The Sigma Asset 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)║AMBYS WINNER 2022

4 part 2: The Interview (2)

Will's features smeared in and out of focus as the blood started to flow back to my brain. I was sitting on the lobby floor, Will's reluctant arm curled around me.

A half-smile rippled across his mouth. "I'll stay for a while."

I was so fucking relieved that I buried my face into his chest and cried, loud ugly sobs that felt like they were being ripped outta my body.

Will's bass-baritone voice rumbled incoherently on beside me while I wept. A grunt of agreement from across the room, followed by the scuffle of feet and the creak of a hinge. The red desk lifted and Will pulled me up.

Teresa led us into one of the meeting rooms. Will pressed me into a chair and crouched next to me as if expecting me to faint again.

I didn't know how many minutes I sat there wailing, but after a while Will nudged me. "You gonna be OK for the rest of it?"

I tried to get my shit together. "Yeah. It was just a shock," I said. "It's all a shock."

When my breathing had gotten somewhat back to normal, I packaged up my precious thoughts of Halmae and Halbae carefully in the softest paper, and put them high up, on a special shelf in my mind, to bring down and think about later, when I was safe and happy. Until then, I needed to get home and face Eomma, and grovel and plead for everything that I'd fucked up.

Will uncurled from his crouch to reveal the effect of all my crying: a truly fucking enormous stain adorned the front of his blue hoodie, like a wet salt-lined teary nebula with a dense central snot nucleus. I looked down at my police shoes in utter mortification.

If he's not taking blowjobs, you seriously owe him a million beers and a shit-ton of ganja for this, Zeph.

The door creaked open as a newcomer joined us in the meeting room.

"Detective Inspector Sofia Borbón is going to ask you some questions today." Teresa gestured to the inspector, a sweet-looking little lady in black glasses and a dress with huge red roses printed on it. "She's the Head of Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking."

I was skeptical. The inspector looked like she'd be more at home in a florist's store than arresting crime lords. Worse, other police officers hurried past the glass front of the meeting room, stopping briefly to look at me with curious expressions like I was an animal at Maria Zoo. I guessed that they all knew what I was, and who I belonged to. My stomach started to turn in anticipation of having to talk about Sigma to Inspector Borbón. It didn't help that she was a fluffy cardigan in human form.

"It's lovely to meet you, Zephyr. Just call me Sofi." She looked across at Will, who was miserably failing to camouflage himself among the office furniture. "You'll have to step out for this confidential interview about ongoing casework, but we'll let you right back in when it's over. Is that OK...Sir?" Sofi held out her hand.

Will took it, but didn't offer his name.

"And how do you know Zephyr?"

Will shrugged. "I don't know him. I just gave him a ride over here." It was such a terrible account of how we met that it stung me.

I threw Will an accusing look. "He means that he pulled me outta the fire, fed me, gave me a place to sleep, and drove me back here."

Teresa led Will out and set him at her workstation, in full view of us through the glass wall of the meeting room. I expected him to check his phone or call someone, but he sat with taut shoulders, looking furtively around him.

Teresa hunkered down in her chair and began reading dates and times into her laptop microphone.

Sofi scrawled into a little pink book. "Now Zeph, I'm going to ask you to give a statement that may be used for reference material in an ongoing case, as written evidence in a trial, or you may be asked to give evidence in person during a trial. Would you be prepared to give evidence in person in a court of law?"