He didn’t see a father. He didn’t see a police officer. He saw a threat.
“Security!” Skinner yelled, his voice cracking. He pointed a shaking finger at me. “You! Step away from the teacher! I have the resource officer on the way!”
Mrs. Halloway scrambled up, clutching the torn pieces of Lily’s test to her chest like they were diamonds. “He threatened me, Principal Skinner! He barged in here and forced me to the ground!”
She found her courage again now that another authority figure was in the room. She pointed at me, her eyes wide with feigned terror. “He’s clearly on something. Look at him!”
I didn’t move. I didn’t shout. I slowly turned my head to face Skinner. I still had my badge in my hand, but Skinner was too panicked to look at my hands. He was looking at my dirty hoodie and the “tattoo” on my neck.
“Sir,” Skinner said, trying to deepen his voice. “I am going to ask you once to leave the premises. If you do not, you will be arrested for trespassing and assault.”
“Assault?” I repeated calmly. “Define assault, Principal Skinner.”
“You… you threw her to the ground!”
“Did I?” I looked at the students. “Did I touch her?”
The class was silent. They were terrified. But then, a small boy in the front row—a kid with glasses who looked like he’d been bullied his whole life—spoke up.
“He didn’t touch her,” the boy squeaked. “She fell. He just told her to pick up the test she ripped.”
Skinner blinked. He looked at Halloway. “You ripped a student’s test?”
“It was trash!” Halloway shrieked, losing her composure again. “The girl cheated! Her father… look at him! A man like that doesn’t raise an honor student. He raises… delinquents. I was simply discarding a fraudulent document.”
I stepped forward. Skinner flinched back.
“Principal Skinner,” I said, my voice cutting through the hysteria. “My name is Detective Jack Reynolds.”
I held the badge up again, right at Skinner’s eye level. “Badge number 4922. Organized Crime Division.”
Skinner froze. He squinted at the gold shield. He looked at the ID card. Then he looked at my face. The realization hit him like a physical slap. His mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water.
“D-Detective?” he stammered.
“Mrs. Halloway has just accused my daughter of academic dishonesty based solely on my appearance,” I said, my voice icy. “She then destroyed school property—a graded exam—in front of twenty witnesses. And when I identified myself, she lied to you and claimed I assaulted her.”
I took a step closer to Skinner. He smelled of cheap cologne and fear.
“Now,” I continued, “I want to know why a teacher in your school feels comfortable profiling a student and her family based on their socioeconomic appearance. And I want to know why you assumed I was a criminal before you even asked for my name.”
Skinner was sweating now. “Detective, I… surely there is a misunderstanding. Mrs. Halloway is a tenured teacher. She has high standards…”
“She ripped my daughter’s perfect score in half,” I interrupted. “That’s not high standards. That’s malice.”
I turned to Lily. She had stopped crying, but she looked exhausted. “Lily, pack your bag. We’re going to the office.”
“But… the test…” Lily whispered, looking at the scraps in Halloway’s hands.
“Bring the pieces,” I ordered Halloway. “We’re going to tape it back together. And then you are going to grade it again. In front of me.”
Halloway scoffed, trying to regain her ground. “I already graded it. It’s a zero. She cheated.”
“Then prove it,” I said. “We’ll go to the office. Lily will take a new test. A harder one. Right now.”
Halloway smiled—a nasty, predatory smile. “Fine. If she fails, she’s expelled for cheating. That’s the policy.”
“And if she passes?” I countered.
Halloway laughed. “She won’t.”
“If she passes,” I said, leaning in close, “I want your resignation.”
Chapter 4: The Impossible Test
The conference room in the main office was sterile and cold. It had a long mahogany table that probably cost more than my car. Lily sat at one end, a fresh pencil in her hand.
Principal Skinner sat at the head of the table, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else in the world. Mrs. Halloway sat opposite me, looking smug. She had gone to the math department head and requested the “Category C” exam.
I knew what that was. I’d seen Lily’s textbooks. Category C was the advanced placement challenge test. It was meant for kids two grades above Lily. It was full of complex algebraic equations and geometry problems that most adults couldn’t solve with a calculator.
“You have sixty minutes,” Halloway said, sliding the thick packet across the table to Lily. “No calculator. No scratch paper.”
“No scratch paper?” I asked. “That’s unreasonable.”
“She’s a genius, isn’t she?” Halloway smirked. “Geniuses don’t need scratch paper.”
I looked at Lily. She looked pale. She looked at me, her eyes wide with panic.
” deep breath, Lil-bit,” I said softly. “Just do what we do at the kitchen table. Visualize the numbers. You know this.”
She nodded. She closed her eyes for a second, took a deep breath, and picked up her pencil.
The room went silent. The only sound was the scratching of graphite on paper.
I watched Halloway. She was scrolling on her phone, looking bored. She didn’t think there was a chance in hell Lily would pass. She thought she had won. She thought she had humiliated the “thug” and his “cheating daughter.”
Ten minutes passed. Then twenty.
Lily was moving fast. Faster than I expected. Her hand was cramping, she shook it out, and kept writing. She was in the zone.
I sat there, still in my dirty undercover clothes, feeling a strange mix of pride and rage. I thought about the nights I spent studying with her. People see me—big, scarred, rough—and they assume I’m dumb. They don’t know I have a Master’s in Criminology. They don’t know I handle complex logistics for RICO cases. They don’t know that math is the only thing that makes sense to me when the world gets chaotic.
And I passed that love of logic to her.
“Time,” Halloway announced, though only forty-five minutes had passed.
“She has fifteen minutes left,” I argued.
“She’s stopped writing,” Halloway pointed out.
Lily put her pencil down. She looked up, her face unreadable. She pushed the packet toward Halloway.
“I’m done,” Lily said quietly.
Halloway snatched the packet. She pulled a red pen from her pocket like a weapon. “Let’s see how badly you failed.”
She started grading. The first page. Slash. Correct. The second page. Slash. Correct.
Halloway’s brow furrowed. She flipped the page faster. The scratching of her red pen stopped. There were no X marks to make.
Page three. Perfect. Page four. Perfect.
The silence in the room grew heavy. Skinner leaned forward, watching Halloway’s face change from smugness to confusion, and then to pure, unadulterated shock.
Halloway got to the last question. It was a derivation problem that I struggled with.
She stared at it. She checked her answer key. She checked Lily’s work.
Slowly, Mrs. Halloway lowered the pen. Her hand was trembling.
“Well?” I asked. My voice was quiet, but it echoed in the room.
Halloway didn’t look up. She couldn’t.
“Mrs. Halloway?” Skinner asked nervously. “What is the score?”
Halloway swallowed hard. She looked like she had just swallowed a lemon.
“It’s…” she choked on the word. “It’s perfect.”
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you,” I said, leaning back in my chair and crossing my arms over my chest. “Say it louder.”
“It’s perfect!” Halloway snapped, throwing the packet onto the table. “She must have seen this test before! You stole the answer key! There is no way a child from… from your background… could know this!”
I stood up. The chair scraped loudly against the floor.
“My background?” I walked over to the table and slammed my hand down on the mahogany. “My background is protecting this city from people who actually hurt others. My background is staying up until 3 AM helping my daughter study because her mother passed away three years ago and I’m the only parent she has left.”
Halloway flinched at the mention of her mother.
“She didn’t cheat,” I said, my voice rising. “She outsmarted you. And you hate it. You hate that a girl who looks like her, with a dad who looks like me, is smarter than you are.”
I looked at Skinner. “I want that resignation. Now.”
“Now, Detective,” Skinner said, holding up his hands. “Let’s not be hasty. Mrs. Halloway is a valuable asset…”
“Valuable?” I pulled out my phone. “Because I’m pretty sure the video that’s about to
