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“Okay,” she mumbled, sinking her teeth deeply into her bottom lip. “There were ten flights leaving Madrid from the main airport that night. Ten. No, fuck.” She exhaled, annoyed. “Eleven. Okay, so eleven flights that night.”
“Paula?”
She snapped up from her screen, trying to sort her thoughts as she looked at her colleague. “Yeah?”
With a deep sigh, Diego leaned against the door frame of Paula’s office. “You know that there’s such thing as working hours for you too, right? You don’t have to rot here all night.”
Paula let out an ironic chuckle, wondering when she’d last gone home on time in the span of the last year. Ever since she’d gotten herself into that case, she’d dedicated her life to it. And if there was one thing she knew, it was that there was no going back until she would solve it.
“Thank you for your concern, Diego,” she smiled at the young man. “See you tomorrow.”
But to her surprise, he walked up to her, placing himself at the corner of her desk with a concerningly straight look on his face. It was only now that Paula realized how much Diego was always smiling. No matter how difficult a case was, he was the one who’d stay optimistic and cheer everyone up. Whatever it meant; the serious face he was making was definitely a bad sign.
“In case you forgot what a desk and what a door looks like, I’m happy to show you the way out,” Paula joked with a sarcastic smile on her face.
However, Diego only shook his head with a sigh. “I’m worried about you, Paula.”
She chuckled. “Last week, you said that you loved working with me because I was the one you didn’t have to worry about.”
“Exactly. That’s the point: You’re the one who’s always fine whenever someone asks her how she’s doing. The one who nails every single case she works on. But you’re also the one who has to wear tons of concealer to hide the big dark cycle beneath her eyes because she hasn’t slept in like a week. The one who turned into an obsessive workaholic and not in a good way.”
“You’re being very rude and offensive,” Paula interrupted him with a scandalized smile on her face. But no matter how much she tried to hide what she was actually feeling, deep inside she knew that Diego’s description of her disastrous work ethic was spot on.
He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Look, I’m not the type of person to get my nose into anyone’s business. It’s up to you how much you’re willing to die for this station. But if you need help with any case, let me know please.”
For the first time in months, Paula’s heart turned warm. It scared her; she hadn’t felt something so comforting in an eternity. She smiled at him, scratching her arm and letting her eyes travel to the huge folders on the table in front of her.
“It’s not an official case, though,” she explained, her gaze still directed towards her workload. “It’s something… personal, you could say. So I prefer to work on it alone.”
“Okay,” Diego replied, sounding somewhat disappointed. “Well, you know where to find me if you ever change your mind, okay?”
“Okay,” she nodded. But as soon as the only person who’d shown her genuine compassion walked towards her office door, her stomach started crumbling. She couldn’t define what exactly that feeling was, but it almost made her scream Please don’t go. Don’t leave.
“My boyfriend is cheating on me.”
Diego turned around. His gaze as startled as her own, probably. It was as if Paula’s mouth had been quicker than her head. Why the hell had she just spat that out?
“Fuck,” Diego whispered as soon as he’d collected himself again. He walked back up to her desk and took a seat at his former position. Something about that felt strangely relieving to her.
“I… I found out about it yesterday. And do you know what the weirdest thing about it all is?”
It was clearly a rhetorical question and yet, Diego shrugged his shoulders and shook his head no.
“I laughed. I broke into hysterical laughter when I found his burner phone and read their sexting messages. I just…” She chuckled again. “I was glad. I was so fucking glad that I was right. I’ve been having this feeling that something is going on for so long. All this time, he told me that I was slowly going insane… But I wasn’t. I was right.”
“Do you want a hug? A drink? Buy an axe with me and visit your ass of a boyfriend with it?”
Paula laughed, once again realizing why she loved working with Diego. He never lost his ability to save terrible situations with his sense of humor.
“I mean it: we’re police officers. We can cover that ship up,” he raised his eyebrows with a smirk. “I’ve been working on a difficult case of a man who faked his death before I transferred here. I’m not lying when I say I’ve got the knowledge we need.”
Paula’s face suddenly fell. She glanced back at her laptop screen, staring at the picture of her mother in the red jumpsuit. Her heart started pumping faster.
“I’m so sorry,” Diego suddenly cut off her train of thought. “God, I’m a fucking idiot. I didn’t mean to joke in such a situation. I hope you know that what he did had nothing to do with who you are as a person, Paula. Seriously; you’re a wonderful woman and he must be blind not to see it.”
“That’s…” She noticed heat shooting into her cheeks. Hopefully the dim light in the office was too bad to reveal how she was blushing. “That’s flattering, but you didn’t say anything wrong. I just thought of something…”
“And that something was…” He let his voice trail off, waiting for Paula to finish his sentence.
Normally, she’d keep her mouth shut. It was something she’d promised to herself: never involving anyone in this mess. But with what Diego had just told her, it was as if the key to her breakthrough was lying right in front of her. She would be stupid not to grab it, wouldn’t she?
“That something is my case. My personal case. It has something to do with a dead person. But I… I don’t believe they’re dead. And all those sleepless nights, I’ve head my boyfriend’s voice in my head, calling me insane. But I was right about his affair. So what if I’m right about all of this here too?”
“You said it’s a personal case.” Diego looked her deeply into the eye, as though he was trying to stare right into her soul and get all the answers he needed from there. “Who’s the fake-dead person in question?”
Paula swallowed, holding his gaze.
“My mother. To be more precise: ex-inspector Raquel Murillo.”