LYING COP

by Sandy Night

  Twirling in circles, the bottom of her feet skimmed over smooth rocks, inching her closer to the powerful spray. Her chest submerged and she gasped from the freezing sensation. Her nipples tingled. She couldn’t help it; she glanced his way but didn’t see him.

  Colt couldn’t have gone too far.

  She drank some before going under, and then she opened her eyes. The pressure from the waterfall rolled before her and she swam into it. The bubbling action massaged her body like a giant Jacuzzi. She rolled over like a seal and gazed upward at the sight of massive amounts of water cascading down on her like a thrill ride.

  She popped up on the other side, energized, as if her battery had been charged by a power plant. Through the spray, she spotted Colt knee-high in the water, wearing only his gray jockeys. She swam out to get a better view.

  He stood rigid. His biceps bulged and a pinkish hue colored his side. Bloody scratches streaked his arms as if he had gotten into a fight with a bobcat.

  “Take off your underwear,” she called out.

  He flipped a glance over his shoulder toward the trees. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not,” Alaska teased, eyeballing his thick crotch. “I’ve already seen your dick, remember.”

  He bent over and used his hands as cups to rinse his arms.

  She glided toward him. “Sissy.”

  “So.”

  Floating on her belly, she spewed water out of her mouth. Then she gave him a hefty splash.

  “Why you little vixen.” He reached out to grab her.

  She backed up into the deeper part, not thinking he would follow but he did. He thrashed in the water like a grizzly after a fish.

  “Ha, ha, ha, ha,” she laughed.

  He seized her like a cop, clutching her arm, but pulled her in firm against his chest like a lover. His body simmered like a burner on low heat.

  Her arms encircled his neck. She placed her mouth over his and kissed him with a driving force. His soft tongue danced in rhythm with hers. He stood statute strong, chest high in the natural pool water. Her legs wrapped around his waist.

  She detected him tugging at his underwear, and then he slipped his magnificent dick inside her. An arousing sensation coursed through her whole body. She leaned her head back, drew in a deep breath, and let it out with a soft sigh.

  She hugged him tighter and muzzled her face against his neck. Licking his skin, she tasted sweet salt.

  He gripped her butt cheeks and guided her as he rocked with the gusto of a 747 airliner rolling for takeoff. She clung to his shoulders. The water around them swooshed and churned.

  Then she came like an enormous itch being scratched, but it didn’t stop, it escalated to a height unbeknownst to her. Her brisk breathing jingled her vocal cords and when her hot-air balloon hit the ceiling above the clouds, Colt’s body tensed.

  She loosened the hold on his neck and faced him. His luxurious brown eyes invited her in as if the windows to his inner being hung wide open. She entered and sensed their souls had been welded together by the highest heat known to man.

  A blue jay squawked and flew across the water. Alaska dropped her legs, dunked, and swam to shore. She emerged with her arms crisscrossed over her chest.

  As she twisted water out of her hair, she watched Colt who stayed in the water, kneeling beneath the surface. Frogs croaked.

  Colt surfaced. “Do you have my underwear?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you see them anywhere?”

  “No.”

  *****

  Colt could have sworn he put his foot through the leg opening of his underwear and stood on them the whole time he made love like a man of the wilderness.

  Maybe they’re buried. He went down again, eyes open and burning. The water did him good getting the rest of the dirt particles out that he didn’t have time to tend to. He dug around the pebbles and rocks, but couldn’t locate his jockeys.

  Maybe he should look at the big picture. Slumbering out of the natural pool, his gaze switched every which way. A chill set in his bones as he stood by the edge, staring past the once glass like surface. But he couldn’t see a thing. A cloud formation of silt darkened the water from his stirring around the bottom.

  Best to let it go, no sense in obsessing over a pair of dang underwear. Collecting his jeans and shirt from the bushes, he scanned the thick forest wall that encircled them. Then he shook his clothes out like a beach towel layered with sand.

  Alaska stood fully clothed as she fiddled with the flashlight, swiveling the top around, peering at the beam. “Where’d you get this?”

  “In the deputy’s SUV, I was looking for a weapon and that’s all I could find.”

  She slapped the front end into her palm. “I guess this would work.”

  Colt followed her out of the hollow. After she cleared the top, she took off like a shopper the day after Thanksgiving. But she headed the wrong way. He jogged to catch up, holding his side with one hand. Either the soreness had set in, or his mind finally acknowledged the fact he had pain. “Whoa, sweetheart, where you headed?”

  “Move that boulder and get Whip out.”

  He reached out and took hold of her hand, making her stop. “We can’t go back there.”

  She spun around. “Why not?” She tilted her head and left her lips ajar.

  Colt chuckled. “Ah, the three stooges from hell.”

  “So, we’ll sneak back. And besides, somebody crashed, bet they’re not wandering around.”

  He gazed past the top of her head. “We need to pin-point the cave entrance. That will be the first place I come back to with help.” He looked into her feral green eyes. “Whip’s not getting past that boulder, but he could travel through the tunnel and get out like I did.”

  She blinked. “What if he already got out?”

  “No way, it’s tough down there. The only way he could have gotten out soon would be if he had been familiar with the tunnel. And I don’t think any one of them knew about it or they wouldn’t have tossed me or him down there.”

  “Well, let’s go.”

  Chapter 17

  Colt waded through high grass and wildflowers with Alaska plodding behind him. The area appeared different, but the blinding sun now hovered at a late afternoon stance instead of straight overhead. He halted to glare at the arched gap in the earth. Hell’s exit. A thickness formed in his gullet as if his stomach was twisting to anatomically rearrange itself.

  Shadowed by bramble, the mouth of the cave expanded then receded as if it breathed life. And then it yawned like a pet greeting its owner. Colt turned the other way. It had been a long, long, dramatic day. Without looking, he pointed at it with a quivering finger. “There it is.”

  Gazing at the distant dark hills soothed his soul like hot soup on a cold day. He began trekking downward, glad to be back where he had started, and this time he brought Alaska. Now he could run into hikers, or approach a home.

  “I’m sure we’ll be somewhere safe by dark,” he said over his shoulder. “This spread of pine might lead to a logger’s road. If we’re lucky, maybe spot a wildlife officer and flag him down.”

  The fullness in his throat subsided like a faucet turned off. He envisioned raiding the refrigerator at the cabins. “Getting hungry?” he asked.

  No answer.

  “Bet you’re tired,” Colt added.

  No response.

  He spun around. She was no where in sight. Maybe she had to do business in the bushes. She should have told him. “Alaska,” he called out. “Alaska!”

  Thirty yards away, her head and chest popped out of hell’s domain like a jack in the box. “Hurry,” she yelled, and then she disappeared back inside.

  That wild woman went in the cave. And she had the dang flashlight. How could he have not thought of getting it back from her after she picked it up at the waterfall? He hung his head like a scolded dog.

  *****

  The ancient walls inside the hill’s dark cavity tapered down to a
fork in the back, creating two narrow passageways. Alaska squatted, switching the beam of light back and forth. She grimaced, knowing if she took the wrong one, not only would she not get Whip, but she could get lost in a network of tunnels that had the potential of going on for miles. She needed Colt, what was taking him so long.

  He probably couldn’t see her. She had gone in deep, behind a cluster of columns. Getting off her knees, she located the sloping overhang with her free hand, making sure she didn’t hit her head. “Colt,” she called.

  She turned around and slipped back through the maze of vertical limestone, and located the heap of large rocks she had stumbled over going in.

  The faint echo of a squealing animal came from beside her.

  What the hell?

  She pointed the glow from the flashlight over the layered wall and made loops. It landed on a hole the size of a patio table. She peered in with the light and discovered it to be a tunnel that stretched on an incline. Standing on her toes, she leaned inside up to her waist. It had to be man-made, like some kind of secret… Holy Crap. Was this Colt’s tunnel? How awesome.

  Again, the peculiar whine trickled down the passage like a distant squall. Was it a stuck animal or?

  “Whip,” Alaska hollered. “I’m coming after you, you wretched piece of a human being!”

  She backed out and moved on into the front room of the cave, swinging the light around. “Colt, where are you?”

  “I’m here.” His figure materialized at the entrance as a silhouette. Broad shoulders tapered down to his waist and he had one arm extended sideways as if he held onto the mouth of the cave.

  “I found it, your tunnel.” Alaska headed toward him but stopped. Something appeared wrong. He did not come toward her even though he could obviously see her from the light she held. She placed the beam directly on him. His eyeballs bulged and the veins in his arm pressed against his skin as if he held the earth up. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Come here,” he said.

  A corner of her mind sensed a foreboding danger as if he portrayed a bad guy trying to lure her out of safety. But he wouldn’t hurt her, ridiculous. “No.”

  “C’mon.” He held out his free hand without releasing his other one and beckoned to her as if he was in the middle of an intersection directing traffic.

  “Oh, now I get it, you’re scared, aren’t you?”

  “C’mon, Alaska,” he pleaded. “Just come over here.”

  “You had no light, did you? And you didn’t know where you were, or where to go. You couldn’t see a damn thing, could you?”

  Poor guy, she bit her knuckle. He had no intention of going back in there, and he wanted the flashlight so she wouldn’t go in there. She took a step back. “But we have light now,” she said, holding it underneath her chin and smiling.

  “That tunnel is dangerous. We need help; professionals with the proper equipment.”

  “Relax, it’s just a tunnel.”

  “No, it isn’t. It could collapse. And there’s something in there.”

  “The boogie-man?”

  “I don’t know what it was, but there’s a skeleton.”

  “Oh, a ghost? I love ghost hunting, that’s a hobby of mine.”

  “You don’t want to go in there.” Colt stepped forward. “Trust me.”

  “Ha!” Alaska jerked around head first, twisted her waist and scuttled butt.

  When she got within a foot of the tunnel, a heavy breath caressed her right ear. She flung her arm out expecting to push Colt off her, but didn’t touch him. He apparently didn’t come up directly behind her. She lifted herself up and scurried on her knees like a rat in the woodwork, pounding the flashlight on the hard dirt so she could use both hands. The golden beam bounced ahead of her like waves.

  The long incline tired her and she stopped at the turn. The wailing had ceased and she listened to her own labored breathing coupled with that of someone else—Colt. Leaning her back against the carved burrow, she pulled her knees up and flashed the light behind her to reveal him in the darkness. But she didn’t see his features; instead she saw, a phantom’s pale round face with blue eyes and red sideburns, glaring at her.

  She let out a bungee-jumping, nose diving scream.

  The stranger vanished.

  The shocking encounter sent an electrical current coursing through her body, rendering her paralyzed except for the rapid drumbeat of her heart.

  The illumination of the flashlight remained on the decline of the tunnel, showing no one. Alaska began breathing again. “Holy shit!”

  She had a decision to make, go back to Colt and the safety of his arms wrapped around her, or go on for Blade and get him exonerated? Her hand trembled and the light vibrated as she gazed into the ominous steep darkness in store for her. If she hurried it wouldn’t be too bad, but she didn’t know how far she had to go. She needed Colt.

  She yelled, “Colt!”

  No response.

  “Damn it.”

  Well the ghost did go away.

  “Oh, I love ghost hunting,” she mocked to herself. Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut, and maybe the spirit of whomever the hell that was wouldn’t have come after her.

  What the hell’s the matter with her anyway?

  “I’m not scared of ghosts,” she said, remembering the hotel ghost tour she had gone on and how she got nudged by no one there. And she had laughed. But she was with Blade, his girlfriend, and some guy. And what about the haunted houses she went to all the time, and the cemetery they used to snoop around at, at midnight too, searching for vampires and werewolves. And she’d never lost her nerve.

  What could that ghost do to her anyway? Punch her? Pull her hair? They couldn’t hurt people.

  Blade would be here right now if he could. Forget Colt and that creepy apparition.

  She slipped back into a crawling position and trudged upward, moving slowly, digging her fingers into the earth, sometimes finding a solid rock to hold onto, and then placing the top of her shoe there to push.

  Finally, the tunnel evened out like the top of a slide and then stretched out like a hallway. The flashlight began to dim. She turned it off and lay on her side to rest for a moment.

  Her knee throbbed with pain and she rubbed her hand over it, discovering a tear in her jeans and moisture mixed with grit—blood and dirt. But she didn’t care.

  Cool air settled over her, seeping into her skin. She shivered and got back up.

  “Okay Mr. Ghost,” she called out. “Get the hell out of my way!” She turned the light back on. No one appeared. “Thank God.”

  She scurried for a ways before Whip’s hollering wafted through the tunnel like a gust of wind. “Noooo, noooo, leave me alooooon…”

  Serve’s him right.

  His words turned into bawling.

  Wait until he saw her.

  She smiled at the thought of dragging his ass into the sheriff’s office, but no, that might not be a good idea, what with his prize deputy running around; better the police department.

  A skeleton’s head appeared before her.

  “Ewww!”

  Its deep eye sockets glared at her and it grinned with its teeth showing. The ribcage lay behind it in a twisted way, and the leg bones stuck straight up against the curve of the tunnel. As she searched for the best way to pass without touching it, a burst of frigid air hit her as if she had opened the door to a walk-in freezer. Then something strong gripped her ankle and pulled. She slid backwards and screamed.

  The force behind her did not stop.

  She caught her breath and screamed again.

  Chapter 18

  Colt’s anger toward Alaska for not listening to him had evaporated a great deal of the fear saturating the core of his inner being like a wet towel weighing him down. But when she screamed, that was it. His burning passion for the feral woman overpowered him and he entered the cave. He moved cautiously as his police training demanded. Protect yourself first and foremost. However, the business of t
aking care of the situation was also number one, and then you got scared.

  He slipped into the tunnel after the faint light from the flashlight disappeared, and caught up to her but stayed behind, remaining silent. He rested when she did. They’d gone a considerable distance.

  When she proceeded, he crept within inches behind her like a stalker squad car patrolling in the dead of night, looking for a reason to pull over a lone vehicle.

  She stopped at the skeleton. He figured that would be a good place to make known his presence, he needed the flashlight to search the remains for any possible identification. And he wanted to sport some revenge, like he did to his older brothers during childhood whenever they exploited him. He grabbed her ankle and pulled hard enough to make her slide backward.

  “Aaaaaahhh!” She screamed sharp enough to shatter glass, if not his eardrums.

  He kept on pulling.

  “Aaaaaahhh!”

  He released her ankle.

  She spun around with her arm raised, the light from the only weapon they had bounced off the ceiling of the tunnel. The beam dropped but before she clobbered him, he reached out with the speed of a snake strike and snatched the flashlight out of her hand. “Alaska!”

  “Colt! Holy shit, you scared the crap out of me.”

  “Smartass,” he mumbled, sitting back on his heels.

  “I can’t believe you did that,” she said in a southerly fast-pitched tone.

  “Serves you right,” he responded.

  She coiled back. “Oh…Oh, I can not believe you just said that.”

  “It’s not very much fun in here, is it?” Colt gripped the cold aluminum as if his life depended on it. “Can you imagine being in here without this?” He swiveled the top to a wider beam. “Be careful, you’re almost on top of the skeleton. Don’t mess it up.”

  “Jerk.” She turned and scrambled over the bones, it sounded like wooden wind chimes getting hit with a gust of wind.

  “Watch what you’re doing,” he called out.

  The skull toppled toward him. “What does it matter?” Alaska’s voice echoed inside the tunnel. “It already looked like it’d been in a wrestling match.”