Chapter 17
Last chapter… Epilogue up soon :)
The next morning, Tris walked into work, acting as if everything was okay. As if she hadn't cried herself to sleep the previous night. As if she was the happiest girl in the world. As if she wasn't heartbroken.
"Hey, Uriah," she said to him when he sat across from her. "Good morning."
"Sup, Prior?"
"Nothing much. We've been assigned cold cases since we solved all of the recent ones yesterday," she laughed, "so get ready for some real work. These cold cases are mostly back from the seventies. Surprising because the 60s and 70s were mostly hippies," Tris chuckled.
"True," Uriah laughed. "So, what've we got?"
"Homicide. Hippie was shot and killed at some peace rally in '75. Hundreds of people around, but nobody could identify the shooter. 24-year-old man. His name was Wallace Smith. I've been mainly looking at the witness reports. One said it came up from the ground," she laughed.
"Probably high on special brownies," he joked.
She smiled. "Probably."
The smile wasn't sincere though. Sure, she was great at hiding things, but on the inside she knew it wasn't real. That whole day she knew she'd be faking it. Everything. Her emotions, thoughts, feelings… None of them would be real.
Earlier that morning when she arrived, she saw flowers lying on her desk. There was a card too. She didn't read the card or bother to count how many roses he'd bought her. It didn't matter. None of it did. That was not only the first time he betrayed her trust, but the second. The first: when he played her by telling her Four was his cousin. The second: well, that's quite obvious.
She was done letting him hurt her.
"Tris?" Uriah asked.
She snapped her head up and looked at him. "Hm?"
"Are you okay? You seem like you're perfectly fine, but I can tell when you're faking."
She shrugged. "It doesn't matter."
"Is it a problem with Tobias?" he asked in a low voice.
She sighed and closed her eyes. "Yes. We went on a few dates, but it's not going to work out, all right?"
"Tris," he said adamantly, "you and I both know that what you had was more than 'just a few dates.'"
"Yes, it was. There just wasn't a connection there. That's that."
He shook his head. "All right, fine. Don't tell me."
"Okay, so I'm reading the coronary report of the autopsy and I think there might actually be a possibility that it was shot from the ground," Tris gathered.
"Damn, Tris, are you on crack?" Uriah teased.
"No, Uriah, just look." Tris stood and walked across to Uriah's desk and bent over. She showed him the picture of the victim's head. "Look at the way the bullet is lodged in his head. It couldn't have been higher or even with the victim's head. It had to've been lower."
"Maybe a short person shot him," Uriah suggested. "Like a, uh, little person."
Tris shook her head. "I think someone was in a sewer when Smith was shot. This was no riot shooting. Whoever shot this guy did it on purpose. Not to create a panic at the—"
"Disco!" Uriah shouted.
Tris laughed and rolled her eyes. "Whoever shot this guy didn't shoot Smith to create panic at the rally, but because this guy needed to be dead. My theory is that someone with a good shot and a rifle hid in a sewer and through the holes of the drainage pipe shot Wallace Smith."
"Tris… That's a little, I don't know. Out there."
"Just look at this picture of the crime scene."
She flipped to three pictures of the scene. "Look, there's a a drainage sewer a few feet away from where the victim was shot. Let's just go and check it out. It's on Michigan Avenue."
So there they went.
As she walked out with Uriah, joking about the pot brownies, she laughed. She felt Tobias's eyes on her. She couldn't hold herself back from looking at him. Her smile dimmed when she saw how distraught he was. He had bags under his eyes and his hair was out of place. To anyone else, it would've looked normal. But since she knew him—since she loved him—she could tell he was fraught.
"Uriah," she said, "give me a minute. Wait in the car."
"You got it."
She walked over to his desk and put her palms on it, leaning down.
"Tris—"
"I'm not requesting your station transfer. But if you come anywhere near me after this conversation, I will have you moved to another precinct. Get me, Eaton?"
He closed his eyes, then nodded.
"I love you, Tris."
"I'm not doing this here," she scoffed. "I'm not doing this period."
"Just know that I love you. That's all I have to say for myself. My appearances should say the rest."
Tris sighed, then walked away.
She couldn't handle seeing him like that.
"Uriah, do you know what this means?" Tris asked.
They stood in the sewer system where Tris thought the bullet would come from. They found extra bullets down in the sewer where the killer would've been forty years ago.
She answered for him. "These are bullets from a .223 Caliber. Only the military handles those, Uri. We're dealing with something much bigger than the Chicago PD."
"Tris, we could be arrested just for thinking about this, let alone solving it! What do we do?"
"We tell Max. We have to. We need to see what and who we're dealing with."
They rode back to the station conversing about who this could be. FBI? CIA? They didn't know.
"I think it's the CIA," Uriah said.
Tris shook her head. "FBI."
"Either way, it's gonna be cool."
About three hours later, Max went to them with worried looks.
"My office."
Tris and Uriah looked at each other in confusion, but went to their Chief's office.
They opened the door to see two men with black suits and sunglasses on.
Their eyes widened.
"What did we do?" Tris whispered to Uriah.
"Detective Prior, Detective Pedrad, these are Special Agents Rosen and Ross. They are with the FBI."
Tris looked at Uriah with an I told you so look.
"How can we help you?"
"No," one said. "How can we help you, Detective Prior? We'd like the speak with you in private, without Chief Blue or Detective Pedrad."
She nodded. "All right."
"Take my office," Chief said. "We'll be outside."
Uriah and Max left the office and shut the door.
The blinds were shut on the all the windows seeing into the office, so no one could see in or out.
"We'd like to offer you a job, Detective."
"I'm not quite sure I follow," Tris said. "This has nothing to do with the '75 Wallace Smith case?"
"This has everything to do with the Wallace Smith case," one of the special agents said. "We've kept that case hidden and unsolved for forty years, but you solve it in one hour? We received intel that you were in the sewer of where Smith was shot. You see, Smith was getting close to something that involved the government. Too close. So, you know, the CIA did what they had to do. And, you, Tris, have gotten too close."
Tris's eyes widened. "So, what, you're going to kill me?"
They chuckled. "No, Detective. We're offering you a job in the FBI. Or CIA. Whichever you prefer."
Tris's eyes widened even more. "What?"
"Yes, Ms. Prior. Your record of arrests and being your age is very impressive. This would require you to move to DC, but the job is quite incredible. If you join the Federal Bureau of Investigation, then you will most likely be working alongside Agent Ross and myself. If you join the Central Intelligent Agency, then you will most likely be a field operative, traveling to foreign countries and tracking down wanted terrorists and people of that sort."
"Oh my god," Tris said. "If I join the CIA, I can't tell anyone, right? I'll disappear."
"That's correct."
Tris sighed. "If you came to me with the offer three months ago, I would've said yes to either of those positions, but I… I can't. My life is here. In Chicago. At the CPD. I'm sorry."
They nodded.
"Here is my card if you change your mind, Detective," an agent said.
"Of course. Thank you." She accepted the card and put it in her back pocket.
"Have a good day, Detective."
"You too, gentlemen."
They left the office in perfect posture, and Tris collapsed against the chair.
"Holy shit," she said.
Max and Uriah went into the office.
"What?" Pedrad asked. "What happened?"
"They offered me a job."
"At the FBI?" Max asked.
"And the CIA," she answered, "whichever I prefer."
They didn't say anything.
"What'd you say?" Chief asked softly.
"I declined."
"Thank God, Prior," Uriah said. "We need you around here."
She gave a small, sad smile. "The sad thing is that if he asked me a few months ago, I probably would've said yes."
"Why?" Chief asked.
She shook her head, smiling. "I have too many important people. Mainly one in particular."
Then she got up and walked back to her desk.
I just made a life changing decision, she thought, because of him. I stayed because of him.
She groaned with her face in her hands.
"You okay?" Uriah asked when he got back.
"I stayed because of him," she mumbled through her hands.
"Who?"
"Who do you think?" she said.
"You love him, don't you?" Uriah asked, cracking a smile.
She sighed. "Yes."
"You should tell him that."
"Absolutely not," she said adamantly. "No."
"Tris, you can't avoid him forever."
"Sure I can," Tris retorted.
Uriah just shook his head.
About and hour later, it was time for her to go home. She wasn't working late, she decided. She didn't need to deal with any shit. She was no farther than the parking lot when she heard someone shout her name.
"Tris!" the man shouted.
It was without a doubt Tobias.
She kept walking because of that undoubted fact.
"We have to talk at some point," he said as he caught up to her. "Tris, please."
She stopped in her tracks.
"Tobias, I don't know what I want, okay? One minute I'm imagining a future with you and the other I'm hating you and then the other I'm back to imagining my life with you! This is all so confusing for me! Tobias, I am so, so afraid of what could happen between us in the future. Terrified, really. I mean, I don't know that I ever want kids. A husband. Maybe I just want to be alone for the rest of my life! No clue! Do you get that? I'm terrified, Tobias. I like not knowing and I like being unpredictable and right now I can't handle the unpredictability. I need to know right now you're not going to lie to me ever again, because if you do—I swear to god, if you ever lie to me again—I will not hesitate to leave you." She paused. "That's a lie. I will hesitate immensely because I am so, so in love with you, but I don't know if I'll ever trust you again the same way. Do you get that?"
He didn't say anything for a minute. "Yes. I do, Tris. But I never meant to hurt you. And you're going to have to deal with me too. You're going to have to deal with my predictability, because I know that I want to be with you for a long time, and I have no plans to change that," he said pointing at her, somewhat annoyed. "And you can't be terrified of that, all right?" he said, slightly harshly.
"Well," Tris said in the same angry tone, "I guess I'll have to deal with that then."
"Good," Tobias said, still harsh, "because I love you."
"Oh yeah? Well I love you too," she said angrily. For some reason, they had the same, unkind, sharp tone throughout the seemingly good conversation.
"Well I'm gonna kiss you," he said adamantly.
"Yeah, well you better," Tris said, not a shake in her voice to prove otherwise.
That night, they ended up going back to Tobias's house to talk.
Tris sat on the couch next to Tobias.
"You aren't completely forgiven yet, you know," she said, unable to look at him.
He sighed. "I know. I'm surprised I even got this far."
"Tobias, if we're going to do this, I need to trust. If we're going to have a relationship—a real, concrete relationship—we need trust and honesty."
"I know. I really love you. A lot. I know sometimes I mess up and do things that make it seem like I don't care, but trust me. You are my world, Tris."
She smiled. "I'll never forget when we first met," Tris chuckled. "I was arguing with Uri about you—well, Four—and I was so absorbed with trying to make him go away that I didn't see you coming. It was like in the real cliché high school movies where one bumps into the other and they drop all their stuff all over the ground and the other helps pick up the stuff. I remember thinking how good-looking you were with those glasses of yours," Tris chuckled again. "And the uniform. I tend to have a thing for guys in uniform."
He grinned. "You know what I thought that day?"
"What?"
He shook his head. "Max ordered me to go through all those files and organize them and stuff and I was mad. Then some person had go and run into me to make my day even better, sending the files flying. I didn't even see who it was at first; I just started to pick up the files. When I saw a woman's hand give me the file, I couldn't help but look. I remember thinking that maybe that day wouldn't be so bad. And I also remember thinking how beautiful you were that day. I thought about you the rest of the day. I mean, before I knew who you were. Tris Prior, Head Detective. But that's all. I guess I never really realized how beautiful you were."
Tris smiled. "I got a job offer today."
"Really? For where?"
"The CIA," she chuckled. "And FBI."
"Oh my god, Tris. That's amazing. Did you… Did—"
"No."
"Why the hell not? That's an amazing opportunity."
She put her face in her hands and laughed. "Because of you."
"Prior, never let me hold you back. Never ever. If you want to do this, do it. Don't let me—"
"No, Tobias. You didn't hold me back. Well, I don't know. It's hard to explain. If they would've come to me before I met you, then, yeah, maybe I would've accepted. But… things are different now and so are the circumstances. I mean… My life is here. In the Chicago PD. With you. And as cool as the CIA sounds, it's a bit too much. I like my job. I like the people at my job. My life is in Chicago. If I moved to D.C., then not only would I leave my loved ones, I'd leave myself too. You know what I mean?"
Tobias nodded. "If you have a dream, don't ever let me hold you back, okay?"
She smiled. "Okay."
"You're quite possibly one of the most amazing people I've met in my life," he told Tris.