Small Town Angel

by K'Anne Meinel

  “Like I do that deliberately,” she protested with a grin.

  “Uh huh, you think I keep those under my pillow? Smell them later for your essence?”

  “Would you?” she asked surprised. Her redheaded lover was really inventive.

  “Now would I do that?” she asked innocently, laying out on the bed temptingly.

  Abby froze in the act of pulling her pants on, staring at the lovely woman on her bed. She wanted to crawl back into bed with her but discipline kept her pulling the pants back on. “You are a hard woman to leave,” she said instead as she sat on the edge of the bed to pull her socks on, not bothering to button or zipper the pants.

  Amy crawled down the bed to be behind Abby, to take her in her arms. She kissed her on the back of the neck, nuzzling, causing shivers down the officer’s spine. Her hands began to wander across her front, finding the bountiful breasts she had come to adore. “Are you sure you have to leave now?” she whispered huskily as her hands creeped towards the open front of the trousers.

  “You are bad,” Abby assured her, leaning into her. “If I could stay, I would,” she told her emphatically and quickly finished pulling on her socks before the redhead could do any more damage to her. She was already seething with desire for her again.

  “I can be,” she teased as her hands wandered.

  Abby turned with lightning swiftness and pinned the naked redhead on the bed. She used her legs to spread Amy’s and hold her captive beneath her. “Don’t tempt me,” she ordered before she leaned down to ravage Amy’s mouth with her own, punishing her for teasing her.

  Amy gave as good as she got and while she was helpless beneath Abby she loved every minute of it. She trusted her implicitly and allowed her to have her way with her naked body. She was left wanting…very wanting. “I’m going to pay you back for that,” she promised when Abby finally arose from her.

  “Only as much as I’m hurting,” she was assured as Abby leaned over from the pains in her own body that were unfulfilled.

  “Then why did you do that?”

  “Because we both will be having pleasant thoughts today when we get to work and anticipate tonight,” she promised.

  Abby left Amy with a big smile of anticipation as she went back to sleep for a few hours.

  * * * * *

  “Good afternoon, may I have a cherry coke?” Abby asked formally and then smiled when Amy turned in surprise.

  “I thought you were going out to check boats or something and the islands?” She hadn’t anticipated seeing her until tonight.

  “I got back early,” she told her with delight, checking out her ass in the mirror.

  Amy saw her look and turned to see what she was looking at, realizing she was checking her out. Her eyebrow went up as she shared an anticipatory grin with the officer. They frequently flirted and actually hoped no one noticed. Several of the locals had noticed and they couldn’t find any objections to the two women enjoying each other. Except for a select few that felt two women loving each other was wrong, they were getting approval on all sides. People were being kind about waiting on the two women to announce they were in a relationship. They were fooling no one but they were at least getting the space they needed to cultivate the connection as they needed.

  “Are you almost off work?” Abby asked, almost innocently, drawing circles with her finger on the wood surface. It wasn’t as though Amy didn’t catch the gleam in her eye.

  “Actually, I am almost off,” she assured her as she spotted one of her relief workers coming in. She didn’t have to close the store tonight and she was relieved since the two of them had a date. “What about the kids?” she whispered worriedly.

  Abby loved that about Amy, she was always worried that she wasn’t spending enough time with her kids and balancing her time with the redhead. “Today was a school holiday, didn’t you realize the amount of kids in here?” she pointed at the full seats in the eating area, all the kids seemed to be eating ice cream.

  “I did notice but I didn’t notice,” she said as she shook her head.

  Abby laughed at the redhead’s distraction. Ever since she had gone to the bank and gotten the papers for her loans on the store and the cabin she had been a bit distracted, almost as though she were jumpy. “I took the kids with me around the islands. I think we have had enough quality time. I apparently cramp Bailey’s style,” she finished with a typical parent’s moue.

  “Is he hitting the teen years? Already?”

  Abby shook her head. “That boy is growing up too fast, he isn’t a teen…yet!”

  “Yeah, but you’re just his mom, you don’t know what you are talking about,” she teased.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” she replied with a full dose of sarcasm.

  “How long until you can leave?”

  “Give me five minutes and you can walk me to my car,” she promised as she sauntered away, putting a little extra swing in her hips, knowing Abby was watching…and she was.

  * * * * *

  “We should head down The Thumb and look at all the trees turning. The leaves are going to be particularly gorgeous this weekend,” Abby said idly as they walked along towards Amy’s car. “There is the Apple Harvest Festival…” she droned on, offering places they could go together as a family or as a couple.

  Amy wasn’t paying attention though anymore. She had looked up at the taller woman and then beyond her, frowning. “Do you smell something?” she asked concerned.

  Abby smelled and then shrugged. “Someone burning leaves?” she asked if that was what Amy meant.

  “No, it’s something else…it almost smells like gas or oil burnin’,” she answered knowledgeably, looking around.

  “I don’t smell…”

  “Abby, LOOK! Your house is on fire!” she yelled, making fire sound like far.

  They both turned and began running towards the house which was indeed on fire. Amy dropped Toby’s lead as she ran. Just before they got to the front door it exploded outwards in flames. They both fell back from the explosion.

  “Oh my god, the kids are in there with Bonnie!” Abby exclaimed.

  “You see if you can get them out the back, I’m gonna empty The Emporium,” Amy called and gave Abby a shove to the right as she went to the left.

  Amy calmly yelled to everyone to drop everything and leave the store. There was a fire next door, she told them coolly, not mentioning that the next door was attached to this building. She saw Abby on the dock behind the building and ran through her store to open the door. “Anything?” she called.

  “I can’t see them, all the windows and doors have flames,” she called frantically.

  “Did someone call the fire department?” Amy asked calmly.

  Abby held up her cell phone where she had made the call.

  “You go out front and direct them, tell them,” she ordered, noticing that Abby was looking panicked, something she had never seen her do before. She had handled drunks and other altercations in their small town effortlessly, but since her children were involved she was going to pieces. Amy remembered something. “I’ll be right there,” she called as she rushed back into her store. No smoke was in there and she hoped that the fire department would come and put the fire out before it spread. This was her life and she’d put so much into this that she couldn’t lose it! She wouldn’t! She glanced up at the modern sprinkler system and wondered what a mess it would make if it went off. She hurried to her stock room and began to pull aside the shelving that blocked the hole between the Sheriff’s home and her own store.

  She soon had the shelves aside and then she pulled the sheet of wood she had put there nearly a year ago to block the kids from coming in her store. She pushed at the panel that blocked it the rest of the way from Abby’s home, it slid aside. She crawled through and called, “Bailey!” she waited a second or two for an answer and then, “Heather?” Again she waited and repeated the call. Then she called, “Bonnie?” She began to walk through the small back room and along th
e hall, she had never gone through this hall, they had kept it locked and really she hadn’t seen the inside of their house before as she had been relegated to the kitchen for a couple of meals that they shared. She kept calling when she thought she heard something, almost a whimper. As she tried the door, she found it locked. She lunged against it hurting her shoulder. It opened from the other side, the lock seemed sturdy too. She kicked at the lock repeatedly, lunging at the door, and amazingly it finally came loose. She opened the door, she didn’t think to put her hand against it, and as she opened it, the smoke began to pour out from behind it, she saw flames and found one of the children as she stumbled over them. She quickly regained her balance and tried to see through the smoke which one it was. Whoever it was, whimpered, and she began to pull them along the hall, back to the hole. The smoke was filling the hall, causing her eyes to smart, and she began to cough. It was only when she got to the hole that she realized she had Heather. “Heather! Heather,” she shook the small girl who was coming to. There wasn’t much time. “Heather, I need you to go through the hole. Do you know where Bailey is? Do you know where your grandmother Bonnie is?” she asked the barely conscious child.

  Heather looked up at her with incomprehension. She shook her head. She started sucking on her thumb.

  “Heather! You need to get through the hole, can you crawl?” she asked. At the child’s nod she pushed her towards the hole and then ran back along the hall to look for the others. She found Bailey in the kitchen, coughing and crying out, crawling along the floor. He too was trying to find his sister, his grandmother, his mother.

  “Bailey, you need to come with me,” Amy told him as she grabbed him. Her eyes were smarting. She was coughing at all the smoke.

  Bailey turned towards the back door that led to the dock but the flames were too fierce.

  “No, this way,” Amy directed him, trying to remember where the hallway was from the kitchen.

  “I have to find Heather!” he said frantically. “Mom will be mad if I don’t,” he reasoned.

  “Heather’s safe, she went through the hole,” Amy told him.

  “The hole?” he asked dumbly, not comprehending and coughing horribly.

  “The hole between my store and your hallway,” she prompted. “Do you remember she was going through there to check out my store last year?” she reminded him further.

  He nodded. “Let’s get you out there,” she hoped he knew the way, between the unfamiliar house, the smoke, and her frantic worry over finding the children, she was beginning to panic.

  Bailey led the way directly to the back hall. It was full of smoke now and she could see the walls were about to go up in flames, they were beginning to have a different tinge to them and she saw peeling wallpaper through the smoke. The last few feet they had to crawl in order to get enough oxygen.

  “Go through,” she ordered him.

  “What about Grandma?” he asked.

  “Where was she?” she asked in return as she urged him through the hole. She could see clearly into the back room and Heather hadn’t moved.

  “She was in the jail area, she was doing some paperwork for Mom,” he told her.

  “How do I get there from this back hall?” she asked coughing, the smoke was becoming worse. She thought she could hear the sirens outside.

  He told her quickly and she hoped she had enough time, it was as she saw him through the hole and turned back towards the end of the hall that she saw the flames coming down the hall. She didn’t have time and she ducked down for oxygen to hurry. She didn’t make it halfway down the hall when a second explosion rocked the building. She fell to her feet and looked up at the flames at the end of the hall, it was engulfed. She quickly turned around, her eyes were tearing so bad she was nearly blind but she made it to the end of the hall and pulled herself through the hole. She quickly put back the board.

  “Wait, what about Grandma?” Bailey shouted as he fought her for the board.

  “I can’t,” Amy cried, the tears were already there but more began to fall as she struggled with the boy. “I’m sorry Bailey, get Heather out,” she knew it was only a matter of time before the flames she had seen began to burn this side of the building. She leaned her weight against the board for a moment until the sense of what she was saying got through to the boy. He turned and pulled at his sister’s hand. Amy leaned some supplies quickly against the board and followed him. She looked back at the board for a moment; already she could imagine the flames coming through that tiny gap between the two places. She hurried to catch up with the children and caught them at the door.

  As they came out she saw it was chaos. Two people were trying to hold Abby back, one of them was Thomas and the other the bartender from Chuckies. “My children are in there,” she kept screaming like a crazy woman. She was irrational, and stronger than they thought, she lunged against one and then the other in her desire to escape them and get to her children inside the burning building.

  It took a while until Amy’s yells in return to get her attention penetrated her frantic mind. The sense of what Amy was saying finally began to seep in and then she saw them, she saw Amy’s arms around each of them and she fell to her knees. Both men let her sag down as the children ran to their mother and wrapped their arms around her. The three of them held on for dear life as Amy and the others who had come to watch gazed on. Abby finally looked up from where she was hugging and kissing and petting her children to see Amy’s sooty and tear soaked face. She held out her arms wider to include the redhead in their embrace and Amy kneeled down to join the three of them. Finally Abby pulled back and asked, “What about Bonnie?”

  Amy shook her head and looked down. Abby understood and began to cry some more, joined by the two children who had such a narrow escape.

  * * * * *

  Inside the front offices of the jail, Bonnie had been alone, working on paperwork when a strange man came in. He looked around oddly and she asked, “May I help you?” she asked watching as he seemed to inspect the room.

  “Hello,” he drawled. “I’m with the county commissioner’s office and we are inspecting the various sheriff’s branches,” he told her as he continued to look around, as though he were looking for something as he poked and prodded.

  “I’m the one who would handle such a thing here, do you have any paperwork on that?” she asked watching him suspiciously. She hoped one of the deputies would be in shortly, this man was acting odd. She didn’t believe his story for a minute. Furthermore, she knew the guys at the commissioner’s office and none of them had a southern accent like that. The only person she knew with a southern accent around here was Amy. She idly wondered when Amy and Abby would admit they were seeing each other.

  “Don’t interfere,” he warned as he pulled out a gun, quickly and effortlessly.

  Bonnie was startled. They weren’t some big town with any high falutin’ need for extra security. Except for unruly tourists and an occasional local with too much to drink, they led a fairly quiet life up here. She put her hands out to show she meant no harm.

  The man quickly and easy cuffed Bonnie to her chair. “Don’t make a move,” he warned as he headed for the back door that led to their small holding cell and then to another door that led to their home.

  “My grandchildren are in there,” Bonnie pleaded, wondering what the man had in mind. Maybe Abby had arrested him once and he was out for revenge.

  “That’s too bad,” he said angrily and went through the door. He was back within ten minutes and in that time Bonnie had worked her way around the edge of the desk and towards one of the dispatch radios. “Nuh, uh, uh,” he said as he back handed her hard enough that she rose in the chair and then she fell backwards against the wall. As she fell down the wall, the chair came with her, and together they took down the bulletin boards on the wall, including the wanted posters and all the town bulletins. The man quickly opened and shut the door behind him as he went outside.

  It was then that Bonnie smelled the smoke c
oming from the kitchen through the holding cell. She could hear slight popping sounds from the office and she stared in amazement as little flames burst out all over the office. The drapes caught fire immediately from the front windows, the papers along the bulletin boards. Bonnie began to yell to get the children’s attention, she thought she heard them come downstairs into the kitchen but she couldn’t be sure. It was as she saw the wanted posters had caught fire that she saw one she had pinned there nearly a year ago with a reasonable likeness of Amy Adams. She watched absently as the edges of it curled and burned, the flames spreading across the heart shaped face. It was then that she heard an explosion of sorts; she didn’t hear anything after that.

  * * * * *

  The four of them held each other, people coming by now and then to put their arms around them and give them hugs. Everyone realized that Bonnie hadn’t been able to escape the odd fire. Someone had caught Toby and brought him to Amy to hold, he was very agitated at all the excitement and the smell of the fire. He was further confused by the smell of smoke on his person.

  The fire department was able to put out the fire before it did too much damage to The Emporium.

  “Oh your store,” Abby said consolingly to Amy.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she dismissed. She looked deeply into Abby’s sad brown eyes and glanced at the children.

  “How were you able to get them out?” Abby finally realized they had come to her with Amy. She couldn’t get in the doors or the windows of the house, all of them had been too hot with flames.

  “Through the hole in the storeroom,” she explained.

  “I thought that was closed off?”

  “All I did was put a sheet of plywood over it,” she confessed.

  Abby nodded. She had meant to close it off from her end as well but had forgotten it. She was grateful now that she had. Maybe it was meant to be.

  Someone took the children home for Abby after the paramedics checked them and Amy out. Except for a little smoke inhalation that was quickly taken care of with some oxygen, they were all fine, lucky, but fine.