Not on Her Own

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER ONE

N O GOOD DEED ever goes unpunished, and Brandon Wilkes, who’d sworn to serve and protect the good people of Brazelton County, Georgia, was living proof of that.

“You sure? Brandon, are you positively sure?”

Brandon clamped his jaw shut, trying not, in his effort to get to work on time, to lose his patience with Prentice O’Keefe. The man had the comprehension of an eight-year-old, and the comic-book-violence imagination to go with it.

“Prentice, I swear. No aliens are going to come down here and get you and take you back to their planet. It was just a movie. Okay? Just make-believe.”

“But they could, couldn’t they? I mean, they were big, Brandon and…” Here Prentice’s lower lip trembled. “Scary. Bad scary.”

Prentice’s older sister, Ella, pushed open the raggedy screen door. “Prentice, he’s told you that there’s no such thing as aliens! Now why can’t you believe him? Man’s got to get to work and he’s come all this way out of town to tell you not to believe such garbage!”

“It’s okay, Ella,” Brandon said, suppressing an urge to look at his watch. His boss might not agree that reassuring Prentice justified Brandon’s being late, but Brandon knew, for Ella’s sake, it was important. “Coming by here was on my way to see my uncle—and I’ve got time before I have to clock in at the sheriff’s department. Besides, I don’t want Prentice worrying about things. I know how he gets his mind fixed.”

“Tell me about it. Those so-called friends of his—filling his head with such nonsense and letting him watch crazy movies. He’ll be going on about this for days.” Ella threw up her hands, pulled open the screen door that barely hung on its hinges, and went inside. “I give up.”

Prentice poked out his bottom lip even more. “I ain’t stupid. I know things. Y’all don’t tell me things, but I can figure it out.”

Brandon’s impatience melted away. Prentice was his age, thirty, and Brandon had seen others tease him all through school. The least he could do was not belittle Prentice’s fears.

“Here, I’ve got something in the car that will fix you right up, Prentice.” Brandon jogged to the cruiser, yanked open the glove compartment and dug out a toy plastic star from a packet of dozens of identical plastic stars he kept for kids. Then he crossed the weedy front yard back to the O’Keefes’ porch.

“Okay, Prentice, you know what this is, right?”

Prentice’s eyes rounded. “Ooh, boy, Brandon! That’s a badge! Like yours!” He reached out to touch it, then snatched his hand back.

“No, no, it’s yours. But wait. We’ve got to make this official. Hold up your right hand.” Brandon led Prentice through a halting oath of office, using a lot of invention when his memory failed him. “Okay, then. If any aliens come around in their flying saucers, you tell ’em you’re a sure enough Brazelton County deputy, and they’d better leave you alone.”

“Ha! I will, Brandon! Yes, sir! Hey, Ella! Brandon made me a deputy! And he says there is, too, aliens, and they won’t mess with me—”

Brandon shook his head as Prentice disappeared into the house.

He didn’t linger, though. He was late for work already, and his planned trip by Uncle Jake’s would have to be put off—he’d never dreamed Ella’s request would take up so much time.

A WOMAN STOOD in the middle of the highway.

Brandon groaned. This day was already shaping up to be a beaut. What was it? A full moon or something? He pulled the sheriff’s cruiser to a stop, rolled down the window and poked his head out.

“Ma’am?”

The woman didn’t seem to notice. Not him. Not the fact that the bumper of his Crown Vic was less than three feet from her. Certainly not that she was standing at the base of a hill, on a curve, square in the middle of the double-yellow line.

“Ma’am!”

This time she turned, her dark ringlets sliding back over shoulders bare except for the thin straps of her sundress. She was a little thing, no bigger than five-two, and that was with help from the high-heeled sandals she wore.

Brandon tore his gaze from her tanned legs—surprisingly long for a gal as short as she was—and her toned arms and looked back up at the woman’s face.

And then at her hand.

She held up one index finger, the classic sign for wait.

Then she turned her attention back to the hill in front of her.

Brandon scratched his head and considered the problem. The lady was pretty, sure, but what kind of woman dressed up in her Sunday best and stood in the middle of a highway? What was she up to?

And she was telling a sheriff’s deputy to wait?

He pulled the cruiser over to the edge of the road and prepared to cue the radio on his shoulder. Better to let the dispatcher know he was dealing with a possible fruit-loop, as if he hadn’t already had his fruit-loop quotient filled to the brim with Prentice’s aliens.

But before he could speak into the shoulder pack, it crackled. He released the button and waited.

“Brandon, you in the car yet?”

“Yeah. I’ve got a—”

“Listen, how close are you to county road one twenty-one?”

“I’m on it, matter of fact.”

“Out close to your uncle’s?”

“Near there. Wade, listen, I’ve got a woman—”

“We’re going to need you to provide an escort.”

“A what?”