a police officer. Lucy found herself digging up the reports he’d written as a rookie, and laughed to see he’d misused an acronym - a common mistake that he’d chewed her out for. But the mistakes were few - even as a rookie his reports had been straightforward, detail-oriented and reflective of a military mindset.

She was still looking through his reports when her phone alarm sounded, denoting the end of shift. Lucy carefully put the paper files away, back in their original locations, just as Portia Lin would. While she was no closer to finding the mole, at least she knew more about Mid-Wilshire patrol officers, past and present.

On her way to the car park she crossed Jackson’s path and gave him a wave. He didn’t even look at her - instead his gaze was fixed directly ahead in the middle distance, his shoulders were slumped in defeat, and he seemed completely absent of his usual cheer.

“Rough shift, West?”

Jackson took a moment to register her presence, then shifted the bag on his shoulder and turned to look at her.

“Yeah,” he said.

Lucy sympathized - the worst part of being a patrol officer was that you never knew what was going to happen, or how it was going to affect you personally. She still had nightmares about an eight year old, killed in a car accident her first week as a cop.

“Wanna talk about it?” she asked.

Jackson hesitated, clearly torn. Lucy waited patiently for him to speak, an interrogation technique that worked for cops as well as criminals.

“My new TO, Doug Stanton? He’s just not a good dude,” Jackson said.

“What do you mean?” Lucy asked.

Jackson gave her a look that said she should already know the answer to that. Stanton was a pleasant seeming white guy who used to work for the LA Sheriff’s Department. The pieces clicked into place.

“So he’s one of those cops,” Lucy said.

“Yeah. He stopped a bus driving a girl’s basketball team to their game today and hassled the driver and the coach. Kept them on the side of the road for half an hour - just long enough that they would miss the tip-off. He said they had an attitude. I’ll give you one guess as to the racial makeup of the team.”

Lucy couldn’t stop herself from wincing in disgust as Jackson spoke. Stanton had been moved to Mid-Wilshire in the cross-LAPD personnel changes following Armstrong’s arrest, so he wasn’t the mole. That didn’t mean he was a good cop.

“Then he spent the rest of the shift talking about how terrible women’s basketball is and how WNBA players shouldn’t be paid anything,” Jackson continued.

Stanton had more or less ignored her and the other rookies and she knew very little about him. That was going to change - Lucy had no leads on the mole, which meant she had all the time in the world to investigate Stanton.

“But never anything illegal, never anything so out of line I can report it to Grey or Anderson,” Jackson finished, gesturing widely to indicate the unfairness of the situation.

Jackson looked lost and angry, and Lucy worried for a second that he was on the verge of doing something foolish. Letting a cop like Stanton derail Jackson’s career would be awful - not to mention Commander West would be displeased.

“That really sucks, Jackson. Look, keep your head down for now - we’ll figure something out,” Lucy said.

She meant it - she had taken down Hawke and Armstrong, both much more respected and better known than Stanton.

“We?” Jackson asked.

“We’re in this together, right? All for one,” Lucy said.

“One for all.”

They fist-bumped and for a brief moment she could see a ghost of Jackson’s usual smile.

***

Lucy and Bradford had brought in a suspect for processing ten minutes after Jackson and Stanton had done the same. Lucy saw her opportunity and processed their suspect quickly, then lingered in the station kitchen until she ran into Stanton - she wanted to judge him for herself. He moved smoothly, like an athlete, and was the kind of generically handsome white man police brass usually loved throwing promotions at.

“Officer Stanton,” she said, nodding respectfully.

“Lin,” he said, nodding back.

“How is your day going?” She asked, in Portia's girlish voice.

“Oh, you know, the usual idiots who can’t drive and don’t respect police,” he said.

Lucy faked a sympathetic giggle. Stanton didn’t require any other encouragement.

“The first three hours of the shift was wasted - we got called in to canvas witnesses for a homicide. It was some girl involved with a gang, so of course no one talked. NHI.”

NHI. No humans involved. Lucy’s blood ran cold. In another universe, one where Lucy and Bradford hadn’t been at St Stephen’s at the right time, Stanton could be talking casually over coffee about Cesiah’s murder in the same way.

“Yeah. We should save boots on the ground for where it might actually make a difference,” Lucy agreed, no trace of her true feelings on her face.

Stanton toasted her with his coffee, and she toasted back with her travel mug on her way out of the kitchen, with all the deference of a rookie who had a conversation with a more senior cop.

Jackson was right - Stanton was rotten. Now she just had to figure out how to take him down.

***

Later the same day, at the end of shift, Lucy glanced up to see Jackson walking directly to Grey’s office, a determined look on his face. To her surprise, a moment later she saw Bradford follow as well.

She took a quick look around the station - most of the officers on day shift, including Stanton, had already gone home. The officers on night shift were gearing up and heading out, uninterested in day shift’s activities.

Lucy casually walked to Grey’s office, getting there in time to overhear part of the conversation at Grey’s open door.

“Look, whatever Jackson is saying, I stand with him,” Bradford said.

“And I do too,” Lucy said, sneaking in behind Bradford and closing the door to Grey’s office after her to block any further eavesdropping.

Bradford turned to look at her, surprise quickly changing into exasperation as he registered her presence.

“Welcome into my office, Officers Bradford and Lin,” Grey said, heavy irony in his tone.

“Look, Stanton is a bad cop,” Bradford told Grey, ignoring Lucy.

Lucy was surprised and a little bit impressed - she’d expected Bradford to let a cop like Stanton slide due to their shared veteran status in the LAPD.

Grey and Bradford locked eyes for a moment. The fact Bradford was vouching for Jackson carried a lot of weight - the word of one rookie, no matter who his father was, counted for little in the LAPD.

“Fine. I can assign him to desk duty tomorrow morning,” Grey said.

“That’s not good enough,” Jackson burst out.

Bradford put a quelling hand on Jackson’s shoulder.

“Excuse me? You’ve been in the LAPD for all of five minutes,” Grey said, clearly taken aback by a rookie talking to him like that.

“I have an idea,” Lucy interjected.

“And so have you. God save us from rookies with ideas,” Grey said, crossing his arms, skepticism clear on his features.

She and Jackson had almost lost Grey, despite Bradford’s support - she had to talk fast.

“You can assign me to Stanton. I can fade in the background, and keep a record of his behavior. Jackson is a black man who has threatened his authority, so he’ll always consider Jackson a threat. Me? Probably as a submissive assistant or an adoring audience.”

Bradford’s lips twitched slightly as she said the word ‘submissive.’ “Only if he’s never met you,” he pointed out.

Grey began to massage his temples, but he took a breath, considering her words before he responded.

“That’s not actually a bad idea, Lin,” he said, finally.

“Stanton will know something is up if Grey switches up TOs and boots overnight,” Bradford cautioned.

“He won’t be suspicious if he’s the one asking for the switch,” Lucy countered. “Bradford, you’re going to have to do something that goes against your instincts - brag about me.”

“Wait, we can’t take that risk. Portia, what if he hurts you?” Jackson said.

Bradford half-nodded in agreement before Lucy glared at him.

“I’m a police officer. I’m paid to take risks to protect the community,” Lucy said, directing her words at Grey, and hoping her logical approach would win out over Jackson's and Bradford’s protectiveness.

“She’s right,” Grey said to Bradford, who still looked unconvinced. “But I won’t okay this unless you agree. Do you think Lin has what it takes?”

Lucy locked eyes with Bradford. His gaze raked her, assessing.

“Of all the rookies I’ve had, Lin is probably the best prepared for something like this at this point in her career,” Bradford admitted, finally.

“Then it should be straightforward. When Stanton complains about Jackson to you in the break room, all you have to do is rib him for getting a dud rookie in comparison to yours. And make it seem like you’re doing him a giant favor when he asks to swap,” she said.

“So Stanton says Jackson is an annoying boot, and I start singing your praises?” Bradford said, dubious.

Lucy lowered her voice and changed its cadence to match Bradford’s. "Tough break, Stanton, getting the IA commander’s kid. My boot does what she’s told and saved my life a couple of times.”

“One, you don’t do what you’re told and two, I don’t sound like that.”

“One, Stanton doesn’t know that and two, yes you do.”

Jackson and Grey both laughed softly at their exchange, and some of the tension left the room. Internally, Lucy gloated that Bradford was no longer denying she’d saved his life.

“I don’t sound like that,” Bradford insisted. “What you’re suggesting is dangerous, Lin. Cops like Stanton can be vicious when cornered.”

“Which is why we need to make sure they don’t get to keep their badge and their authority over people, especially people of color,” Jackson said.

Grey put up his hands to halt the conversation, and the room instantly fell silent. Grey rubbed his eyes as he thought through the situation.

“If Lin is willing to take the risk, and Stanton asks within the next few days, I’ll grant the request for a rookie swap. Otherwise, I’ll bench Stanton and kick this mess off to IA,” Grey said.

“I can handle it,” Lucy promised all three men.

“Then all three of you are dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bradford, Lucy and Jackson all left the Watch Commander’s office quickly. When Sergeant Grey rubbed his eyes, it was a sure sign that his patience was growing short.

Lucy was already planning logistics on her way to the women’s locker room. She was well and truly overdue for her end of shift shower, and she needed to pick up a wire from Murphy as soon as possible - Stanton seemed the type to play fast and loose with his body cam.

“Officer Bradford is right, Portia. Stanton is dangerous. He has a mean streak,” Jackson said, bringing Lucy's attention back to the present.

“There are a thousand guys out there like Stanton, but there is only one me,” Lucy told him and Bradford, projecting confidence.

She was confident - she was literally the most qualified person in Mid-Wilshire for this job. She just wished she could tell Jackson and Bradford that so they’d stop worrying.

Lucy pushed aside a brief twinge of regret over the lies and omissions her job necessitated, and turned to Bradford. He was a weak link in her plan. Despite his years of experience on the force, she got the sense that undercover operations weren’t his strong suit.

“Did you want to practice the sell?” Lucy asked him.

“It’s not my first rodeo, Boot. Go home,” Bradford said, striding away to the men’s locker room before she could answer.

He seemed angry, but she wasn’t sure if it was at her, Stanton or himself.

“You sure this isn’t all a plot so you can get away from Bradford?” Jackson joked.

“Maybe. Hope you enjoy being constantly tested,” she said, nudging him with her shoulder.

“Thanks for having my back, Portia.”

“Always,” Lucy said, the words ringing false in her mouth.

Chapter Text

Lucy still had her doubts about Bradford’s ability for subterfuge, but it took less than forty-eight hours before Stanton was in Grey’s office making the case for swapping rookies with Bradford. Grey granted his permission and, just like that, Portia Lin was now Doug Stanton's rookie.

It was Valentine's Day, the first shift Lucy rode with Stanton. Poor timing, as Bradford was taking a PTO day. Lucy had no immediate backup if things went wrong.

Stanton had let her drive and, almost despite herself, Lucy was happy to have that piece of autonomy after Bradford’s micromanagerial approach.

“So, partner, any plans for Valentine’s Day?” Stanton asked her.

“No, sir. I’m focusing on being a police officer at the moment,” Lucy answered.

“That’s smart - a lot of rookies just don’t know how to focus.”

“Thanks, sir. Any plans with your wife?” Lucy asked.

“Nothing special, we get dinner a few nights after to avoid the crowds. I’m getting her favorite flowers delivered. Can’t afford to get too deep into the kid’s college fund.”

Stanton laughed, self-deprecatingly. He seemed so normal. If it hadn’t been for his comments in the breakroom, Lucy would have thought Jackson had overreacted to minor issues.

“I hear that. I’m still paying off my student loans. Your kids are lucky to have you,” Lucy said.

“I’ll do what I can to make sure we pick up some OT - for the college fund and the student loans,” he said. “Just not on Valentine’s Day.”

She laughed. “Definitely not. If the college fund can stretch and you’re looking to add chocolate to the flowers for your wife, there is a fancy chocolate place a few blocks east of here.”

It was genuinely a great artisanal chocolate store. Lucy was going to stock up there before she left LA, and there was no harm in getting into Stanton’s good books by suggesting a good present for his wife.

“Thanks Lin, but my wife isn’t into hipster chocolate.”

Stanton closed off his body language to Lucy, scanning the road ahead. Lucy took the hint. Stanton, much like Bradford, preferred being in control. He didn’t want suggestions or advice from a rookie - even on something as minor as chocolate for his wife. Unlike Bradford however, he attempted to wear the guise of being buddies with his rookies.

The first few calls, Stanton handled the citizens they interacted with with professionalism and care. Then they stopped a latino man in his mid-forties who wasn’t doing anything other than walking down the street of a middle class neighborhood. His name was Alfonso Rocha, and he had a warrant out for his arrest for missing a court date for unpaid parking tickets.

“Cuff him, Lin,” Stanton ordered.

Although it was tough on Alfonso to be arrested over a parking offense, Lucy cuffed him without hesitation. Bradford would have directed her to do the same if the warrant had come back on an ID check - but Bradford would never have stopped a man for just walking down the street in the first place.

“All you had to do was show up to court,” Stanton said, shaking his head theatrically with false regret as he looked at Alfonso.

“Whatever, pitufo,” Alfonso said.

Stanton’s face went cold with anger and his fists clenched.

“Have some respect for Officer Stanton,” Lucy said sternly to Alfonso.

Alfonso had called Stanton a smurf in Spanish, and Lucy had to admit the term was a little funny when applied to police. Externally, she pretended to be angry with Alfonso. She jostled him a little to emphasize her point, and hoped that Stanton would view that as enough of a corrective to Alfonso’s behavior to not take it any further.

“Don’t worry about it, Lin,” Stanton said, falsely jovial with his expression back under control.

Lucy shoved Alfonso into the back of the shop and then quickly made her way to the driver’s seat, hoping they could get the suspect processed and lunch before Stanton’s anger made an appearance.

“Lin, I need you to do a quick survey of the area. Make sure he didn’t stash drugs or a weapon when he saw us coming. Take about five minutes,” Stanton instructed.

“Of course, sir.”

There was no obvious cover from which Lucy could pretend to obey Stanton and safely observe his interactions with Alfonso. Guilt washed over her - she had to keep her cover. Lucy did as instructed, which meant leaving Alfonso to Doug Stanton’s tender mercy.

Lucy undertook a search of exactly five minutes, checking under bushes and taking a quick look down a storm drain. Unsurprisingly, given the man’s offenses were parking related and not related to drugs or weapons, she found nothing.

“Nothing appeared to be stashed, sir,” she told Stanton on her return, chipper.

“That’s working patrol, Lin, a lot of time searching and getting nothing for our efforts. Good work”

“Thanks, sir.”

Alfonso didn’t have visible signs of injury but his breath was slightly labored. Stanton would have known how to avoid the shop cams, and probably hit Alfonso in the torso where he could have have had an injury not visible to their body cams prior to the pick-up so it would be difficult for the suspect to prove anything had happened.

Alfonso’s eyes bored into hers as she glanced in the back of the shop. He looked angry and betrayed, but said nothing.

Lucy cursed herself silently, outward expression placid. She should have requisitioned a spy cam for the shop in addition to the subtle mic she was wearing. She would make sure to have it when she set up the shop tomorrow.

By the time the shift was over, she was exhausted playing handmaiden to Stanton. Jackson had undersold the situation - Stanton wasn’t only a bad cop, he was a bad man.

It had taken all of one day of riding with Stanton for her to figure out his ideology. Cops and white people were the people he protected and served - and he did it well. Everyone else? The enemy. Blue and white versus the rest of the world.

She wondered how many police officers had overlooked Stanton’s behavior over the years, and knew the number had to be uncomfortably high.

Still, while she couldn’t change the past, she could pass on Rocha’s name to IA, and make sure he was interviewed and offered medical treatment. It was literally the least she could do.

***

Lucy was more prepared for a second day of riding with Stanton - this time there were two secret cams covering the known shop blindspots, and Bradford and Jackson were patrolling in the the same sector as Stanton and Lin had been assigned to. Knowing she had backup made Lucy more confident, and she committed to the role of eager to please rookie, Portia Lin.

“So you were on varsity for three years at high school? That’s a big deal,” Lucy said.

“Yeah. And it wasn’t easy. There were times I walked into the basketball gym and me and my parents were the only white people in the gym,” Stanton bragged.

So Stanton had been on teams with men of color all his life - basketball, the sheriff’s department and now the police - and he still couldn’t see their humanity. He deserved IA throwing the book at him.

“What position did you play?” Lucy asked, expression attentive but not too attentive.

“Point-guard. Was player of the year in my high school junior and senior year.”

Her questions were a launch pad - he regaled her about his high school basketball career, and it was familiar territory for Lucy that she mostly tuned out. The criminals she’d gone undercover with, often those who’d dropped out of high school or college, had similar stories. How they played against kids who would later go professional, how they almost made it. In her experience, there were few men who would turn up the opportunity to discuss past athletic glory.

By the time their shift was almost over Stanton had moved on from talking about his own career to explaining to her that Larry Bird was the best basketball player of all time. They were headed back to Mid-Wilshire with five minutes on the clock as he quoted some of Bird’s best trash talk.

He stopped abruptly, eyes locked on a red sedan.

“Looks like we might get that OT after all, Lin,” Stanton said. “That woman just ran a stop sign. Light her up and run her plates.”

Lucy hadn’t seen the woman in the red sedan - a black woman - run the stop sign, but she did as instructed. The plates came back clean, and registered to Faith Robinson.

“Approach with caution. Some rookies think women can’t be dangerous - but you know better, don’t you Lin?” Stanton said.

“Yes, sir,” Lucy said.

She and Stanton executed a perfect by-the-book approach on either side of the red sedan.

“License and registration, ma’am,” Lucy said.

The woman, in her fifties, handed over her ID. She was Faith Robinson, and the registration was in order.

“What’s this about?” Faith asked, just the edge of outrage in her voice.

“We saw you run that stop sign,” Stanton said. “That’s a serious offense - someone could have gotten hurt.”

“I did not!” Faith protested.

“Ma’am, given your elevated emotions and erratic driving, I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to blow into this breathalyzer,” Stanton said.

“Excuse me?” Faith said.

“If you refuse to comply, that will be noted and can be used against you in court later,” Lucy said.

Faith blew into the breathalyzer, glaring at both of them. It came back with zero blood alcohol.

“Could be drugs,’ Stanton said to Lucy. “Make the arrest.”

Lucy felt her stomach sink. He was going to force her to arrest someone who hadn’t committed an offense so he could get OT to pay into his kid's college fund.

“Faith Robinson, you’re under arrest for suspicion of driving while intoxicated. I will be taking you back to the station so you can be tested for drug use,” Lucy said.

“What? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Ma’am, do you want to be charged for resisting arrest?” Lucy said, every inch the petty bureaucrat Stanton expected her to be.

Faith’s mouth opened and closed, soundless, as she realized there was nothing she could do to stop what was happening.

“I will be making a complaint,” Faith finally said, the emotions in her voice carefully controlled.

“That’s your right, ma’am,” Lucy said as she cuffed Faith and began to walk her to the shop.

“Good job, Lin,” Stanton said, radiating approval.

“Thank you, sir.” She briefly fantasized about pepper spraying him.

Stanton drove them back to the station, well below the speed limit. By the time Faith was processed and in holding, both of them had an additional hour of OT in their timesheet.

“My student loan balance thanks you for the OT, sir,” Lucy said, offering Stanton a fist bump.

He fist-bumped her back. “One step closer to UCLA for the kids.”

It felt wrong, sharing a moment of comradery with Stanton that she’d recently shared with Nolan and Jackson.

“My buddies and I are going to catch the second half of the Lakers game tonight at High Flyers. Want to come along?” Stanton asked.

“Meet you there,” she said, trying to appear thrilled to be invited to a social engagement with her TO.

Still, it had been a productive day. She had Stanton on the record as making a wrongful arrest for self-enrichment - his words caught on her mic. He might get away with being racist in who he stopped and how, but the LA took a dim view of cops breaking the rules for more OT. The amount of city funding that went to police salaries had been a media issue for years.

It would likely take a couple of weeks before IA moved on Stanton, but at least there was an end in sight. Murphy had already interviewed Alfonso Rocha and gotten evidence that would point to a larger pattern of behavior. Stanton would either be forced into retirement or spend the rest of his career riding a desk - the citizens of LA would be safer with him off the streets.

Lucy took a long shower in the women’s change rooms, deliberately delaying her arrival at the sports bar. She turned up the shower to the maximum possible spray and as hot as she could stand, hoping it would drive the memory of Alfonso’s pained breaths and Faith’s incredulity from her mind. It didn’t.

She emerged into the parking lot well into the night shift’s tenure, with damp hair she had been too tired to style and dry properly just for a sports bar called ‘High Flyers’.

Bradford was waiting for her, next to her shitty car. He had his arms crossed and leaned against the driver’s door to the car, ensuring she couldn’t leave without talking to him first. He looked good in civvies - his lightweight sweater hugged lean muscle, which she knew to be entirely functional.

“You doing okay, Lin?” he asked, gruffly.

His eyes were worried despite his uncaring exterior and, despite herself, she was touched. He clearly felt partially responsible for her.

“Going okay, Bradford,” she answered.

He didn’t move away from the car door, clearly still worried about her. She intended to shoot him a strong and confident smile, but she couldn’t quite project Portia’s optimism in the moment.

“Tim?”

“Yeah?”

“Who is the greatest basketball player of all time?”

“What?”

He looked thrown off for a second. Despite her mood, she filed that away as a victory. Surprising the super-prepared Tim Bradford always put a spring into her step.

“My answer might be a little off the beaten path,” he said.

She braced herself.

“Magic Johnson.”

She relaxed in relief - despite some superficial similarities, Bradford would never be a Doug Stanton. She took a step closer to her car door, maybe a touch too close to Bradford to be strictly professional.

“You’re such a Lakers fan,” she said with a smile - genuine this time.

“Best team in the NBA,” he said, moving away to give her access to the driver's side door.

“Don’t you have tickets to the game tonight?” Lucy put her keys in the door, but didn't turn them, reluctant to leave.

He shrugged. “Gave them away. They’re playing again in a couple of days anyway.”

He’d stayed past tip-off just to check in on her. Having him onboard as her backup, even if he didn’t know the real her, grounded her.

“I’m headed to Stanton’s sports bar to meet his buddies,” she told him. "High Flyers."

In some ways he was her handler for the investigation - no one would think it was odd if he talked to her as a TO around the station. She wanted to make sure at least someone in Mid-Wilshire knew where she was going. She’d text Murphy on the way, but she didn’t think Murphy would get out of bed for anything less than a 911 text.

“That’s less than fifteen minutes from my house. If anything feels wrong, get out of there immediately and call me for backup. I know you’re hungry to prove yourself, Portia, but no operation is worth your life,” Tim said.

“I know. But it’s a sports bar - the worst that happens is I choke on chicken wings,” she said, playing the cocky optimist.

"Just be careful," Bradford said, his eyes fixed on hers.

"I will," Lucy promised, seriously.

They stayed like that for a moment, then Lucy turned the key and swung herself into the driver's seat, and the moment was lost.

"See you tomorrow, Lin," he said.

"Tomorrow," Lucy agreed.

Bradford headed for his own, much nicer vehicle, backpack slung over his shoulder.

***

Doug’s sports bar buddies turned out to be cops - no surprise there. Two white men around Doug’s age, Sergeant Zachariah Adamski and Officer Willam Long, as well as Stanton’s former rookie, a black man named Officer Ben Owens.

Despite the ambitious name, High Flyers was a fairly simple bar with cheap beer on tap and the basketball game on every television. The game’s audio was low enough that it was easy to have a conversation, making it a perfect environment for a group of off-duty cops to catch up.

“Bringing a lady to a sports bar. Interesting choice, Doug,” Officer Long said as soon as Stanton introduced Portia to the group as his new rookie.

“She’ll be a good fit for the Taskforce,” Stanton promised. “Talked to Bradford - she’s hitting the male qualifications for P2 fitness testing, except for the pull-ups.”

Lucy’s face burned. Is that what Bradford had told Stanton? It had been a good call - it made her ‘one of the guys.’ Neither Sergeant Adamski nor Officer Long were in any kind of shape to do a fitness test, unlike her and Officer Owens, but since they were long past their rookie year it didn’t matter.

“I’m working on those pull-ups,” Lucy told them.

“Good, you like to see a woman cop going around it the right way, not just relying on diversity bullshit for a promotion,” Long said.

Despite Adamski being the Sergeant, Long seemed to think he was the leader of the group.

“She can handle herself,” Stanton said.

“If the Dougernaut says you’ve got the goods, that’s good enough for me,” Long said, offering Lucy his hand.

She gave him the firm handshake he clearly expected from her, but not so firm it threatened his perceived view of his strength.

“What’s this about a Taskforce? I’m always keen for OT,” she said, quirking her mouth at Stanton and inviting him into the inside joke.

The men all laughed, including Stanton who tilted his head in acknowledgment.

“Oh, we’re all fans of OT here. Doug is a pro at racking that up,” Long said.

Adamski stirred to life, his eyes moving from the television screen to examine Lucy closely.

“The Anti-Gang Taskforce is more of a shared philosophy than an assignment. The LAPD is so focused on sensitive policing these days they’ve forgotten the real job. We protect the community from criminals,” Adamski told her.

When Adamski spoke, the rest of them were silent. So he was in charge after all - he just preferred to let Long do the talking.

“Too true, sir,” Lucy said.

He was still looking at her searchingly. She was confident enough in her Portia persona that she wasn’t worried. She assumed he applied the same scrutiny to everyone.

“I guess as the new rookie, I’m buying the next round of drinks?” she asked.

“Doug was right, you’ll fit into the Taskforce just fine,” Long said.

Adamski gave her a terse nod of approval and just like that, Lucy was in.

The Taskforce’s conversation after that mainly focused on the game, and the referees’ parentage. Lucy remembered Tim’s words - as soon as cops gave themselves a name, an indictment followed. In this case, she couldn’t be sure if this was a social club for bellyaching or something more. Her hopes of wrapping up the Stanton operation in a couple of weeks was dimming in front of her.

The dynamics of the so-called ‘Anti-Gang Taskforce’ were apparent to Lucy. The older men were the sources of wisdom. Portia Lin and Officer Owens were conditionally invited as the nominal “good ones” - but would always be a subordinate position.

She would, like the consummate professional she was, play her part, until the guilty parties were in cuffs or removed from the LAPD.

Chapter Text

“What were you thinking, Officer Lin?” Grey asked.

The door to his office was closed, which meant his booming voice echoed around her and Stanton.

“She was driving erratically. It made sense to make sure she was drug tested,” Lucy said meekly.

Grey slapped the results of Faith Robinson’s drug test on his desk. Lucy didn’t need to look at them to know they were all negative.

“We’re lucky that we’re not receiving an official complaint in your permanent record. Was she showing any signs of intoxication when you interviewed her?” Grey asked.

“She was belligerent,” Lucy offered, weakly.

“And you, you’re supposed to be teaching her,” Grey unloaded at Stanton.

“Sir, it was my fault. I was too eager, and didn’t demonstrate discretion. I apologize,” Lucy said.

“Don’t let it happen again. Both of you. Dismissed,” Grey said.

Stanton and Lucy got out of his office quickly.

Stanton whistled quietly. “Grey is a bit of a hardass for a Watch Commander, isn’t he?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Lucy said, neutrally.

“Thanks for taking the heat back there, rook. You took a solid hit and shook it off.”

“Just being a good partner.” Lucy fist bumped Stanton - now a part of their ritual. The skin on her knuckles crawled where they had touched his.

Less than an hour later, she was meeting a more friendly version of Sergeant Grey again, this time with Captain Anderson, Commander West, Detective Murphy, and Officers Bradford and Jackson. Off-shift, they had quietly convened in a crowded meeting room in Central Station to discuss the Taskforce.

“We’ve got enough on Stanton, but we don’t have anything on the others,” Commander West told Anderson.

“Officer Lin has already gone above and beyond in gathering evidence. I want Stanton out of my station and off the streets tomorrow,” Anderson said, crossing her arms.

“With all due respect, Captain, Officer Lin has already shown her facility for this kind of work,” Murphy said.

“With all due respect, Detective Murphy, Officer Lin is a rookie and you’re going to get her killed just to boost your stats,” Bradford said.

Murphy rolled her eyes at him, not bothering to respond verbally.

“I can keep going,” Lucy offered.

With the Wilshire mole seemingly no longer active, Lucy wanted to have something more to show for her stint undercover than Hawke and Armstrong. As much as she disliked riding with Stanton, she wanted to collar all the officers involved in potential vigilantism and racial profiling.

“We don’t know if the others have done anything wrong,” Bradford pointed out. “They could just be drinking buddies with Stanton as far as we know.”

“You’re the one who said that once officers name themselves, an indictment follows,” Lucy answered.

Bradford lifted his eyebrows at her, as if surprised she'd remembered that piece of wisdom.

“She’s right. They’ve named themselves - doesn’t that make it easier for us?” Jackson said.

“It does - it will make a grand jury much more likely to back a conspiracy charge. And there is something there - both Sergeant Adamski and Officer Long have unusually high OT totals and several civilian complaints on their jackets,” Commander West said.

“Portia’s safety is our first priority,” Grey said. “How will she be safe if this continues?”

“In addition to Officers Bradford and West as her covert backup, I’ll assign Detective Murphy as her full time handler to shadow her for any off hours operations. Someone will always be monitoring her wire - she won’t be alone,” Commander West said.

“How are we going to manage operational security? There are already too many people in this room,” Anderson said, gesturing to the group. “If there is anything the Marines taught me, once a secret goes beyond three or four people, it’s functionally no longer a secret.”

“We appreciate you taking this evidence to us and widening the circle of trust,” Commander West said. “I assure you that this operation won’t be mentioned outside this room. I’ll ensure we have trusted officers on call if need be, but they won’t know why.”

“Undercover rules apply. The second Officer Lin calls this operation, it’s over,” Anderson said, steel in her voice.

“Of course, Captain Anderson.”

***

It took three more weeks of Stanton - three weeks of bad arrests, racially insensitive comments and seeing Bradford and Jackson in all too-short glimpses - before the Anti-Gang Taskforce met up at High Flyers again.

Stanton introduced a retired officer - Christopher Barclay - to Lucy as another member of the Taskforce. A white man in his mid-fifties, the scent of cigarette smoke wafted off him and was tangible from five feet away. Not too young for retirement by police standards, but many in that age bracket, like Smitty, stuck around longer.

“Portia Lin, I’ve heard a bit about you,” Barclay said, shaking her hand.

“An honor to meet you, sir,” Lucy said, fighting the urge to grit her teeth against the stench of cigarette smoke and Barclay’s halitosis.

“Oh no need to call me sir. Retired with a nice disability pension, so I’m just Chris now,” he said.

“A desk job not for you?” Lucy asked, sympathetic.

“The LAPD isn’t for me, at least not anymore. The way civilians treat us now?”

“No respect,” Stanton agreed, nodding his head.

Long and Ben Owens muttered in agreement. Lucy could tell their words were automatic, worn smooth by repetition. She wondered how many nights they’d spent like this, deepening each other’s confirmation bias that things were worse now than back when Barclay was in the force, and that they were somehow under attack from the very civilians they had signed up to protect and serve.

“But I retired, and I’m living the good life,” Barclay added.

Lucy doubted that. The broken capillaries on his face and yellowing of his skin pointed to alcoholism. Few cops were happily retired, and Barclay didn’t seem like he was the exception.

The conversation turned to an analysis of the Dodgers chances this year, with Lucy taking Stanton’s side in the argument over Long’s (although she didn’t really dare one way or the other, she still needed to give the impression of being a loyal rookie). Adamski cut out early to have dinner with his family, so Lucy bought another round of drinks, hoping to get the other members of the Taskforce to spill information now that Adamski - the boss - was away.

“The early 1980s Dodgers would wipe the floor with the boys now,” Barclay argued as she returned with a pitcher of beer and a glass of non-alcoholic tonic water for herself.

“Just like the early 1980s LAPD compared to the LAPD now,” Lucy added, playing her role.

“To the good old days!” Barclay toasted.

She joined in the toast, pretending to be tipsy when all she’d had was a couple of beers spaced between non-alcoholic tonics. The benefit of buying rounds of drinks at the bar was that no one else knew what she’d ordered.

“In the old days you could get convictions to really stick, you know. None of this body camera stuff!” Barclay said.

“Yeah, remember when we were stationed in Malibu together?” Long said, keen to be at the center of the conversation.

Lucy nodded along, still pretending to be tipsy, and projecting a touch of hero worship. Long kept talking.

“It was 07’ and a drug kingpin thought he was above the law. He didn’t know he was messing with the Taskforce.” Long said the Taskforce with reference - like they were some kind of superhero team.

Long and Barclay laughed knowingly as they shared the memory of what Lucy assumed was a wrongful arrest. Police who wanted an arrest had ways of making it stick, as she well knew.

“Probably just got released this year - should have checked his trunk before visiting his kids,” Barclay added, touching his drink to Long’s in a toast.

“Now I’m Mister-by-the-book,” Long said glumly. “Yes sir, no sir, to uppity civilians who think they own us.”

“Just do what I did, and get shot so they pay you out,” Barclay told him. “When you get that doctor’s note, make sure it’s for physical reasons. Any mental health crap will make people talk. Not that Portia here is likely to get shot.”

Barclay patted her hand condescendingly.

“Lin was in a gunfight her second day as a rookie. Saved her TO’s life,” Stanton said, defending her.

“Huh - no wonder Doug likes you,” Long told her.

“She’s the real thing,” Stanton confirmed.

Lucy caught a flash of jealousy in Owen’s eyes. Did he think they were competing for the approval of these washed up losers?

“Thank you. Just in the right place at the right time. More drinks?” she asked.

“No, it’s Ben’s turn to get them. Thanks to Doug, he’s starting in SWAT next week. He owes us all a drink,” Barclay said, loudly enough that the tables around couldn't help but overhear.

Ben shifted on his feet, clearly embarrassed.

“Really? Congratulations,” Lucy said to Owens, and meant it.

“Thanks. I’ll go get us that round. Vodka tonic, right?” he asked Lucy.

“Just grab a pitcher, keep it easy,” Lucy said.

Owens ducked out of the conversation and to the bar. Lucy watched him go for a brief second. Maybe once he was in SWAT, he’d become his own person. He would have excelled at multiple tests to be selected for the elite unit - and his reward was to see the other men in ‘The Taskforce’ take credit for it.

“What are you thinking you’ll do after your rookie year, Lin?” Barclay asked her.

“Patrol for a few years, then maybe Robbery/ Homicide,” she told him. It was a generic enough answer to be safe, and it was more or less true in her case.

“With that smartypants brain of yours it will be a good fit. I know the senior detective in North Hollywood. When the time comes, I’ll put in a good word for you,” Barclay said.

“Thank you, sir,” Lucy said.

Lucy doubted Barclay’s endorsement would mean much to anyone still on the force, but Portia Lin would be thrilled by a retired officer’s approval.

“Any tips on getting OT while I’m a rookie? Our Watch Commander is riding us about an arrest we made near the end of shift,” Lucy said, turning to Long, who was already pouting after briefly being left out of the conversation.

“If your Watch Commander isn’t a fan of late arrests, there are other ways. That’s why I was late today, in fact,” he told her with a smirk.

“Really?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah. Made a sudden stop at a light, and the asshole tailgating me rear-ended me. It will show up as his fault on the shop cams. The regulations are clear - we have to get checked out at the hospital before we can sign out for the day. Two more hours of OT, baby. The boat doesn’t pay for itself.”

“C’mon Long, wait until she’s completed the FTO program before you tell her any more stories,” Stanton said. He glowered at Long, who laughed nervously as he realized he had probably said too much.

“I’m not that desperate to pay off my student loans,” Lucy said with a laugh that downplayed the seriousness of what Long had confessed to.

“We’ll volunteer for the next big event,” Stanton assured her. “Dealing with the worst of humanity on LA’s streets is good practice for a rookie.”

Owen clunked another pitcher of beer between them all. The conversation returned to baseball and none of the men were considerate enough to further incriminate themselves.

There wasn’t a grand conspiracy here. Just a bunch of washed up cops trading war stories about better days where their misconduct went unnoticed. Still the misconduct was serious enough - and dated back far enough - there could potentially be hundreds of civilians in prisons or with records who didn’t deserve it thanks to ‘The Taskforce.’

It made sense for her to stay under long enough to gather bulletproof evidence against the serving officers and to attempt to overturn any wrongful convictions they had been a part of. She assumed Murphy was already researching Long’s tenure in Malibu. But it could mean months more undercover.

Lucy closed her eyes, pushing back her homesickness through pure strength of will. She hated being a rookie again, but it was nothing compared to being wrongfully convicted and in prison. Staying under would be dangerous - Captain Anderson hadn’t been wrong about the difficulty of keeping secrets to large groups, and both LAPD’s Internal Affairs and a big chunk of the Mid-Wilshire station were now involved. She took a deep breath - it would be worth it if it meant citizens like Faith Robinson could be safer around the LAPD.

"Last round on me?" Lucy asked, holding up the now empty pitcher with her trademark optimistic smile.

The men of the Taskforce toasted her and cheered. Her cheeks hurt from smiling, but she held it as she went to the bar. She couldn't let it drop and risk one of them catching it in a reflection.

***

Still smelling faintly of Barclay’s cigarette smoke and the stale beer from the sports bar, Lucy opened the door to Portia’s shitty apartment, texting Murphy the all-clear. She couldn’t wait to shower off the bar smell and the conversation.

She left her keys in a small ring bowl, and put her hands behind her to unhook her bra when a strong arm encircled her. One hand ripped her mic from its relay and a strong hand slammed over her mouth, all before she could scream.

“Situational awareness, Pollyanna.”

Chapter Text

Bradford cuffed her to a kitchen chair and gagged her in a matter of seconds, every movement efficient. Lucy had bloodied his nose in the struggle, but he was otherwise unhurt. She did her best to catch her breath through her nose as he glared at her from a chair of his own.

She’d been caught completely off guard - the hair she’d left on the door frame was somehow still intact when she entered. Now, as she evaluated her options, she realized she was in trouble. Murphy wasn’t coming to her rescue - not after the all-clear text. It would be hours before anyone knew something was wrong.

“You try to scream, and I hit you with the taser,” he warned her.

She nodded, eyes wide, wondering how Bradford had broken her cover, and how he thought he was going to get away with assault and kidnapping. He’d made no attempt to hide his face, which made her nervous.

He removed her gag in a darting motion, too quick for her to bite him. He said nothing, and just let the silence lengthen as he rested the taser on one arm. His skeptical expression was all too familiar from when she’d ridden with him as Portia.

She looked around her cover apartment - the dishwasher and all the kitchen cupboards hung open, and some of the light fixtures had been removed. Tim had clearly tossed the apartment before she’d arrived, using the DEAR method he’d taught her himself.

Lucy suppressed a blush as she considered what he would have found while searching. He would have seen the unused vegetables at the bottom of her fridge, the large pile of dirty laundry that had accumulated in her bedroom, and her vibrator collection.

Lucy knew that staying quiet and letting your suspect feel pressure to fill the ensuing silence was the oldest interrogation trick in the book, but she also needed more information to understand what was going on and what exactly Bradford knew. Bradford was stubborn - she didn’t want to spend the night tied to a chair.

“This seems excessive for a Tim test,” she told him, finally.

“It would be if you were my rookie,” he agreed, then lapsed back into silence.

Lucy rocked forward slightly to test the cuffs on her wrists and the zip ties that bound her ankles to the leg of the chair, but they were solid. If she had time, she could break free by breaking the rickety chair into pieces, but she doubted Bradford was planning to leave her unattended for that long.

“Okay, I’ll be the bigger person and talk first,” she said, injecting a teasing tone into her voice. “Why did you break into my apartment, search it, and tie me to my chair?”

“Why do you think I broke into your apartment, searched it, and then tied you to your chair?” he responded.

He mirrored her language exactly and gave her no new information, of course.

As rundown as it was, her cover apartment was borderline flawless in protecting her identity. The only hole in her cover as Portia Lin were the books she’d been studying for the Sacramento Detective’s Exam, hidden in plain sight on her bookshelf. And she could always claim she was studying them because she was eager for advanced knowledge.

“You’ve assaulted and kidnapped me because you think I’ve done something wrong. Something bad enough to justify criminal behavior on your part,” Lucy said.

The best defense was a good offense. To her surprise, Bradford didn’t seem flustered by her accusation of assault and kidnapping. Instead he leaned forward, capturing her eyes with his.

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me your real name? Boot is obviously out given you’re not actually a police officer, and Pollyanna doesn’t seem to fit anymore.”

Not a police officer? So he hadn’t broken her cover, not completely.

“Who do you think I am?” Lucy asked, genuinely curious.

“I considered foreign intelligence. The local background checks for police officers don’t go as deep as they do for the federal government, but you still have periodical access to valuable information, not to mention the benefit to any government of having police officers embedded in major cities when you have assets in-country. But there isn’t a bug-out box anywhere in your main residence, and no alarms or surveillance feeds in your apartment. That’s not how they operate.”

“How do you know how foreign intelligence operates?” Lucy was strangely flattered he’d considered she might be a spy.

“That’s classified,” he said with a smirk.

She rolled her eyes in exaggerated exasperation, despite the seriousness of the situation.

“But then I remembered you poking your nose where it doesn’t belong to get leverage on me. And I remember all of your questions. Asking about Southern Front? That came out of nowhere. You got away with it at the time, but that was a big mistake.”

He glared at her, and she put the pieces together from his perspective.

“You think I’m a mole for Southern Front?” Lucy asked, and then laughed. The irony of the situation was too much for her to keep a straight face.

“They’re opportunists first, white supremacists second. They’ll work with anyone who gets them closer to their goals, regardless of race,” he said, his eyes still locked on her face as he searched for any sign of guilt.

“And instead of taking your concerns to Internal Affairs, you decided committing several major crimes was a better approach,” she said, keeping her tone light.

“I can’t report an officer to Internal Affairs if they don’t exist - and you don’t exist. I have a friend who works in the police force down in Austin who checked out Portia Lin. A good cover, but not bulletproof. The strength of the cover does indicate a well established and well resourced group that understands how the game is played. That leaves Southern Front or one of their competitors.”

Her cover had been set before she’d known that she would be placed in Mid-Wilshire - so even if she’d known Bradford had a contact in Austin she wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. Still, that was something Murphy should have discovered and shared. Lucy would have to take that up with Murphy later.

“What if your friend just did a half-assed job? How much do you trust him?” she asked, aggressively. “Enough to tie up an innocent woman?”

“Yes.” His voice was iron with no give or sympathy to it.

He knew Portia Lin was fake and she wasn’t going to be able to convince him otherwise.

She struggled against the cuffs fruitlessly and let tears come to her eyes, buying herself time trying to think through a new strategy of convincing Bradford to let her go.

For a second she thought she saw sympathy flicker across his features, before his skeptical expression returned.

“I’m impressed by how well you’re holding up under pressure. If I’d been the one who trained you, I’d be proud,” he said, almost conversationally.

“You did train me,” she said.

It was true: even when he’d been on the edge and dealing with Isabel, he’d been twice the training officer her first TO had been.

“A rookie with a musical theater background would be blubbering by now,” he pointed out.

“Like crying is going to help. What are you going to do next, torture me?”

“No. Torture makes people lie.”

His voice was flat, like that was a fact he knew well, not a theory. Despite herself, she shivered at the bleak look in his eyes.

“Besides, I have other ways of gathering intelligence.” He rose from his chair and leaned closer to her.

She swallowed, taking a deep breath as he got closer.

His hand reached inside her jacket to take her phone. He put it to her face, and it shook slightly in his hand as it refused to open.

“Face lock? Not a secure way to store your life, Boot,” Lucy said, imitating his voice.

He glared at her, and then input a code into her phone - but it was the code she’d had when she’d been riding with him. She’d changed it every few days when she’d been riding with Stanton.

“What’s the new code?” he asked.

Lucy laughed. “They’ll eventually miss us when we don’t show up for roll call. I might see if I can sleep in this chair. It’s still more comfortable than economy air travel.”

He raised the phone as if were about to smash it, clearly frustrated, and then set it gently on the counter. Keeping her in his peripheral vision, he scanned the room, looking for answers.

Despite being tied up, Lucy could feel the power in the room shift in her favor. Tim had assumed he’d be able to find something in her apartment, or crack her phone. Super prepared Tim Bradford, at a loss once again. Another one in the victory column for her.

“You want the truth?” she asked, softly.

“The truth will set you free. Literally, in this case.”

Half a dozen cover stories had flickered through Lucy’s mind over the course of the interrogation - she could claim she was in witness protection as the child of a bad man who’d informed on his even worse mobster employers. She could claim she had changed her identity to run from an abusive ex husband. Bradford saw abusive men regularly on patrol - those stories would play into his biases, and he’d believe her.

At his core, Bradford didn’t want to hurt her. He could have used a taser or pepper spray to subdue her as she entered the apartment. Portia’s file would have included that both a taser and pepper spray had been used on her in the Academy, and that her cardiovascular and respiratory system had withstood them. Instead Bradford had restrained her using physical force, in a way that was higher risk for him and lower risk for her.

Her training screamed at her to lie to Bradford and spin the story her subject would believe. Any story. She might even make him apologize and wallow in guilt if she sold it hard enough.

“My real name is Lucy. I’m an undercover cop, working for Internal Affairs,” she said, using her real, deeper, voice.

He rocked back, as if she’d punched him.

“Enough truth to let me go?” she asked.

She wasn’t prepared for the look of absolute betrayal he gave her.

“With your training, I’m sure you can figure a way out of those on your own.”

He pocketed his taser and opened the front door to her apartment.

“Tim, wait,” she called after him.

The door swung shut. He was already gone.

Lucy sighed, and began to pull on the chair’s armrests, testing which one was weaker. The nice thing about the shitty cover apartment with its shitty furniture was at least the chair wouldn’t take too long to break.

***

Lucy arrived at Mid-Wilshire bright and early, no sign of the late night she’d endured. She should have reported Bradford to Murphy immediately. She hadn’t.

A text on her phone buzzed - it was a message from Commander West that had gone out to everyone at Mid Wilshire involved in the investigation into Stanton, including Portia Lin.

Stanton and Long have been picked up. The DA’s office isn’t interested in charging them, but we have enough that it’s likely they will be terminated with no pension. Keep it confidential for now.

She stared at the phone, disbelieving. Her mission was effectively over - there was no way the Taskforce would continue meeting now. Internal Affairs must have gotten spooked, pulling the pin before she could secure evidence of the rest.

Bradford must have done or said something - why else would IA stop a promising investigation so early?

Her eyes moved to the roll call room. Bradford had also gotten in early - it was just him in the roll call room as she walked towards it. She could see his nose was still swollen and vessels had broken under his eyes. He might have been able to subdue her embarrassingly easily, but at least she’d done some damage in the process.

Bradford didn’t even greet her - his eyes sliding over her as she entered the room. She strode over to him with no hesitation.

“Bradford, what the fuck?” Lucy demanded, brandishing her phone.

“Do what? Congratulations on the takedown of your own, Lin,” he said, appearing genuinely confused.

“I could have gotten the others,” she hissed.

“I know. I guess Internal Affairs did the math and got cold feet,” Bradford said.

Did the math? Now it was her turn to be confused.

“Do you think they wanted to let dozens of criminals walk after their convictions were tainted?” he pointed out to Lucy.

Lucy froze in place, her anger so intense it felt her skin was tight with the effort of containing it. She had sacrificed almost a year of her life for the LAPD Internal Affairs, and they’d destroyed the most promising investigation of her career because it was inconvenient?

Then the roll call room door opened.

“We did it!” Jackson said, radiating excitement, brandishing his own phone and embracing Lucy.

For a second she remained frozen in place by her anger and did not return the embrace, but then her training kicked in and she returned to the Portia Lin persona.

She hugged him back. “Confidential, remember?”

Everyone could see them celebrating something through the glass but, thanks to Nolan’s everyday exuberance, the rookies embracing each other was a common enough sight that she hoped it went unremarked.

“Congratulations, Officer West,” Bradford said dryly, and pointedly omitting Lucy.

She wanted to flip him off but remained in character, giving him a saccharine smile instead. He glared at her in response.

The roll call room door opened again, this time admitting Grey.

“Officers Lin and West, your service in making the LAPD a better place won’t go unnoticed,” Grey said, his usual booming voice unusually quiet as he attempted discretion.

“Thank you,” Lucy said brightly, bitterness curdling her stomach.

Her anger, tightly compartmentalized, was banked rather than extinguished. Internal Affairs had done the math, and decided that it wasn’t worth the PR nightmare of another LAPD scandal and potentially putting hundreds of criminals back out in the street. Instead two cops would be quietly dismissed, and their conduct investigated only as far as Internal Affairs was comfortable with. She would never forget this, not for as long as she lived.

“West, front desk. Bradford and Lin, you’re riding together today,” Grey said.

“What?” Tim said, poorly concealing outrage.

“It will be great to be back with Officer Bradford,” Lucy said brightly. She was the best damn undercover officer in her class, she wasn’t about to break cover now.

“Is there some kind of problem with that arrangement, Officer Bradford?” Grey asked, his tone indicating that he would brook no nonsense from a subordinate, no matter how friendly the relationship.

“No, just that I still have more to teach Officer West, and he could benefit more from the instruction than Officer Lin at the moment,” Tim said.

“I understand that, but once word of Stanton’s dismissal gets out, it needs to be clear that we’re not relegating Lin to desk duty because of her association with him. My word is final,” Grey said.

“Understood, sir,” Tim said.

“Jackson, I apologize, but we have a shortage of TOs at the moment.”

“I’m very happy to learn from the front desk,” Jackson said, with an easy smile.

A couple of months ago he would have been thrown for a loop by Tim’s assessment that Jackson needed the instruction more than Portia, but today he didn’t seem bothered. Riding with a bad cop had given him some perspective, and he’d grown. Lucy was proud of him, the emotion a bright spot breaking through some of the anger she felt at the premature end of her operation.

***

“Hurry up Boot, I don’t have all day,” Tim barked at her as they returned to the shop from the patrol.

Lucy obeyed, humming ‘Cabaret’ - the title song to the musical of the same name. If he was going to treat her like Portia, she was going to act like Portia.

“Look, if you agree to stop humming, I’ll buy coffee,” he said, frustration clear in his tone.

She was surprised at his offer - fully expecting the silent treatment after what he had clearly considered a personal betrayal. Also, his favorite coffee shop was a food truck that was closed for repairs. She’d expected him to stick to the awful station coffee rather than venture into the world of LA coffee shops.

“I know a place on Rawley with almost no hipsters,” she offered.

“Almost no hipsters?”

“It is LA.”

“Fine.”

He set a course for Rawley, and she resisted the urge to begin humming again.

Chapter Text

Your father is getting worse. You need to come home now if you want to say goodbye.

The text from Murphy was the final nail in the coffin. Lucy’s operation was officially over.

She watched Tim as he paid for his coffee and her chai latte, as promised, and left a generous tip for the barista. Tim looked up and smiled at her - smiled! - and motioned for her to walk with him.

Curious, she followed until they found an empty lot with no obvious surveillance. He reached for her body camera, deliberately slow enough that she could choose to dodge the action. She stayed still, letting him turn off her camera, then waited as he turned off his own.

He opened his mouth to speak and she put her finger to his lips to stop him before he could say anything incriminating.

“Give me a second,” she mouthed, apologetically.

She unbuttoned the first few buttons of her shirt so she could “accidentally” disconnect the wire she wore. With Stanton and Long benched, Murphy was no longer following her audio live, but the recording of this, her last shift at the LAPD, would still end up in IA records.

Tim’s eyes lingered on her chest for a half second as she disconnected the wire. She was tempted to draw out the movement but restrained herself. Even if she wasn’t his rookie anymore, she was leaving and he still had a lot to work on after what happened with Isabel. Whatever unspoken attraction existed between them, it would have to remain just that.

“Still recording?” Tim asked.

“Still. I think Murphy is hoping she’ll get to arrest you before I leave,” Lucy dropped into her regular voice.

“Of course Murphy is your handler,” he said, bitterness in his tone. “I take it from the fact I’m not already in cuffs she doesn’t know about last night?”

“No.” Lucy hesitated, but continued. “She does know about almost everything else though, including the night outside Isabel's apartment.”

She expected him to be angered by the revelation, but instead he just nodded.

“I thought as much. You’re part of the extreme measures the mayor promised?”

“Yes, although my assignment was initially just to attend the Academy for six months, and see how the LAPD is training probationary officers.”

He thought for a moment. “Hawke.”

“Yes, that was me,” she admitted.

“And once IA realized you could do their job for them, they convinced you to stay?”

“Something like that. Do you remember the Southern Front busts, a few weeks before I came to Mid-Wilshire?”

“Yes, we were assigned to support Metro as they made what was supposed to be a front page arrest. Instead, all we did was catch a couple low level scumbags, confiscate a few bags of drugs, and pick up some loose change. The intelligence was off.”

“The intelligence wasn’t off. According to a CI, a Mid-Wilshire patrol officer leaked to Southern Front leadership ninety minutes before the busts were supposed to go down.”

“So there is a Southern Front mole in Mid-Wilshire after all. Just not you,” Tim said.

“Whoever they are, they’ve been quiet since the failed busts. It’s not clear if or when they’ll re-engage with Southern Front.”

“So, if the mole is inactive, why is Detective Lucy Zhang of Fresno PD sticking around?” Tim asked, watching her face intently.

She let out a surprised laugh. Zhang? Fresno?

“So not a Detective, Z surname or Fresno PD,” Tim mused.

“Really?” Lucy asked - he was trying to figure out who she was?

“For IA to bring you in you’d need to be a member of a force that has a close relationship with the LAPD, likely in California. Fresno is a city big enough that it has multiple undercover officers, but not so big that it would fight like hell to hold onto all of them.”

Lucy sipped her chai, keeping her face neutral, not letting him know how close he was coming to the truth. She refused to believe that she was that easy to read.

“Officer Lucy Wang, San Francisco PD?”

Lucy interrupted him before he could keep guessing and stumble onto the truth. “For your information, I’m not sticking around. This is the last shift before Portia Lin resigns from the LAPD to look after her sick father. IA will have to find the mole without me.”

“Not if I find them first,” Tim said, his tone harsh.

“But you’re going to go to IA before jumping to kidnapping this time, right?”

Tim stayed silent, sipping his coffee.

“Right?” Lucy demanded.

“We should head back to the shop. For as long as you’re here, you’re on LAPD’s dime.”

She shook her head in mild censure.

***

With less than an hour left in their shift they answered a call for potential gunshots at a bakery famous for its high end wedding cake - the French-themed ‘Paris Pastries’.

When they arrived, the sound of multiple women shouting echoed from inside the faux-French storefront.

“Should we call for back-up?” Tim asked.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Lucy replied, winking at him.

“You just want to keep any free cake for yourself.”

Lucy shrugged, not denying the accusation. She took point, entering the front door at a crouch as the sounds of her movement were masked by the continued screaming.

A sweet vanilla scent rolled over her as she moved stealthily through the bakery towards the source of the screaming - a handcrafted wooden sign denoted the room as the Tasting Room.

She listened, her ear to the wooden door, motioning to Tim to move closer.

“Red velvet is MY flavor, you bitch!” a voice said.

“No, it’s MINE,” another voice said.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask all of you to leave,” a third voice added.

“Red velvet is an American abomination,” a fourth voice said, the fake French accent grating to Lucy’s ears.

Lucy rolled her eyes and prepared to swing the door open, but Tim halted her with a gesture. He removed his body cam from its chest mount and raised it so they could see through the glass panel at the top of the door via the app on his phone.

The pixelated scene was more serious than Lucy had anticipated. A woman dressed in a tight white mini dress had a handgun held on a second woman, dressed in an equally tight maroon dress, who was wielding a delicately decorated cake knife.

Two female staff members were attempting to reason with them, empty hands raised in supplication, while a shell shocked man was attempting to hide beneath a table adorned by a multicolored array of cake samples, with both his front and rear end sticking out.

“Only one entry point. Ideas?” Tim asked.

“Go to the side of the door, and be ready to disarm them as they come out,” Lucy said.

“What?”

“Just go with it.”

He moved beside the door.

“Babe, what’s all that noise? We need to be on time for the secret sample sale,” Lucy whined, in a high-quality Valley Girl accent.

It took less than three seconds before both women emerged. Tim seized the gun and Lucy the cake knife.

“You’re both under arrest,” Lucy told the women.

“Wait, where is the secret sample sale?” the woman in white asked her.

Tim shook his head in disbelief as he cuffed the woman in white and Lucy cuffed the woman in maroon.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Tim said.

“Weddings make people stupid,” Lucy said, the cynicism of the words sounding strange in Portia’s voice.

“What happened to the pollyanna that showed up on Day 1 of rookie training?” Tim joked.

“You happened.”

The two staff members emerged from the tasting room, holding boxes of cake samples in their hands.

“I am Madame Paris, the finest pâtissier in Los Angeles,” the older staff member said, with a tilt of her head.

Her fake French accent had slipped from bad to ridiculous, as she added two extra syllables to pâtissier.

“We couldn’t possibly accept those,” Tim said smoothly.

“Good, because we weren’t offering them,” Madam Paris said.

“Yeah, why weren’t you here earlier? That lady had a gun. We want her charged!” the younger staff member demanded.

“Other officers will be along shortly to collect your statements,” Tim said, clearly taken back by their aggression.

“You live in LA, get voice lessons,” Lucy told Madam Paris, the vanilla scent in the air causing her empty stomach to rumble.

Tim looked at her with something like admonishment and she looked back, unrepentant. As a phony operating in LA, Madam Paris had no excuse for a poor accent.

“I can’t believe there’s no sample sale. You’re both monsters! How could you ruin my special day?” the woman in white sobbed.

“Yeah, what’s wrong with you? How could you arrest Annabel when she’s getting married?” the woman in maroon said.

“Being engaged is not a defense against criminality,” Tim told both women sternly.

Lucy burst out laughing. If this was Portia’s last arrest, it was a good one.

***

“Thanks guys! I wasn’t expecting this. Rookies don’t usually get a party when they wash out,” Lucy told Jackson and Nolan.

Nolan and Jackson had somehow organized a going away party less than seven hours between Lucy telling Tim about Portia’s resignation and end of shift. Nolan had even strung up fairy lights for the occasion, adding to the cheerful decor of the Mexican restaurant they’d booked. Did the man just have fairy lights sitting in his car?

Lucy was deep into an unprecedented (for Portia) third glass of sangria to celebrate the occasion.

“Our pleasure,” Nolan beamed.

“You’re not just any rookie, Lin,” Grey said, entering the conversation carrying a beer topped by a comically small hat.

“Thank you, Sarge,” Lucy said.

“Family comes first. We all understand that - but your FTO certificate is good for three years. You’re welcome back to Mid-Wilshire any time,” Grey continued.

Lucy teared up at that. She wished she’d been part of a community like this during her rookie year her first time around.

“If you come back you have to start at the beginning. And if you blubber at this farewell, I’m writing to my friend in the Austin PD to let them know not to take you if you apply to them,” Tim threatened.

“That’s his way of saying he’ll miss you,” Lopez teased, before giving Lucy a hug.

Lucy hugged her back. “I’ll miss all of you,” she said, honestly.

“Which is why Nolan and I already have a road trip to Austin planned!” Jackson said.

At Grey’s huff of disapproval, Nolan quickly added. “Once our rookie year is over, of course.”

“I’ll show you all the sights,” Lucy promised.

“All two of them,” Tim said.

“What can we do to help? I can be bought as a mover for the low cost of a six pack and full sized pizza,” Nolan continued jovially, ignoring Tim’s dour mood.

“Thanks, but I’m all set. I’ve booked professional movers to pack all my stuff and transport it to Austin. In fact, I sold my car and already bought my plane ticket before I knew about the party. I need to leave for the airport in half an hour.”

“You sold your car?” Nolan almost seemed disappointed that he couldn’t help her move.

“Yeah, I’ll be using my dad’s car once I’m in Austin.”

“And her car probably wouldn’t have survived the trip across,” Jackson added with a smirk.

She poked him in the ribs as revenge for the completely accurate jibe at Portia’s car.

“I’ll take you to the airport,” Tim said.

“That’s okay - I can get an Uber.”

“I insist.”

“Timothy Bradford, voluntarily taking someone to LAX? It’s a cold day in hell,” Lopez said.

“Very funny, Lopez,” Tim said.

“I’m hilarious,” Lopez said smugly.

Lucy left them to their sibling-like squabble and began to say goodbye to the other officers at the precinct. It took twenty minutes to bid farewell to the Mid Wilshire book club.

“I’ll text you my thoughts on The Fourth Wing,” Lucy promised Officer Angel Lopez.

“Portia, can I have a word,” she heard a familiar voice say behind her.

“Commander West,” she said, surprised he had made an appearance.

“Look, I know you having to leave right now might be disappointing, but I’m sure your father will be happy to have you back,” Commander West told her.

The emphasis on the ‘your father’ was awkward - he clearly meant Sacramento PD. There was a reason he was in a public facing role and not an undercover officer. Thankfully no one was close enough to hear.

Knowing his words were the closest to an apology she was going to get, she bit back her frustration at the premature end of her operation.

“Thank you, sir,” Lucy said.

“We win some, we lose some. We just have to keep pulling on the uniform and doing the best we can.”

She saw an echo of her own frustration in his eyes, and figured it hadn’t been him that pulled the plug. That meant top brass had decided her investigation had gone a little too deep.

“Well you do, I’m back to the luxury of civilian life,” Lucy said, and laughed Portia’s high laugh for emphasis.

“Of course,” Commander West said.

She scanned the crowd, looking for Tim. It was time to leave and he was her ride. She saw him, head and shoulders above the crowd, talking to Smitty and Smitty’s scantily-glad girlfriend. Lucy struggled to recall the girlfriend’s name for a brief moment before remembering that Smitty had shown her a bikini photo. The memory techniques she’d learned as a UC helped her now: she recalled Glinda was her name and she was an American football fan, with an 83 tattoo for Willie Gault.

Glinda was dressed in micro shorts and a sleeveless tee. Even from this distance Lucy could see Glinda looking Tim up and down despite Smitty’s presence - Glinda seemed every part the badge bunny. Poor Smitty.

Lucy deliberately chose to sneak up on Tim, using the tactics he’d taught her to avoid rippling the crowd and to stay in his blindside

“Hi everyone,” Lucy chirped from directly behind Tim.

Tim jumped - just a fraction of an inch but it was enough.

“Situational awareness, Officer Bradford,” Lucy said.

“You’re hilarious, Lin,” Tim said dryly.

“I’m Glinda, lovely to meet you,” Glinda said, her voice craggy from years of smoking.

Lucy could see Glinda’s eyes flash in derision as they shook hands. Typical badge bunny - viewing male cops as eye candy and female cops as competition.

“Thank you Glinda. You catch the game?” Lucy asked out of politeness, remembering the Raiders had played last night.

A look of confusion crossed Glinda’s face.

“We’ll get them next time,” Smitty said with a shrug.

“I thought we were close - a couple tweaks to the defensive line and we’re title contenders,” Tim added, with unwarranted optimism given what little she knew of the Raiders’ chances this year.

Glinda’s eyes glazed over at the football talk and she quietly sipped her cocktail, gaze roaming the room. Lucy could see the same flicker of derision as she took in the many officers in attendance for her party.

Why was someone with the number of a Raiders player tattooed on her chest bored when conversation turned to the Raiders?

Lucy refrained from groaning aloud at her own stupidity, because she was a professional. Mostly - she probably shouldn’t have had that third glass of sangria.

She’d bet her entire UC pay backlog that the 83 tattoo on Glinda’s chest wasn’t a football jersey number, but originally an 88 - a common white supremacist symbol paying tribute to Adolf Hitler. Shit. Glinda was Southern Front, and Smitty her unwitting mole.

“Probably time for us to head to the airport right?” Tim asked Lucy.

Lucy pasted on a vacant expression, hoping Tim could see through it. “We’ve still got time for one more drink. Why don’t you and Glinda go the bar and give Smitty and I a chance to catch up?”

Tim looked at her searchingly for a second, but those long hours patrolling together had clearly paid off.

“Sure,” he said, following your lead.

“That’s a great idea,” Glinda said, grabbing onto Tim’s arm, bright pink nails contrasting against the dark grey of his jacket.

“We’re all going to miss you, Lin,” Smitty said with his trademark wide grin.

“I’m going to miss you as well,” Lucy said. “I’ve learned so much from you.”

Smitty preened, adjusting his collar.

“Can I ask you a few questions?” Lucy asked.

“Go right ahead. Always happy to share Smitty’s wisdom with the young folk.”

“How long have you and Glinda been dating?” Lucy asked.

“More than a year,” Smitty said proudly.

Over Smitty’s shoulder she could see Tim and Glinda already being served by an annoyingly efficient bartender - Lucy was running out of time. She abandoned subtlety.

“When you got called in for the failed Southern Front raid, before I started, did Glinda know about it?” Lucy asked.

Smitty looked confused for a moment before she saw stunned realisation cross his features. Smitty had turned off his brain since he’d hit retirement age, but he wasn’t stupid.

“Oh,” Smitty said. The usual vague smile he wore disappeared from his face, replaced by worry.

“Yes, oh,” Lucy said.

“I gotta talk to Grey,” he said.

“Water for you, and water for me,” Tim said, returning from the bar and handing Lucy a glass.

“He’s no fun,” Glinda said, carrying a fresh cocktail for herself and a beer for Smitty.

Smitty took the beer, numbly.

“Probably time for us to head to the airport now,” Lucy told Tim.

“See ya,” said Glinda.

Tim raised an eyebrow at Lucy. As they walked to the cloakroom, Lucy leaned into him.

“Glinda is working for Southern Front,” she told him, her words deliberately quiet enough to be swallowed by the din of the party. He didn’t react visibly, not in sight of Glinda.

“Based on what?” Tim asked.

“She has an 83 tattoo that used to be an 88, and she was dating Smitty when patrol was called in to assist with the raids.”

“That idiot,” Tim said, glancing at Smitty who had a hangdog expression as he looked at them both.

“You can double back and make the arrest. I don’t have jurisdiction here anymore,” Lucy said.

“If I make the arrest you’ll definitely miss your flight and we won’t have enough to hold her. I’ll text Murphy to get a warrant for her phone,” he said. “We’ll do this by the book. Or IA can - I’m taking you to the airport.”

Lucy gawped at him. Turning down an opportunity to pursue the Southern Front leak so he could drive her to the airport? Lopez was right, hell was in a deep freeze right now.

“Thank you,” Lucy said.

Pleasantly tipsy she could feel a flush rise to the tips of her ears from the victorious sensation of finally figuring the mystery of the Mid-Wilshire mole, as well as all the alcohol she’d imbibed. God she was good.

Lucy stumbled slightly into the passenger side of Tim’s obnoxiously large truck, but was able to get her seatbelt attached first try.

“Still wired up by IA?” Tim asked.

“Nope, debrief is done, all the equipment is back with Murphy,” she said. Her neck felt naked without the Saint Michael’s necklace and the security blanket of the GPS tracker, but the loss of the wire was a welcome relief.

“So, Officer Lucy Li from Sacramento PD-”

Lucy gently hit him in the chest before he could finish his sentence, the alcohol removing her inhibitions.

“You know there is a reason why I can’t tell you everything. Safety!”

“Sacramento. I knew it. The only place where they have enough UCs going spare to waste you on an operation like this.”

“How do you know I’m not a Seattle girl? Or from Chicago?” Lucy said, archly.

“You’re not stuck up enough to be from Seattle and you haven’t had a single opinion about pizza the entire time we’ve ridden together.” He grinned.

“Those are unfair stereotypes,” she argued, but without heat.

“If I tell you my real name, my real full name, you need to do something for me,” she said.

“Other than driving you to the airport? Because that’s a top tier favor.” Tim said, his beautiful eyes turning guarded and skeptical.

“Stop putting yourself in danger. Follow SOP next time you’re in a firefight,” Lucy said,

“I’m a cop. Danger comes with the job.” His voice was curt.

Lucy winced. Things had been going so well and then drunk Lucy had opened her mouth and ruined it. But she couldn’t stop talking, her mouth moving as if on its own volition.

“When they have your funeral it will be beautiful. Half the cops in the city will attend. Grey will make a speech that makes Lopez, Bishop and Nolan cry. And you’ll still be dead,” she said sadly, reaching for his face.

He pushed her hand away, his other hand still firmly on the wheel.

“You’re drunk. And being a patrol cop is a lot less dangerous than being an undercover cop around dirty cops.”

“Touché,” Lucy said softly. “And that’s actually how the French pronounce it,” she added smugly, hoping to make him laugh.

He didn’t laugh, but he did quirk his lips.

“It’s Officer Lucy Chen, Sacramento PD,” she told him, softly, searching his face as he kept his attention on the road.

“Lucy Chen." He paused for a moment, considering. "It suits you."

Chapter Text

Fourth District - Sacramento PD

Lucy timed her walk by the captain’s office door perfectly - appearing to be unhurried and unoccupied as Captain Bernhardt emerged with Tim Bradford in tow. Tim looked good - he’d put on a few pounds, all of it muscle, and his movement was as sharp and economical as ever.

She had spotted his distinctive gait as he entered the building thirty minutes ago, and had almost spit out her chai latte in surprise.

“This is Sergeant Bradford, a big shot from LA interviewing for the sergeant job in Operations,” Captain Bernhardt told Lucy. “Can you show him out?”

“Of course,” Lucy told Bernhardt.

“Thank you Detective Chen,” Captain Bernhardt said, already eying a donut in the breakroom and oblivious to the tension between Lucy and Tim.

“Detective Lucy Chen, Office of Investigations,” Lucy offered, shaking his hand.

“Sergeant Bradford, LAPD,” he responded, returning the handshake.

From the quirk in his lips she could tell he was gloating at catching her unawares.

“I get off shift in about four hours. I can show you around Sacramento, Sergeant,” Lucy offered as she walked him towards the exit.

“That would be incredibly kind, Detective Chen,” he handed her his business card, his personal number already written in pen on the back.

Typical Bradford, always prepared.

“Well, it’s for the greater good. If you’re going to be a sergeant in Operations you need to know the layout of the streets. What if someone gets shot and you don’t know which street you’re on?”

She held her poker face as he struggled to hide a grin.

“I’m not sure if I’m going to take the job or not, but I would love to see more of Sacramento,” Tim said.

“It’s a beautiful city, Sergeant Bradford,” Lucy told him, straight faced.

“It really is,” he said, looking straight back at her.

“Detective Chen, they’re running out of strawberry donuts,” one of the new detectives called out from the breakroom.

Tim laughed openly at that, breaking the strange tension between them.

“I wouldn’t want to keep you from your donuts,” he said.

“No, that would practically be kidnapping,” Lucy said.

Tim laughed - he actually laughed out loud. The ghosts that had been haunting him weren’t banished entirely, but they seemed to hang on him less heavily.

Lucy headed to the break room with a bounce in her step, already mentally planning where she’d take Tim for dinner.