Chapter Two
He looked down at the scrubby creature kneeling on the ground in front of him. The same creature he’d seen across the river
just last night. He had assumed that he was looking at a teenage boy. Bony shoulders, baggy clothes and a dirty face.
But hell. It was a girl. Her blond hair was tucked up in a beanie, a few stray strands sticking out around her face. There
was a smudge of dirt on her cheekbone. And her cheeks were much too hollow. Her lips were chapped, and there was a scrape
on the bottom of her chin.
She was pathetic.
He stood there staring and began to revise even more of his initial thought. He’d pegged her at maybe fourteen right at first.
But no. She wasn’t fourteen. She was older.
Maybe .
There was a glint to her eyes, an intelligence that made him think she couldn’t possibly be that young.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Name’s Daughtry King. Officer Daughtry King.”
“Is there a problem?”
“The illegal still behind you is a problem.”
He watched her eyes dart back and forth. He knew that she was doing the math equation. He just didn’t know what the figures were.
“It’s not mine. I mean, I don’t even know what it is. I was just looking at the funny buckets. I was wandering through the
area, taking a hike.”
“Strange, because you were here last night.”
“Camping,” she said.
“This is private property.”
“I didn’t know,” she said. “I’m really sorry. I... I’m not in trouble, am I? I’ve never been in trouble before.”
Her eyes went glassy. Her lower lip trembled.
He didn’t buy it.
There was something wholly disingenuous about the saccharine tone she said that in.
“Stand up,” he said.
She looked around wildly, and for a second, he felt bad.
She seemed terrified.
But it only took a moment for him to realize that it was a facade. She wasn’t terrified. This was an act, and he was getting
irritated.
He reached down and grabbed her upper arm, hauling her to her feet.
She screeched and jerked backward. “You get your hands off me! I’m not doing anything wrong.”
That feral outburst, he realized, was closer to the truth of it. Of her. She wasn’t scared. She was mad.
“Tell me your name, and what the hell you’re doing here,” he said.
“I told you . I was taking a walk in the woods. Camping . Taking a walk while I was camping.”
“You can’t even keep your story straight, ma’am.”
“Ma’am?” She wrinkled her nose. “The hell is that?”
“Manners,” he returned. “Are you not familiar? Well, clearly you aren’t, as I’ve introduced myself to you, but you haven’t
introduced yourself to me.”
“I’m a woman,” she said, making her voice small again. “A little one. You might be a police officer, or you might be impersonating one, but either way, a woman has to be careful. And not
just trust men because they say they are trustworthy.”
“That is true,” he said. “But the difficulty is, ma’am, you’re on my land. So not only am I an officer of the law, I’m the
landowner. I have every right to know what you’re doing here, and what your name is. I need to see some identification.”
“Identification?” she scoffed. “It’s a hell of a thing that a person needs a piece of paper to prove they exist. Another way
for the state to earn money by doing nothing .”
“Then tell me who you are.”
“My name is Bix,” she said. “And I’m just passing through. I’m not here to make any trouble.”
“But you were here to make a still?”
“I don’t even know what a still is,” she said, defaulting to that blandly innocent tone again. “I just thought it was a bucket.
With some hoses. I stopped to have a look at it.”
“It looked like you were inspecting it, and pretty competently too.”
“Look at me,” she said, gesturing toward herself. “Do I look like I would know what to do with one of these things?”
“You absolutely do,” he said, his voice flat.
She looked exactly like what she was. A woman down on her luck, desperate enough to do anything. She was too skinny, she was
dirty, and hell, in spite of himself he felt his chest tighten with compassion.
It was so easy to get jaded. And not just in his line of work, by living . The truth was, there wasn’t a hell of a lot of crime in Pyrite Falls. But the crime there was was repetitious and soul grinding.
He was familiar with it. The fact that he could still feel a bit of compassion mattered to him. Meant something to him.
It at least made him feel like he wasn’t a husk. Which was nice.
Figuring out what to do with her was less nice. The truth was, every stray that wandered through town wasn’t his responsibility.
But a stray that wandered onto his property felt... a little more like she might be.
“Is Bix short for anything?”
“No,” she said.
He wasn’t sure he believed her. He wasn’t even sure if she went by Bix or if it was something she’d plucked out of the air.
“Right. Well. Do you have somewhere to go, Bix? Someone waiting for you?”
“I... Yeah. I’ve got a husband. Waiting for me to come home. If I don’t come home, he’s going to get mad. And worried.”
He was certain she was lying about that.
“Do you have a house?” he pressed.
“I’ve got... a house.”
“Do you have a house other than a cabin on my property?”
“ House might be overselling it, but I have a place. I have a van. I just... I’ve got to buy a part to fix it, that’s all. And
then I’m leaving. Not just your ranch, but the state. So, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m not a problem. I won’t hang
around. I just...”
Lord have mercy. This creature was going to end up being his problem.
“Cut the bullshit, please,” he said.
She blinked. “Are cops allowed to say bullshit ?”
“Sweetheart, cops do nothing but shovel bullshit all day. We can damned sure call it like it is. This is your still.”
She bristled. “I have the right to remain silent.”
“You do. But I’m not arresting you.”
It was his property, after all. And it wasn’t like she had time to have actual alcohol in the still, so whatever her intent
was, she hadn’t gotten far with it. Anyway, doing something to this girl would be like... kicking a puppy. A pathetic,
homeless puppy.
She blinked. “You’re not arresting me?”
“No. I’m not. Just... tell me honestly, Bix, what the hell was happening here?”
“I’m being honest. I’m not staying. I just need to earn a little money so that I can get out of town. My starter’s blown and
I can’t get the damn van to start. You can give me a jump if you want, and I’ll be on my way.”
“To where?”
“I’m headed down to California.”
“To do what?”
“I don’t owe you that information,” she said, giving him the lofty look of a queen, when the only royal thing about her was
that she was a royal pain in the ass.
“Here’s the thing. You may not owe me information, but the way that I see it, you don’t have any control here. I can arrest
you if I want to. You’re trespassing, you’re squatting and you’re engaging in illegal activity on my land.”
“Squatters have rights,” she said, jamming her finger toward him. “You can’t arrest me for staying here. And you can’t just
kick me off.”
“The hell I can, babe.”
And that was Daughtry King. Not the cop.
She narrowed her eyes. “What do you want from me?”
“I just want to know who you are, what you’re doing here and how I can help.”
He hadn’t expected that third thing to come out of his mouth. It was clear she didn’t either.
“Well, that’s not true. That’s never true. You don’t just want to offer help. No man ever has. You want to know who I am,
why I’m here and get a blowjob.”
He nearly laughed. “No offense, but that didn’t occur to me.”
She did look slightly offended. Oh well. She looked like a street urchin. She was bony and pathetic and covered in dirt. The
idea that...
Hell. Who was he kidding? She wasn’t wrong. A lot of men would’ve taken in her desperate state and seen fit to make those
kinds of demands. Hell.
If he sent her on her way in a van with no starter, looking like a bundle of sticks wrapped in a baggy sweatshirt, he was sending her out to be potentially harmed or taken advantage of in some way.
He couldn’t consign the little stray to the world. He just couldn’t.
“Come with me.”
“I don’t want to be arrested,” she said.
“Do police usually ask if you want to be arrested?”
She squinted. “Wouldn’t know. Like I said. I’m pure as the driven snow.”
Then he did laugh. “Right. Okay. That’s how you want to play it, go ahead and play it that way. Let me put my cards on the
table. You need a part for your car, so that you can head down south. You need to earn some money. You can work for me. At
the ranch. You got any skills?”
She blinked. “I... Yeah. I got lots of skills. I can hunt and fish and trap. I can fix cars.”
“Can you clean stalls?”
She blinked. “Sounds easy.”
“How about construction?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I’ve done my fair share.”
“Then we’ll have no trouble finding stuff for you to do.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”
Because you became my problem, and I can never leave a stray behind.
“What do you mean why ?” he asked.
“Why are you helping me?”
Because my dad wouldn’t have.
“Because we’ve got plenty of shelter, plenty of food and plenty of work. What you’re doing out here, that’s work. Even if
it’s illegal work. Even if you won’t admit to it. If you’re willing to come do legit work for me, then you can do that for
a couple of weeks and be on your way.”
Yeah. He could offer her money. But he didn’t want to do that. He wanted to offer her something she could earn herself. Mostly
he... he felt cautious about the whole thing. She was a woman alone in the world. She’d clearly been treated badly before.
He didn’t feel all that great about turning her loose. Not that he had any control over that. But if she decided to stay...
Maybe it would be good for her. Have a couple weeks of meals and not sleep so rough.
“People don’t just help each other,” she said. “They look out for themselves.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Some do. But I’m a police officer because I want to change things. It isn’t just because I want to arrest
people. What I want is to live in a world where more people help than hurt. All right?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I’m just coming off shift,” he said. “Why don’t you come on back to the ranch house with me and we can have dinner.”
She frowned. “This sounds like a recipe for rape and murder, and I’m not actually interested in that.”
“Is it so hard to believe that I just want to help you?”
“Yes.”
Fair enough.
“We won’t be alone back at the ranch house. My whole family is there.”
“Your... your family?”
“Yeah. Come have dinner. You’ve been staying on the property, I could’ve come and raped and murdered you at any point. I can
do it now. I don’t have to take you back to the house.”
She appraised him. Her eyes fell to the gun on his hip. “True,” she said.
“Come on back. Get a plate of food, have a shower. If you still want to leave, leave. But you’re not hanging out here on the
edges of the ranch.”
“You’ll give me a jump?”
“Yeah. If that’s what you want.”
She screwed up her face, appraising him with hard, squinting eyes. Then she seemed to relax slightly. “All right, Sheriff.
I’ll go with you.”
“I’m not a sheriff,” he said.
“It’s all the same to me. Oink, oink.”
“Cute. Haven’t heard that one.”
She barely came up to the middle of his chest and she was mouthing off. She clearly wasn’t that scared of him, no matter what
she said.
“You don’t have a husband, do you?”
“Is it so hard to believe that I might?”
“You don’t look a day over eighteen.”
“I’m twenty-six ,” she said.
She was lying. He didn’t know why he was so certain of that, but he was.
“Okay,” he said.
“You don’t believe me.”
She looked wounded.
“Since I’ve met you, you’ve cycled through about four personalities. So, no. I don’t believe you. I think you’re desperate
to keep me from finding out your real situation, and I also think you don’t want me to know your name.”
She huffed. “It doesn’t benefit me.”
“If you want a paycheck, I might have to know. I’m going to run you through payroll.”
She looked scandalized. “You want to put me in the system?”
“It’s easiest for taxes—”
“Taxes?” She looked scandalized.
“Taxes are actually how my job is funded,” he pointed out.
“Yeah,” she said, dryly. “Exactly. You’re the System, dude. I don’t want to be in the system.”
“I imagine you’re in the system to some capacity.”
“Well. Yes.” She looked around, her expression shifty.
“Do you have some stuff you want to grab?”
She looked momentarily defeated. “Yeah. I just... If I can get my backpack. And to let you know, there’s a big hunting
knife in it. If you try to touch me, I will gut you.”
That he believed. It was the first thing that had come out of her mouth that he thought was a pretty solid truth.
“Noted.”
She led the way back to the cabin. She hopped down the way like a rabbit on a trail, and it was difficult to keep up with
her. She pushed open the door to the cabin, the one he had searched yesterday.
“You were here,” he said. “Yesterday when I came in to search.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I was hiding.”
“Where were you hiding?”
“If you don’t know the hiding spots on your own fucking property, it’s not up to me to tell you.”
She had attitude. She grabbed a knapsack and a fishing pole from the corner and hefted it up over her shoulder. “Right. Let’s
go then. Let’s do this dinner-and-shower thing. Do I have to listen to you preach the gospel before I can have a hot meal?”
“Ask my brother Denver to share the good news with you. See what he says.”
She looked vaguely intrigued by that. “Mister, I have heard every form of good news you can possibly imagine.”
“How’s your soul?”
“Don’t know. Had to sell it for parts a long time ago.”
That hit him square in the chest and resonated a little further than it ought to have.
He cleared his throat.
“Well. Let’s head on back to the homestead, Bix.”