Once Upon A Killing (A Gass County Novel Book 2) (3 page)

Chapter Three

“Gather around, please. Got some things we need to take care of before we start the day.” Chief Hensley’s voice shook the walls of the break room and similar to silent rats the team of paramedics and rescue workers gathered around the small coffee table, each grabbing a seat on the blue couches surrounding it in the middle of the narrow room.

“Good morning, and welcome to yet another great day. As always we are here to rescue and help people in need, even animals, as our fellow paramedic Bryce here showed us yesterday.”

A round of comforting laughs and cheers, and coffee cups held high in salute as they all acknowledged a sulking Bryce leaning back against the fabric of the couch, knowing he was the one that had crawled under Mr. George’s sealed in front porch yesterday to rescue not only one, but three dirty chickens, one of whom had needed CPR, and who then pecked away on every piece of fabric he had worn, and defecated in his hand as he grabbed it and pulled it outside to freedom and future life on the farm.

“Yeah, some thanks I got for that effort; dirty clothes and chicken breath.”

“Now, now, Bryce. Every life is as important as the next. That’s our mantra and you should stick to it. If I had an award for your bravery I’d hand it to you right now. Would you care for some fried chicken thighs?”

The room busted out in coffee spitting laughter, a seamlessly charming joke making even the old chief wipe a tear or three away from going down his face.

“Laugh it up people, I goddamn saved those suckers yesterday. And to be honest, I’m glad I did. Not to mention the free supply of chicken eggs I’ve been offered to pick up at the farm whenever I feel like it. Beat that.”

The chief eventually got the rowdy group around the table to calm down somewhat, and slowly and methodically went over the day’s schedule and current events. As the noise of the room dissipated, the groups were separated with Wayne, Bryce, and Jaycee walking out to the large hall attached to a huge garage door that Jayce pulled open, making it possible to look up and down the entire street. It was currently empty at this time of the day, but as soon as the clock struck seven, cars would start lining up to buy a quick coffee at the one and only Starbucks shop in the town, or to run their kids across the street to St. Joseph’s Catholic Middle School.

The morning started out as routinely as it possibly could with Wayne and Bryce checking all the inventory of the two parked ambulances, while Jayce stocked whatever was missing from the two vehicles, making online orders of things in need of refill.

Then he heard it. It was like a pecking sound filling the otherwise quiet air inside the open space surrounding all three in the hall. A sound picking up speed, clicking more furiously over the newly polished cement floor until the sound got too loud and there was no chance in hell he was able to avoid the creeping curiosity anymore and he stepped back out of his ambulance.

There they were. The things that had so recently made the increasingly annoying pecking sounds. Shoes so apricot in color they would make the sun ripe fruit pale in comparison, just to be decorated with the slightest of white ribbons framing some well manicured baby blue toenails.

Above those, bare skin, and even more bare skin wrapping around nicely muscular calves, until a skirt, the softest pink of a scarcely opened Belle Amour, hid the rest of the possibly nicest shaped legs his eyes had ever witnessed.

“Hi, my name is Christine. I own the newly opened bakery ‘A Bun in the Oven’ just a few houses down on this street, and I’m currently advertising my business by giving away fabulous deals on lunch services delivered to your business. It would be absolutely fantastic for you guys here at the station; no need to bring food from home, having the hassle of cooking the night before, and no need to rush out and buy something before your break is over. My business will come to you and…”

“Hold up a second!”

Wayne’s eyes had barely reached the dark haired woman’s face and already the speed of her mouth almost made him dizzy. “What was your name?”

“Christine. Christine Anderson. I know, right, the most common name in the universe. Nothing memorable at all. That’s why I had to make the name of the bakery stand out instead. So, anyway, who can I talk to about this fantastic lunch offer? You can’t beat it.” Her smile turned blazingly white, and in a joking fashion she displayed a white paper menu in one hand, and pointed at it like an advertiser with her right hand.

Something inside him turned on. Was it a slight sizzle? Or a slight fire of a warm torch in his chest, maybe? He didn’t know, he just looked at her, still standing there in the same ad position waiting for a response. Definitely memorable, very much so.

Before he had the chance to respond, she picked up the purse she’d placed next to her feet on the floor when she showed him the menu, and walked past him heading for the door to the inside of the station’s break room.

“Hey, wait up!” He called after her, just to have the apricot shoes take a slight break from their clicking and turn in his direction. “You can talk to me about that.”

“Really? You didn’t say much and you honestly don’t look like someone… in charge of things.”

“Oh, is that so. Well, to be frankly honest, you don’t look like someone owning your own business.”

His last comment birthed the deadliest of silences between the two. Eyes stared into eyes, and for a short moment he thought he saw her pupils enlarge under those long dark brown lashes, but the thought was gone as soon as it started, as she took a clicking step of her heels and erased the space between them.

He was waiting for her to say something. Something that showed her irritation with him. Something to tell him off, or maybe the opposite, kiss him.
Stranger things had happened
, he thought. Maybe not to him, but he’d seen it in movies. Although, this wasn’t the movies at all, this was reality.

Instead her mouth smiled slightly, but as the lips curved something fired off inside those brown eyes of hers, resembling the explosive fuse of a firecracker on the fourth of July. Then the tip of her tongue came out and slowly licked the upper part of her lip before it disappeared between two plump, sheer glossed lips. The sudden vision must have made him black out somewhat as the clicking of her heels leaving the station’s garage made him come alive again, and instantly he turned to follow the sound of the heels, but her speed was fascinatingly quick as her legs had  already brought her to the other side of the street. The last thing he witnessed were those amazing calves of hers ending in those colored heels, following the rest of her body inside Kline’s Accounting Services, most definitely hunting down new clients to haunt about lunch.

Chapter Four

The street looked empty. Lonelier than usual, embedded in the darkness of the evening. The walls from the taller brick buildings framing the street with its few trees and their thick, wide crowns assisted the dark sky in making the usually lovely street appear haunted.

He wasn’t even half-a-block away from the fire station where he was standing now, under one of the large trees that seemed to erupting from the cement of the sidewalk. He didn’t want to be caught dead standing there alone, hiding under a tree like that, on a usually very happening Friday night. But he hadn’t been able to stop the prodding urge that had come over him earlier that evening, even before he got off his shift at the station.

He kept wondering, picturing things over and over again, what a woman like Christine Anderson would do on a Friday like this. The beginning of what for him used to be a most delightful fuck-fest if he wasn’t scheduled to work.

She wasn’t too young to go out. Thinking of it, she would definitely be someone who could go out and drink with her friends, dance, maybe make-out with a guy before heading home. Or perhaps she liked girls? Perhaps she liked both?

All of a sudden those jeans he’d chosen out of the drawer appeared tighter around his crotch than before. Making sure he was alone on the sidewalk he reached a hand down inside his jeans and adjusted his cock, which had grown into mature fullness just thinking of Christine with another woman. Soft bodies entangled. Lush breasts touching other breasts, lips, mouths.

“Shit, I hope no one saw that.” His voice rumbled quietly as he shook his head, afraid of being taken for a peeping-tom outside Christine’s bakery. Now that would be a most fascinating article in tomorrow’s paper, one that would get him fired so fast he wouldn’t even feel the door hit him on the way out:

“Local paramedic caught masturbating outside the new bakery, two blocks from his place of employment.” Yeah, that would be the end of his days as he knew them. Thank God for the trees, and the fact that he was alone. And that his hand was no longer inside his pants. “Grandma, grandma, grandma without clothes…” the thought visualized and he released a long sigh, relieved his mind was back in the here and now.

The lights were still on inside the bakery. Rattan café chairs in blue and white were seen turned upside down hanging from table tops around the room, but the olive tinted sign on the aged glass door still showed
Open
. “Huh, that’s pretty late for a bakery to keep open.” His mind hadn’t yet finished the thought, as his legs, as if on autopilot, brought him in great strides across the dimly lit street, landing him just outside the old door of the bakery. He could swear he smelled a hint of cinnamon and yeast seeping out through the slight cracks around the door, crooking a finger, inviting him in. Given that the sign still said open, and the cord hung lights in the ceiling were dangling luminously, he inhaled another deep breath of sweet spices, opened the door and stepped inside.

He hadn’t been wrong. The smell of baking, dough rising, sugar, and cinnamon rolls dove into the ridges of his nostrils and went straight into his brain, instantly stirring up memories from the past; of weekends at grandma’s with her morning rolls swelling in the oven just before breakfast.

“Sorry, I’m actually closed!” came a voice from the backroom, and just as suddenly a big poof of white snow concealed the space of the doorway between the dining area and what seemed to be a storage section behind the front desk.

Excessive coughing ensued and an alabaster ghost showing hints of dark red, or maybe chocolate brown hair sprinkled in saffron dust, stepped through the doorway and walked up to place her hands on the desk.

“I’m actually…” She held up one of her hands in midair, as if telling him not to ask her how she was doing, and then coughed once more - a deep chest rumbling quake. Sparse tears ran through the white powder down her face. “I’m closed, you see. I was about to lock the door and flip the sign when I heard something slide on the shelves back there and ran to see what it was.” Another coughing event occurred, and with that she turned around, her hands fumbling for the sink on the wall, seemingly attempting to get the dust out of her eyes.

“Hold on, let me help you with that.” Before she had a chance to stop him his large hands were already guiding hers underneath the warm water, he then handed her a towel hanging below the white belly of the porcelain sink.

“Let me have a look.” It went automatically, his warm hand on her shoulder, possessively turning her his way, his other hand gently underneath her chin pushing it up slightly to get a better view of her eyes.

“You have to stop blinking, or I won’t see if anything is still stuck in there.”

Her face tried to jerk back, out of his hand, but he held her face steady, looking into her eyes.

“Thanks,” she mumbled. “But I’m quite alright, it’s just flour. It’ll come out sooner or later, just need to rinse some more, then I’ll be good to go. You can let go of my face now.”

Her brown eyes stared straight back into his, and in the light he noticed a few speckles of green in one and gold in the other.

“You’ve got… interesting eyes.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” she said low, trying to find another focal point in the room but his face. “Now, please let go of my face, my eyes are starting to dry up again so I need to rinse.”

Wayne backed away creating more room for her to bend over the small sink once more, watching her hands move under the pouring water from the faucet, cupping it to bring it up to sooth the abrasiveness her eyelids created when they moved. A few seconds passed with him standing there, watching the way her hands moved, until her face surfaced and she patted herself dry.

A woman without make-up, and a good looking one, too.
His inner conversation seemed endless tonight.

“So, as I said,” she stated. “I am closed for tonight. I’ve already cleared out the register, so if you came attempting to buy something I’m sad to say you have to come back tomorrow. Come back in the morning though, because the freshly baked cinnamon rolls are to die for. Fortunately, you now have the inner scoop.”

“Actually, I work up the street and you might not remember but you came into our station the other day asking if we’d like to sign up for your lunch distribution service. You know, like sandwiches and stuff.”

Her hands were slowly wiping of the excess white flour still lingering on her arms, in between her fingers, behind her ears, while she silently took in the information he was polluting her with.