"I said drop it!" she screamed, and the sound was like a gunshot in the confined space, vibrating against the glass partitions.
He fumbled, dropping the device, and it skidded across the floor, sliding under the heavy metal desk.
I stood frozen, my mind racing to reconcile the woman I thought I knew with the person currently threatening my life.
"You think you're the only one who plays the long game?" she asked, stepping closer, the gun never wavering from my chest.
I felt the sweat prickling at my hairline, the crushing weight of a plan gone catastrophically wrong.
"I didn't come here to save you, and I certainly didn't come here to help Rourke," she spat, her lip curling in a display of genuine hatred.
She looked past me, fixing Rourke with a stare that promised a kind of agony I had only ever seen in the deepest pits of the underworld.
Rourke backed away, his hands raised, his bravado completely shattered as he realized he was merely a pawn in a game he didn't even know existed.
"Who are you?"
I whispered, my voice barely audible over the sudden, deafening silence of the precinct.
She didn't answer, her attention fully occupied by the two men in front of her, both of us now desperate, both of us now prey.
She reached into her jacket with her free hand, not for a badge, but for a small, encrypted key card that she dropped onto the file I had originally brought in.
"The evidence you have is garbage," she said, her eyes flashing with a dangerous, manic intelligence.
"The real files, the ones that connect this precinct to the human trafficking ring in the docks, are on this card."
I looked down at the card, then back at her, feeling the walls of the room closing in as the reality of her true intent finally crystallized.