Strangers with Benefits (Siren Publishing Classic) (2 page)

When the officer got out of the car, she couldn’t see him for the lights on the front, just a thick silhouette that appeared to be all man. The cop had to be built like a brick house. “You just missed them.”

“The people that took your things?”

“Yep,” Sidonie said bitterly.

“I’m sorry. What was taken?”

“My cell phone and a hundred bucks.”

The officer whistled. “That sucks. Did they break in?”

“Yeah. It does. Suck, that is. And no, like a simpleton, I left the car unlocked while I was unloading.” Admitting her idiocy aloud to another human being stung.

“It happens to all of us. Okay, do you have location services on the phone?”

“Yes.” Sidonie rattled off the name of service that came with the phone when she bought it.

He stepped out of the light and she got a good look at the man.

Wow.

Sidonie was a black woman who had seen her fair share of police brutality against black people. In her opinion, the best officer was one that passed her by instead of riding behind her.

It was safe to say that she didn’t pay the police too much attention.

She assumed, at first glance, that he was a multi-ethnic white guy. One of those that was a quarter German and half Russian with a tidbit of Italian twist sort of thing. He had short hair, almost blue-black, but with a faint hint of a curl, that due to the length translated as a ripple of steep waves and it was perfectly combed in a part at one side.

But at the second glance, his eyes were dark, but they had an odd Japanese slant and tightness at the corners that made her question his ethnicity deeper than she had at first sight. He was a decent enough height, maybe four inches taller than her average five foot five. But he was well built for his frame, stocky with heavy muscles that filled his shirt sleeves nicely with little room to spare.

And his hands?

They were big and matched the rest of him. They let her know his frame was partly due to genetics with a bit of work on upkeep to keep his body fat low.

Sidonie was so caught up in his good looks and muscular build that she didn’t even hear his next question. She assumed he introduced himself as she shook his hand, but she didn’t hear a single word leave his lips, despite seeing them move.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Clark?” He looked at her as if he wondered about her sanity.

“Sorry, I went off there for a sec.” She must have left her brain at home. That was the only excuse that made a lick of sense.

“I see. Can you try and login for me?”

She gave him her work e-mail address, and if that one didn’t work, she could try the junk email she had that she used to sign up for stuff she wouldn’t read later, like newsletters and savings at stores that she liked to shop at.

Then she gave him her generic password and hoped it worked.

Bingo!

The login, thankfully, worked as she watched as the screen popped up with her prior phone.

“That’s not it. Try under accounts.”

He did and the screen showed her new phone number and the phone that was missing. The officer scrolled over for a location update.

But when the map popped up, it showed the same place they were located.

The elderly attendant walked over. “Excuse me, but the lady over there said she saw the boy throw something into the water behind those trees.”

The officer nodded. “No problem.” He walked over to the copse of trees and looked down.

Sidonie followed, more so because she felt lost and didn’t know what to do with herself than out of sheer helpfulness.

He flicked on the flashlight and stepped into what appeared to be a small creek that at one time would have been a deep tributary for the Cape Fear River, but now only contained a few inches of dirty water and a ditch that was taller than she was.

She watched his shoes clog up with the muck from the half-dry creek.

After ten minutes of slow strolling through the embankment, he shook his head. “I don’t see anything.”

“Uggh. I can’t believe this. The money was bad enough but the phone has half of my life on it.” It was a terrifying thought that the ass who stole her phone would have access to everything. She only had a swipe lock on the screen, so there was nothing stopping them from her information.

Her bank accounts.

Her employer server login information, every bit sensitive and confidential.

Her dividend statements.

Her credit cards.

Payment information.

Her online shopping accounts.

They would even have her address.

Pictures of her and her children.

“That was some ghetto shit,” the officer said with a small smile. The statement surprised her. He was delightfully casual with a bit more flavor than she would have assumed at the look of him.

But she couldn’t deny the accuracy of his statement. “Yeah. I agree with you.”

“Just give me your ID and let me take down the information and I will write a report up so you can have your insurance replace your stuff.” She really didn’t want to give him her ID, but she had no choice.

The photo was taken on a really bad day, but the renewal came up and she procrastinated for much too long, and then she caught the flu. She was barely able to walk that day and in all honesty, she was halfway toasted on meds.

“That’s fine.”

The officer, dang, she wished she remembered his name, looked back up at her. “You can finish washing if you need to. I can bring this to you.”

Sidonie realized she must look like a fool, standing over the cop while he filled out paperwork.

“Sorry. I didn’t get to wash. I just put the clothes back in the car.”

He made a slightly surprised face. “Oh. How much would it cost to finish your laundry?”

“I don’t know, I just assumed it would be fifteen, maybe twenty bucks. The rest of the money I took out to have my hair styled.” Sidonie shrugged.

“Well, let me help you with the clothes at least.”

Sidonie popped the trunk open and grabbed two bags, even though she had no idea why. She didn’t want to spend another minute in the laundromat after this episode. But it was better than doing nothing and at this rate, her arms would look like Michelle Obama’s in no time, even if the rest of her was all softness and no muscle.

The officer grabbed one of the bags from her and another from her trunk.

“Lock it.” He chuckled and Sidonie couldn’t help herself from laughing about it, either.

She did and they dropped the bags on the floor in front of a huge washer. He had her unlock the car and grabbed the last three by himself. The only thing she was left to carry was the little embroidered bucket with her supplies.

God, that was sexy.

Get yourself together, girl.

Sidonie shook her head and opened the front door for him to walk in with the last of her bags.

When they stopped inside, he dropped the bags and pulled a folded twenty dollar bill from his front breast pocket. As he extended it to her, Sidonie shook her head.

“I’m okay.” No way would she take his money.

“No, you’re not. Wash your clothes and get something to eat.” He smiled. “Just give me a few to fill this out, okay?”

“All right.” Sidonie smiled and made change for the twenty in the machine.

As she tumbled the change into the washer, she looked outside and the officer was gone. She wondered where he went. Maybe there was a real emergency somewhere and he had to go and help.

But it was no matter, she had gone through too much today to not finish up these clothes.

The ironic part was that she could have replaced quite a few pairs of stolen underwear with her hundred dollars if she had of just called Slick Rick.

By the time she got the clothes out of the washer and loaded them into the dryer, she walked back to her car and sat down, in the hopes of relaxing for a minute.

That minute was far from relaxing as she realized that she would have to listen to the radio. Sidonie didn’t listen to the car radio. In fact, she didn’t even know what the radio stations were here. She always connected her phone to the car and played music from her internet radio stations or her downloaded stuff.

Before she had the chance to irritate herself scrolling through the FM stations, she saw the glint of headlights in her rearview mirror.

She sighed and shut the car off, but before she could step out, there was a knock on the window.

“Hi. Mrs. Clark?”

“Hi.” It was the eye candy officer.

“Sorry about that, but the website showed movement, so I went to the grocery store, but they already left. I just wanted to give you your ID back before I go check one other place.”

“Okay. Thank you.” The sentiment was heartfelt. She never imagined she would meet a cop and that he would be so nice.

Sidonie stepped out of the SUV and slid her ID back into her wallet.

“No problem. If I find anything, I’ll let you know shortly, okay?” He smiled again and Sidonie nodded back.

Officer Handsome pulled away for the second time, only this time Sidonie watched him go.

As she waited in a small, uncomfortable plastic seat for the clothes to finish drying, Sidonie tapped her toes. She hadn’t realized how important her phone was until she didn’t have it. Shoot, she couldn’t even think of a way to amuse herself that didn’t include the damn thing.

She absently counted the water stains on the ceiling and listened to the rhythmic hiss of metal buttons slide against the belly of the dryer, over and over again monotonously.

The whole of it was truly boring and she felt as if she watched a pot of water in the hopes it would begin boiling. She heard the hiss of a dryer slowing down, and then the beep as it stopped. At least now she had something she could do with her hands.

As she folded the clothes, she sorted them into three piles: Katie’s, Mark’s, and hers.

The underwear and socks were tossed into catchall bag for her to deal with at home as they didn’t require ironing if left to their own devices.

Just before she lugged the last bag to her trunk, she saw the headlights of the now familiar police cruiser pull up beside her vehicle.

Officer Gorgeous stepped out. “Hey. I tried to catch them but they must have turned the phone off. The pings stopped and the witness at the last address said someone was parked beside her house for a while then drove off. But I did do a wipe on the website for you, so at least they won’t have access to your personal data.”

“You know what? It’s okay. But I really appreciate all that you did for me. I never imagined meeting an officer that would be so helpful.” The man flushed slightly and Sidonie was embarrassed.

She was a plumb idiot and her statement owned up to as much. She shouldn’t have made it seem like all police officers were cut from the same cloth as the poor examples she had seen before. Especially since this one, in particular, seemed so helpful.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No worries, Mrs. Clark. I get it. I really do.”

He handed her a card with terribly executed block script on the back with a case number. The handwriting matched him, oddly enough, despite the script being as ugly as he was attractive. The style was rough and masculine, but not overly large, as if his ego was proportionate to his status in the world and he accepted it.

“I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciated you. You made a really bad experience a positive one and you are wonderful at your job.”

If her prior statement made him flush, now his ears were redder than a hot poker fresh from the fire.

She leaned over and asked the dumbest question yet. “Can I give you a hug?”

He complied, and she gave him a small, stingy hug because the last thing she needed to do was sexually harass the man when he was doing his best to be kind to her.

“Have a wonderful night, sir,” she said when he released her. “And be safe.”

“I will do my best.” He tipped his head and drove away, leaving her with her thoughts and little else.

When she drove home and hoisted her stuff into her apartment, Sidonie sighed and left the bags right in the floor. She would deal with them tomorrow. It took two hours to log into everything she used on the phone to change passwords and monitor her account activity, in case they had gotten to any of her information.

Her mail account came with a wipe feature that she used as a backup in case the one the officer did wasn’t enough.

But when the next morning came, Sidonie thought about the kind public servant and she wondered if he was in need of the money he had given her. He might not have been able to have lunch because he gave it to her. She knew cops weren’t paid that much, like teachers, but more day to day danger involved.

It wasn’t as if she was hurting for it.

She called the renters insurance first, and the cell phone provider to make sure her service was suspended. The phone insurance plan representative offered to either send her a phone by courier to arrive on Monday, or she could go into her local store and pickup another after she paid the hefty hundred and seventy-five dollar deductible with an agent.