Highland County Heroes Collection

Chapter 4

Hayley stared out her office window, it didn’t overlook the city, but rather the squad room, so she sat watching the rows of desks where her officers wrote up their reports. The desks were shared, as the officers spend most of their shifts away from the station house, on patrol, but that didn’t stop officers from staking claims. Part of her job was to make sure things went smoothly and reports got turned in on time, with a minimum of overtime. That meant no one was hanging around on the clock, doing nothing while they waited for someone to vacate a specific desk. As she looked out now, only one desk was occupied. Well only one was occupied by one of her officers. A glance at the clock told her it was nearly an hour after the end of their shift. He’d been out there too long, which wasn’t like him. In the six months she’d been in charge of this shift, she’d learned most men got their paperwork done and got out of there as quickly as possible. Since he’d transferred to her shift a week before she’d found that Warren Hathaway was usually one of the first to finish his daily reports, turn them in and get the hell out of here. With a sigh she went out to see what the holdup was.

“Is everything all right?” she asked as she stepped up beside the desk where he was typing away, his attention on the ancient computer screen. He glanced up at her as she stopped beside him.

“Yeah. Just finishing this up. It was a big day.”

She tried to remember the reports that had come across her desk or landed in her email. His partner, Reed, Johnny if she remembered right, had submitted a report about a body.

“You were first on the scene of a body, right?” Hayley asked, hoping he wouldn’t shut her out as so many of the men did. Writing a report about what they’d seen and done was one thing, it was paper, or more accurately, these days, computer screen, and not another person. Either was impersonal and easier than talking to another human face to face.

“Yeah, we were.” He paused. “I’m almost done. I just wanted to get everything down before I forgot anything.” He checked the small notebook he kept in his uniform shirt once more before typing a few more words. She was impressed by his typing. Fast and sure, with almost no backspacing. She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d taken some kind of typing class. He typed another minute or two then hit send with the mouse and leaned back in his desk chair.

“There,” he said with a sigh. “All done. It’s been one hell of a day. I’m gonna head home and take a load off.” He looked up at her a moment. “Unless you have something else for me?”

“No. It’s late. Go. You’re usually one of the first out of here. I was just making sure nothing was wrong.”

“Nothing wrong. Just a busy day and a lot to put into the report.”

“Good to hear. Take off. You need some down time before it all starts again in the morning.” He was her last officer to clear out. She’d spend a few minutes wrapping things up then she’d head home too. Everything else could wait until tomorrow.

At home, Hayley stepped in the door and started stripping. First to come off was her duty belt, the one with her cuffs, pepper spray and the holster for her SIG and set it on the table next to the door. She pulled the SIG from the holster and carried it with her as she went into the bedroom. Her pistol got laid on the nightstand before she took off her uniform shirt, and the jeans that went with it. With a sigh she stepped in the bathroom and briefly considered a shower. It had been a long day and she was tired, a shower might help wake her up and refresh her, at least until it was time to crash.

Why the hell not? she asked herself as she pushed off her panties and peeled off her bra. It only took a moment to turn on the shower and adjust the temperature. Once she had gotten rid of her clothes, dropping the things that needed washing in the laundry while hanging the others off the hook on the back of the door, she stepped under the steaming spray and let out a content sigh. The hot water pouring over her skin was better than she’d imagined. The heat seeped into her muscles and made her want to stay there for days. Or maybe just for a couple hours.

Why the hell not?Hayley wished, not for the first time, she could afford to have a hot tub installed on her back porch. Water was nice, but hot water was amazing. Some days she wanted nothing more than to lay in a warm tub for hours. Especially on the days she felt like she’d never be warm again. Those were the days she wished for a hot tub the hardest.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing under the steaming spray, but she knew if she didn’t get moving soon, the water would turn cold. She hated cold water and cold showers were even worse. Hayley finished showering and shut off the water. She stepped out onto the plush rug, one of her few indulgences, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her. She wound a second towel around her hair as she thought about what to eat for dinner.

Something simple. She was too tired to cook. Her stomach growled, and she decided not delivery, as it would take too long. So would a frozen pizza. Hayley sighed and tried to remember what was in the fridge. Leftovers she could just heat. She wasn’t coming up with much, she’d have to go look. She pulled on a pair of sweat pants she’d cut off into shorts and an oversized shirt that hung almost to the hem of her shorts, making them sometimes difficult to see. Comfortable, she made her way into the kitchen to find something for dinner.

Generally, Hayley enjoyed cooking but cooking for one was depressing and a pain in the ass. She missed cooking for other people, people who enjoyed her food and the effort she put into it. She hadn’t had anyone to cook for, other than herself, and occasionally her sister or another girlfriend in too long. She’d been too busy with work to bother with men. Dating took time, and energy, she didn’t have. Maybe she’d have time to date, to have a relationship, later, but right now she was focused on her career. She wanted to be the first female police captain in Highland County.

Yes, she knew Highland County was a little behind times. Hell, there’d been a female presidential candidate. She hadn’t won, but Hayley couldn’t complain about that, she hadn’t voted for her. Hayley had liked that she was a woman, but that was about all she’d liked about the candidate. Her politics and policies had made Hayley cringe. She’d had a hard time voting for anyone during the last election and wished that just once there could be a candidate you were voting for instead of having to pick the lesser of two evils or vote against someone. She shook her head and turned her attention back to her own aspirations; Highland County was still a little conservative. Not that the people didn’t believe a woman could get the job done. She was doing just that. But it hadn’t been easy to convince the powers that be that she was capable and wasn’t going to disappear to have babies or raise them. She wasn’t even sure she wanted children.

Hayley loved her sister, as well as the rest of her family, but they didn’t understand her. She shook her head. Being the oldest of two girls, her father had done his best to teach her everything he thought she might need to know once he was gone. She liked to think of herself as her father’s only son. He’d taught her to hunt, shoot, change a tire and do whatever auto repair was needed.

Some people had been offended, insisting that she should have been treated like a princess, pampered and babied but she was grateful. She was independent and hated having to ask for help, though she’d learned that admitting you need help sometimes wasn’t a weakness, it was still difficult at times. Her dad had given her the skills to be herself and she only loved him more for that. The rest of her family had made sure she could still do all the traditional female stuff that Hayley thought of as ‘archaic female s**t’ cooking was one of those skills she hadn’t thought she’d need. There were several other things her family had made sure she learned but cooking as her favorite. It hadn’t taken her long to figure out that there was at least a small element of science to cooking. A chemical reaction. Once she understood how that worked, she’d been able to play with recipes and make them her own. That was the real part she loved. The figuring things out. The making new things and seeing how someone else liked it. Not having someone else to eat her cooking really made cooking far less enjoyable.

In the kitchen, she opened the fridge and stared unseeing for several minutes. Nothing there appealed to her, but she knew she needed to eat, or she would regret it later. Low blood sugar led to moodiness and the shakes. She’d been there more than a few times in the past and she’d learned from the mistake. She needed to eat regularly in order to avoid both. Protein was best, but what else? She stared for a few minutes trying to make her brain create something from what was in the fridge.

Hayley briefly considered fixing herself a drink, or maybe opening one of the three beers that sat in the door of her fridge, as she considered dinner, but then dismissed the idea. She didn’t need alcohol to relax. She’d worked hard not to become her father. Hayley might have the occasional beer or three but she didn’t drink regularly and she never had enough that she couldn’t remember what she’d done or said under the influence. She loved her father, but she wasn’t going to become him.

With a shake of her head she resisted the urge to dump every ounce of alcohol in her house down the drain. She was stronger than that. She could have it in the house. She could drink only when she chose. Hayley wasn’t driven by the same craving, the same need that had claimed her father’s life when she was only seventeen. Hayley sometimes wondered if her father had made better decisions, if he’d decided not to drive, or to stay home that night, if he might have survived. Then she wondered if she wanted him to. He’d been a mean drunk. Yelling and slapping when he’d been drunk. Hayley had learned to avoid him when he was drinking, well at least most of the time. Denni hadn’t been as lucky.

There had been a few times when Hayley had stepped in between her father and Denni, when her father had been drunk and particularly mean, and protected her sister. More than once she’d wondered what her parents had been under the influence of when they’d decided to name her sister. What kind of name was Denni? Hayley’s mother said she’d been named after their father’s brother… Dennis. But really? Denni?

Hayley shook her head and picked up her stereo remote. She needed to think about something else. Something less depressing. Music would help. After starting her favorite playlist and turning it up loud enough she could sing along at full volume, she went back to the fridge, this time she opened the freezer. Two frozen pizzas, six TV dinners, and a couple packages of raw chicken stared back at her from beside the ice bin. She preferred to cook for herself when she had the time but she was a busy woman and could admit, at least to herself, that she didn’t always have the time or the energy to cook after work. It took her a moment to choose one of the TV dinners, but only a couple minutes to get it ready and put it in the oven. She’d tried using the microwave, but unless she was in a real hurry, she preferred to heat it in the oven. It just tasted better.

After setting the timer, she wandered back to her bedroom where she’d left her ereader. She was in the middle of a book and couldn’t think of a better way to take her mind off work than to get lost in another world.