The street was quiet, and had been for hours. Now that the sun was setting even the gaggle of youths that had congregated at the basketball courts was dispersing.

I shifted in my seat, readjusting my position for the umpteenth time. I looked over at Keith, seated next to me with his arms crossed over his chest. He sat completely still and silent, and had done so for nearly the entire time we had been here. I marvelled at the man's ability to just sit without bother.

Our target, a run down house trapped between a mini-mart and an apartment building, was empty and had shown no evidence of habitation for days now. We had been staking the place out in rotating 10 hour shifts since the week before. I was getting restless, fearful that the info that had led me here was somehow falsified or unreliable. This case was reaching its expiry date, and there was a lot of pressure on me to deliver some sort of results.

We were waiting for a person of interest to visit the building and try to collect the high value package currently waiting within. Any of Bernie Crusher's boys with whom we could draw a concrete connection to him would be perfect.

But... Nothing. For days, nothing. Not so much as a mailman or Mormon had even approached the house. After every shift I went home and stared with tired eyes at the mess of case files spread across my living room couches, coffee table and floor, trying to make a new connection, searching for the tiniest detail I might've missed.

Once more I ran through the case in my mind.

The victim was one Lance Jacobi, prominent figure of the local Black Panther party chapter and noted political activist. He was found facedown in a pool of his own blood, dead from the many stab wounds in his back, most of which were inflicted after he was already gone. It was evident that whoever committed the crime had wanted to ensure beyond any shadow of a doubt that Lance was dead.

The murder weapon was nowhere to be found, and subsequent searching of the surrounding area had not recovered it. All of the blood was confirmed to belong to Lance, and nothing so much as a hair or fingerprint could be found belonging to the murderer.

He was found in his own home, discovered by his girlfriend of six years, one Maria Tillman. No signs of a struggle, no broken furniture or missing belongings. Just a good man dead for seemingly no reason.

It was, of course, a politically charged case. Lance was well liked in his community, he represented the very best ideals, using his influence to uplift his community. But his ties to the Black Panther party naturally meant he saw a lot of opposition from outside groups regardless of his positive deeds.

Politicians were using the case in the lead up to the upcoming election. The progressives promising swift justice and resolution, and the conservatives promising a crackdown on violent crime. These were the messages spoken for the screens and mics of course. The undercurrent was far more direct, with accusations of pandering to domestic terrorists being thrown around and returned with accusations of conspiracy, racism and corruption.

And so far, all I had been able to find, despite the myriad of resources placed at my disposal, was a potential link to Bernie Crusher, a local thug with his own possie of minor drug dealers, killers and thieves. One of Lance's friends had arranged to have an important package exchanged with Crusher's gang in this location. The drop had been days ago, but nobody had shown up to collect it since.

The package contained a stack of cash, approximately twenty thousand dollars. An amount that rather suspiciously matched with an amount withdrawn from Lance's savings account just days before his death. It was a solid lead, but the lack of activity was making me wonder. Maybe the thugs had found out that we knew and that we had swapped the cash for fake bills.

I felt my stomach gurgle, bringing me back to reality. We'd ploughed through our packed lunches earlier, and dinner was approaching. I was just about to mention to Keith that I would hop out to stretch my legs and fetch us a bite, when there was movement near the house.

We both sat up. Keith grabbed the camera. A woman was walking up to the front door. She was wearing a hat and layers of clothes, making it hard to distinguish her features. But she seemed familiar to me somehow. Just looking at her figure from a distance, I could tell she was about 5'8", 170 lb, hazel irises with a narrow face. Wide nostrils typical of a Black American but with a longer nose likely inherited from a White ancestor. The above average height of her cheekbones, the barely visible freckles upon them and the single dimple on her left cheek when she smiled. The mental image of her face was etched into my brain, seemingly summoned forth from some deep memory. My rational mind pushed the image away, telling myself that it was impossible to know in such great detail what this woman looked like based on a half glimpse of her from such distance.

For her part, the woman turned and looked in our direction almost exactly as these thoughts dominated my mind. We were well disguised, with heavily tinted windows in the shade, hidden behind other cars. Yet somehow I could feel her eyes on me. I could tell she was looking right at me. She stood frozen in place, staring at me as I stared back. Then she turned and ran.

Keith shouted and I started the car, quickly peeling out of the parking space and racing off in pursuit.

She turned a corner and disappeared. As we came around the corner behind her, another car pulled out in front of us, flinging a door open to allow the woman to leap in. Keith pulled out his handgun.

"NOOO!" I roared, slapping the gun out of his hand. He shot me a surprised look but said nothing, instead pulling up the radio and calling the incident through.

I yanked at the wheel and pulled the car around as quickly as I could, then stamped on the accelerator, taking off after the escaping vehicle. I drove with reckless abandon, gripped by an intense and confusing compulsion to catch the woman. Keith tried telling me to slow down a few times, but I barely heard him, and he eventually just braced himself and gritted his teeth.

Over the radio, an interception was organised. The target tore through traffic, ignoring red lights and stop signs and taking multiple corners over the curb. But I stayed right on their tail, and soon they turned a corner right into half a dozen parked police cars, with ten officers standing behind their open doors with guns pointed.

The target vehicle stopped, and after only a few minutes two burly men and the woman who had taken off running all stepped out of the vehicle, their hands behind their heads.

A few officers stepped out with handcuffs and restrained the three of them. They were then pushed towards separate vehicles. As they were put into the backseat of these vehicles, the woman looked, again, directly at me, watching me until she disappeared from sight.

I shivered, unnerved by the experience, but also still feeling that pressing urgency to go to the woman. It took a surprising amount of willpower to resist.

We followed the cars back to the station, where the suspects were escorted into the building and each into interrogation rooms. I immediately made my way to the room where the woman had been taken.

When I got there, the sergeant was just locking the door behind him. He was surprised to see me.

"Here already detective Penn? We haven't even had time to run her ID yet."

"What's her name?" I demanded.

"Uh..." He looked at the ID in his hand. "Nicole Avery."

I pushed past him into the interrogation room, where Nicole was cuffed to the table. She immediately looked to me, and our gazes locked again. I was transfixed, and almost in a trance I walked over to the table and sat down across from her. Without thinking I opened her handcuffs.

"Nicole Avery?" I asked. She never once let her eyes fall away from mine. I found them almost hypnotic.

"Yes." She breathed.

"I'm Russell. Penn. Detective. Uh, detective Russell Penn."

"Russell." She said. A shiver ran down my spine again. I still couldn't look away. New thoughts exploded into my mind. Wild thoughts. Insane thoughts. Thoughts of opening the door to the interrogation room and simply escorting Nicole away. Of taking her in my arms. Of finding her soft lips with mine.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, shaking me back into reality.

"Nicole. Uh... Do... How did you know Lance Jacobi?"

She didn't even hesitate. "He was my brother."

I frowned. "Lance has no siblings."

"Not by blood," she quickly explained, "we grew up together."

"Who killed him?"

"Crusher hired someone to do it. I don't know his name, I think he left town already." As implicitly as I knew Nicole would by tell me anything I asked, so too did she know that I would ensure her safety. The case, which had so dominated my every waking moment only less than an hour ago, now faded to the back of my mind. A small voice tried to resist the compulsion that now gripped me, questioning what I was doing, ringing alarms about the danger I was considering putting myself into.

Not considering. I realised my mind was already made up. But I still had to play things out just a little further before I would be able to rescue Nicole.

"What were you doing with Crusher's thugs?"

"They've been keeping me locked up. Please, I didn't do anything wrong. They said they'd kill me if I didn't do as they told me."

I took her hands in mine. They were soft and small. I felt warmth radiate from her touch through to my entire body. It was calming and thrilling all at once.

"I believe you." I said. Relief washed over her. I leaned in and whispered to her. "It's going to be okay. I'll be right back, I promise." Fear covered her face, but she nodded. Our eyes remained locked as I stood, and right up until I disappeared through the door.

Immediately Keith confronted me. "What are you doing?" He demanded.

I brushed him off. "Don't worry about it. I've got this. I need you to go talk to the bruisers."

"What is going on with you? First the chase, now this? This isn't how we work. You're worrying me. You're gunna have us buried under paperwork if you keep dodging procedure. You know the lawyers look for any excuse to nail us over details. And what the hell are you doing getting so close with the suspect? Do you know her somehow?"

"Just go." I said flatly. "I told you, I got this. I'm fine, I just... I've got an idea. I want you to trust me."

He shook his head and groaned. "Ugh. Fine. Just please don't fuck this up." And then he walked off.

It was much easier to dismiss the officer standing by the door. I sent him off to fetch a report and then entered the room again. I helped Nicole to her feet and then quickly led her out the door.

Once outside I whispered to her, "Walk like you belong. Everything will be okay." She squeezed my arm. It was an action borne of instinct, of familiarity that we should not, but somehow did possess.

She nodded, trusting me implicitly. It seemed crazy, but I knew exactly what she was feeling. I knew without having to ask, without any evidence to prove it or even rational reason to believe it, that Nicole would do anything for me. Just as I would for her.

Nobody stopped us. Nobody even saw us really, except one officer, who greeted me briefly as we walked past.

Once through the double front doors of the station, we beelined for my personal car. I opened the door for Nicole and then walked around to sit in the driver's seat. I closed the door and locked them all.

We turned to look at each other again.

"What is happening?" She asked me.

"I don't know." I responded, never breaking eye contact. We needed to go, I knew, but at this point, I was no longer in control. In the same moment we both leaned in and kissed. My heart beating so loud I was certain it could be heard from outside the car. The intimacy felt like the final pieces of a puzzle clicking satisfyingly together. Being with Nicole felt right.

With effort, I pulled away. I saw the disappointment in her expression, and it was mirrored on my own face, but while I could not prioritise the case, or my job, or my life, over Nicole, I could easily put her safety above all else.

We pulled out of the carpark and made our way to the highway. In less than thirty minutes we were on our way out of the city.

"Where are we going?" She asked me. I didn't have an answer.

"Away. Somewhere we'll be safe. Somewhere we'll be free."

"What's happening to us?" There was uncertainty in her voice this time. Uncertainty that I felt too. I was uprooting my entire life for someone I had never seen before today.

"I don't know. It feels like all my life I've been sleepwalking, waiting for the day you showed up..."

"Like a memory from another life suddenly taking over." She finished.

I looked fondly over at her, a small tear rolling down my cheek.

"I missed you Nicky."