Don't Catch Me

Chapter 4, Don't Catch Me

Chase gassed up his car and left messages for both Luc and Aaron that something had come up and he'd be late, so they'd need to have dinner without him. By the time he had driven back the way he'd come into Vale and found the sheriff's office, the sun was starting to set. He was tired and hungry, and he needed some time in the gym to work out all his pent-up restless energy from having sat so long. He also needed to stop in at the local ER and get his arm looked at.

He'd never been to Vale, and he took in the clean side streets and the orange brick building that made up the sheriff's office. Before he could enter, the front doors opened, and he took in the short deputy he'd seen at the gas station.

"Hey, there," Chase said. "I was at the Stop and Save where the incident just happened. You brought the girl back with you?"

The deputy took him in and then jutted his chin to the gash in Chase's arm. "That looks bad. You should get it looked at," he said, and it wasn't lost on Chase that the man hadn't answered his question about the girl. "She do that?" he went on to ask.

"Just the wrong place at the wrong time. One of those things," Chase said. "The girl, she in there?"

Two could play this game, and the deputy was in the wrong league if he thought he'd be able to best Chase. This was his arena, and he had mastered evasion.

"She's talking with the sheriff," the deputy finally said before starting down the steps and heading to a cruiser.

Chase pulled open the door and walked down the hall to a set of doors inset with clouded Plexiglass and red lettering that read Sheriff, though the final f was starting to fade. He pushed open the door and went to the counter. A woman with dark hair who looked as if she were someone's grandma, with glasses perched on the edge of her nose, said, "Can I help you?"

He wasn't sure about her Midwest accent, something he thought started a little further east. "Yeah, Chase McCabe. I understand the sheriff is speaking right now with the young lady he picked up at the gas station outside McDermitt." He tapped his fingers on the counter.

"You mean the girl he arrested," she said as if he didn't have a clue what the facts were.

"Yes, the girl who was cuffed, arrested, and stuffed in the back of a cruiser." He forced the point.

She paused for a second as if considering him an asshole. "Yes, the girl who was arrested for armed robbery. Don't look too good for her. The sheriff is questioning her now."

"I'd like to speak with him," Chase said, but the woman was already shaking her head.

"Sorry, no can do. He's going to be a while. You can wait over there if you like." She had a file in her hand, and she gestured with it to three straight-backed older kitchen chairs that had to be from the seventies before turning her attention to a pile of papers on the counter.

"Does the girl have legal counsel in with her?"

"Pardon?" The woman seemed annoyed—confused, too, as if people didn't ask for such a thing.

"A lawyer. Is her lawyer in there with her?"

She actually snorted out a laugh as she waved her hand. "No, that thing doesn't look like she'd be able to afford much of anything."

Also what he was afraid of. "Then I'm going to have to ask you to interrupt the sheriff, because I'm the girl's lawyer, and he doesn't talk to her without me."

She looked up to Chase slowly as if he'd just announced he was the next sheriff, and for a second he thought she was going to deny him and tell him to sit his ass down and shut up, but then she firmed her lips and dropped the papers and file on the counter before mumbling what Chase thought was some crude remark under her breath. He wasn't entirely sure, though.