by Marika Ray
Ridin’ Solo
Sisters From Hell #1
Marika Ray
Marika Ray Publishing
Contents
Ridin’ Solo
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by Marika Ray
About the Author
RIDIN' SOLO
* * *
Copyright © 2021 by Marika Ray
* * *
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
* * *
First Edition: April 8, 2021
* * *
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
* * *
Cover Model: Ben Shook
* * *
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-950141-28-9
Print ISBN: 978-1-950141-31-9
Ridin’ Solo
A cop with a shady past falls for his boss, the straight-laced captain of his department.
* * *
At a measly five foot three, Captain Oakley Waldo seemed just fine riding solo at work and in her personal life. But when I accidentally burst in on her in a, shall we say, compromising position, she’ll have to work double time to keep the tension between us at a low simmer.
My mission as her new partner? To bring out the wild woman I know is there underneath the starched uniform. Only problem is, she seems dead set on discovering the past I vowed to keep hidden away.
With stolen moments of forbidden passion in between arrests, creative uses for those handcuffs, and four meddling sisters who won’t butt out of Oakley’s life, this law enforcement partnership is set to explode!
1
Oakley
* * *
Wasn’t every day you attempted to arrest a guy in jorts and a backward baseball cap with Jason Derulo lyrics running through your brain. For the pure spirits and innocent minds, jorts were jeans cut off as long shorts, worn by men who had zero fashion sense. Today must have been my lucky day. Not only was I riding solo still, but I had the great honor of arresting Jeremiah Singleton for the twelfth time in as many days.
“Jeremiah, step away from that door.”
His head swiveled in my direction and the rest of him listed a bit too far left to make me think he was sober. His face crumpled into full-blown tantrum mode, which could compete with my youngest sister, Ulva, affectionately called Vee. Because who the hell would want to go around with the name Ulva? Can you imagine the jokes at school? As the baby of the family, Vee could really put on a performance. Clearly Jeremiah here thought I was born yesterday.
“Come on, Waldo,” he groaned. “I’m jest here to make sure she got my text. She could be bleeding out behind that there door and wouldn’t you feel real guilty for interrupting me bein’ a good Samurai?”
Now it was my turn to frown. I rested a hand on my billy club and rocked back on my heels. Normally, domestic violence calls were taken seriously, and I’d be more prepared for things to turn violent. However, this was the backwoods of Monterey County and I’d known Jeremiah since he cheated in dodgeball in elementary school.
“Do you mean good Samaritan?” I asked dryly.
He nodded vigorously, and I worried his baggy jorts might take the jostling as a sign to slide further down his nonexistent ass. What was with these guys who only lifted upper body? Didn’t they know the ladies appreciated a well-toned lower body? Don’t skip leg day, fellas.
“Dat’s right.” Jeremiah smiled and spun back to knock on his ex’s door.
An ex who had a restraining order out on him.
He may seem harmless to me—annoying for sure, but not particularly dangerous—but it wasn’t for me to decide. The law was the law. He’d violated that restraining order by stepping foot on her property. I grabbed the handcuffs out of the back of my utility belt and climbed the stairs of the porch.
“You know you shouldn’t be here, Jeremiah. I’m going to have to take you in again.” I grabbed one beefy wrist of his and slapped the cuffs on him.
The sound of the metal teeth closing made him jump into action. Getting the first wrist cuffed was always the easiest. It was the second one, when the suspect dropped all pretense of being nice and realized things would not turn out in their favor, that was the hardest. Jeremiah used his bulk to spin around quickly, taking all five foot three of me with him.
In this moment I truly wished I wasn’t riding solo and had a partner to help me out. Hence the Jason Derulo lyrics running through my brain.
Thankfully, I’d taken years of Jiu Jitsu lessons. Dad hadn’t let us girls go through life without some countermeasures to make sure we’d be safe out there in the real world, where fifty percent of the population proved bigger and stronger than us.
So what do you do when you’re up against someone stronger? You use their bulk and momentum against them. He spun, I put a foot out to trip him up. He went down like a redwood. As he flailed, stunned at his new horizontal position, I got the other wrist in the cuffs. I gave him a tug, but he looked like he preferred to camp out here all night.
I rolled my eyes heavenward and asked for patience. This was my last call of the night and then I’d be off. “Could you stand up for me, please?” I asked in my nicest, yet stern voice.
“Nah, I’mma stay right here with my lady love.” Jeremiah gave me a smile, ruined because his mouth smashed into the wood planks beneath him.
I looked around at the darkening trees surrounding the property, the sounds of the night animals starting to make themselves known. “Going to be a cold one tonight. It may technically be spring, but it’s still freezing out here overnight and you have no shirt. I’d hate for you to catch your death out here, Jeremiah.”
He shrugged best he could with his hands tied up behind his back. “S’kay.”
I sighed. I hated to do it, but there was no way I wanted to spend the next half hour dragging his uncooperative carcass into the back of my cruiser. He’d asked for it.
“Welp, looks like I’ll have to get Sheriff Locke down here to collect you.”
The guy moved so fast I had to jump out of the way. He found his feet and hustled toward my car before I could bark out a laugh. Man, I was jealous. I hoped uttering my name one day would make people jump to attention like that. Our county sheriff was a fair guy, but you didn’t want to be on his bad side. He turned fifty soon and seemed to have no time for foolhardiness and shenanigans any more. His almost six-foot-five stature with at least two hundred fifty pounds of bulk helped too. The man was a tank with a badge.
Boots crunching over the gravel, I got down to the cruiser and opened the back door. Jeremiah made a face I couldn’t make out in the dimming light and slid right in. I walked around to the driver’s side and
radioed in that I had the suspect in custody and would be in shortly to book him in our tiny county jail.
Getting in behind the wheel, I stopped short, nose lifting automatically. I gave a test sniff and groaned out loud. I radioed in again.
“Got a code brown situation here. Let maintenance know this rig’ll need a full cleanout before tomorrow.”
The dispatcher, a lady in her late fifties whom I liked before tonight, couldn’t contain the peal of laughter before she responded. “Ten-four. What a shitty night, huh?” She broke into laughter again before I cut off the radio and put the car in gear.
“Seriously, Jeremiah?” I asked him in the rearview mirror, none too happy to end my night like this.
He had the good grace to look embarrassed. “I’ve been having tummy troubles, and when you said Sheriff Locke, I just lost control a bit, that’s all.”
“A bit?” I snapped.
My nose said he shit his pants something awful.
I pulled my little Grom motorcycle under the carport next to my house in the woods and cut the engine. I’d been saving all my money while working for the sheriff’s department to get this house. Having a vehicle seemed a little unnecessary, especially when I spent most of my time in a government-issued cruiser. The Grom was all I needed to get around in the small town of Auburn Hill.
Pulling off my helmet, I noticed a light on at my neighbor’s house. One of the deciding factors on my house purchase had been only having one neighbor close enough to see daily. I liked my privacy, okay? Old man Jim had been a good guy. Never caused any trouble, but sadly, he’d passed away a few months ago. His kids hadn’t wanted to move to a small town, so they’d had it on the market. The For Sale sign had come down last week, so I guessed my new neighbor had moved in, though I hadn’t seen anyone around.
I walked closer, not because I was nosy, but because it was neighborly to monitor the goings-on in the area. A huge black truck sat in the driveway, obscuring the front of the house from my view. I snorted and grabbed my cell phone from my back pocket to text my sister, Amelia.
I held up my pinkie and took the shot, the truck in the background.
Oakley: Uh-oh. The new neighbor moved in. Seems like he might be compensating for something…
Amelia: What’s with micro-dicks buying jacked-up trucks??
I snickered and headed back inside my house to make some dinner. I knew Amelia would get my reference. We’d been more like best friends since we were the closest in age out of all the Waldo sisters. In high school, we’d had a game where we tried to guess the guy’s personality based on the car he drove. The flashier the car, the bigger asshole he typically was. And invariably, the bigger the vehicle, the smaller the dick size. Since high school, I hadn’t been proven wrong yet. It was science, y’all.
I threw my helmet and keys on the tiny kitchenette table and hurried to turn the heater on. My home may have been old and drafty, more cabin than house, but it had charm you couldn’t manufacture in a master-planned community. While throwing a frozen lasagna dinner in the microwave, my phone rang. It was my parents. They likely memorized my work schedule and called the second they knew I’d be home.
“Hello, Mom,” I said, putting the call on speakerphone so I could strip out of my uniform in my bedroom.
“Hey, doll. How was work? All in one piece, huh?”
Mom always worried about me, but I guessed she was used to that state of being. My father was the chief of police in Auburn Hill.
“I’m just fine. Trying to scrounge up some dinner and relax. How’d your day go?” I tossed my shirt over the antique chair I’d found in the attic of this house after I’d moved in. My boots and pants were next, though my boots went into the tub in the bathroom and my pants went into the clothes hamper. I took all sanitary precautions in case that code brown had spread. I’d learned that the hard way.
“Oh, it was fine. Just caught up on the gossip at Coffee today. That Penelope Fines is getting stranger by the day. I asked your father why he hired her and where she came from. You know what he did? He basically hustled me out of the room! That’s strange, don’t you think?”
I rolled my eyes, but the smile came just hearing my mom’s voice. “Sounds like you need to let Dad do the detective work.”
She made some clucking noise only mothers of five daughters can make with their mouths. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s talk about what you’re having for dinner. Is it another one of those nutrition-less frozen meals?” She didn’t even give me a chance to answer. “I told you I’d be happy to make some extra each time I make dinner and drop it off to you. I can’t have you withering away on me. You’re so slight as it is.”
I shook my head and pulled on sweats and a tank top. “Mom. I’m short, but I could take most women in an arm wrestle.” In my mom’s eyes, if a woman didn’t have rounded hips, ample bosom spilling over, and a thigh-rubbing problem, they weren’t hardy women.
“Well, I think I’ll swing by tomorrow and drop off a few things.” She ignored my logical defense, as usual, but her heart was in the right place—and I really wouldn’t mind some homemade meals—so I didn’t call her on it. “Your father wants to speak to you.”
Loud ruffling filled the air as they handed off the phone without a care for the eardrums of the person on the other end of the line. I took the call off speaker and pressed the phone to my ear. The microwave dinged, and I moved back into the kitchen to eat.
“Oakley?”
“I’m here, Dad.” The lasagna proved a little cold in the middle, but I wasn’t one to complain. I needed adequate sustenance. It didn’t have to taste like a gourmet meal. I sat down at the kitchenette table and dug in.
“I’m still concerned they haven’t assigned you a new partner yet. It’s been three months. That’s plenty of time to hire from outside if need be.”
I shoved in a big bite and talked around it. “I know, but what can I do? I’m kind of enjoying being on my own.”
“Oakley.” The word was a rebuke. “It’s not safe for you to be out there on patrol on your own. Downright negligent of them.”
This was familiar territory. Dad criticized the county sheriff’s department. The county sheriff’s department criticized the small-town police force. It was a merry-go-round of disapproval we’d never get off.
“I can ask the sheriff about it again tomorrow.” I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Sheriff Locke remained an immovable force, but perhaps it would get Dad to settle down for another week.
“You do that, honey.” There was a pause, and I braced myself for it. “You know, it would have made things a lot easier if you’d just been a police officer. I would have made sure you always had a partner.”
And there it was. The guilt trip that had nipped at my heels since the day I got accepted into the sheriff’s academy and broke my father’s heart. I’d chosen a different department and he couldn’t seem to reconcile the fact that my doing so didn’t mean I loved or respected him any less. I just wanted to know that I succeeded on my own, not because my daddy was the town chief of police.
“I know, Dad. Well, I gotta go. My food’s getting cold.” All the satisfied feelings of a job well done left to die a slow death in the shadows of my father’s disappointment.
Dad grunted at my change in subject.
“Your mother wants to know if you met any handsome men today,” Dad grumbled like he didn’t want to ask, but he feared he’d have his ass handed to him if he didn’t.
The lasagna felt like a brick in my stomach. “Tell her my love life is just fine, thank you very much.” Dad made a distressed noise. “Tell her to focus on Amelia, okay? She’s married and giving her a grandkid shortly. That should tide her over.”
Dad sighed. “You know your mom…”
“Yes, I do. And despite it all, I love her. And you. Good night, Dad.”
“Love you too. ’Night.”
I put the phone down and inhaled the rest of my lasagna, washing it down with a bottle of water. I should l
ook into those box deliveries of dinner items and instructions. They’d have more vegetables and fresher ingredients, but I just couldn’t be bothered with it all. I didn’t exactly have the time to cook a dinner that took an hour to prepare. That time could be better spent working out or doing paperwork.
Speaking of which, I had some to do tonight. I settled into the couch, flipped on a movie I’d seen a thousand times, and got busy documenting everything I’d done today on the job.
If my night was a little repetitive and a lot lonely, I didn’t let it bother me. The job came first. Always.
And I was damn good at my job.
2
Oakley
* * *
“Lee!” barked the sheriff. “Get in here.”
“Yes, sir.” My boots squeaked on the clean linoleum floor as I changed directions and headed into the sheriff’s office. Betty, the sheriff’s long-suffering secretary, gave me a wide-eyed look which didn’t help my stomach much. When Sheriff Locke told you to do something, you dropped everything and did it. Fine by me to be a little late getting out on patrol this morning. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing if the maintenance crew had sufficiently aired out my cruiser from last night’s unfortunate arrest.
