His ears reddened.
“Ma’am, there’s no need for sarcasm.”
“There was no need to throw me against your car either.”
Mason spoke then, finally.
“Officer Turner,” he said quietly, “we should probably document—”
Blake shot him a look.
But it was too late for silence now.
Because the front door of my house had opened.
And stepping out onto the path in gray slacks and a navy blazer was my head of operations, Dana Price.
Dana had come by early that morning because we had a contractor meeting scheduled for 8:30 about a commercial campus retrofit. She had been in the kitchen reviewing plans when the external security alert flagged “resident approached under stress condition.” BlueGate homes did that automatically. If resident vitals spiked through a paired wearable and movement stalled unusually near the front perimeter, the system bumped the event to high attention.
Meaning my own house had probably noticed the stop before the officers understood how stupid it looked.
Dana crossed the street fast.
“Nia?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
Then her eyes moved to Blake’s cruiser, his hand still too close to my arm, and the red imprint beginning to rise against my skin.
Her entire expression changed.
“You put your hands on her?”
Blake opened his mouth.
Dana didn’t wait.
She pulled out her phone and lifted it so both officers could see the screen.
“You should know,” she said, voice suddenly cool as glass, “this entire frontage is under continuous exterior capture through a private system my company controls.”
Blake blinked.
“Your company?”
Dana looked at him like the answer offended her.
“Hers,” she said, pointing to me.
His face went blank again.
That was the second hit.
First the house.
Now the company.
He was beginning to understand that what he had treated like a routine intimidation stop had landed on the wrong morning, the wrong sidewalk, and very possibly the wrong woman.
“Ms. Brooks is CEO of BlueGate Systems,” Dana continued. “We designed the security integration package for this property and six others in Fairwick. So before you say anything inaccurate, understand that your body camera is not the only recording that exists.”
For a second, nobody moved.
Then the radio on Blake’s shoulder crackled.
“Unit twelve, status check.”
He reached for it too fast.
“Unit twelve, code four,” he said. “Resolved.”
I looked at him.
“Resolved?”
He shifted his eyes away from mine.
“No issue here.”
“No issue,” I repeated. “You shoved a resident against your patrol car because she didn’t ‘look like she belonged.’”
Mason exhaled through his nose.
He knew how bad that sounded because it was bad.