Stay All Night
Katie Douglas
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Rick
“I’m gonna take off. Night, Rick.” Sheriff Bob Halsey stood to leave. Officers Sean and Mike followed suit.
The door slammed behind them and I sighed.
Silence.
I loved the night shift best. No people meant no troubles. Everything cops did was to solve problems made by people. In a big city like nearby Phoenix, the night shift was stressful and busy. But here in Snake Eye, things were a little different. There was very little crime.
The town only had four law men, including the sheriff. I knew we’d have two fewer cops except the home of a senator was in our jurisdiction. Only technically, mind. We never saw the guy from one month to the next. He was busy in Washington most days.
I turned on my computer screen and opened Solitaire.
This was the way I liked it. I’d been working here for six years, ever since I turned eighteen, and the night shifts had always been my favorite. I volunteered for them, and everyone let me because those guys were larks to my owl.
The only time I didn’t like the night shift was when I got a call to go to the old Clifton Schoolhouse. That place gave me the creeps even during the day.
I was about to move the two of hearts when the phone blared. I reached for it.
“Sheriff’s office, Rick speaking.”
“Ah, hey Rick, it’s Dash at the gas station. I was closing up for the night when I heard a noise out there. I’m sure it’s nothin’ but could you come over and put my mind at ease?”
“Sure thing, Dash.” I hung up and got my gun and coat. I never knew when it was going to rain water or bullets, so both were useful. Except, it almost never rained either here in the middle of Arizona.
I drove my squad car over to the gas station. Dash had gone. Place seemed empty. I poked around a little and was about to leave again, thinking the old man’s mind was playing tricks on him, when I saw a flash of what looked like a bare foot.
“Hello? Officer Rick Porteous here. Please identify yourself.”
“D-d-don’t shoot me!” A young, high voice stuttered. I hadn’t even thought of reaching for my gun. A girl crawled out from behind some old wood. She looked barely eighteen.
“I don’t know you.” I spoke with barely-concealed surprise.
“Should you?”
“I know everyone from ‘round these parts,” I explained.
“And who are you?”
She eyed my uniform suspiciously. I guessed it was a fair question, but I also suspected she’d been given some reason to distrust authorities, which I found disappointing.
In the half-light, I couldn’t make out much about her. She wore a thin cottony dress that didn’t quite reach her knees. One of her arms was wrapped in a frayed rag that looked filthy even in this light. Her hair contrasted with her skin color. She had heavy brows and dark eyes. Maybe South European heritage?
“Officer Rick Porteous. One of the cops for Snake Eye.”
“Ugh. I walked too far.”
“Where were you headed?”
“Mesa.” She shrugged like this kind of thing happened often.
“You came out of the wrong side of Phoenix. You’re about thirty miles from Mesa.”
“Shoot.” She sounded disappointed. I guessed maybe there was dinner waiting for her some place in Mesa.
“Do you need a ride home?”
She shook her head and made a strangled cry.
“I’m not going back there. You can’t make me this time. I’m eighteen now.”
This time and now clanged in my head like dark alarm bells that she was fleeing something long-running and terrible. I needed to help her calm down so she could make a plan.
“Sure. You’re eighteen and no one will make you go home. So where would you like to go instead?”
“Go?” She looked around. “I’m not bothering anyone. Why do I need to go someplace?”
I tried not to sigh. She was young and had no idea about the law. I needed to teach her a thing or two about how the real world worked.
C’mon, you’re only six years older than her, I teased myself. I’d been taking responsibility for the town’s welfare for so long, I knew my concern wasn’t so much to do with any ideas of a vast age difference between us. I had seen what happened to drifters out in the desert. I didn’t like the idea of a young woman, barely an adult, being left to fend for herself like this.
“This is private property. The owner called me as he was concerned.” I left out the fact Dash had been jittery. The next time I saw him, I vowed to tease him that he’d been spooked by a scared young woman.
“Figures. People only get concerned when property comes into the equation.” The bitterness in her tone was evident and again I had to wonder what she’d been through.
“Ma’am, I’m going to be frank. You can’t stay here if the owner doesn’t want you here. It’s as simple as that. I can drive you someplace local.”
“That’s pretty useless.”
I didn’t like her entitled tone, like she thought I’d fix her problem. I tried to remind myself she was running away from something.
“Listen, you’ve had your problems, but that’s no excuse to be rude and entitled. If you were mine I’d—” I stopped myself. This wasn’t the time to say it. Or even think it. Was this what they meant by “Freudian slip”?
“You’d what? Send me to bed without supper? I’ve gone hungry all day.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Young lady, don’t you have any friends or relatives you could stay with?”
“No! I don’t! Dad never allowed me to have friends, and all our relatives are in Phoenix Cemetery.”
Her dad stopped her from having friends? I reminded myself Phoenix was out of my jurisdiction. The problem in front of me was what to do with this young lady, not how to rain consequences on her negligent and cruel-sounding father.
“I’m sorry to hear that. If you’ve really no place to go, I’ll take you back to the precinct.”
“You’re throwing me in jail? For being alone in the world and having nowhere to go?”
Oops. That wasn’t what I’d meant at all. I was about to explain, but she suddenly darted out of the shadows like a startled cat. She sprinted out of the gas station and down the street. I knew I could let her go, but where would that get her? She’d be hungry, broke and homeless, still. Or I’d get a call at four in the morning from Mrs. Vanderhosen to say she’d found an intruder in her chicken coop, eating eggs.
There was only one thing to do. I chased after her. She was fast. I was faster. I’d been first in my high school for track. I’d been spotted by three different colleges. Athletics scholarships were being dangled above my head. I’d not considered any of them. I had always known I wanted to be a cop.
Running fast was why I was a good cop.
I caught up with her at the intersection. The light was red but a car was turning right. The girl didn’t seem to have noticed it, or maybe she was too scared to pause. She ran out in front of the c
ar.
I dived for her, pushing her out of the way. I rolled, narrowly avoiding the wheels. The sound of a window opening made me look up.
“Sorry, officer, didn’t expect anyone to be about at this time of night,” Mr. Green said.
“No problem.” I was a little winded from hitting the street so hard, but otherwise fine.
I got up and brushed myself off. Looked around. The little minx had disappeared again.
“She went thaddaway,” Mr. Green said, pointing at the distant figure. “Get in.”
I hopped into the passenger side. It seemed unnecessary to use a vehicle for such a short trip but at least I could get ahead of her. Mr. Green drove down the street a way until we caught up with her. I threw my safety belt off and jumped out, tackling her to the ground. She wriggled, kicked, and even tried to bite me.
“I wanted to let you sleep in the precinct, but now you’re under arrest for jaywalking and biting an officer of the law,” I told her. “Want to try any more funny business?”
“Screw you, Dudley Do Right,” she snarled. I cuffed her and put her over my shoulder, then carried her back to my squad car, a few hundred yards away. Mr. Green chuckled then went on his way.
“Stop struggling, or I’ll have to charge you with something,” I told her, getting a little tired of feeling her knees hitting my ribs.
I bundled her into the back of the cop car and closed the door. As we drove away, I heard crying. When I looked into my mirror, I saw she was sobbing quietly.
“There, now.” I tried to be soothing but I don’t think I pulled it off. It was against my nature.
“My life is over,” she sobbed. “Every last part of it. I have no home, no money, no food, no friends, no school... I just have the clothes I’m wearing.”
I didn’t know what to say to that so I drove back to the precinct in silence. I parked in the bay outside the main entrance. When I opened her door, she’d stopped crying but there were still tear tracks on her cheeks.
“C’mon. It’s warm and dry, and there’re no snakes. That’s an improvement on where you were gonna sleep,” I told her, as the first fat drops of a cleansing desert rain landed all around us.
“Oh my God, I’m going to have a criminal record, now.” She didn’t seem to be listening to me. When I reached in and pulled her out of the vehicle, she didn’t resist.
I placed her feet on the ground and led her ahead of me into the precinct.
“Listen, it’s not so bad as all that,” I tried. With three brothers, I had no real experience of women getting emotional.
“How would you know? When did you last flee a life or death situation and end up getting arrested for it?” she snapped.
Once more, I didn’t have a response, so I just kept her moving into the precinct. Throughout booking her, unease grew within me, but I went ahead with the process. After all, she had broken the law. Whether or not she had a good reason to do it, the rules were there to protect everyone. She could have been badly injured when she ran out in front of a car, and who knew what might have happened to her if a drifter had found her at the gas station?
I took her to the jail cell and locked her inside. She just stood there, in the big empty jail, staring blankly at the wall. I went to the supply cupboard then returned with an armload of bedding.
“Here. You should get comfortable,” I told her, putting the bedding in with her. I locked the door again and returned to my desk on the other side of the open-plan precinct.
I made myself some coffee and opened up Solitaire again, but the sound of sobbing drifted across the room.
“Aw, damnit,” I grumbled. I couldn’t just leave her in there. It didn’t seem fair. I went to the coffee machine and poured her a cup, then took it to her.
“You want coffee?”
She stopped sniffling and looked up from her feet. Big brown eyes gazed up through wet lashes. “Yes, please.”
I passed it through the bars.
“It’s precinct coffee,” I warned her. She took a big gulp then shuddered.
“Geez! That’s... ugh!”
“It’s a little-known fact that even the best coffee in the world tastes bad if you drink it in a precinct,” I told her.
She giggled. The sound warmed my heart.
“Maybe y’all should switch to herbal tea.” She took another sip and made a face.
“You sorta get used to the coffee after a while. It’s an acquired taste.”
“Acquired?”
“Yeah. You know. Like strong cheese. Or olives.”
“Never had either of those.”
I didn’t know what to say. My family had never really struggled for grocery money. We had been far from wealthy, but my dad had a good job first as a cop, then later in his career, he’d been elected as Sheriff. My mom had gone to college after I was born and she had become a teacher. She had progressed to being vice-principal of Snake Eye Elementary School. My parents were hard working, and they had been rewarded in life.
“I’ll have to take you to an Italian place,” I told her. “They’ll have so many things for you to try.”
“I’ve had pizza before,” she replied.
“Takeout?”
“No. Frozen. But what’s the difference?”
It was like asking the difference between hops and beer.
“What’re you doing tomorrow?” I asked her.
She frowned. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether you’re charging me for anything or letting me go free in the morning.”
Oh. Yeah. She was here for a reason. I tried to pull my thoughts together. She was fascinating. I wanted to get to know her better but right now I needed to maintain a distance. At least until she wasn’t my prisoner anymore.
God, were there any more rules I could break tonight? What was with me? I was usually a good cop, committed to doing the best job I could.
“I need to go process your paperwork,” I told her gruffly, clutching at straws. I closed the jail door and went back to my desk. I tried to lose myself in meaningless bureaucracy, but she was still there, behind me. Her presence called to me. A beacon of mystery. I wanted to look around, just to see what she was doing, but I didn’t want her to know how much she’d ruffled my feathers.
She was my prisoner. I was in charge. So why did I keep getting distracted by her?
This was fast becoming the longest night of my life.
Even Solitaire was too dull.
Chapter 2
Avery
Being arrested was the icing on the cake after a day of total crap. When I’d gotten up in the morning, I had already known I needed to take off. My pop was steaming drunk and staggering around the kitchen yelling about the dishes.
I’d fled when he started throwing plates at me, but one had caught my arm. I’d wrapped it in a dirty washcloth and tried to hide in the living room but he’d found me. He grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and dragged me to my feet.
“You look just like your mom.” His tone had changed. I knew the warning sign. I had to get away. He only ever wanted one thing when he got like this. “When she was your age, she was good lookin’ too.”
“Mom’s not here,” I reminded him.
“I know that, I know, but she left you to take her place, didn’t she?”
Oh, God, no. Terrified, I flailed like a trapped animal until I broke loose of his grip. I ran out of the house. He had stood in the doorway while I ran.
“You leave, now, doll face, but when you come back, Imma whup your ass good for going. And then some. You’re mine, y’hear?” he had yelled.
That was it. I was done. Done with being yelled at. Done with him throwing things at me. Done with having no safety or privacy. Done with everything.
I had run until I had no breath left and my chest was struggling to work properly. Not now. I had collapsed on the pavement, still awake but unable to do anything but breathe. Air. I needed air. There wasn’t enough of it. My body need
ed so much more.
“Ma’am? You okay?” An old woman’s voice had butted into my thoughts. I couldn’t reply. “Hang tight, hon, I’ll call an ambulance.”
Ambulance? Not happening.
While she was on her phone, I had crawled around the corner, still unable to stand, until I was hiding behind some trash cans.
I had cupped my hands around my mouth. I’d fixed this before. I would do it again. I slowed my breathing down, tuning out the burning feeling in the muscles around my ribs. A giant elastic band compressed my lungs and stopped me taking in enough air. But I knew how to calm it down. Usually.
It took a long time to get over it. I wasn’t sure an ambulance would have done anything different to what I could do by myself. Anyway, I didn’t have insurance. Once they established that I wasn’t about to die, they would have hit me with more charges than... something really expensive, anyway.
Once I felt better, reality had hit me. I couldn’t go home. If I did, my soul would die. I could feel it. If I let my pop mistreat me one more time, something terrible would happen inside me and I’d never recover. No way was I going back.
I had no idea where to go or what to do. I didn’t even have a purse or any money. Thinking rationally was difficult. I knew I needed a job to earn money. I needed a place to stay. And I needed food.
From one of the shops on the main street, someone had walked around the corner with a big bread tray filled with rolls. They dumped them into the trash can right in front of me, without ever noticing I was there. I pulled a couple out. They looked fine, except they had expired. I bit into one. Delicious.
I had devoured the first one and was well into the second when I realized what I was doing. I was eating food from a trash can. I should be disgusted with myself. But I’d needed to eat and the food had come straight out of a bakery or café.
Stay All Night: Arizona Law 2 (Arizona Heat Book 6) Page 1