2
"I...I
can't, I just-"
"You bitch, I already paid you! You are
NOT backing out now-" there was a small scream,"and you are
going to finish what you started!"
I turned away for a
moment from the muffled screams. There was a slim chance that this
was the girl I was looking for. That, or just a nervous kid on her
first night.
I weighed my options. On one hand, I hated to see a
women being forced to do something that caused her pain. On the
other, I had no weapon, and he most likely did.
Feeling woozy from
those drinks, which hardly ever happens to me, and turned the
corner.
"Hey," I barked, "leave the kid
alone."
Unfourtnally, he did have a gun, and at the moment it
was planted right between the girls eyes. She shot her head up from
his lap when she heard me, a wild look of frozen fear in her blue
pools as she craned her neck at me.
She was young. Much too young
to throw her life away as a hooker. Hell, she even looked underage
(underage in this town was twelve and under) in whatever light was
being thrown from the street lights, but one thing I could tell was
that she was scared as shit.
I kept my cool as the man shot his
own head at me and glared, "You have no business here, missy,"
he spat, "now, why don't you move along and you won't get
hurt."
"I'll leave with the girl." I said icily.
His eyes silted and he clicked the gun. The girl gasped, closing
her eyes so tight tears formed in the corners.
"I said,"
I repeated, "I'll leave with the girl. That means
unharmed."
"You have a big mouth on you." He
commented through his teeth, "What have I to fear of you?"
Then he laughed. A laugh so cold and horrible that it seemed to echo
around the whole world.
"Just the fact that I'm a cop and
I'll throw you in." I lied. Even though I was a P.I., I still
had no right to land someone into the slammer.
I could see in his
eyes that he had broken slightly.
"How do I know you aren't
lying?" he asked, the hold on his gun lagging.
The girls eyes
had opened and she was looking towards me now with a new fear that
she would be the one I was throwing in.
I reached into my trench
coat pocket and pulled out my P.I. badge, making sure he couldn't
read it clearly.
It must've worked, because the moment I pulled it
out he pulled the gun away from the girl and stood up, his pecker
still hanging from the unzipped portion of his pants as he ran like
Hell out of there and jumped the fence further down the alley.
I
loosened my stance with relief, pocketed my badge and turned, almost
forgetting about the girl who was now trying to slip away from
me.
"Hold it right there." I commanded her, not turning
to look at her.
There was a pause, and a weak, stammering voice
chimed in, "It wasn't what it looked like, I-I.. I was just
walking here and he..I mean, first it was day, and I saw..I wasn't-"
"Relax, I 'aint really a cop."
There was another
pause, "I...Thank you..Ma'am.." the awed voice said.
"What
are you doing out here, any how? Get on home, it's dangerous to be
your age in this town at night."
"That man.." Her
voice was closer now, but oddly quieter then before,"I have no
home. That man found me here. He told me to come with him, that he
wouldn't hurt me.." I felt her small hands grab my arm. She
sounded on the verge of tears, "He wouldn't hurt me and that he
wanted to help. He bought me these clothes..a meal."
I
turned, and the moment I did she held to my waist tightly, "Oh,
I was so stupid to trust him..!"
"Hey, you're not
stupid," I said, "you knew what you were doing was wrong,
you tried to stop it. Hell, if anything, he was the idiot. Really,
taking advantage of a little girl like that.." It honestly made
me stick to my stomach.
She started sobbing so I held her for a
few moments.
"I don't want it to happen again.."
"Don't
worry, kid, you learn from your mistakes."
Her crying had
died down, leaving a few tear stains on my coat. "Thank you,"
she said again, leaving my arms to get out of the alley.
It
started to rain.
My stone heart had broke in two as I watched
her walk away to God knows where, shivering in the rain. So, being
half drunk as I was, I had offered her to stay in my office, which
was my home half the time anyway.
She was now curled up on the
small couch I had gotten second hand a few days ago. I, leaning back
in my desk chair, looked up at the ceiling calmly thinking, the only
sounds being the rain pattering agents the window and her deep and
slow breaths as she slept.
She told me she never had a name. That
at the orphanage her dead beat mom had left her at nobody had ever
bothered to name her.
So, I had lovingly named her Wanda Jr.
Wanda'll get a kick out of that when she meets her.
In a way, the
kid kinda looked like her. Despite her blue eyes, she was a dead
ringer. Her long, lank brown hair even looked the same shade of red
Wanda had under the right light.
We still didn't have her exact
age, though. She looked to be either nine or ten, so I just guessed
it.
I glanced over to her after seeing the small movement of my
coat, looking like a blanket on her, as she shifted in her sleep. The
color seemed to be coming back to her cheeks and her now soft, shaggy
hair fell lightly against her face. I looked back to my ceiling and
moved my fag to the other end of my lips with my tongue. Wanda had
just told me the the other day that cigarettes are called fags in
Britain. I now used the word as much as I could.
Before I had
brought the girl to my office, we had dropped by my apartment to find
some clothes and giver her a shower. The clothes she had gotten from
the deadweight earlier were fine for the time being; simple blue
jeans, cheap sandals, and a light green tank top, the loose kind you
would find at a kid's store. I had discovered, though, after she had
cleaned her hair, that she possessed no undergarments. Rooting
through my drawers, I has located one of the few underwear I had and
gave it to her, using a safety pin to keep it up. I had shorted on
seeing if I still had an old training bra lying around, which I had
highly doubted, for I hadn't helped but noticed that she didn't need
one. Before I had opened the door for us to leave, I had asked her if
her mouth was sore, to which she embarrassedly nodded yes. I gave her
a mint, "to get the bad taste out", and we were out to my
office.
I was about to nod off myself before I had heard the girl
move again, but only this time it was to sit up and say through the
semidarkness; "Miss.Stills?"
"Shoot." I
responded lazily.
"Thank you."
It was the umpteenth
time she had told me that that night. Normally I would have bit her
head off in annoyance. But still, I couldn't help but smile.
"Don't
mention it, kid."