Rise of the Dunamy (6 page)

“Yes?”

“Don’t sweat it,” he said with a wink. Lucian left his comment vague in order to keep Sofia from feeling even more embarrassed about the way she had just reacted to the situation; and it had worked. A tight-lipped smirk slid up the corner of Sofia’s lips as she turned to leave once more.

Sofia wanted so badly to skip gleefully out of the morgue, which she actually would have done had she not allowed herself to act like such a child only moments ago. She did allow herself to burst through the swinging double doors that led into the hallway, though. Something had to be done in order to release some of her excitement.

10

U
pon returning to her desk, Sofia did everything that she could to try and get some work done. She was able to get some paperwork taken care of which was normally something that she would never even bother with until a job was closed, but she couldn’t concentrate enough to do anything else. Going through pages of documents, she filled in her name, badge number, and any other generic information that she could as she began creating a mental checklist of things she needed to do in order to get home and ready by six o’clock. This went on for the remainder of the day.

Sofia hardly noticed when Bishop finally returned from whatever ridiculous escapade he had gone on without her. He, on the other hand, was paying plenty of attention to how much busy work Sofia was doing.

“What are you doing?” He asked in a very puzzled tone as he passed in front of her desk. Sofia snapped her head up at him, and looked almost shocked to see him. She had been running through all of the possibilities that the night could hold in her mind, focusing so much on them that she had all but forgotten where she was.

“Oh, you’re back! Sorry, I was just kind of zoned in on this stuff I guess.” Sofia returned to her paperwork, not wanting to miss a second of mental preparation for her date.

“What case are you doing that for? Did you close something today?” Bishop knew all too well what Sofia’s routine was, and found her current actions highly peculiar.

“Oh, nothing. I mean, no. I mean, it’s not for anything in particular, and no I didn’t close anything. I was just trying to get ahead. I’m just trying to get my head straight so we can figure this thing out.” This was entirely true, although not her main reason for doing the ridiculous task.

Bishop remained bewildered by Sofia’s break from her usual routine, but decided to let it go since she wasn’t hounding him about where he had gone or what they could do next to further the case. Watching her out of the corner of his eye, Bishop began quietly checking his desk to see if anything was out of place. The only explanation that he could think of for Sofia’s odd behavior was that she was about to play a practical joke on him and was trying not to alert him to what was about to happen. After searching every possible place that could have been sabotaged, Bishop decided to check with one of the other detectives to see what information he could come up with. Walking over to Detective Welsh’s desk, Bishop sat down on the edge with his back facing Sofia.

“Hey.” Bishop muttered with a nod, interrupting the middle-aged detective’s review of one of his current case files. The deep, permanent creases in Welsh’s face intensified as his brow furrowed into his normal scowl. He was known to be quick tempered, especially when interrupted. Bishop, however, had a bad habit of not caring about that sort of thing; especially when he outweighed Welsh by thirty pounds.

“What?” Welsh asked angrily, shaking his head a bit to make his aggravation clear.

“Any idea what she’s up to?” Bishop asked, nodding his head back towards Sofia’s desk, and completely disregarding Welsh’s attempts to drive him off.

“Looks like she’s working, Bishop; just like I was trying to do. Maybe you should try it.” He replied gruffly. “It’s funny how much detective work you want to do when it comes to seeing what your partner is up to; but how little you want to do on your cases.”

Continuing to ignore Welsh’s frustrated comments, Bishop’s questioning of Sofia’s actions persisted.

“She’s doin’ busy work. She never does busy work when we’re workin’ a case like this. How long has she been at it?”

“I don’t know, ever since she got back a little while ago, I guess. Why don’t you just go ask her?” Detective Welsh replied with an exasperated sigh before turning his back to Bishop entirely as he attempted to return to his own work.

Bishop took a second to think about where she would have gone and remembered what she had said before he left. He couldn’t help but chuckle to himself as he put everything together. Bishop nearly burst out in laughter as he watched Sofia mindlessly filling out needless paperwork. He could tell that she was nervous, but rather than pester her and possibly get her started on something that might keep him there late, he just went back to his desk and found his own project to waste time on. The two worked quietly for the remainder of the day, Sofia on her mindless busy work and worrying about her evening, and Bishop dodging the higher-ups and anyone else that might question why the two weren’t out canvassing scenes and searching for clues. Finally, the day came to an uneventful close. Bishop shook Sofia from her trance-like state with a booming ‘good night’ as he passed her desk. As Bishop left the station, Sofia was still looking around the room as if she had just been awoken from a deep sleep. As she finally became aware of her surroundings, she snatched up her belongings and made her way towards home.

11

S
ofia was so filled with adrenaline and excitement she felt as though she had been pounding energy drinks all day as she prepared for her date with Lucian. The anxiety crawled through her skin like a million tiny spiders. It had been years since she had actually gone out on dates and those hadn’t gone well.

After her brief dating experience with Mateo, Sofia focused much more on her studies and her extracurricular activities, and made no time for dating. She went to her proms with dates, but since they were with groups of other people and had always ended with a giant party, she had never felt that they were representative of what a real date was like. Since high school, Sofia had gone on only three dates, and each one was its own level of terrible.

The first date she went on out of the academy was the one she considered to be the first of her adult life. She had been asked out several times by men while she was in college and the academy, but never felt like taking the time away from her studies to go out. She was still deciding whether or not to follow her parents south when she accepted a date invitation from a charming young man she had attended college with. He had been after her for months prior to her graduation and Sofia felt good around him.

Her expectations were low, but they were still not met. The majority of the date took place at a noisy bar, where he proceeded to drink so heavily Sofia had to take him to the hospital before calling it a night and heading home alone. His intoxicated state being as debilitating as it was, the drunken Casanova still managed to make several half-coherent attempts at fondling her during the drive to the hospital. Upon arriving at the hospital he was admitted for alcohol poisoning, and a broken wrist Sofia had given him as a parting gift for his unwanted advances.

Her second dating experience occurred several months after the incident with the drunk and the hospital visit. She had decided that moving to Atlanta to be near her parents would be a nice change and immediately began attending the Police Academy upon her arrival. During her training there she met another cadet that had just moved down from Pennsylvania and they decided to get together to check out the town together. He managed to do a little better with his selection of locations, taking her to a quaint, undiscovered café that he said a friend had suggested to him. Although she expected their discussions to include something about getting used to the cultural differences they each experienced since moving South, the dinner conversation was instead driven by their experience at the Academy, and little more. At the end of the date, Sofia lowered her guard and agreed to take a look at his apartment. Although well-versed in the enforcement of the law and identifying predators, she had never had personal experience one.

After taking a look around his shabby bachelor’s pad, Sofia decided to make her exit. Being that she hadn’t been in the situation often, she felt a goodnight kiss was expected in the situation and granted him one. Sofia’s attempt at a sweet, soft goodnight kiss turned into sloppy, one-sided, face-rape that she attempted to endure. When he started trying to remove her clothes, Sofia tried to pull away from him, but he pulled her back tightly and became more aggressive. Sofia’s repeated warnings that she was not interested in him went unheeded as he pushed her towards his couch. Clearly unaware of Sofia’s years of extracurricular study and proficiency in self-defense, he quickly ended up face down in his cheap, dirty carpet with her knee in his spine after a solid knee to his groin. Sofia pounced on his back and placed him in a tight chokehold as she pulled his arm halfway up his back. After some not-so-gentle coaxing, Sofia got him to admit that he had been completely out of line and recorded his statements on a mini recorder she kept in her purse at all times. After playing it back for him, she informed him that he would keep any comments regarding her or their date respectful and truthful, or she would gladly take the recording to his superiors. The two were assigned to different precincts and Sofia made sure to check in with his fellow officers from time to time to see what was being said. She was surprised to hear that none of them had ever even heard him mention her name.

Her third, and final, attempt at dating happened a few months after meeting Bishop, but well after his protective instincts for her had taken over. She had met a cousin of his, named Denny, when they stopped by his house for Bishop to drop something off, and he asked her out. They went out a few days later, but Bishop followed them in a patrol car to each location. He used the spotlight anytime they were getting “too comfortable” and the siren sporadically to interrupt any conversation where Sofia was reacting positively. A fiasco from the start, they called it an early evening and agreed to try another time. The next day, Denny called Sofia to tell her that he was sorry, but he couldn’t continue to see her. He and Bishop were very close, and he thought it would be too weird for her partner to see them together. Sofia agreed, and they ended things.

Those three occasions had created serious aversion to the dating scene, but she felt compelled to look past that for a chance with Lucian. Luckily, she had picked up on several hints during her unbelievably uncomfortable interaction with Lucian in the morgue that let her know that he too was pretty excited about their date. There were so many things that were coming together to make this potentially the greatest date of Sofia’s life to this point; although that bar was not set very high.

The most obvious and overwhelming difference between her previous experiences was how attracted she was to Lucian. She had never really dated a man with whom she was truly smitten. Mateo would have been the closest, but that was on such a juvenile level and she had never really gone on a date with him; not to mention that she didn’t find him nearly as attractive as Lucian. For that matter, she couldn’t even remember a time when she had been this attracted to a man, period. This was a fact that Sofia had wondered about on several occasions during their casual conversations around various crime scenes and during her visits to the morgue. It was that unknown factor that she still couldn’t quite pinpoint that pushed her infatuation with him. Lucian’s classic good looks were undeniable, but she could never figure out why it was such an overpowering connection that she felt to him. The looks were there, but his physique wasn’t what she normally would have been drawn to. The reasoning she always gave was that while he may have fallen short in an area or two, his charm and confidence were off the charts, which more than compensated for any deficiency. There was also a great deal to be said for how wonderful Sofia felt when she was with him. Lucian was able to take her mind away from work, which was completely out of character for her, and it made her feel like a different person.

Sofia had always been driven to succeed at her profession. It brought her great joy to enforce the law and make it safe for decent people to live. But, the way that she felt with Lucian was different. He was fun and exciting. He had a way of saying things that made even the most ridiculously boring activity sound energized. He had a brand of humor that everyone enjoyed, and Sofia was no exception. She knew several of the men on the force that would find a reason to go see Lucian when they were having a rough day or if the job had gotten to them. His humor mixed with his wild bachelor lifestyle always did the trick. He was always able to bring their spirits up.

One thing that Sofia found to be most impressive was Lucian’s outlook on life, which remained consistently upbeat and positive even though he faced so much death on a daily basis. He was the most fun-loving and optimistic person she knew. Whenever he was faced with a difficult time or had a run of bad luck, he would somehow turn it into a positive by claiming that it was an opportunity for him to learn from his mistake or situation. He didn’t seem to be afraid of anything and found joy in everything. The only time that she ever saw him without a smile on his face was when he was meticulously dissecting a victim in search of evidence.

In most cases, he was able to observe a body faster and more closely than even the most veteran examiners. However, in some of the more violent and heinous cases, she had seen him focus on a single body or case for days on end. He had a way of taking care of his victims that showed how much he cared about finding those responsible for their deaths as much as Sofia did.

All of these factors were coming together to create the extreme levels of angst that she was struggling with. Oddly enough, even though she was struggling with her anxiety, she felt confident that this night was going to go wonderfully. She had attempted to manage some of her nervousness by downplaying the likelihood that this would become anything serious due to Lucian’s reputation as a ladies’ man.

Lucian regularly had women that he had dated coming around the office to see him, which was shocking, considering where he worked. Sofia would see gorgeous women come in the precinct and instantly knew whether or not they were looking for Lucian. While the spectrum of women that came looking for Lucian was vast, ranging from very posh, extravagant women, to successful businesswomen, to twenty-something club girls, they all fit into the “perfect 10” category for the men of the office. What made it clear they were there for Lucian was that they, without fail, would overlook every man in the room as they made their way towards the morgue.

The men around the office loved to talk about and speculate about Lucian’s sex life far more than Lucian himself did. They would constantly compare his conquests as if they were playing a game. Any time the subject came up, one of the men would mention a name, description, or sometimes just a date that one of the girls had come by and the other men would try to make a comparable mention. Every time a name was said, all the men within earshot would start grunting, and smiling and laughing as if they had been involved in some way.

The most interesting thing to Sofia about the women that came to see him was not their physical appearance, which was always the most impressive thing to the men around the station. The fact that Lucian had been with so many women and seemed to remain on such good terms with all of them, seemed impossible. It was something that always struck Sofia as odd when she first began working at the precinct, but had now become quite common to her. The girls would come to see him, sometimes staying for an hour or more to talk to him. They would blaze a path to his door, turning the head of every male officer in the building as they did so. They would often leave while reapplying makeup or primping their hair, leading the men in the office to speculate about the activities that had just occurred. It was funny to Sofia that so many of the women seemed completely oblivious to the fact that they were in a morgue, although in some cases it was completely believable that they had no idea where they were.

On more than one occasion she had witnessed two (and on one occasion three) girls arrive together and leave together. Each seemed to have their own encounter with Lucian, and yet none of them appeared to be jealous of the others. One time, Lucian had caught Sofia making an odd face as the girls passed her while leaving the morgue and he vaguely addressed the situation by stating “Oh, they’re all roommates.” She hadn’t inquired further, and he hadn’t offered any more explanation. Sofia had accidently let slip what Lucian had said in their brief exchange about the girls being roommates, and the men ran with that information. Their stories about Lucian became wilder after that.

They always implied that the girls had been involved in some sort of group sex situation with Lucian, or that he had talked them into some “girl-on-girl action”. The stories always made Lucian sound so seedy and conniving that Sofia would usually walk away whenever the others began telling them. She had spent more time with Lucian one-on-one than any of them and couldn’t bring herself to believe he was the man they made him out to be. However, Sofia had to admit his situation was intriguing. The idea that Lucian was even half as sexually active as her fellow officers made him out to be was exciting to her on some level, and terrifying on another.

Sofia’s virginity had never been something she had to talk about with people. While she assumed everyone knew she had remained a virgin, people actually assumed just the opposite. Anyone that saw Sofia instantly pegged her as a sexual goddess because of her exquisite body and gorgeous looks. It was a foregone conclusion with everyone that she was a phenomenal lover based solely on her looks and ethnicity. She knew the stereotypes about Latin lovers, she just thought people knew she had put more effort into her studies than into sex. Now, she faced the possibility of losing her virginity to a man with such a sexual pedigree that he was the envy of every man she knew was very intriguing. However, every time she considered how awkward or unsatisfying she might be to him, she would cringe and become unbelievably uncomfortable. Each time it happened she shook her head quickly and told herself out-loud, “Not thinking about that!” As the time for Lucian’s arrival drew closer, she found herself having to tell herself more and more often not to think about it.

Given the amount of anxiety Sofia had built up over the event as she scrutinized every detail throughout the day, she remained incredibly excited about their date. Her only fear was that, in the event that something went wrong, things between she and Lucian could become strained and cause things at work to become difficult. She had considered this possibility for the better part of the past few months as her infatuation with Lucian grew. She had told herself for some time that they were better off keeping things professional, but she couldn’t stop playing out different scenarios in her head where they were together. As it turned out, it was the constant parade of women that dropped in to see Lucian at work that changed Sofia’s mind. She figured that if he was able to maintain contact with so many of the women he had dated, it would be possible for her to continue working with him if things didn’t go as well as planned. In the back of her mind Sofia knew the chances of her reacting well to being rejected weren’t good, she also knew she wanted to date Lucian really badly.