Chapter three

     Jillian zipped through traffic in her little mini cooper to try to get to the police station as quickly as possible, she even found herself driving a little above the speed limit, nothing that could really get her into trouble but her own recklessness surprised her. Jillian knew herself very well, she was the most straight laced person on earth. In fact she was such a 'by the book' person that she didn't really have any friends. She didn't drink, she didn't smoke, she has never been arrested, she has never been late for work or missed an appointment, she didn't go to the cinema because she would rather curl up at home with a good book and she doesn't like to go out of her house unless she has to. Her colleagues at work call her robot Jill and wet blanket Jill behind her back when they think she isn't listening but she didn't mind. She knew who she was and she was happy with who she saw in the mirror, that was why she felt that it was bizarre that she had suddenly become more adventurous and the moment she noticed her momentary slip, she immediately reduced her speed to the legal speed limit and drove carefully until she reached the police station.

     Jillian parked her little car, adjusting it repeatedly until it was perfectly positioned between the lines in the police station parking lot in a textbook perfect way. She got out, locked her door and headed towards the door. 

     When Jillian went inside the police station, she was met by a familiar sight of a security checkpoint. Andromeda city was an extremely violent city and had the highest rate of gun violence in America so all government buildings and even some privately owned ones have these security checkpoints set up at their entrances. The security checkpoints consisted of a metal detector and a couple of armed guards with metal detector wands. Jillian didn't wear any jewelry so she just put her keys in the tray that was used to put personal items that contain metal and walked through the metal detector without a problem. The guards looked at her with strange expressions when she passed through but they waved her inside without saying anything.

     Once inside, Jillian clipped the ID that identified her as an official Prosecutor of the city and headed towards the interior of the building. 

     Because her job involved working with the police so much, she was very familiar with the police station. Andromeda city had a large well funded police force that was housed in a rather large ten story building with five wings that radiated from the central building like the five petals of a flower when seen from above. Each of these 'petals' were big enough to be separate buildings, they even had their own separate helipads complete with a helicopter resting on top. 

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

     The building layout was a little confusing but since Jillian knew the way, she walked through the hallways without hesitation but as she continued to go deeper into the building, she was surprised to see that there were very few police officers in the building, much fewer than the amount of officers that she usually saw when she came to the station because of her job. The whole place was almost completely deserted and the officers she did see were rushing about like their asses were on fire, not even taking a second to glance towards Jillian.

     She was wondering if it had anything to do with the war that old man Jeff had told her about when she reached the entrance to one of the wings of the building, the 'petal' of the flower that was entirely dedicated to homicide. 

     Jillian had just made it through the door, still deep in thought about the war between the Macalister family and the Manelli family, when she ran into an equally absent minded man and fell down on her ass.

     The man she had run into was rather large, his well defined muscular body clearly visible through the white shirt he was wearing. He had a close cut military style haircut, handsome features and usually had a friendly smile on his face but it was absent today. Instead he looked exhausted and had a haggard expression on his face. He had dark semi-circles beneath his eyes, dark enough that they were clearly visible even though he had dark brown skin. His brown eyes, which usually shone with vitality, looked dull like the eyes of a doll but after the little accident, the man looked up from the file he was reading and his haggard look vanished as he noticed Jillian on the floor. He immediately knelt beside her with a look of deep concern plastered on his face.

     "Jillian, is that you? What the hell happened to you ? Jesus, if I had known you were in such a bad shape, I wouldn't have asked you to come."

     The man Jillian had ran into coincidentally turned out to be the man she was looking for, Detective Edward Briggs.