Caged 2 (Caged Series) Read online

  I sprinted out for the other car that was only a few feet away, and at that moment I heard clinks of the bullets popping everywhere around me. I was surprised that I didn’t get hit and was grateful that I wasn’t. I slid to the ground next to the cop and held my hand over his neck. He had lost a lot of blood and looked like he was turning blue.

  “You’ll be okay!” I said while holding him. I grabbed his arm and tried my best to pull him out of harm’s way.

  I looked up at Abigale who was busy shooting through the window, and landing shots the same way I did. It made me proud that she was able to shoot as well as me. I was the one that helped her get better at shooting over the months.

  “Don’t let me die,” the cop jerked a few times. “I don’t...want to.” His green eyes teared up, and veins formed in his forehead.

  “You’re not gonna die officer. You’ll be okay,” I said, although I wasn’t so sure. The shooting had died down a little, but I could still hear a few shots coming from the remaining gang members.

  “I have a wife-a girlfriend-I want to marry her,” the cop said. He spit blood from his mouth and grabbed my wrist.

  My hand shook on his neck. This wasn’t fun anymore, and it was no longer a game. This man was going to die.

  “She must be beautiful,” I said. I ripped my hand away. “Hold on.” I rushed into the car we were next to in search of some kind of cloth, but all I managed to find was a few napkins. “Just hold on!” I yelled back. I had no idea that he had already died.

  The firing had finally stopped and I turned around to see the cop laying still on the ground, “No, no, no, no,” I rushed back to him and grabbed his neck. The bleeding had slowed dramatically, and in any other case this would be a good sign, but on account that he wasn’t moving and his eyes were still open meant something else. I was too late. I couldn’t save him.

  “Officer!” I yelled down at him. Seeing a body under me once again took me back to when Jessie was shot. She had broken into my house and tried to kill me, but she had been killed instead. She was another one of those lost kids...

  “Wake up!” I yelled. My hands shook as I tried to shake him back to life. “Somebody!” This guy was one of us. He graduated the police academy with me. I remembered seeing his girlfriend holding his three year old daughter at graduation and felt sick to my stomach. “Somebody help him!” After all the training we had, I had no idea what to do. And there was so much blood, I couldn’t think of how to put it back.

  Abigale rushed over to me and pulled me away from his body so that the medics could take a look at him, but there was nothing that they could do by now.

  I pulled away from Abigale and pushed her away. “Get off of me!” I yelled. I wiped the tears from my face and watched as the medics worked over him. He was gone. “Oh, fuck,” I started to cry and tripped back into Abgiale who held me up on my feet.

  When I looked around all I saw were cops arresting the teens that were still alive, and the rest being put into body bags. A few cops were being tended to, but this guy, he was the only one that died. I couldn’t save him.

  That was the first time I saw a cop die, but it wasn’t my first time seeing death. I joined the force because I wanted to protect people and prevent lives from being taken. After watching him die, I started taking my job more seriously so that I would never have to experience that feeling again. That could have easily been Abigale, and if she were to end up like him, I would have lost it.

  I was down for a long time, and had to get counseling from the psych, but no one could ever comfort me like Miss Shy. She went by lieutenant nowadays, but Abigale and I address her by her first name which was Stephanie.

  Miss Shy told me to stop going to the police psychologist and instructed me to start coming to her instead. I had been on desk duty for a while and couldn’t go back to working on the field until she gave the okay. I was against her decision at first, but when she told me that this wasn’t permanent. I agreed with her and just worked on recovering. She knew that even though I acted as if nothing fazed me, I was actually pretty sensitive to certain things and it took me a lot longer than others to recover.

  Our sessions together weren’t anything like they used to be. Back in high school, I was more rebellious and would hold back all of my feelings and emotions because I felt like she was just another psych that was trying to study me, but now I was okay with letting everything pour out. She reminded me a lot of my mother with her soft voice and comforting smile. It was something that I noticed the first day that I met her, but back then I just brushed it off as an act.

  When I was in high school it was hard for me to trust anyone. I had a past that I needed to keep secret, and a future that I was trying hard to build for myself, but people kept getting in my way. I thought that Miss Shy was one of those people until I met Lorena. She showed me that I could love and trust again, and that’s exactly what I did. After I let her in, I began letting others slip into my heart and I cherished them deeply...

  Miss Shy was sitting at her desk while writing on one of the many unorganized papers that sat on it. This was something I saw her doing every time I came in, and I was always curious about what she was working on, but she would never tell me. It apparently was confidential.

  I sat down in my usual chair across from her, lifted my chin, and stretched my neck to try and see what she was writing on, but then froze when she shot a serious look up at me. I sighed and sat back in the chair, feeling like I’d just gotten in trouble for doing something terrible. Miss Shy had a way of making me feel like a child sometimes.

  I sighed loudly again to try and get her attention, but she didn’t budge so I just looked around her office. It was filled with more than what she had back in her office at the high school and I was glad. She gave me the feeling that she may have been lonely with nothing but photos of her cat, but now I saw that she had pictures of friends, co-workers, and me.

  I smiled at the picture on her wall of her and me after my high school graduation. My aunt had popped her head in the picture so that she wasn’t left out, and I had burst out laughing. The principal had snapped the photo with my mouth wide open in a smile, Miss Shy smiling like a normal person, and my aunt looking like a crazy person with her face extra close to the camera. I couldn’t help but laugh to myself when I thought back to that day.

  Miss Shy looked up with her bright blue eyes and moved her long brown hair behind her ear. “What is it?” She asked.

  I turned to Miss Shy, “Oh, nothing. Just thinking back to graduation.”

  Miss Shy smiled and looked over at the photo on the wall. “Yeah,” she said looking back at me, “I was really proud of you.”

  I shrugged and sat up, “Yeah, and soon you’ll have a lot more to proud of.” I bit my lip when I could tell that she knew what was coming next.

  Miss Shy gathered all of her papers and sat them back down in a pile. She gave me a worried look, like any normal parent would, and sighed. I knew that she was afraid to let me go back on the field, but it had been a month already and I felt like I was finally able to go back out there, plus Abigale needed her partner back.

  “Rose, you know that I want to let you back out there-”

  “Then let me,” I said calmly. “I’m ready to go back to work. I can do it.”

  “But mentally...”

  “Miss Shy,” I gave her a reassuring smile, “I can do it. I feel good, and I’m ready. You and I both know that if you keep me at a desk any longer that I’m going to flip out.”

  Miss Shy gave a tired laugh. I had been bugging her about letting me go back to work for the last couple of days, and I think I had finally gotten her where I wanted her.

  “So?” I bit my lip again and hoped that she would say yes.

  “You know I care about your well-being,” Miss Shy said as she sat up and folded her hands on her desk. “I don’t want you going back to the way you used to be.”

  She and I both knew that when I got depressed, I could go to a real
ly dark place and it was hard for me to come back from it.

  “You don’t have to worry about that Steph. Come on, let me get back to work,” I said folding my hands together, “Please, please, please, please, please-”

  “Alright!” She waved her hand in exhaustion, and I was just about to celebrate when she gave a devilish grin, “But only under one condition.”

  “Ummm, what is it?” I asked.

  Stephanie’s grin turned into a full smile, “I need someone to go and talk to the kids back at the high school. You know, the original ‘do the right thing’ speech.”

  I gave her a blank stare. I didn’t know how to react. I couldn’t talk in front of people! I couldn’t do it back in high school and I couldn’t do it now. My last year I almost failed because I refused to present my final project in front of the class.

  I blinked a few times then asked, “You want me to do what?”

  “I need someone, which is you, to go and talk to the high school students back at Wintry high. The school called asking for a speaker, and I couldn’t figure out who to get until you walked through my door.”

  “But Stephanie-”

  “If you want to go back out on the field, then this is what you have to do,” she grinned.

  “And how exactly would this be showing you that I could go back on the field.”

  Miss Shy shrugged. “It doesn’t, but I need someone to do it for me,” she said.

  I sighed and sat back in my chair. I couldn’t believe that she had just thrown this on me, but I had the slightest feeling that there was another reason that she was making me do this. I just had to figure out why. “Fine.”

  Chapter 3

  I didn’t know why I was feeling butterflies when I pulled up to the school. I felt a bit of excitement, along with other multiple emotions that I hadn’t felt in a long time. This was the very place that I had changed my life around for the better. This is where I met Lorena.

  I could still remember how she sat at her desk with her head buried in a book, and how it felt on my fingertips when I first touched her hand...

  I opened the car door to my black and white 2017 police charger and stared over at the large building in front of me. The school looked exactly as I had remembered it, only smaller. I bet it was probably smaller on the inside too.

  I walked across the neatly cut green grass and onto the walkway that led to the school’s front doors. For some reason I had some sort of hope that Lorena would be waiting for me on the other side, but then I shook the thought away, because she was hundreds of miles away with someone else that she loved.

  Thinking of her wasn’t good for me, and for a while, I did good at keeping her off my mind, but this place...the halls beyond these big red doors...it brought it all back...

  After I was buzzed in by the secretary, I stepped onto the white tile floor and slowly made my way down the old blue and green hallways. It looked as if the walls and lockers were repainted because they almost looked as new as the first time I’d entered the school five years ago.

  My heart pounded as I made slow steps further into the school. I could still remember how it felt when I walked down these halls, and it made me feel warm inside. This was home. I slightly wished that I could relive my senior year again, but then, I don’t think I ever want to experience those hardships twice. It’s been years, and I still hadn’t fully recovered from everything that’s happened. Sometimes you just can’t forget the fucked up things you’ve experienced no matter how hard you try.

  I stopped and closed my eyes at the thought of Jessie walking down these halls. I was sick to my stomach at the thought of her death and how she was killed right in front of me. We had walked down these very hallways together, even if it were in opposite directions. She used to be here.

  I looked ahead and saw that I was close to the main office where I would be given instructions by the principal on what classes I would be speaking with. Apparently, they wanted me to talk to a few of the health classes today about being safe and doing the right thing. The usual cop “stay out of jail” speech. It only worked on a small percentage of teens, but the other ones were just excited about having a guest speaker and no class work. Those were the students that you couldn’t tell what their life would be like in the next couple of years and hoped the best for.

  When I looked to my left I realized that I was standing right in front of what used to be my second period class, and I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. This was my favorite class. It was my old English class being taught by Mrs. Pond. She still looked as young as I could remember with only a few strands of silver hair mixed in all of the black. She was another person that looked after me during my times of need, and even though she couldn’t do much, she did her best to keep me afloat. Especially the year after Lorena left and I had to repeat a year. It was hard for me to get used to her chair being empty in front of me, but Mrs. Pond helped me cope every step of the way.

  I turned and walked up to the closed door and stared over at the girl in Lorena’s old seat. My heart fluttered when I thought back to the first day that I’d met Lorena. She had dropped her identification card at the end of class, and I had picked it up for her. I was staring down at her picture trying to figure out if her eyes were blue, but I couldn’t tell until I actually looked into her eyes up close...

  "Hey," Lorena stopped in front of me. "Can I have my card back?"

  I looked up and saw Lorena standing in front of me. Her eyes were very blue.

  "Oh, sorry. You dropped it," I handed it over to her. She had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen, and I couldn’t seem to break eye contact.

  Lorena smiled slightly, "You’re new here, aren't you..."

  I snapped out of my daydreaming when the classroom door whipped open and Mrs. Pond stood there with a big smile on her face. Even up close she looked the exact same way that she did when I was attending school here.

  “Rose?” Her smile stayed the same, but her eyes quickly watered. “Oh, my lord,” she said.

  I nodded with a slight smile, “Hey, Mrs. Pond.”

  Mrs. Pond held her hand to her chest and took a deep breath, “Hey? Give me a hug, it’s been so long.”

  I openly gave Mrs. Pond a hug, hoping that it would stop her from crying, but I think it just made it worse. When we pulled away, she wiped her eyes. She may have been young, but she definitely acted like an older woman.

  “Look at you!” Mrs. Pond looked me up and down in my all black police uniform. “I was so excited when they said that you would be the one coming. You’re all,” she rested her hand on my shoulder as she continued to look me up, “in a cop uniform. You’re a cop. Oh, goodness. You’re so grown up.” She gave me another hug and then quickly pulled away, “I’ve missed you Rose. We all did.”

  “I’ve missed you as well Mrs. Pond, and I see you haven’t aged a day.”

  “Oh, please. You and I both can see these gray hairs coming through,” she laughed.

  I looked up at her hair that was neatly pulled back into a bun. “Nope, I don’t,” I said as I shook my head.

  Mrs. Pond laughed, then as it died down, she just stared back at me with a smile on her face. I could tell that she was thinking back to all the good and bad times we had together, and I waited patiently for her to snap out of memory lane.

  “Well, how are you?” I asked.

  “Oh, I’m fine...” I didn’t do it on purpose, but I tuned her out when I looked back at Lorena’s desk. It was filled by a Latina with curly brown hair that she kept pulled back into a ponytail.

  I wouldn’t have paid this girl any mind, but I just couldn’t help but notice how she kept her head buried in a book just like Lorena did. Everyone was looking over to see who was at the door but her. The girl leaned back in her chair with a tight black T-shirt, black sweat pants, and a pair of gray Nike tennis shoes. She reminded me of the days that I used to wear clothes like that when I came to school. Now my everyday uniform was the one I was wearing now.


  Mrs. Pond noticed how I had stopped listening and looked back to where I was staring. She knew exactly what I was thinking and smiled “When was the last time you spoke to her?” she asked.

  I jumped and turned back to Mrs. Pond. “Oh, ummm a couple of months ago maybe? It’s no biggie though. Who is she?” I nodded towards the girl who was staring right at me now. Her expressionless stare is what started my chills, but the darkness in her eyes is what froze me in my spot. They were nothing like Jessie’s, because they were worse. By now, a person’s eyes could tell me almost anything, and hers told me that she’s been through a lot of shit.

  Mrs. Pond didn’t even have to look back. “That’s Terry,” her voice lowered. “She’s...kind of like you were.”

  I was a little offended on account that I didn’t give off an ‘I want to kill you’ vibe when I was her age. At least I don’t think I did. “Oh, so she was trafficked too?” I said as I turned back to the girl. I was relieved to see that she was back to reading her book again.

  Mrs. Pond sighed then nodded, “Unfortunately. But look, I’ll see you later on today, I almost forgot I had a class to teach.” She smiled again, but this time it wasn’t as joyous.

  “Oh, yeah, definitely,” I nodded. “It was really good seeing you though.”

  “Yes, it really was Rose,” she said before she gave me another hug and walked back into her classroom without shutting the door.

  I figured it was time to head to the office for instructions now, but before I did I took a look at the girl one more time. It was almost as if it were in slow motion the way that she turned her eyes up from her book, just enough to get another look at me. She had sent another set of chills down my spine, and I snapped my head back around towards the office.

  Once I was inside I noticed that the same secretary worked here. I never knew her name, but she was always so nice. She was looking down at her computer with a full head of gray hair and a pair of reading glasses on. I don’t remember her wearing glasses the first time, but I guess age finally got to her eyes.