Mind Games

The Salem Precinct loomed over our spot in the front row of the parking lot. The brick had just recently been power washed clean of its moss and debris, bringing out the abrupt red color amongst a sea of green pine trees and foggy stagnant air.

"Wait right here for a second," my new partner ordered, stepping out of his door with more grace than I would ever have in my lifetime. Before I could protest, the door closed with a firm click. I rubbed my hands on the thin material of my jeans again and relaxed with a sigh.

The Rubik's cube lay completed in my lap, but I felt no more urge to fiddle with it at this moment. Silence rang in my eardrums and the scent of cedar and a hint of chocolate invaded my nostrils suddenly. It wasn't unpleasant in the slightest but it was a new combination in comparison to the intense smell of dad's mint aftershave.

I jumped when the car door under my elbow opened for me. Jace stood patiently to the side with his other hand shoved into his pocket. "It's broken from the inside, too?" I asked with a frown, looking at the chrome handle.

"What can I say? Antiques," he shrugged.

Gripping my cube in my hands, I stood from the car on unbalanced feet, sidestepping so Jace could close the door. "I can try to fix that for you…," I said slowly, analyzing my words to ensure they couldn't be taken as an insult or in a way that brings his masculinity into question. I knew if I looked at a diagram of the interior mechanisms I would at least be able to identify what the problem was if a part was broken or missing.

"No, no, it's alright. It gives her character," he grinned and strolled for the glass doors. White acrylic stickers displayed Salem Police Department across the glass as well as the police crest.

The woman at the reception desk perked up at the sight of Detective Herondale, pulling down the neckline of her shirt to expose a bit more abysmal cleavage. I crossed my arms over my own chest behind him, feeling slightly insecure about the size of my breasts—they weren't small but they weren't as eye-catching as hers, either. Surprisingly, he hadn't given the receptionist a single glance, making my confidence spike just enough to relax my shoulders.

We stepped into an elevator, setting the destination to the third floor. I had only been to the third floor a handful of times; that space was reserved for detectives, interrogation rooms, and the forensics laboratory so I had no previous reason to explore the area other than the occasional visit to Simon's office.

The elevator doors closed with a soft thump and out of the corner of my eye, I could see the detective twist his features in frustration with a sigh as if he was holding his breath through the lobby.

"You okay?" I whispered, not wanting to slice through the silence with a full voice.

"Yeah, I'm good. Natalie is just so airheaded, it's painful," he said, rubbing his—still dirty—hands down his face.

"The receptionist? I thought she was attractive," I said with a shrug.

"I don't like the way she tries to get my attention, like the only thing I care about are tits. Don't get me wrong, she is attractive and generally, boobs are great, but she lacks…substance in her personality." The answer made little sense to me, possibly because he seemed like the type of guy to only do hookups with women he meets at bars or online.

"Well, if it's any consolation, I think you're pretty ugly," I stated.

His reflection of the elevator raised shocked eyebrows but wore a grin of amusement. "Thanks," he chuckled, brushing his hair back from his face with his fingers.

I thanked the universe just then when the elevator doors broke our reflections as I felt my cheeks blush pink. "Follow me." He walked out the doors with long strides much to my legs dismay, they pathetically ached painfully from trying to keep up.

Good god he was fast, or maybe I was just out of shape.

Probably both.

When he finally slowed to a stop, his hands reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his keys before unlocking a door to a small office that read Detective Jace Herondale in white acrylic stickers much like the front door of the precinct. The walls were made of glass like a fishbowl, leaving no privacy to anyone on the inside other than the blinds that could be opened and closed.

He opened the door and gestured for me to go in front of him. I instantly obeyed, avoiding his scrutiny as much as I could for the time being. He closed the door with a click that rattled my nerves slightly since being in a small closed room with a stranger didn't bring me comforting thoughts. But instead of smothering me, he stayed a few feet away and popped something into his mouth again—waiting for me to take it all in.

I took a look around the room. A rich red oak desk holding a computer monitor and small file holder sat in the middle of the room while large shelves covered the entire wall behind it, only leaving gaps of space for the two big windows facing out into the Oregon forest. The trees provided some shade from the sunlight, but turned the room green at certain times in the day as the sun reflected off the branches into the space.

My legs took me to the shelves where hundreds of books were neatly tucked. Their spines varied in size and color but I instantly noticed something strange. "Are all of these alphabetized?" I asked incredulously, amazed by the organization of so many books.

"Of course, how would you do it?" He calmly stood in the center of the room with his hands in his front pockets as he watched me.

"Truthfully, I can't say I'm a very organized person," I replied, feeling slightly ashamed. I could have lied, could have told him I was tidy, but I knew what the current state of my apartment was and 'tidy' definitely wasn't it.

He raised a brow. "I guess I only assumed you would be, because of your…."

I finally understood. People usually preferred to dance around the word 'autism' as if it was a rude slur.

"Ah, I see what you mean. Obsessive Compulsion isn't one of my quirks, unfortunately. I'm sure my dad would've preferred that. I was a messy child." A light laugh passed my lips. I touched the spines of the books, their textures drew my attention with their smooth but bumpy feel when I ran my fingertips over the pressed lettering of each.

I was so enamored that I didn't hear footsteps approach me from behind until a hand brushed the small of my back. Startled, I turned my head to find the detective an inch from my backside, reaching up to a shelf way out of my range and pulling a book from the pristine order.

Without a word, he held it between us. The gold script on the front displayed text in what looked like French and the hard covers were bound in a dusty red velvet similar to peach fuzz. He took my hand and grazed it on the cover. The sensation of the fabric was incredibly soft under the pads of my fingertips and made goosebumps prickle up my arms with a shudder.

He gave a subtle chuckle. "You can use any of these books, but I have one rule," he said. When I looked up at him, he still gazed down where my hand was memorizing the feel. "You have to put them back exactly where you found it, or I'll know. OCD is one of my quirks." A smirk tugged the corner of his mouth and he playfully tapped under my chin with a finger. I was sure I turned as red as the velvet between us at the contact.

"I will," I murmured with a nod and put my hands in my back pockets. "But can you…" I trailed off and pointed to the empty space where this book belonged. He winked and shoved it back in its place. I felt strangely seen for a moment, like he could read how I reacted to things and went out of his way to show me a new sensation.

He sat on his black swivel chair and laced his hands behind his head lazily. "I have another rule."

"You seem to have a lot of rules," I mumbled, stepping to the window and peering out into the expanse of tall pines. My breath fogged the glass and I idly drew a smiley face on the pane.

He scoffed in false amusement. "Why do you think I usually work alone?"

I rolled my eyes, knowing the genuinely nice moment between us was gone now. "What is this rule?"

A finger pointed to one of the two upholstered chairs in front of his desk, most likely used for meeting with guests. "You sit there and look pretty. I have a lot to work on, so I can't babysit." His computer turned on with a chime.

I crossed my arms over my chest. "I'm literally here to help you. Maybe you can set your ego aside and give me some cases to look at?"

"Not a chance. I like my ego where it is," he said simply and directed his attention to his computer screen. With an irritated sigh, I stalked to the chairs and plopped down, my Rubik's cube in hand ready to distract me for as long as possible.

After an hour of bouncing my knee and idly shifting the puzzle cube around, I was growing antsy. I had already mentally solved the cube fifty minutes ago, but I was stalling completing it because I didn't want to make the trek down to the second floor to have my dad scramble it for me. Reluctantly, I slid the last colors into place and set it on my lap with a quiet huff.

I was bored.

I had considered shuffling a couple books around behind the detective's back for entertainment, but something told me that would make him go feral—which wasn't exactly a complete discouragement since he forced me to sit here with nothing to do. My eyes wandered around the extremely plain office, hooking onto nothing in particular until they connected with a set of molten gold eyes that had probably been secretly watching me from around the computer monitor for several minutes.

Everything inside me fought to look away and avoid the eye contact, but I didn't want to submit. I've practiced staring into the eyes of people on tv to train myself out of the neurodivergent quirk enough to where I didn't feel like squirming under his watchful gaze. He had his cheek casually propped up on his fist and the urge to look away increased tenfold when the offending eyes slowly scanned over my entire body twice.

"What?" I snapped, my nerves shaking.

The hand holding up his head extended out to me with its palm up in silent request. I raised my eyebrow in question until his eyes flicked to the completed cube in my lap. Hesitantly, I plucked it from my lap and handed it to his awaiting fingers where he straightened and twisted the pieces chaotically.

"So how exactly did you solve my case?" he suddenly spoke down into the cube.

I blanched and spoke slowly, "Uh…well, it seemed while you may have been focused on the idea that the Midnight Crawler was choosing his victims as their neighbor…I disagreed." I tried my best not to make that statement sound insulting or demeaning because I truly didn't mean it to be.

"You disagreed," he repeated in a resentful mumble.

"Yeah, I disagreed," I spat with more confidence as a little bit of anger flared against my bones. "I thought there was something suspicious about the pattern of the victims' houses. The way it was shaped resembled a service route, which is how I came to understand that the murderer was stalking the women while he was doing his job as a garbage man, then dumped their bodies in their dumpsters to be picked up the next day by none other than himself."

He considered this with a stoic face but I noted how both eyebrows twitched up slightly while he looked down. "And how did you know it was a garbage route?"

"I saw a flier from the city with a change in trash pickup days along with the scheduled routes."

"You just happened to have the same flier that was distributed a year ago."

"It seems you don't understand what 'eidetic memory' means. I saw it a year ago and memorized it. Would you like me to draw it out for you, detective?" I was being vexatious but the way he was talking to me like I was less than him was beginning to grate my nerves.

Instead of being angry at my attitude, he chuckled and extended the cube to me. It looked small in his large hands. I warily stood and wrapped my fingers around it, but his snapped shut nearly around my entire hand like a venus flytrap. My chest tightened as I met his eyes again. He studied my face for a moment, which I was sure was painted with a smidge of paleness.

"Nobody ever disagrees with me," he said lowly and chewed the inside of his cheek in thought.

"Yeah, I can sense that," I retorted stiffly and yanked my hand from his before walking around his desk to the bookcase. "Does that mean you'll let me help with another case?" I walked down the length of shelves, running a fingertip over the spines once more.

He scoffed with his back turned. "Getting lucky once is hardly a valid reason."

"Hm," I hummed absently and took a book from a shelf, then placed it on the other side of the neighboring one. I did the same two more times on the other shelves.

"What are you doing back there?" he grumbled.

"Disagreeing with you," I said simply.

He shot from his chair and whirled on me. "Are you fucking with my stuff?"

"I would never." I feigned innocence but let him watch my hand shove another book in the wrong place.

He snapped out and snatched my wrist with a sneer to prevent me from grabbing another book. "Don't."

"Give me a case to distract me and I won't have time to shuffle this entire shelf the way I see fit. Maybe I'll organize by color." The adrenaline buzzing through me was amazing—I felt like I had real power for once in my life.

He got close to my face and pinned my arm above my head against the bookcase with a thud. "Put them back where you found them."

My conviction was waning but I still had the upper hand. "I can confidently say I know exactly which ones I moved around, can you? It could take you all day to fix everything, unless maybe a neat little file folder will convince me to put it all back."

He chuckled darkly without amusement. "Fine, you want a case? I know just the one." His hand released me and he turned on his heel toward his desk before crouching at the file cabinet beneath it and digging through an abundance of files.

I straightened my sleeve and pulled on the hem of my shirt while I bounced on my feet excitedly. He stood with a thin manilla file in hand and raked his hair back from his face. The smug look should have thrown a red flag but I snatched the folder without thinking about his ulterior motive.

My stomach sank. "Are you serious? This case is over seventy years old," I whined and flipped through the miniscule amount of pages with close to nothing substantial between their lines. "No fingerprints, shoe prints, hair samples—God, they didn't even have DNA analysis until the 80's."

"You said you wanted a case. There's your case, princess," he smirked with his arms crossed over his chest. My face reddened, both from frustration and the equally demeaning nickname. "Now put those books where they belong and sit your tight ass back in that seat."

"This is so fucking stupid," I mumbled angrily and fixed the books while he supervised with a satisfied glint in his eyes. My shoes stomped back over to the hard seat and only then did he settle back into his own, but I knew he was glaring at me over the computer screen.

This was going to be a long day