CONVICTED (Completed)

-17-

ZAHRIAH CRUZ

At the sound of the door creaking, I quickly shoved my phone under my pillow and lifted my head up towards the television. As Dominic made his way out of the bathroom; the steam began to pour out with him. My eyes wandered over to where he stood, towel wrapped around his lower half, water still coating his skin. I bit down on my lip watching him as he walked over to place a kiss upon my lips. "How are you feeling?" he asked, giving me one last kiss before he stood back up and headed over to where his duffle bag was.

"Hmm, still a bit weak." I answered, although it was far from the truth. I was perfectly fine, in fact; I never normally got sick quite often. However, Dominic didn't need to know that yet. I needed him to believe that I was staying home because I was unwell and not because there was a psycho on the loose that was practically out to destroy him and God knows whatever else. I needed to be home for the sake of his protection and would pretend to be sick for as long as I needed to.

That day after rushing home from the station, I knew better than to come clean and tell him. I knew that if I was truthful Dominic would run. I knew that if he ran there was no telling when or where I'd be able to find him. I don't know if it was selfish or fear but I felt that in that moment it was the right thing for me to do without a doubt. What also made things better was the fact that Dominic didn't want to watch or hear the news, he said he trusted that if he needed to worry; I would let him know, until then he didn't want to see the negative stories that the news had to offer.

For now, Dom was focused on his online training. It was going on his fourth day and he seemed quite excited for the journey. Every morning he'd wake up as early as he did today, do a workout in the living room, shower, maybe squeeze in a quickie then get onto his training.

Chris had me working from home, mainly reports being as it was crunch time and most of the team was actually on the streets looking for Anaya, her father, mother and sister. Yara and Paula Caldwell were wanted for questioning, them disappearing right in the middle of this mess made them definite suspects. That along with the fact that we were in search of a recent picture of her, they had done a social media sweep and she was completely two steps ahead of us. Witnesses were able to describe her to our forensic artist but that didn't cut it, we needed something recent.

I had gone back and forth with myself about asking Dom because I was sure he would have something or know where to go. However, asking him would open up a whole can of worms that I wasn't ready for. It wasn't as if I could just ask him to see it, I needed a physical copy or something close to send over to Chris and soon. We just didn't know of any other ways of how to get it, so the sketch as all we had for now.

On the bright side, Dominic's involvement had faded somewhat in the background after the testimonies given by his mother, friend and Uriah. However, he was still guilty until proven otherwise which is what Chris was trying to clear up.

This morning Chris had finally broken through with getting in touch with the family's home security provider. Although the murder of Thompson didn't take place anywhere near where she lived, after hearing those witness statements they couldn't miss a single step. Every single move Anaya made needed to be tracked if we were going to find her and if we were going to work at closing this case, with all the other supporting factors it was almost certain that this was a set up and had been the entire time. We were just waiting for the glue, that would make it all stick; especially with the chief that wanted nothing more than for us to wrap this thing up and quick. If there was one thing he hated, it was a case getting cold.

"I'm about to get dressed and make you some soup, again."

"No, there's no need for that." I shook my head. "I can get up and grab something to eat when I'm ready. I'm kind of feeling for waffles anyways."