Baker nodded in agreement.
“And, as far as I can tell, a foam party is a rave with the addition of bubble soap of some sort. So, a bunch of irresponsible kids dancing to flashing lights and loud music… and bubbles. Not my idea of a good time, but exactly the kind of place where the suspect would be, isn’t it?”
“You’re right about that,” the deputy told Peter. “By the way,” he added, “how is having the girl at your house working out for you? I was so sure that she would drive you crazy and you’d be sending her off to the safe house in Los Angeles after a day!”
It was hard for Peter not to hide a wry smile. “She’s certainly not the kind of girl I would have picked to hang around before I knew her,” he said. “And she gets a little out of control. Messy. Irresponsible. That kind of stuff. But I can keep her in line, and since I can do that, I can keep her safe.”
He let the smile spread across his face just a little. “She’s a real good kid once you get to know her. She’s sweet and lovable.”
Baker obviously didn’t expect that response, but he didn’t seem put off by it. “I’m glad it’s working out for you. We all knew we could count on you to keep her safe. If you’re good at anything, it’s that,” Baker teased.
“Yeah, yeah,” Peter replied, standing up and heading out of the office and down the hall to his own. He wanted to carefully review any information that had been turned in regarding the Crank situation before he went on to the rest of his tasks for the day.
* * *
That evening, Julie had her art supplies spread out on the table as she worked on a project. She had taught herself how to draw and paint based on manga and anime, and liked to draw cute, colorful scenes. She usually drew pictures of her friends, but separated from them by her current situation, it didn’t seem that fun of an idea. In fact, when she thought about how few of them had even bothered to send her texts asking where she was or checking to see if she was safe, she felt positively disheartened. Instead, she had started working on a landscape, sketching the barren sands that surrounded the town. She was adding a tiny lizard to the foreground when she heard Peter come in the front door.
“Hey, kitten,” he called as he locked the door behind him.
Julie felt a little bit coy, although she knew that was silly. After what happened last night, feelings were growing in her heart and manifesting as butterflies in her tummy when she thought of the sheriff.
“Hi, hi,” she called back.
She watched Peter come into the room. He carried himself with a sense of confidence that sent a shiver down her spine. He walked over to where she was and set some mail down on the table casually.
“I learned something today,” Peter told her, picking up a letter and opening it.
“Yeah?” she muttered, only half listening as she colored the shadow beneath the lizard she was drawing.
“Yep. You-know-who didn’t show up at work today or yesterday. Can you think of a reason why that might be?”
Julie felt a lump forming in her throat as the sheriff told her that. Even though she trusted Peter to keep her safe, and she was truly afraid of what Crank would do if he ever showed up where she was, she had really thought that going to the foam party would have been safe.
“Does he know that you guys are following him?” she asked nervously, ignoring Peter’s original question. She was sure that it had been hypothetical anyway.
Peter sat down in the chair and rubbed his temples as he thought for a moment.
“I’m not the one who knows him, but if he’s at all clever, he probably suspects that you’ve told us what’s going on. I’m worried by the fact that he hasn’t tried to sell to the undercover cop yet. I don’t think that the officer is at risk being there, but I think that we could be wasting time. What I’m most worried about is the fact that you got the wrong information about whether or not he’d be at the rave last night.”
Julie thought about this for a moment. “Do you think he wanted me to go?”
“That’s my concern. That he’s trying to draw you out. If he’s figured out that you’ve gone to the police, he could be trying to target you now.”
Peter and Julie didn’t usually talk about Crank, and when they did, it felt very distant. The world inside the little house in the desert was one place, and everything else was different. This little ranch house had become her own world, and sometimes, the memories of what happened outside of these walls, not long ago at all, felt distant and inaccessible.
But not now. When she thought of Crank as a threat to her, that was real and that was immediate. Julie couldn’t help but imagine the scene in the kitchen when she had first discovered that Crank was selling drugs. His horrible strength and size grabbing her, looming over her. Her heart started to pound, and her mouth felt dry as she remembered the details of it, everything suddenly taking place again.
She must have had a terrified look on her face, based on how Peter reacted.
He immediately noticed her discomfort and came to her side, kneeling down to be at eye level with her.
“It’s okay. I wasn’t telling you that to scare you, darling,” he told her in a hushed, soothing voice. “You just need to know that you need to be really careful. Don’t tell anyone where you are, or give them clues at all. And I’m going to work from home for the next few days, so I can be here with you. I worry about you when I’m at work.”
Julie didn’t know what to say to this, so she instead let herself fall into his arms, burying her face in his tan uniform shirt.
“I’m just scared,” she finally whispered. She thought for another moment, listening to the rising and falling of Peter’s steady breath and taking comfort in the rhythm of it. “And I feel so totally stupid that I wanted to go out last night.”
Peter’s strong hand stroked her hair, and she felt security in every touch.
“You’re just a little girl,” he reminded her.
Julie pulled back a little bit.
“But I’m really a grownup! I should be able to not do stupid things.”
Peter looked like he was trying to stifle a laugh.
“Julie, you’re still so young. And I don’t think you’ve had very many role models to show you how to make good choices, have you?”
Julie tried to think of a time in her life when someone had been truly responsible and had made choices with her best interest in mind. The only person like that she could think of was Peter.
She shook her head. “I’ve always been the best person at taking care of myself,” she admitted.
“Well, that makes me sad,” he told her. “I think things would have been much easier for you if you had just had someone to look after you properly. But that’s okay, because you have that now, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I have you!”
“Anyway, it’s okay for you to not know how to make good choices yet. It’s okay for you to want to act like a kid. But it’s also entirely important that you listen to me and that you put the thought out of your mind that you’re the one who is best at taking care of yourself. Because you’ve been good at surviving this far, but the stakes are higher. You have to trust me.”
“I mean, you proved your point. I know that you were right, now. So I’m not going to screw around anymore, even if it means that I have to spend the next seventy billion years being bored,” she said, her voice teasing.
“We’ll do something fun soon enough,” he told her. “I’ll feel more relaxed once we know where the target is.”
Julie looked back down at her drawing. Really, she wasn’t even that bored. And if Peter was going to be staying home with her, she had a feeling that he would be able to find ways to keep her entertained.
Chapter Fourteen
Peter woke up in his bed the next morning, and was surprised to see that he wasn’t alone. He had gone to bed by himself, although he hadn’t been sure if he was making the right choice when he did that. He just wasn’t sure how to proceed after the night he and Julie had sp
ent together after he had spanked her a couple of days ago. Then, he had fallen asleep with her tiny frame nestled tight in his arms. He hadn’t minded the stars reflecting on the ceiling, and he’d found the way that she snuggled against him to be the sweetest thing in the world. Her face looked truly innocent when she was asleep.
The next night, though, she had asked him if he was going to put her to bed. So he had, changing her into her pajamas and tucking her in with her ragged bear before giving her a kiss on the nose. He had been worried that this meant that she had decided she was no longer comfortable with… whatever it was that was blossoming between them, but he had done his best not to obsess over it. It was possible she was just tired.
And now, here she was. Her pink hair was tousled with bedhead, and she was clinging to his chest like he was a giant teddy bear himself. Again, he studied her sleeping face. Angelic.
Peter did his best to sneak out of the bed without waking Julie, but she was so intertwined with him that it wasn’t possible.
She awoke with a whine, and rubbed her eye with a balled fist.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you, Julie,” he whispered, giving her a kiss on the end of her nose.
“It’s okay, can I keep sleeping?” she yawned.
“Of course. Go ahead and sleep.”
“Are you mad that I’m in here?” Her eyes were only half open, but her face scrunched with concern.
Peter tousled her hair. “Why would I be mad to wake up to the cutest girl on earth?”
“Because you put me in the other bed before,” Julie tried to explain, her eyelids fluttering with her desire to fall back asleep.
“Just sleep now. I’m not mad.” Peter got up and gently placed the blankets back over her, landing another kiss on her cheek as he left.
He passed his reflection in the mirror as he headed to the bathroom and saw just how ridiculous the tent that his morning wood was pitching looked. It stuck straight out like an arrow in his boxer briefs. He shook his head, half thinking that he looked silly, but half wishing that Julie had woken up before him to discover his condition.
Walking into the bathroom, he shed his underwear and stepped into the shower. Warm water fell onto his body, which was hardened by his work and training. He let his mind wander, wondering how spending an entire day with Julie would be. Peter usually went into the sheriff’s office at least for a couple of hours a day. This had become a habit for him back when his house was empty. There was no reason to stay home, or to keep the other officers from their own.
But his house felt like something more than a place where he slept now, and he was looking forward to doing his work from the home office that he so rarely used. Julie had primarily been using it since she had been there, since she liked to use the Internet to entertain herself. Peter didn’t complain; there wasn’t that much for her to do in the house, and someone might as well be using the space.
Peter finished washing and then stepped out. He toweled off and then brushed his teeth and finished getting himself cleaned up and ready for the day. He then strode naked down the hallway back to his room to get dressed.
Julie had once again arranged herself in a comical sleeping position. This time, she had rolled over onto her stomach and bunched her legs up beneath her, pushing her bottom high in the air. He shook his head. She was just too cute, and too sexy at the same time. It was hard not to land a good, firm swat to her bottom when it was posed that way.
Peter decided that even though he was working from home, it would be best to dress in his work clothes. He was, after all, still working. It was always possible that there would be some kind of emergency and he’d have to run back to the station, anyway, and Peter was the kind of person who always wanted to be prepared.
Once he was dressed, he grabbed a Power Bar in lieu of breakfast and headed back down the hallway to his office so he could set up remote access to his machine at work. The tech guy had given him instructions on how to do it, and had told him to call if he needed any help.
Upon entering his office, Peter realized that he really hadn’t been in here much recently. So much so that he hadn’t realized what an absolute disaster Julie had let it devolve into. There were soda cans and empty chip bags littering the floor, some of them just inches away from the trashcan. Several of her hair accessories and bracelets were scattered across his desk, and the printer was out of paper. There were some pages with sketches on the corner of his desk, but most of it seemed to be wadded up in and around the trash.
To make matters worse, there was a light dusting of glitter and a smattering of loose beads, stickers, and google-y eyes just about everywhere. Peter thought of this as ‘Julie detritus’ but he had never seen such a concentration of it before. He knew that it came from crafts projects that she had done before, making jewelry and accessories for her raves. Yet somehow, it had ended up on everything that she had brought with her, in quantities that he was still able to find this much of, despite the fact that she hadn’t just moved in.
He sighed and cleared things away enough for him to sit down at his desk. He noticed, much to his annoyance, that the computer had been left on. He was worried that it had been running constantly since he first let Julie use it, since he couldn’t remember the last time he had used it himself. He tended to take care of online things when he was at the police station instead of here, wanting to unplug and relax in the evenings.
Upon moving the mouse, his grumpiness grew. There were countless windows open, piled on top of each other. They were mostly pictures of frogs, anime characters, or ideas for craft projects. Peter sighed as he one by one closed them. When the desktop was cleared, he saw that she had saved a huge number of files and documents, all in little piles cluttering his desktop.
Peter sighed. As much as he had come to adore his charge, who he now thought of as his little girl, he couldn’t help but be frustrated by her behavior sometimes. They were going to have to have a talk about this.
Christ, I need coffee, he thought. He left the mess that had become Julie’s office in order to go start a pot.
* * *
Julie groggily awoke around eleven. She considered going back to sleep, but she remembered that Peter was home today, so she figured she should go say hi to him. She slumped the blankets off and got to her feet, then padded down the hall to the bathroom.
A few minutes later, she emerged looking halfway put together, although still in her pajamas, and headed down the hallway to look for Peter. She didn’t see him in his office or in the kitchen, so she began to wonder if he might have left and gone to work after all. Her heart sank a little at that prospect. She got lonely during the day, and was looking forward to the change in his schedule.
She noticed that the side door off the kitchen was ajar, though. A sliver of yellow light shone in. Julie felt an instant nervousness when she saw that it was open, like the protective seal of Peter’s house was compromised and she was now at risk, but she was able to convince herself pretty quickly that Peter was probably in the yard.
With the hesitancy of a child creeping into a dark hallway at night, she pushed the door open and stuck her head out.
Peter was sitting at a café table in the shade of the house, reading a detective novel. He had a yellow pencil in his fingers, and he tapped it against his leg as he read.
Julie put her bare foot on the concrete walkway to test its heat. It was warm from baking in the desert sun, but in enough shade that she could stand without it hurting.
“Hey!” she called from the entranceway, “am I allowed to go out here?”
Peter set his book down and looked over his shoulder at Julie. “As long as I’m with you, yes.”
Julie tiptoed over to where he was sitting. “The sun! It burns me after so long!” she said with feigned melodrama, bending her neck back and putting the back of her hand against her forehead as if she were about to faint.
“Yeah, yeah,” Peter said with a shake of the head. “I don’t get out much either.”
Julie took a look at her caretaker.
“Why are you wearing your work clothes?” she asked.
“Because I’m technically working. Actually, I’m technically on my lunch break.”
“But you’re not at work, so you don’t have to wear them.”
Peter shrugged. “Habit, then.”
Julie giggled a little bit. “You’re being a big dork again.”
Peter looked up at her with mock sternness. “You’re being a naughty little girl again,” he scolded.
Julie kept giggling for a moment, dancing in place a bit as she did.
She took a second to look at Peter in his uniform. She often saw him dressed this way when he came home, before he changed. He had been wearing it when she first saw him. But she had never really looked at it.
The tan shirt fit snugly against his strong chest, and the short sleeves showed off the musculature in his arms. Even the pants, although they were really just unremarkable brown dress pants, seemed to be perfectly fitted to his frame, and she studied his lap for the shape of his cock within them. He wore black boots with his uniform and a thick-looking leather belt around his waist, which made lots of thoughts pop into Julie’s mind when she saw it. It wasn’t fair for her to tease him about dressing this way. There was nothing dorky about it. His body looked so strong, and everything about his attire emphasized his authority. She felt a little shiver run down her spine despite the desert heat.
“Decided to come visit me last night?” Peter asked, breaking her daydreaming.
Julie blushed a little and shrugged. “You said you weren’t mad.”
“Of course I wasn’t mad. You can always sleep there if you want to.”
Julie made a concerned face at Peter. “But you put me in the other room when I said that I was sleepy.”
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