⋆° დ ༄ RISKY BUSINESS
chapter fifty one. hit me.

"Here you go, ma'am" a waitress says, setting down a drink in front of Maxine who was playing black jack at a casino.

"Thanks" Max says, before taking a sip of the amber liquid, then she looks up at the dealer, "hit me"

"Twenty one" she says.

"Yes!" Maxine smiles, as everyone at the table claps. Jay laughs and says, "This is unreal. Do you wanna take it up to the room?"

"Maybe later. I wanna go out" Max smiles then stands up from the table, "Gentleman. Lady" then she grabs all her chips to bring to the money booth to collect her winnings.

~~~

"Eight. Nine. Thousand" the lady says, handing Maxine the money she won. Max smiles and says, "Thank you" going to put her winnings into her purse, when she's stopped by one of the guards.

"Ma'am, you've had a nice night. I'd like to offer you a car home" the man says.

"Aw, that's so sweet. I'm actually okay to drive" Max says, then puts a 100 into the mans pocket and walks away into the lobby.

"Hey" Jay shouts, following Maxine, "Where you going?"

"The city" she smiles, "I want to spend some of this"

"You're gonna drive? How many whiskey's have you had? Seven?"

"Oh, now you're counting?"

"Yeah, when I'm dealing with a drunk, I count drinks" Jay says, earning a slap from Maxine.

"Find someone else who needs saving" she says, before walking away.

"You know what? Knock yourself out"

🪩🪩🪩

Maxine drives down the road, when she gets a call from Jay and ignores it. Then she looks up to see flashing lights behind her and pulls over.

"Do you know why I pulled you over?" the officer asks. Maxine shakes her head and says, "I have no idea, officer"

"You were swerving"

"Oh, um..I didn't realize"

"Coming from the casino?"

"Yeah"

"Where's the cash"

"Why?"

"Look, hand it over, we can forget the whole thing...or I could throw you on top of the hood, throw the cuffs, take you in for drunk driving"

"No, I-" Maxine scoffs, then takes out her winnings and hands them over to the officer. As the officer goes to walk away, the Intelligence team rolls up and gets out of their cars with their guns drawn.

"Drop the gun!" Max shouts, pointing her gun at the officer.

"Patrolman, drop the gun, or I drop you" Antonio shouts. Then when the officer gets on his knees, Atwater goes to pat him down and then cuff him, "Officer Watkins, huh? You're a disgrace to the uniform and you're under arrest. Pretty sure you know the rest of the speech.

Jay walks over to his partner, putting his coat over her shoulders and asks, "You good?"

"Yeah. I guess I was just hoping it wasn't true" Max says, then looks at her partner, "How's your face? I didn't hit you hard, did I?"

Jay chuckles and says, "I'm good"

🪩🪩🪩

Maxine looks over at her best friend, who was just standing at his locker, so she walks over to him and leans on the lockers next to him. "What's going with you? Why have you been so quiet?"

"Um—I um...Kim gave the ring back"

"Oh A" she said, putting her hand on his arm, "I'm sorry. I thought you guys were great together. I might not have liked her at first but she's a great girl and cop"

"Yeah" Adam said, then looked down at her hand to see a ring, "he finally did it?"

Maxine looked at her ring then back up at her best friend, "you knew?"

"I helped him pick out the ring"

Maxine goes to bring her brother into a hug, "I love you so much, A. Thank you"

Flashback
3 days ago

Maverick took a deep breath and walked back over to the detective, grabbing her hands, "you doing this means that you would do anything for us to be together"

"I would. I love you, Mav. So much that it hurts when I'm not with you"

Maverick cups her left cheek, caressing her cheek with his thumb, "I am absolutely and incredibly in love with you, Maxine and I would go to the ends of the earth to protect you from everything" then he gets on one knee, and opens the small box to show a Diamond ring and Maxine practically gasped, "the day that we met, I was instantly hooked on you. I had to know you. I felt this connection with you that I've never felt with anyone else and I'm so lucky that you choose me to give your heart too. Will you marry me, princess?"

"Yes. A thousand times yes"

Maverick stood up and slid the ring onto her finger, and brought his fiancé into a kiss. Maxine pushes him onto the bed and straddles his lap, taking off her shirt and throws it somewhere onto the floor.

Maverick places his hands on Maxine's hips and looks up at her adoringly. He never thought he'd ever find someone to love him for him, help him even when he can't help himself. He loved this woman more than himself.

Flashback over

~~~

"Kristie Bradford, hit three sevens on the slots at the Marquise Casino last week" Antonio says, looking at a file, "Pulled over by a uniformed police who demanded cash to let her go. She resisted. He did this to her" then he shows commander Crowley photos of Kristie's badly beaten face.

"Yeah, just crushed the orbital bone with, what we assume, the butt of his gun. Broke two ribs. She's 22" Voight says.

"Yeah, why the hell wasn't I looped in on your sting?" Watts asks.

"Internal Affairs confidential matters brought us in"

"They wanted it kept inside the unit. We thought we were going after dirty cops" Antonio says.

"You thought?" Watt asks.

"Well, the offender we have in custody was impersonating the police. He looked the part, but he's not one of ours" Hank says.

"Okay, so you two start working together on this" Crowley says, "Share files. Share information. Just keep this air tight till we know what's going on"

"Yeah, tell them, commander" Watts says. Voight looks at the detective and says, "We heard her"

"I got a problem with fake cops. So do you" crowley says before walking away. Maxine leaves the break room to see Roman and Burgess bring up Kristie Bradford as Roman says, "We have Kristie Bradford here to see Sergeant Voight"

"Of course. I'm detective Bishop. Would you follow me" Maxine says, guiding her to Hank's office.

~~~

"I'm sorry. I don't see him" Kristie says, looking a photos of men to try and identify her attacker, "the man who attacked me was...I can still...I'm sorry"

"Please don't apologize" Hank says.

"I was alone, and I shouldn't have been, with all that money. But you're supposed to trust the police. He came up to the car, and he was so friendly at first. I don't understand. If this isn't the man who attacked me, then there are more like him out there?"

"And we're gonna find him"

"He has my ID. He said he'd come after me if I came to the police. I thought that you had him"

~~~

"Clayton 'Bug' Howard" Mouse says, bringing his rap sheet up on his computer, after Antonio and Voight had interviewed the guy that had pulled Max over, "Uh, he lives in Calumet Park. He's got robbery, armed robbery, strong arm robbery, aggravated robbery..."

Max goes to print out the mans picture and says, "I'll see if Kristie IDs Bug"

"Alright, loop in our guy at the casino. Anyone shady he flagged the past two months. We need to ID the spotter" Antonio says.

After Maxine prints out Bug's picture and puts it with a bunch of other guys, for Kristie to look at, she walks into the break room and says, "Okay, take your time" then sets the pictures down in front of her. Kristie immediately points to the picture of bug and says, "It's him. Please tell me you've got him"

Max nods her head and says, "We're working on it"

🪩🪩🪩

"Officer Mularz?" Jay says, as he and Maxine walk into a diner, up to the guy, who's badge was stolen, "Hey. I'm detective Halstead"

"I'm detective Bishop" Max says, moving her coat to show him her badge, while Jay sits on the edge of one of the surrounding tables, "We're with Intelligence. We got a couple questions about your badge"

"That. I reported it lost two weeks ago. It's embarrassing. I got my suspension days coming" Mularz says.

"How'd you lose it?" Jay asks.

"I work security at a club. Strip club. Girl comes in, wants to see the girls dance. Says she got a thing for cops. Wanted to see my badge. And I came clean with this to my sergeant"

"Yeah, problem is, someone used your badge for a robbery last night"

"Oh, man. I hate hearing that. Every cop's worst nightmare, right?"

"Especially when a lady almost gets her face bashed in" Max says.

"15 minutes ago, another person posing as a cop opened up on two of our own, and he's still out there" Jay says.

"Okay, I just reached the point where I don't know what this has to do with me" Mularz says.

"Are you involved?"

"In robbing people?"

"That's right" Jay says and Mularz stands up, making Jay raise his eyebrows.

"I ought to lay you out right where you stand"

"I'd advise against trying that"

"Sam, come on. You're jammed up with the department. You need money. Your badge was used" Maxine says.

"You know how easy it is to get a duplicate?" Mularz says. Max nods her head and says, "Sure. But why dupe yours?"

"I don't know. Because whoever's behind this maybe knows I got open CR numbers on me, and I'm an easy target right now. Got you standing here in front of me, didn't it?"

"Sam, we're not buying it. Why don't you tell us what's going on here before somebody gets killed. This things going south real quick"

"You guys wanna keep talking? It's gonna be through my union rep. You all have a great day" Mularz says, grabbing his jacket and walking away. Max and Jay look at eachother then leave the diner.

🪩🪩🪩

"Clayton Howard. Ran two of our own off the road, then ditched his squad" Hank tells his team, standing in front of the whiteboard, "We're sitting on his apartment, but he knows it's burned"

"Investigative alert's out. They're running a grid search" Al says, sitting on the edge of his desk.

"Every copper in Chicago's got his photo right now. He'd better hide" Antonio says.

"Prints on the car are being processed. It's CPD issue. Registered to the 33rd district. The others to the 32nd" Adam says, leaning on the filing cabinets.

"How do you steal two squads from two different districts?" Kevin questions.

"How about you do me a little favor and find out" Hank says. Mouse stands up from his desk, hanging up his desk phone and says, "Sergeant, that was the casino. I think they found our spotter"

"You two" Hank says, pointing to Adam and Kevin.

~~~

After getting a screenshot of the real spotter from surveillance from the casino, Mouse runs his face through the system and hands the file to Kevin, who then hands it to Jay and Maxine and says, "So, I ran the spotter through faces of the nation. Now, what came back is Franklin Haynes. He did two stints for armed robbery. LKA puts him in Bucktown"

"Known associates?" Jay asks.

"Well, none other than Mr. Clayton "Bug" Howard"

🪩🪩🪩

Al kicks in the door of the residence Franklin is staying at and shouts, "Franklin Haynes. Chicago PD!"

As they go to clear out the house, Al stops at the bathroom to see Haynes leant over the tub and shot in the back of the head. Maxine sighs as her and Al give each other a look.

🪩🪩🪩

"Here lies Franklin Haynes" Antonio says, taping a picture of his body leant over the tub onto the board, "Everything he knew about this crew died with him"

"Yeah, we're still waiting on the ballistics, but the blood on Howard's shotgun is a match for Haynes" Jay says, leaning forward on his desk.

"They're cleaning house. Whoever runs this crew knows we're closing in" Erin says.

"And officer Mularz?" Hank asks.

"Lawyered up" Max says, standing up from her desk to sit on the edge of it, "We're going through those channels to set up another interview"

"You got nothing to connect him to the other guys?"

"Not yet"

"But you like him?"

Max nods her head, looking at her partner who says, "We do"

"Alright, where are we at locating Howard?" Hank asks and everybody looks at Adam, who just stares at his phone, "Ruzek?"

"Uh..we're still searching. Must've found a good hiding spot within the grid" Adam says.

"The GPS units that were in the stolen squads, they're gone" Kevin says, as he and Mouse walk onto the unit.

"And that's not easy to do. It's like a Russian doll down there" Mouse says, "It's a box inside a box..."

"Inside a box"

"So we got nothing off the cars?" Voight asks. Al looks at a file at his desk and says, "They were from two different districts, but both squads were sent to the same motor pool in area south a month ago"

"It could be Clayton Howard's got a hookup inside the motorpool" Hank says, then looks at Jay and Max, "you two"

🪩🪩🪩

As Jay and Maxine get out of their car to head towards the motor pool building, Maxine says, "Jay, I um, I need to tell you something."

"You're engaged" Jay said, disappointed as Maxine looked at his green eyes, "I noticed it when you slapped me back at the casino"

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. But you're my partner right?"

"Yeah, partners. I'm happy for you, Max. Really, I am" Jay said, then walked into the building, making her sigh.

Jay knocks on the office door at the motor pool garage and asks, "You the shift supervisor?"

"I am. You got a problem with your vehicle?"

"Uh, two of them actually. We were wondering if you can tell us where we can find these cars" Maxine says, handing the man a paper.

"Hold on a second. I'll look" He says, going to type on his computer, "Anyone want a french fry?"

"No thanks" Maxine says, then shrugs, "Well, maybe" then as she goes to take one and Jay looks at her in disbelief.

"The cars were stolen off your lot" Jay says.

"Nope. they were signed out, detective"

"Show me" Jay says, turning the computer around.

"Officer Sam Mularz. I remember her"

"Her?" Max questions.

"Yeah. Yeah, she's real pretty. Came in with her partner. Big guy. Black guy. Uh, he signed out a car two weeks before that"

"That's not her name. That's a stolen badge"

"Black officer. Is this him?" Jay asks, showing him a picture of Howard.

"Yep. one and the same" the supervisor says.

"Do you have cameras in here? We need anything you got on the partner"

🪩🪩🪩

After grabbing up Howard and getting the identity of his partner, he confesses that it was detective Watts' idea for the robberies.

"Watts arrested both Howard and Haynes on burglary charges" Jay says, as Al tapes Watts' picture up onto the board, "Instead of pushing their cases, he put them to work"

"And our first offender?" Al asks, pointing to the guy who pulled Maxine over.

"No, they don't look connected" Erin says, "Watts turned out Howard, and then he must've brought in his friend"

"Watts was the catching detective for anything out of the casino. He could've buried anything he wanted" Antonio says.

"We can't stitch up a cop on a tip from a repeat offender" Adam says, standing up from Kevin's desk.

"You think I want to go after one of ours? I mean, girls got robbed and beaten. We don't know how many. We don't know who else got hurt, because the guy in charge was investigating himself" Antonio says and the team looks over at Hank.

"We got to play this really carefully" Hank says.

🪩🪩🪩

"Antonio, you got eyes on Watts' vehicle?" Hank asks through the walkie, getting out of his SUV.

"Negative" Antonio says, as he and Kevin check out the garage of Watts' house, "Mouse, any movement on his phone?"

"Last ping was inside the house. He hasn't moved in over an hour"

"Sarg, we got movement upstairs" Jay says, as he and Maxine approach the front door, then kicks in the front door, "Chicago PD"

Then the partner duo cleared out the first floor of the house. "Watts if you're up there, come on down, now, nice and slow" Voight yells, as they all have their guns pointed at the stairs.

"It's just me. I'm coming down" Watts' wife says, walking down the stairs with her hands raised, "What the hell's going on?"

~~~

"He came home and he was looking for Jenni"

"Jenni is?" Max questions, her hands resting on her hips.

"Our daughter. She's out with friends. But he said he had an active case, and he took his gun. His shot gun. Oh my god" She sobs. Jay walks down the stairs and says, "Sarg"

"Yeah"

"It's not about money now" Jay says, showing Hank a small bag full of money, "I found this stash. It was hidden under a panel in the bedroom"

"Alright, he knows we're closing in" Maxine says. Watts' wife stands up from the couch and says, "Please. Whatever's going on...he's a good man"

Hank rests his hands on the woman's shoulders and asks, "Do you know where he'd go?" and she nods her head.

🪩🪩🪩

After finding Watts and Platt talking him down with a shotgun in his hands. Maxine walks into the locker room to see Kim and says, "Hey" going to open her locker.

"Hey"

"Certainly earned your paycheck today, huh?"

"Yeah, I'll say"

"You alright?"

"Yeah, I'm good"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Uh, anyway, I'll see ya"

"Kim" Max says, folding her arms over each other, "you know, Sergeant Platt and I are pretty close. She's..."

"She loves you"

"Yeah, we'll call it a mutual admiration society with twizzlers. Um..she and I were talking, and I don't have to be coy here. She told me that you're transferring out."

"Yeah, that's right"

"Because it's that difficult to see him at work every day?"

"Because, um...because I feel really guilty about calling it off. But it needed to be called off. So, there's plenty of other places I can work, Maxine"

"Yeah, no, I hear you. But you know that when Platt signs off on the paperwork and takes it to the commander, she's gonna want to know why. You know how hard it is already to be a female cop. And I love Adam, I do, he's the best brother someone could ask for but this will follow you around. You. Not him. For the rest of your career. And I'm telling you, you have a really bright one ahead of you. Just think about it"

"Yeah"

Maxine brings Kim into a hug and says, "I'm really sorry"

🪩🪩🪩

Maxine was laying on her side of the bed, putting lotion on her legs when Maverick walked in, taking his suit jacket off and throws it on the chair.

"Hi baby"

Maverick looks over at the smile on his fiancés face and all his worries just washed away, "hi my love" then he walks over to her and leans down to give her a kiss, his cold rings causing shivers to run down her spine.

"How was work?"

"Exhausting" Maverick said, unbuttoning his shirt, "had to help security break up three fights tonight. How was your shift?"

"Long and tiring" she said, sitting up on her knees, "I know what would make both of us feel better"

Maverick turned around and said, "what?" As Maxine was untying her silk robe, "oh. oh. Yes, yes that would make me feel better" then he quickly unbuttons his pants and jumps on the bed, making Maxine laugh.

authors note;

my babies 😭😭😭💓