⋆° დ ༄ RISKY BUSINESS
chapter thirty two. get back to even.

Maxine walks into the kitchen to see her boyfriend cooking them dinner and she smiles. God, I love this man. Maxine immediately freezes. What the hell did I just say?

Maverick turns around to see his girlfriend frozen in place and raises an eyebrow, "you okay?"

Maxine quickly nods her head, "Hmm"

Maverick turned back around to stir the sauce and says, "so I was thinking we could get away this weekend"

"Where to?" The detective asks, walking over to the taller man, "taste please"

Maverick smiles bringing the red sauce covered spoon up to his favorite pair of lips for her to taste his mom's recipe, "New York. I have some business to take care of over there and I want to show you that there's a lot more outside of chicago"

Maxine smiles, "Okay."

Maverick raises an eyebrow, "really? you've always said you never wanted to leave this city"

Maxine shrugs, "if you're there with me, I'll try anything"

Mavericks heart swells with love for this woman. He didn't expect anyone like her to walk into his life, with all the shit he's been through, especially now.

Maverick had been going through a rough time before he knew Maxine and the night that she walked into his night club, his whole life changed, he didn't expect to feel such a connection to her.

He smiled, putting the spoon back on the spoon holder and goes to cup his girlfriends cheeks in leans in for a kiss, "you're amazing"

"What's amazing is that sauce. Wow"

"It's my moms recipe"

"Your mom has great taste. Can't wait to meet her one day"

Maverick clears his throat, "you will, when we go to New York"

Maxine swallowed a lump in her throat, "what?"

"She lives in New York and I always visit when I'm there"

Maxine steps back, "I—I can't meet your mom yet"

"But you just—"

"We've only been together for four months"

"Baby, listen to me" Maverick said, cupping her cheeks again to calm her down, "I don't care how long we've been together. My mom will love you just as much as I do"

Maxine looks at his baby blues in shock, "what?"

Maverick tucks some of his girlfriends brunette hair behind her ears, "I love you, Maxine"

Maxine smiled, wrapping her arms around his waist, "really?" And maverick nods his head, "I love you too, Mav"

Maverick leaned in for a kiss and picked Maxine up by her thighs, who wrapped her legs around his waist.

"There's 15 minutes before the food is done.."

Maxine raises an eyebrow, "and whatever you're thinking, it'll be done in 15 minutes?"

Maverick smirks, "I guess we'll see" and he brings them over to his couch, then he takes off his t-shirt and throws it on the ground.

~~~

*ring ring ring*

Maverick slowly opens his eyes and yawns as he grabs the phone from the coffee table. "Hello?"

"Who is this?"

"Maverick. You called me"

"No, I called Maxine. Where is she?"

Maverick looked at the phone then puts it back to his ear, "sorry. Hold on a sec" then he gets up from the couch, "baby, phone!"

Maxine walks out of the bathroom and grabs her phone from her boyfriend, "hello?"

"Hey"

"Hey Jay. What's up?"

"We got a scene"

"Okay, I'll be right there. Just text me where"

"Sure" then he hangs up the phone. Maxine looks at her phone for a second, "okayyy" then she walks into mavericks bedroom to see him lying in bed, "I gotta go. Caught a scene" then she walks over to the dresser and opens one of the drawers on her side of the dresser and takes out a pair of jeans and a shirt.

Maverick hops out of bed and goes to wrap his arms around her waist, "be safe, baby."

Maxine turned around and wraps her arms around neck, "always"

"I'm serious. I'll never stop worrying about you"

Maxine leans in for a kiss with the taller man, "Aw, you're cute" then she walks away.

🪩🪩🪩

Maxine stuffs her hands in her coat pockets, as she, Jay and Hank walk under some crime scene tape to their crime scene, where they meet up with Antonio and Al.

"Watch your step. They're still flagging brain matter" Antonio tells them.

"Truck driver?" Voight asks.

"Names Aaron Mclntire, he's in the wind. No eye witnesses. Don't count on anyone coming out of the woodwork down here"

"The Sedan came back stolen" Jay says.

"What, you've done this before?" Dawson asks, sarcastically.

As the five detectives keep walking and surveying the crime scene, a crime techie approaches them with an evidence bag in hand and hands it to Dawson. "Detective? Found these in the cab of the truck. Crystal meth, looks like"

"No. These are Jesus Malverde crystals" Dawson corrects the crime tech guy, "Patron Saint of Mexican drug dealers. They carry them to ward off evil. Could've fallen out of someone's pocket"

"Alright, so it's a truck jacking gone bad" Hank says, then looks at the techie, "You check the container?"

"Uh, we were waiting on you guys. There's a smugglers lock on the door"

"This kids in the gang database" Olinsky says, looking at his phone, "Darius Gifford. He's with the Gangster Disciples. I'm guessing his buddy is in it too"

"It's a long way from home. I mean, this is vice lord territory. You got a LKA?" Dawson asks.

"Yeah, public housing in Deuce"

"Alright, Jay and I will roll there. We'll notify the family" Max says, before she and her partner walk away.

🪩🪩🪩

Max and Jay get to the Gifford family home to notify them of Darius' death and they stand on either side of the door and Jay knocks.

"Who's there?" A child's voice calls out.

"Police, can you open up?"

A couple seconds later, the door opens and a little girl who looks about to be 11 stands before them. "Can I see a badge, please?"

"Yeah, sure" Maxine says, showing her badge to the girl, "They're real, I promise"

"I'm Jay and this is Max" Jay says, introducing them to the girl, "What's your name?"

"I'm Denise"

"Denise, is anybody home with you right now?" Max asks and Denise shakes her head no.

"Does Darius Gifford live here?" Jay asks.

"Mhmhm. He's my brother"

"Can we look inside his room?"

"No, cause he said nobody's allowed in his room"

"We're allowed" Jay says, opening the door more so they can walk in and go straight for his room.

Once the two go in with Denise close behind them and they look around and see the room is a mess.

"Looks like our DOA came here to change out of anything identifiable" Jay says and Max sighs, looking at the girl and asks. "Denise, was your brother here with a friend?"

"Yeah, with Andre and another boy I didn't know. They were yelling at him a lot, and Andre had a gun"

"Did your brother have a gun too?" Maxine questions and Denise nods, "Who else lives here with you?"

"Just me and Darius. My mom is dead and my dad had to go to jail" Denise says and Maxine's heart breaks. She couldn't fathom what this child must be going through.

"Alright, we're gonna take a ride then, okay?"

"Hey, we have a problem" Jay says, handing Maxine a card with Hank's name on it from when he was in the gang unit and Max looks up at Jay in surprise.

🪩🪩🪩

"Our two DOA's from the truck" Maxine says, walking into Voight's office with Jay and Al behind her, "Darius Gifford and Andre Davis" then she shows him two photos, "Both up and comers with Gangster Disciples"

"They changed at Darius' apartment. Them and a third guy, who was kind enough to leave behind his wallet" Jay says.

"This came out of the wallet belonging to a Charles Gray" Max says, handing Hank the card, "We think he was the third occupant of the car at the scene"

"Except Charles has no record" Olinsky says, as Hank plays with the card in his hand, "He's not in the gang database, unlike our victims slash possible offenders"

"The little girl, Denise, says they had a gun to him. So, sounds like he was coerced" Maxine says.

"Well, let's find him and ask how this wound up there" Voight says, raising the card.

"Yeah. You got any ideas?" Jay asks, leaning on the doorway.

"If I did, I would've shared 'em"

"Charles has an unknown father, his mother is Michelle Post, lives nearby" Al comments.

"Hmm.." Voight hums, looking down at the ground, "Alright, well somebody knew something about this truck. Ask Narcotics if they heard any chatter about a two million dollar shipment coming in" Hank continues, as he gets his coat off the coat rack and puts it on, "And I wanna know everything there is to know about this driver. Did he run or was he snatched ...I'll talk to Michelle Post"

Voight leaves his office and so does Maxine who goes to sit at her desk.

"Who is Michelle Post?" Jay asked the older detective.

"Well, that's the lady Voights going to talk to" Al says, walking away.

Maxine watches Jay sit at his desk and she raises an eyebrow, "is everything okay?"

"Yeah"

~~~

Maxine, Jay and Erin stand around the white board, looking at the crime scene photos when Hank walks onto the unit.

"Hey, you get anything from the mom?" Erin asks, her arms crossed over each other.

"Not really. Where are you guys at?" Hank says.

"Well, the truck has never been opened. It's a botched robbery" Max says, "How does that happen? I think Charles and his friends were riding behind the truck, as security and they got hit by Mexican drug bangers"

"Which explains the Malverde crystals at the scene" Jay says, cutting in then Bishop continues on. "Uh-huh. Kids go down defending their product. Charles knows the cops are coming, so he runs. He's either dead or he's hiding"

"No, Charles ain't caught up" Voight says.

"How do we know that?" Jay asks.

"Look, his friends are gangbangers, he isn't. We can't even place him at the scene. I wanna know where the truck was headed and whose drugs they were"

"That's cool. But, what I asked was, how do we know Charles isn't caught up?" Jay said and Maxine and Erin give each other a look.

"Because I said so"

"Ruzek's trying to figure out where the drugs were headed" Max says.

"Alright, where's the driver?" Hank questions.

"We got an alert out on him, nothing from state troopers yet. Olinsky's headed to his apartment to check it out" Erin added.

"Move faster" Voight says, walking into his office.

🪩🪩🪩

Maxine, Jay and Erin are in their car, waiting outside a warehouse, scoping out the place with Kevin and Adam on the opposite street in a van doing the same thing.

"We can't just move on the warehouse. There could be twenty guys in there" max says, sitting in the drivers seat, with Erin in the passenger's seat and Jay in the back.

"Could be hiding Charles in there" Jay says.

"Why do you wanna find this kid?" Lindsay asks, "You trying to make a point to Voight?"

"He wants us to take the lead" Jay says, then a kid on a bike ride past, staring at the three detectives and Maxine sighs.

"We're made" max says, into the walkie on her work phone, "This whole blocks on counter surveillance"

"Alright, we gonna try something different" Kevin says, as the three detectives watch the two officers talk with two teenagers and make their way inside the building and Max, Jay and Erin follow after them.

As the two boys are yelling 'no', Ruzek and Atwater are telling them to stay against the wall.

"Guys!" Lindsay calls out and everyone turns around to see a ring of fire starting to form around the buckets of drugs, which starts an even bigger fire.

"We gotta get out of here!" Ruzek yells, then tries to open the door, but it won't budge, while Kevin tries the windows, and still no luck.

"What's wrong with the door?" Max questions.

"It's locked from the outside"

"There's no other door" Erin says, running over to her co-workers.

"This is 5021 IDA. Emergency, emgerency" Ruzek says, into his walkie, "10-1, we are locked down at 2200 Wabash. Roll fire. I repeat, roll fire. We are surrounded by flames, holding two offenders"

As everyone starts coughing their lungs out, Erin sees a built-in wall fan and runs over to it to see if she can knock it out, but when she can't she calls over Kevin and Jay to help her while Maxine helps Adam try to pry the door open.

Once Jay successfully kicks the fan in and gets out of the building, he runs around to the door to let everyone out.

"Maxie, you okay?"

Maxine looks up at her best friend from coughing, "I'm good. I'm good"

🪩🪩🪩

Back on the unit, after Adam and Kevin interrogate the two offenders from the warehouse. The team gathers around the white board.

"G-Ds put ten grand on the street for any information that IDs Charles" Adam informs the team.

"So, I looked into his social media, his facebook" Mouse says, "There's no overlap with the victims from the robbery. He must know 'em from the bad old days. So, so maybe he's safe"

"Guys, we missed this" Jay says, walking over to the white board and taping a picture up, "Charles has a class A license. He knew how to drive a tractor trailer"

"Alright, so he's a good kid with bad friends. He gets pulled into their robbery crew to be a getaway driver. They were gonna hijack their own truck" Maxine says, sitting back in her chair.

"The Mexican angle, what are we missing?" Kevin asks.

"Plenty. Without Charles, we don't have a witness" Jay answers, looking at Voight.

"So, the missing truck drivers our most likely murder suspect" Adam says, "Charles and his buddies roll up, driver starts blasting"

"Aaron Mclntire. Forty seven years old and according to his trucking company, a model employee" Al says, reading from a piece of paper, then hands it to Kevin, who says. "Yeah, a model employee registered with a forty caliber handgun. Same caliber as the victims at the scene"

"We checked his apartment, his car was still in the lot" Al says, as Antonio walks onto the unit, "We alerted drug interdiction agencies along the highway...nothing"

"I should be sitting across from this guy right now, okay? He's halling drugs, might've killed two kids a mile from here" Voight says.

"He has two step sons from an ex wife. His son Keith, is local" Antonio says.

"Hit it, you and Al"

Maxine walks into the break room where Jay is grabbing a water from the fridge and sits on the edge of the table, "So, what'd Voight say?"

Jay sighs and looks at his partner, "he told me a story."

"On how he gave the mom a card"

"And because of that, we operate in the dark"

"Jay, listen. The way Voight works, the way his mind works. It's never going to be the same as yours. He might be a little more reckless than you but I trust him, okay? He took me under his wing when I joined gangs, he taught me a lot. He taught me to always go with my gut"

"Maybe. I just would like to think I could handle it"

"I hear you" Maxine said, pushing herself off the table, "the kid matters to Voight. So he matters to me. That's the gig. It's simple" then she walks away.

~~~

"Truck driver ID'd this guy" Lindsay says, pointing to a picture on the board, "Octavio Ramirez is our gunman. He hit on both FBI and ICE databases"

"Wanted for multiple drug related murders in Durango, if it was his job to secure that shipment, you better believe he's looking for Charles Gray. He's gotta send a message" Bishop says.

"This is good work. You put out an investigative alert" Antonio asks.

"And got the FBI to add him to Chicago's most wanted"

~~~

"I blew it" Nadia sniffles, sitting at her desk.

"Are you kidding? No you didn't" Erin says, sitting on the edge of Nadia's desk.

"Patrols gonna be telling that story for years" Maxine adds, standing in front of her desk.

"Commander Fischer screamed at me" Nadia states.

"I'm intelligence, that usually just means you're doing your job"

"What was I thinking"

"You weren't" Erin's says, grabbing the young girls hand, "your instincts took over. Alright, and they're good instincts. You backed up roman and burgess. You stopped those two clowns before they got away"

"What do you wanna do, Nad? You wanna keep answering phones? Cause it doesn't matter to us, either way. We want what you want" Maxine reassures the brunette.

"I want to be a chicago police officer"

"Let's do it then"

"We got your back" Erin states.

🪩🪩🪩

"I know, I'm sorry I couldn't come to New York with you. Next time, okay? Promise"

"Okay. I'll be back in a few days. I love you, Maxine"

"I love you too, Mav" Maxine says then hangs up the phone, putting it in her back pocket and knocks on the door in front of her.

When Jay opens the door to find his partner, he grows shocked, "hey, what's up?"

"I heard what happened to Charles. Came to check on your brother" Maxine said, walking into her partners apartment, "glad you're okay too. Hey Will"

Will turned around on the couch to see Maxine and he smiles, taking a sip of his beer, "Hey Max. What are you doing here?"

"Came to check up on you" She said, sitting on the couch next to the red head.

"Aw" he smiles. Jay rolls his eyes and goes to grab Maxine a beer and sits across from them.

authors note;

max and maverick said i love you 🥺🫶🏼🫶🏼❤️❤️
and jay, your brothers trying to slide in on your girl, I mean *cough cough* partner. 😭