His Love

Sat on the sofa with Will later that night, Emily stared at the television and allowed her mind to wander. Snapped from her thoughts by her phone, she grabbed it off the coffee table and answered without checking the caller id.

“Groves.”

“Em, I’m on my way to pick you up,” came Jay’s voice from the other end, “We’ve got a body.”

Dread washed through her as she got up, grabbing her jacket and kissing Will before heading out the door. The ride over to the scene was quiet and Emily’s anxiety grew, fading slightly when Jay placed his hand on her leg.

There were already numerous people bustling around as they parked up and Emily climbed out, following Jay over to where the alley had been cordoned off. With a flash of their badges, they ducked under the police tape and made their way over to where the body had been covered.

“What have we got?” Jay asked as they approached the officer that seemed to be running the scene.

“Brunette, late twenties, kind of looks a bit like your partner actually.”

“Just show me,” Jay added with a glare.

Not really wanting to see, Emily made herself busy and looked around the alley for anything that could help them. A pile of cigarette butts soon caught her attention and she signaled for one of the forensic guys to bag them up, before returning to Jay’s said.

“Looks like our perp watched our victim from over by the bins,” Emily told him, crouching down and taking a deep breath before lifting the cover off the body, “He wasn’t kidding when he said that she looks like me.”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Jay added.

“We need to head to the hospital.”

The ride over to the hospital was quiet, but it didn’t take them long and Emily led Jay inside where Will was talking to Natalie. She hadn’t seen the look on his face for so long and it hurt that another woman sparked that amount of happiness in him; it hurt that he was so obviously in love with someone else.

It didn’t come as a surprise, she had been trying her hardest to push reality away and, now, it was staring her in the face.

“Hey babe,” came Will’s voice, breaking her from her thoughts, “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she lied, not wanting to have the discussion with an audience and deciding to wait until they had some downtime, “Is Oscar still here?”

“He discharged himself early hours of this morning, how come?”

“Just wondering,” Emily replied with a small smile, knowing better than to share every detail of her job with him, “Did you want to grab some dinner after your shift?”

“Sure, I’ll meet you at Oliver’s at about nine?”

With a nod, Emily left the hospital and leaned against Jay’s truck with a shaky deep breath. Tired of being one step behind, they returned to the precinct and browsed through the reports from the crime scene.

Sat in front of her computer a while later, Emily sighed in frustration and looked up as a hand landed on her shoulder.

“It’s nearly nine,” Jay informed her, “Come on, I’ll drop you off at Oliver’s and we can pick this back up in the morning.”