The Sheriff's Little Girl Read online

  Climbing back into the nest of covers, she closed her eyes right away. Being as tired as she was, she figured it would be easy for her to fall asleep. But sleep didn’t come.

  Julie kept remembering the feeling of betrayal she had felt when she had come in and seen the drugs on the kitchen table, the pain of being struck, and the terror of his threat. She remembered creeping out the window and through the town, worried that each passing car was Crank trying to catch up to her as she made her way to the sheriff’s office.

  Julie knew that the sheriff was going to keep her safe and that no one knew she was there, but it took her a long time to get her mind to stop wandering to dark places.

  Chapter Six

  Peter woke up at six in the morning, like he always did. He got up and showered, then dressed for the day. It would be a good idea to have a meeting at the station about how to best approach the investigation toward Crank as soon as possible, but he also wanted to make sure that Julie was alright before he left for the day.

  When she didn’t get up right away, he knocked gently on her door. There was no response, so he cracked the door open to peek inside.

  Julie was sound asleep, her mouth hanging open comically. The light was still on, and there was a mess of discarded clothing and accessories all over the floor. In her sleep, she had shifted around in bed so she was mostly outside the covers, lying on her tummy with her bottom on display.

  Peter tried to look away as quickly as possible, but he caught a glimpse of her bare cheeks. Her bottom was tiny, like the rest of her, but absolutely adorable. It was round and high, and her slightly tawny skin looked like it would be soft to the touch.

  He turned her light off and quickly shut the door again, mentally slapping himself on the wrist for leering at the poor girl while she slept. He decided that after a tiring day, she would need a little bit more rest, so he let her continue to snooze.

  He made himself breakfast and then decided that it would be best for him to head to work and just leave Julie a note about what she could eat. It could be hours before she woke up, he thought, and he needed to work.

  He pulled out a notepad and scribbled some instructions for her.

  Julie,

  There’s milk, cereal, eggs, cheese, and meat for sandwiches and a few other things in the fridge. Help yourself. Remember to stay in the house and not to let anyone in and not to tell anyone where you are. I’ll be back this afternoon.

  He considered writing something about picking up after herself and remembering to switch the lights off to save electricity, but he thought better of it. Julie had been through a lot recently; the last thing she needed was someone nagging her. Of course, in the long term, someone nagging her was probably the first thing she needed, but that wasn’t really Peter’s problem.

  He left the note on the table and headed for the office.

  * * *

  Peter drove home around 3:00 with good news. The meeting at the station had gone well, and they had decided to start a sting operation. An officer from a nearby town would be transferring to Palm Oasis and would go undercover as a patient at the rehab to observe Crank and see if he could catch him in the act. Peter felt hopeful that doing so would be an effective way to get Crank brought up on the most serious charges possible, and that the undercover sting combined with Julie’s testimony would put him in jail for a long time.

  The officers that Peter worked with had also agreed that for now, it made sense for him to keep Julie on his ranch. The night patrol officers would drive by once in a while when Peter was sleeping just to add extra security, and Peter would be responsible for her well-being. The alternative was to send her to a safe house in Los Angeles, and Peter kept that in the back of his mind in case this didn’t work out, but it seemed to make more sense to have Julie nearby in case the investigation needed her.

  Peter parked the car and unlocked the house, then walked into the foyer. The house seemed just as quiet as it normally did when he got home; there were no sounds of anyone being there.

  He tried to keep his cool, but Peter felt a surge of panic. Where was Julie? Had she left without his permission? Or had something happened to her?

  “Julie?” he called.

  There was no answer.

  “Julie?” he repeated.

  Still silence greeted him.

  Peter checked the room, looking in the corners and behind the doors for any intruder. Then he worked his way down the hallway, cautiously keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary. When he reached the guest room, he threw the door open quickly.

  Julie was still asleep. She was now lying on her back with the blankets in a pile on the floor next to her and her legs splayed open.

  Peter felt instantly annoyed. “Julie!” he scolded.

  The sleepy girl still didn’t really wake. Instead she just rolled over and mumbled to herself.

  “Julie, wake up!” he ordered.

  Finally, she sat up with a fright. “Oh!” she cried. “It’s you!”

  “Yes,” Peter said sternly, “it’s me. And you gave me a serious scare, young lady!”

  Julie looked at him with disbelief. “How could I scare you when I’ve been asleep this whole time?” she asked, her tone a bit too sassy for Peter’s taste.

  “I got up and let you sleep in and I went to work. Now I’m home from work, and you’re still sleeping?” he lectured. “I know you were sleepy, but it’s three in the afternoon. That’s a bit much, isn’t it?”

  Julie’s eyes grew big. “Are you mad at me for sleeping?” she asked.

  Peter sighed. “I’m not mad at you for sleeping. I’m unhappy at you for not getting up while I was out. When I came back in, I didn’t hear you and I thought that something could have happened to you or that you left without someone accompanying you.”

  Julie scrunched up her face. “None of this is my fault, though! You didn’t tell me that I had to get out of bed! And I didn’t leave, so there.”

  Her protest was a little too immediate for Peter. He had suspected that Julie was the kind of girl who lived life without discipline and that what she really needed was a firm hand guiding her, so it shouldn’t have surprised him that she would talk back to him in his own home. But it bothered him. He was quite sure that what Julie needed was a little discipline. He had figured out already that she needed to learn some responsibility, but it was getting clearer to him that she simply didn’t know how to be respectful, either.

  Still, he cooled his temper. The poor girl had been through a lot recently, he reminded himself. While he was quite sure that her attitude wasn’t caused by her recent trauma, he didn’t think she could handle being corrected right now. So he decided to downplay his feelings.

  “You’re right. I didn’t wake you up to remind you that I didn’t want you to leave and I can’t get upset at you for that,” he said levelheadedly. “I’d appreciate it if you would get up and get dressed now, so we can talk about some things.”

  He walked off to the living room, where he sat down on the sofa to wait for her.

  Julie came in a few minutes later. She was dressed in a pink and white striped tank top and a pair of shorts. They were short, but the outfit was certainly more appropriate for everyday wear than what she had been wearing the day before. She plopped down on the sofa across from Peter. “Okay, so what’s up?” she asked.

  “The other officers and I have gotten approval to start an undercover operation. One of the officers in Yucca Springs will transfer here and pose as a patient at the rehab facility in order to get information and evidence against Crank. In the meantime, as long as you’re okay with it, you’ll stay here under my protective custody.”

  Julie nodded. “Okay, I’ll stay here, that’s fine. But I was wondering something,” she said.

  “What’s that?” Peter asked.

  “Why is there going to be such a big investigation just into one drug dealer? Like, I’m glad, but going undercover seems like a lot of work,” she said.

&n
bsp; “Basically,” Peter explained, “we feel that it’s unlikely that Crank is working alone on this. He’s probably part of a bigger system. Meth has become a huge problem in this community, I’m sure you know. There’s nothing that the local police force would rather be spending our time and effort on than trying to find the ringleaders of this drug-dealing scheme, and your lead is the best one we’ve had in a long time.”

  Julie smiled.

  “You should be proud of yourself for helping us this much, really,” he added, and her smile grew even larger.

  “So, if you’re going to be staying here,” Peter continued, “you need to follow the rules of my house, is that understood?”

  Julie sighed a deep sigh at the mention of rules. “Yeah, okay,” she said.

  “The primary rule is that you cannot go out without me accompanying you, and honestly, that will happen rarely. I don’t want anyone who is connected to Crank to find out where you’re staying. This is for your own safety. Once in a while, we can go somewhere outside of Palm Oasis so you don’t get too bored, but other than that, you need to stay in the house. Let me know what you need from the store and I’ll bring it to you, as well as things for you to keep yourself entertained. You can use the Internet here, but again, don’t let anyone know where you’re staying. And I want you to turn location services off in your phone. Do you promise to obey these rules? They’re the most important.”

  Julie nodded. “I can do that.”

  “Good,” Peter said. “The other thing is that I expect you to treat my house with respect while you’re staying here. Clean up after yourself, including in your room. And please turn off lights when you’re done with them. It’s important to save electricity.”

  Julie nodded again, a little less enthusiastically.

  “Oh, and don’t leave any crumbs in the kitchen,” Peter continued, “because we don’t want to get ants. And I think it would make sense if you did your own laundry, since I have no idea how some of your girly things get washed. Just generally clean up after yourself and let me know if you have any problems, okay?”

  “Okay, okay, I get it,” Julie moaned.

  Peter considered his next sentence carefully, but went ahead with it. “And watch your attitude, young lady. If you can do that, we’ll get along fine.”

  Julie let out a grumpy sigh, but didn’t answer back.

  “What am I supposed to call you?” she asked. “Just ‘Sheriff Mitchell’ or what?”

  Peter realized that he had forgotten to tell her his first name. “You can call me Peter, unless we’re at the station for some reason, in which case yes, it’s most appropriate for you to call me Sheriff Mitchell.”

  “Okay, Peter,” Julie said. “You can call me Julie, that’s fine.”

  Her words were a little snide, but once again, Peter let it go.

  “Alright then,” Peter said. “Let’s figure out what you need me to get you from the store.”

  Chapter Seven

  Julie had originally thought that having a nice, stable place to be all day would be wonderful, but her new situation quickly made her irritable. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had given her as many rules as Peter had. In fact, she was pretty sure that the answer to that question was ‘never.’

  Sure, it didn’t sound like much, but everything that she did made him sigh. Leaving a light on when she left the room seemed to be too much for him to take without making a grumpy face, and he had insisted that she vacuum her room after she dumped her bag out and a pile of glitter, unstuck stickers, and stray beads that had been in the bottom fell out. The clothes that he bought her were plain and boring. She wasn’t even allowed to order pizza delivery when he wasn’t home, in case the pizza delivery person was someone who knew Crank.

  It was easy to be grumpy about being trapped in the house all day, until she remembered what was lurking outside. Then, she did appreciate what Peter was doing to keep her safe. It was just hard to focus on that when she suddenly wanted ice cream in the middle of the afternoon and Peter wasn’t responding to her texts asking him to bring it home, or when she saw trailers for a new movie opening and realized that she wasn’t going to get to go see it.

  Julie was lying on the floor in her room coloring in a drawing that she had done with watercolor paints when Peter got home, about a week into her stay with him.

  “No paints on the carpet, Julie,” were the first words out of his mouth.

  “Hi to you, too,” she muttered back, dipping her brush in paint again.

  “What did I just say?” he asked, his voice sounding serious.

  Peter never raised his voice at Julie. He scolded her a lot, but Julie had realized recently that she never felt afraid of Peter. Even though she knew that she was often being ‘annoying’ to him, she had grown confident that if he snapped at her, he was going to say “Young lady!” in a stern voice instead of yelling or calling her stupid.

  Julie found this comforting. In a strange way, she almost liked it when he scolded her. It reminded her that he liked her enough to do that instead of hurting her feelings. It seemed odd that a person she had only met recently could be so much more caring toward her than her own boyfriend had been, but she had finally admitted to herself what a creep Crank was. This idea was reinforced every time she looked down at her arms and saw thumb-sized bruises there, where he had grabbed her.

  “I’m going to finish this part and then I’ll move to the kitchen or something,” Julie said.

  “No!” Peter told her. “You’re going to move to the kitchen right now.”

  “Or else what?” Julie challenged. She wanted to know how far she could push him.

  “Or else I’m not bringing back ice cream from the store next time I go,” he responded.

  This sounded like a threat that Peter was prepared to follow through on. He never ate sweets at all, and maintained a healthy diet, plus he went to the gym after work almost every day. It made sense to Julie that fitness was important to a cop, but she was blessed with the kind of metabolism that allowed her to eat whatever she wanted. And she wanted ice cream. So she picked up the paints and sulked to the kitchen with them.

  Peter sat down at the table next to her as she continued painting.

  “Isn’t this easier than doing it on the carpet anyway? Having a flat surface?” he asked.

  “Fine, be right,” she scoffed.

  “I will, thanks,” he said with a smile.

  Despite their little argument, Peter seemed to be in a good enough mood. Julie needed to ask him something very important, and now seemed like the best chance she was going to get to do this.

  “Peter,” she started. “Remember how you told me that sometimes I could go out of the house if I was going to another town?”

  “I said that was a possibility, yes.”

  “Well,” she continued. “I’m going to need to do that next weekend, okay?”

  “Why do you ‘need’ to do that next weekend?” Peter wanted to know, his voice sounding dubious.

  Julie tried to think of the best way to put this. “I have to go to Los Angeles. For an event.”

  “Oh, I see, for an event,” Peter said. “What kind of event is this?”

  “It’s for Foam-a-thon three!” she told him, hoping that he wouldn’t ask too many questions about what that was. The Foam-a-thon series of parties were Julie’s favorites. They were big raves with great DJs and a constant stream of fluffy bubble foam falling from the ceilings and sprayed around by fans. She loved playing and dancing in the foam, and besides, it had been too long since she had seen her friends. Most important, whenever she had checked the event page, Crank was not RSVPed. If she didn’t talk to anyone about where she was staying, she’d be perfectly safe.

  “This sounds suspiciously like a rave to me,” Peter told her, his voice and face making it clear to her that he was entirely unimpressed with this idea.

  “Well, it’s a foam party…”

  “Which is a kind of rave, isn’t it?”
Peter returned.

  “Yes, but…” Julie started.

  “But no, absolutely not. That’s far too dangerous.” Peter’s voice sounded like there was no room for arguing. This was what Julie had been afraid of.

  “No, it’s not. I saw on the event page that Crank isn’t going,” she tried to explain.

  “Julie, the answer is no, and that’s final. Absolutely not. No raves until the end of the investigation. They aren’t safe for you. You’ve told me yourself that you don’t know which of your friends you can trust, and I know that your community is tight-knit and full of gossip. If you ask me again, there will be more consequences than no ice cream, young lady,” he scolded.

  Julie scowled. There had to be a way around this. She only had a week to figure it out.

  Chapter Eight

  Peter woke up in the night a few days later and got out of bed to get a drink of water. As he walked down the hallway toward the bathroom, he noticed a crack of light shining from beneath Julie’s door. It was late, and he seriously hoped that she wasn’t still awake. He didn’t feel like it was appropriate to give her a bedtime, since she was an adult after all, but the idea always tempted him. She didn’t respond well to being reasoned with like an adult. It was much more effective if he talked to her like someone much younger than she really was.

  Peter rapped on the door gently, just to make sure that everything was alright. When she didn’t respond, he opened the door just a crack. This had happened before, and he always had to keep himself from panicking when she didn’t answer him. She’d always been there every time. Realistically, he knew that he was probably being a bit overprotective, but it was definitely better to be safe than sorry in this situation, so he opened the door a little more, just to check on her.

  Julie was asleep, clutching her ragged teddy bear to her chest. This time, she had a peaceful look on her face, although once again, she had kicked off the blankets. Peter picked them off the floor and gently set them back on top of her. The desert got cold at night, and he didn’t want her to be uncomfortable in her sleep.