Brother, Dear-- Part Two

Skylar Arrington

The Captain of the police was surprisingly easy to trick. I mused about how easy it’d been to slip a few shots into his mug of beer, and how much easier it was to coax him into buying me a drink, as I helped him into the motel room and pretended not to notice as his hand wandered down my back.

I glanced around room. It wasn’t much, but it would do. I pushed him down on the bed. "It's okay. You'll be fine here tonight.”

“You’re a pretty little thing.” I sat down close beside him and stroked his scruffy cheek. He wrapped his arm around me. "Oh, if I weren't married..."

"What does that matter?" I cooed, running my hand down his chest, carefully calculating my every move. He was like putty in my hands. I'd get the photos I needed in an instant. "She doesn't need to know."

“She’ll… she worries.”

“She sounds like a buzzkill,” I murmured as I crawled into his lap, straddling his leg and kissing his cheek. The Chief looked down at my chest for a long moment, his hands slowly stroking my legs, before he caved to the temptation and ripped my shirt off. He kissed my neck for a long moment then buried his face in my chest. He was so drunk he didn’t even notice that I was taking pictures.

He quickly lost motivation. He managed to get me stripped to the waist and got his own shirt off with a little help, but didn’t make it much further before he laid back on the bed and cuddled up to me, burying his face in my hair. I snuggled into his chest then pulled my cellphone out again.

I crawled on top of him, pressing my bare chest against his, being careful that the angle didn’t actually show anything. I didn’t need nude shots of me floating around. I quietly stood up and got dressed once more, looking down at the middle-aged man who slept on the bed before me.

If I were a decent person, I would feel bad about playing with him like this. He was too stupid. I shouldn't take advantage of his idiocy. Not like he could help it. I didn’t care. I'd done worse. I grabbed a pen from table by the bed and carefully took his hand in my own, then wrote:

I'm 16, love
–Sky <3

I hoped he wouldn’t have a heart attack when he woke. I wanted blackmail to lord over him, not another murder on my hands. He'd be useless to me if he ended up dead. I didn’t like doing the dirty work when murder was involved anyway. I kissed his cheek then slipped into the peaceful night outside.

~ * ~ * ~

I walked along the dark sidewalk, enjoying the utter silence that enveloped me. Most people had long since gone to bed. All of the houses were dark. I took a deep breath, looking up at the star-spotted night sky so far above me. It was times like this that I really felt alive. The night life. That was where interesting people could be found.

I frowned as my phone started buzzing. I didn't like phone calls and I’d made sure that everyone knew that texts were a much safer way to reach me. Especially in the middle of the night. I was enjoying my solitary walk, and now someone was making it much less solitary.

"What?"

"Where are you?" Corbin, the man I'd been living with for a few months, demanded. He normally didn't care what I did, as long as I was around often enough for him to get his pleasures and give me his orders.Not that I usually did what he said.

"Where I told you I'd be," I glanced up at the name of the street sign in front of me as I pulled my pipe out of my pocket and fumbled for a lighter. "Near Holly Lane, a few streets down from the motel. I just left the cop. Why?"

"I'm sending someone to get you."

I took a long draw from the pipe.

“I think you might be in danger. Cohen ratted.”

I choked on the smoke. “What?”

“I don’t have details. I called as soon as I heard they had him.”

I slid my pipe back in my pocket, suddenly too distracted to care about getting high anymore. I rubbed my face, my mind instantly flying through the many ways he could get me in trouble and all the jail time I’d probably serve if he did. "I'm going to kill that bastard.”

“I’ve already got people on that,” he assured me.

"This is why you shouldn't let idiots work for you," I snapped, cutting down a side street.

"I know, babe, I'm sorry," he sounded sincere. "He won’t bother you anymore.”

“That’s not exactly going to help me now,” I sighed, looking around, desperately wishing there was something-- anything-- that I could use to my advantage. All I saw was a small neighborhood slowly morphing from dark houses to a darker forest. I

"Oh," Corbin cursed.

"What is it?"

Suddenly my beautiful, silent night was disturbed by the sound of sirens close by. I sighed rubbed my face hanging up the phone and sliding it in my pocket as I sat down on the curb. I figured I knew what he had to say. It was pointless to even try to escape now. I had very little interest in becoming a fugitive running through a forest. I had an image to uphold. Dignity was important.

Soon the abrasive flashing lights were hurting my eyes. I took a deep breath and buried my face in my knees as I tried to think of an alibi. As I tried to stay calm and pretend that my stomach wasn’t tying itself into knots. I was sunk, regardless of what I said. We all knew it.

I heard guns cocking and finally looked up. The chief of police's second in command was easy to spot, even in the dark, from exasperated way he looked at me as he stepped forward with a tired sigh. He could be worse about fretting over me than my brothers were. “Skylar Arrington."

“Howdy, Captain,” I nodded my head toward him.

"I want your hands in the air.” He said, obviously not in the mood to play. “Get on your knees."

"Is that really necessary?" I lifted my hands in the air. "We all know I'm a docile little pet. I wouldn't do anything."

"On your knees," he said a bit more firmly.

I rocked forward onto my knees with a dramatic sigh. An officer started forward cautiously, his pistol pointing straight at my head. I looked back at Captain Fortier. “Why do I always get such special treatment when I never fight back? It makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong.”

“Oh, shut up,” he snapped.

I looked at him a bit harder, curious at the cold edge to his voice. The officer near me took advantage of my momentary distraction, stepping forward when I wasn’t watching him and snapping the cuffs on my wrists, tightly, then pressing my face into the still-warm asphalt.

Rough hands moved down my body, quickly finding my pipe and lighter and taking them, but finding nothing else. A moment later two officers grabbed my arms and hauled me to my feet, then roughly pushed me over to the Captain.

“I swear, the Arringtons are ganging up on me tonight,” the Captain complained, glowering down at me. He sighed loudly when the officer dropped my pipe into his hand. “Really, Sky? Really?”

I lifted a shoulder. He slapped the back of my head, waving his hand at one of the other officers to read me my rights. The Captain pushed me into the backseat of his cruiser, warning me that he’d better not hear a sound out of me. Soon we were on our way to the police station that was becoming all-too-familiar to me.

~ * ~ * ~

Captain Fortier wasn’t in a good mood tonight. He leaned against the wall, arms cross, glaring at me as one of the officers took my finger prints and asked me a seemingly endless string of questions. His silent anger was worse than his lecturing.

“I’m still not quite sure what charges I was arrested on,” I tried to make him say something.

“You’re sure you want to talk about that?” He looked at me challengingly.

“Maybe not?” I’d learned that silence was often the best stategy.

“Maybe not,” he agreed. “Besides, the charges we had weren’t as bad as what we found.”

I looked at him suspiciously. I knew he was annoyed about my drugs. But he certainly wouldn’t be the most upset about them if he knew what else I was involved with. I couldn’t help but wonder why he’d arrested me in the first place.

“Oh, stop giving me that look,” he took a step nearer to me. “You know all the higher powers send me out to fetch ya, since none of them seem to be able to catch up.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. That was either really good or really bad for me. “Who is it this time?”

“Do I ever tell you that?”

“You could, you know,” I suggested, knowing fully well that he wasn’t going to tell me. He often arrested me and kept me in a cell for a few days, until some man in dark sunglasses trying to be very mysterious and intimidating came and questioned me.

“You could try behaving, for once.”

I smirked at him for a moment, wondering how long I was staying here. Sometimes they forced me to pose for a picture, sometimes they didn’t. It usually depended on if I deserved to be arrested or if I was only being detained for questioning. “You gonna take my picture?”

“No,” he barely glanced at me before hastily looking away, obviously wishing he were anywhere but here, having a conversation with me in the police station in the middle of the night.

“What?” I prodded.

“No,” he repeated a bit more forcefully, turning a frustrated glare on me. “We’re all very familiar with what you look like, Sky. God knows you’re here too often for us to forget.”

I smirked again. “Fine, then, which cell will it be this time?”

“Nope!” He put his hand on my shoulder and pushed me toward the door. “I’m afraid this is a catch and release sort of drill tonight.”

I glared at him over my shoulder for just a moment before another man caught my attention. Staggering down the hallway was a man who looked half-dead. His shaggy brown hair was disheveled and partly covering his swollen, bruised face. His blue eyes were small slits, barely open, glaring down at his scuffed cowboy boots. I recognized him instantly.

“Looks like you’ve had better nights,” I smirked. “Brother, dear.”

Ryker glared at me a moment then looked back down with a grunt. “Amazing observation.”

“You need a haircut,” I reached up and flipped his hair as he neared me.

“Too drunk to care.”

It wasn’t a hard puzzle to put together. “Get in another bar fight?”

“Talk later,” Captain Fortier pushed us toward the door. “You’ve got a schedule to keep.”

“Schedule?” I turned to frown at him as I pushed the door open. “You said catch and release.”

“That’s right,” he answered, walking through the door after us. “I caught, now I’m releasing.”

I followed his gaze to the curb. A small shiny black car was waiting for us, two burly men dressed in black suits standing outside of it, waiting for their catch. I rolled my eyes, looking back at the captain with a sigh. I almost wished he’d keep me. He smirked.

“Ooh, we’re in trouble now,” I said sarcastically, glancing at Ryker as I walked toward the car.

“Still too drunk to care.”