Lines rewritten.

chapter 1

The heat hit me like a punch the second I stepped out of the car. It was barely 7:45 a.m., and Los Angeles was already baking under a sky that looked too blue to be real. My shirt clung to my back, coffee in one hand, phone in the other, badge clipped on like it belonged there — like I belonged there.

First day as a detective at the LAPD.

And I was already ten minutes late.

Whatever. I wasn't a rookie anymore. I'd done my time. Three years in Nowheresville, dealing with drunk idiots and unpaid parking tickets. Now I was here, in the city that never sleeps — or at least never stops screaming. And I wasn't going to apologize for being five minutes behind schedule.

The precinct loomed ahead of me: glass, steel, and stress. I pushed through the front doors, the heavy buzz of the station washing over me. Phones ringing. Radios squawking. Cops were moving like they had somewhere more important to be. I scanned the room with that half-alert cop instinct I'd picked up somewhere between traffic stops and break-ins.

It smelled like burnt coffee and ambition.

I rounded the corner toward the locker rooms when it happened — I slammed shoulder-first into someone solid. Not just solid — brick wall, solid.

Coffee splashed out of my cup and landed in a small puddle on the floor.

"What the hell—" I started, then looked up.

Great.

Tall. Broad. Buzzcut. Scowl permanently etched into his face like it had been carved there by God himself. The name tag on his chest read Bradford.

Of course.

"You blind, or just arrogant?" he barked, brushing himself off like I'd infected him with rookie germs.

I blinked. "Excuse me?"

"You bumped into me, rookie."

Okay. Deep breath.

"I'm not a rookie," I said coolly, picking up my coffee cup from the floor and pretending I didn't want to throw it at him. "I'm a detective. Maybe try watching where you're standing like a normal human."

He gave me a tight-lipped smile that screamed I eat rookies for breakfast. "You're new. That makes you a rookie. Especially today."

"Oh, what? Is it 'National Overcompensating Training Officer Day'?" I muttered, walking past him.

"Say that again?"

I didn't. I just let my frustration hiss out under my breath in the form of a few choice Spanish words I hadn't used since I was sixteen and grounded. "¡Pendejo!" ( asshole )

"Yeah, I heard that," Bradford called after me.

"Good," I shot back without turning around.

This was not the welcoming committee I had in mind.

I pushed into the women's locker room, jaw tight, fingers flexing from the heat of that tiny, unnecessary encounter. It took everything in me not to kick the first locker I passed. Instead, I found the one labeled Chen, L., and yanked it open with a satisfying metal clang.