Living in Sin
Copyright© 2025 by Al Steiner
Chapter 19: There Ain’t No Time Outs
Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 19: There Ain’t No Time Outs - Two single-parent sheriff’s deputies move into a wealthy, uptight neighborhood and accidentally set off a storm of paranoia, lust, and suburban meltdown. As judgmental neighbors spiral, sexually frustrated housewives come calling. Amid threesomes, gossip, and chaos, Scott and Maggie discover their friendship hides something deeper. Darkly funny, raw, and fearless, Living in Sin is a satire of morality, desire, and the lies we live behind picket fences.
Caution: This Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa
No one called in the shooting of a man at Danger Island. Not a single person. Hard to call something in when you “didn’t see nothin’.”
The call went out as a ShotSpotter hit.
ShotSpotter was a system installed and maintained jointly by Heritage PD and the Heritage County Sheriff’s Department, funded through federal grants. Gardenville PD hadn’t bought in—gunfire was pretty rare in their suburban enclave—but Heritage had microphones scattered across every neighborhood where the pops were most common.
Pretty much all of Heritage City, all of Northwood and South Hair, most of the southeast side.
The microphones didn’t care about fireworks, transformer explosions, or car backfires. They were designed to detect only the unique acoustic fingerprint of gunfire. Once a shot was detected, the system measured the time differences as the sound reached different towers, triangulating the location. With three towers, it could get within a hundred yards. With four or five, within a hundred feet.
The shot that blew through Bartholomew Winthrop III’s head was picked up by five towers. The fix was tight—somewhere in the 3500 block of Amherst Street, Northwood.
The call popped up on Scott’s MDT. He was primary. Carter was backup.
Scott shook his head when he read the screen. One shot fired. Danger Island. Imagine that.
Nine times out of ten, ShotSpotter hits in Northwood turned out to be UTL—unable to locate. Somebody squeezed off a round in the air, tried to look hard, then vanished. By the time a green-and-white rolled in, there was nothing to find.
But one out of ten was real.
And those were the ones you remembered.
“Sixteen-Adam staging North and Tamoshanter,” Scott keyed up. “Holding for Eleven-Adam.”
“Eleven-Adam copies,” Carter came back. “Two out.”
Scott pulled over and killed his lights. He waited, engine idling, eyes on the mirror. Amherst was just a block west, but from here he couldn’t see a thing. He drummed his fingers against the wheel, listening to dispatch traffic roll by. A DV on Stanton, a prowler on Hadley. Nothing about Amherst. Nobody calling in.
Then headlights appeared behind him—Carter. As soon as he confirmed her unit, he dropped it in gear and pulled out.
They turned onto Amherst one by one, both units dark except for low beams.
That was when Scott felt it.
Amherst was dead quiet. No porch-sitters, no music through open windows, no kids on bikes. The kind of eerie stillness that meant everyone knew what had just happened—and nobody wanted to be the one to admit it.
Two blocks in, his headlights washed over something in the roadway.
A body. Male, down.
And a river of blood running steady from the head, along the gutter, slipping toward the storm drain.
Scott’s jaw set tight. This wasn’t a warning shot.
“Sixteen-Adam,” he said into his mic, “I’ve got one male down, bleeding. No one else in sight. Start EMS, code three. No staging. Roll them right in.”
“Sixteen-Adam, I copy one male down, bleeding. Starting EMS. No staging.”
Scott rolled a little closer, until the body was in his headlight beams. He could see it was a white male with dark hair. That was about all he could tell for sure. That, and he wasn’t moving.
He got out of the Tahoe and stepped onto the street. Automatically, he slipped his gun from his holster and held it against his right thigh. He had his flashlight in his left hand. He took his eyes off the body—there was no danger there—and looked around. The eerie stillness remained. But he could sense eyes watching. Dozens, maybe hundreds. Peering out through gaps in blinds. Watching.
Carter came up behind him, her gun out as well. “He looks pretty dead,” she said softly.
“Yep,” Scott agreed. “But you know the drill.”
Carter knew the drill. Every cop did.
Back during the waves of police reform—Michael Brown, George Floyd—the narrative had been that cops just stood around while people bled out. Sometimes after shooting them themselves. The fix had been a mandate: advanced first aid for every sworn officer. And not just the class, not just the cert card in a wallet—they were expected to use it.
The policy was written in stone. Cops weren’t allowed to pronounce unless it was so obvious it hurt. Head off. Body burned beyond recognition. Maggots crawling. That kind of obvious. Anything short of that? You’d better be working them when EMS rolled up.
And sure, you could ‘abandon efforts’ if you thought “the person is clearly beyond the ability to be resuscitated.” But every training sergeant who ever hammered that phrase into their heads followed it with the same warning: you’d better be goddamn sure you’re right.
So most cops erred on the side of caution.
Scott and Carter moved up together, guns low but out, scanning. As his flashlight beam steadied, the details sharpened.
Male. Young.
And wrecked.
The bullet had hit him square in the face, obliterating his nose. His mouth and what was left of his nasal passages were packed with blood. Scott’s light tracked across his head and found the exit wound—back of the skull blown out, a hole the size of a coffee cup. Blood, gray matter, and shards of bone fanned out across the pavement like some obscene halo. The river running into the gutter had come from there.
It wasn’t bleeding anymore. Because there was no heart left to pump it. Either that, or there wasn’t any blood left in the body to bleed.
“Fuck me,” Carter said beside him.
“Yeah,” Scott said. “You confirm pulselessness and start CPR. I’ll get the bag.”
“Right,” she said, putting her gun and her flashlight away and grabbing a pair of neoprene gloves out of her duty belt. She began pulling them on.
Scott trotted back to his Tahoe, putting his own gun and flashlight away as he went. He opened the hatchback. Inside, among all the other crap like his war bag and a fire extinguisher and hobbles and spit masks, was a large canvas bag with a red cross on it. Before he grabbed it, he keyed up his microphone again.
“Sixteen-Adam, we’re initiating CPR,” he said. “Go ahead and get homicide started and we’ll need a full 187 assignment.”
“Copy starting CPR,” the dispatcher returned. “Starting homicide and sending a 187 assignment.”
A 187 assignment was enough patrol units to secure the scene and start canvassing for witnesses. A sergeant would be assigned to supervise everything until homicide and CSI arrived. Standard procedure. Something that got a lot of practice in Northwood.
He pulled on a pair of gloves of his own and trotted over to the body, first aid bag in hand. Carter had the man rolled onto his back now and she was doing chest compressions. Every time she pushed on his chest, blood flowed from the hole in the back of his head. This really was like turning on the bilge pumps in the fucking Titanic after the ice encounter. Even more futile, actually. At least that bought the Titanic a little time. This wasn’t buying the dude shit. He was beyond buying things. Probably already smoking his first hit of fetty on the other side while sipping a beer. Assuming he went upstairs instead of down.
Scott took a quick look at the ground, making sure he didn’t kneel down in blood or accidentally step on any evidence—like the shell casing. He opened the bag and pulled out a bag-valve mask for ventilation. He quickly assembled it and got it into position, sealing it against the man’s mouth and ruined nose. He got blood all over his gloves in the process. Disgusting.
They were doing two rescuer CPR. Scott would give two breaths with the BVM for every thirty compressions. He waited until she reached thirty and paused. He gripped harder to keep his seal on the face and squeezed the bag, sending air into the lungs. Or at least that was the theory. Instead of chest rise, however, something else happened. The air blasted out through the hole in the man’s skull, shooting blood and specks of brain out with it. Some of it splattered on Scott’s left boot.
“Okay,” he said, his voice flirting with disgust. “Enough of this. When the air is coming out the fucking head, that means you’re for sure dead.”
“You’re making the call?” Carter asked, her eyes a little wide. She had never seen a cop make the call before.
“I’m making the call,” he said. “This man is clearly beyond the ability to be resuscitated.”
“I agree,” Carter said.
Scott leaned back on his haunches, stripped the mask off the ruined face, and set it aside. His gloves were slick with blood. He tugged them off inside-out and dropped them next to the empty BVM.
He keyed up his mic again.
“Sixteen-Adam. Ceasing resuscitation. This subject is beyond the ability to be resuscitated.”
The dispatcher came back a beat later, her voice clipped and professional. “Sixteen-Adam, copy ceasing resuscitation. Fire and EMS still en route.”
Carter sat back on her heels, breathing hard. Her gloves were reasonably clean. She blew out a breath. “Jesus Christ, Dover.”
“Yeah.” He stood, scanning the silent street again. The quiet was even heavier now, like the whole block was holding its breath. Watching. Waiting.
In the distance he heard sirens—faint at first, then rising fast. Fire. Paramedics. The cavalry was coming.
Carter sat back, peeled her gloves off, and nodded toward the pavement a few feet away. “I pulled his wallet out before I rolled him. It’s right there.”
Scott’s beam found it. Nice leather. Clean stitching. Definitely not something you bought with food stamps or at the flea market down on Stanton. Out of place here, just like the pale skin of the victim.
Carter must’ve been thinking the same thing. “He’s not from here. But ... plenty of whities come through Danger Island. I’ve popped a few leaving with fetty in their cars.”
Scott gave a tight nod. “Yeah. Seen that too.”
“You want me to get his ID out?” she asked.
Scott looked at her for a moment, then back at the wallet. Rookie question, but not a dumb one. He could see it in her face—first time she’d been first-in on a homicide.
“Homicide will thank you for pulling it so it doesn’t get stuck in a pocket until the body’s bagged,” he said evenly. “But they’d prefer you don’t move it from where you put it down. They’ll want to photograph everything as it sits.”
Carter nodded, the lesson absorbed. She left the wallet where it was.
Two more green-and-white Tahoes slid in, lightbars strobing, sirens off. Right behind them came Engine 42, brakes hissing as the big red box settled at the curb, followed by a county EMS rig, rear doors already swinging.
Scott walked toward the two deputies climbing out of their units. Boulder and Menendez.
“Start stringing tape,” Scott told them, his body cam now silent. “I’ll keep the log until Sarge gets here.”
They both nodded without question and headed for the backs of their Tahoes, pulling out rolls of yellow tape.
Scott moved on toward the medics and the fire crew. The gurney was already rolling, piled with equipment, O₂ tank strapped tight. The HCFD captain stepped up with two of his firefighters trailing.
Scott raised a hand in greeting. “We got a Danger Island customer whose black-market commerce didn’t go as planned. Someone shot him right in the nose, blew out the back of his head. Pulseless, apneic. We started CPR but the first time I squeezed the BVM, brains and shit came flying out of the hole in his skull. Got on my boot and everything.”
Every eye dropped to his left boot. Sure enough, gray flecks clung to the leather like paste.
“Sympathies, brother,” the captain said dryly. One of the medics just gave a tired shrug. Everyone who worked in Northwood had had brains on their boot at least once—except Carter, who was still standing off to the side looking at everything but their victim.
Scott gestured back toward the body. “If one of you can go in, hook him up, and make it official, I’d appreciate it. I’m pretty sure he’s dead, but you guys are the experts in dead.”
The medic crew chuckled softly, already pulling gloves.
Benton, the older of the two medics, came waddling up with the heart monitor slung in one hand, the other wrapped around the handle like it was a picnic basket instead of the tool to declare death. He had the same grin he always carried—chubby, balding, eyes twinkling with mischief.
“Let’s see what we got,” he said cheerfully, setting the monitor down near the body. His tone didn’t change, but his hands were steady and deliberate. Benton had done this a few dozen times in his career.
He unpacked the electrodes—four sticky pads, wires trailing. He pulled up the kid’s sleeves and pant legs just enough to get skin (and revealing the fact that the victim had an ankle monitor) then pressed one pad to the back of each hand, one to each ankle. Completed circuit, textbook clean.
The monitor display drew its little green line across the screen. This was where it should start rising and falling in heartbeat complexes, picked up from the faint electrical impulses of the heart cells as they fired. But only if there was anything to pick up. Instead, the display was a flat, unwavering bar. No spikes, no stutters. Not even the suggestion of a flicker.
Asystole, the medics called it.
Scott knew what that meant. Every cop did. The medics could pronounce death on any penetrating trauma to the head or torso with asystole on the monitor. Fifty years of Hollywood CPR success stories didn’t change the fact that no one ever came back from traumatic cardiac arrest. It just didn’t happen. If your heart stopped because someone had fired a bullet through your head or your chest, it wasn’t going to start back up. Not even if you said pretty please and here’s some epinephrine on top.
Benton studied the line for a few seconds, lips pursed. Then, without warning, he pitched his voice high and squeaky, pure munchkin from The Wizard of Oz:
“He’s not only merely dead, he’s really most sincerely dead.”
A couple of the fire guys chuckled. Even Scott cracked a weary smile, though Carter just blinked, not sure if she was allowed to laugh.
The medic announced the time of death. Scott checked his watch to confirm and wrote it down in his notebook. He’d be responsible for the first-on-scene paperwork, and he was in charge until Sergeant Yee showed.
Two more units had pulled in, their red and blues washing the silent block. Still no movement from the apartments. Still that thick sense of eyes behind blinds. More proof the victim didn’t belong here—like the white skin and the expensive clothes weren’t enough. If he’d been a local, family and friends would already be crowding the tape, word of mouth and cell phone spreading faster than the speed of light.
Scott jotted down the names of everyone who’d entered the scene so far. Homicide would want the list. He keyed his mic.
“Sixteen-Adam. Victim is officially eleven-forty-four. Keep homicide rolling.”
“Sixteen-Adam, copy eleven-forty-four,” dispatch answered. “Homicide to be advised.”
Carter edged up beside him. “What do you want me to do?”
He looked at her. Another rookie question. “Grab another cop and start a canvas on this side of the street. If they answer the door at all, they’ll just tell you they didn’t see nothin’—but we still have to do it. Be sure to get names and dates of birth if anyone talks to you.”
She nodded quickly and jogged off to grab Boulder, who had just finished stringing crime scene tape.
Engine 42’s captain gave Scott a nod. “We’re clearing. Nothing else we can do here.”
“Appreciate it,” Scott said.
The fire crew packed up and rolled away. Benton waddled back toward his rig, pulling off his gloves as he went, already fishing out a clipboard. He’d write up a quick paper report, the kind the coroner could stick in their file and forget about.
Scott scanned the scene again. Everything under control. Routine. Just another Friday night in Northwood.
And now the fun part: paperwork. Hours of it. At least he would have time to get started on it before homicide finally showed up. They never rushed. They took their sweet time about everything. Sometimes Scott wondered if they even took a shit without planning it in advance.
He grabbed Benton’s partner, a medic named Grayson, who was just hanging out near the rig. He borrowed some of her cleaning wipes and then put on some gloves and cleaned all the little bits of blood and brain off his boot. Not the most pleasant thing in the world.
They never showed TV cops doing this part.
The homicide team showed up almost two hours after the ShotSpotter call was logged. Everyone else had been waiting on them.
The CSI van had rolled in ninety minutes before, its crew piling out, clipboards in hand. Unlike on TV, they weren’t actually cops. They were unsworn department employees—techs who happened to be really, really into forensics. They wore uniforms but carried no guns or handcuffs or pepper spray or tasers. Oval badges instead of six-point stars. Shoulder patches that read “FORENSICS” instead of “SHERIFF”.
And all of them, as far as Scott could tell, had been part of the geek crowd in high school. Nerds, to put it delicately. The ones who sat in the back of chemistry class and actually enjoyed it. The ones who could fix the teacher’s PowerPoint presentation when it went bad.
TV made them out to be crusading geniuses, brilliant lone wolves cracking cases with a single fiber or a pixel from a security cam. The real ones were quieter, more awkward. They stayed in their lane, did their job, and didn’t mix with the sworn deputies. At least not socially.
They were good at it, though. Damn good. Scott had seen them pull details out of nothing, had even seen them solve cases the homicide dicks couldn’t crack. But until homicide gave the green light, they just stood around their van together, avoiding eye contact with the cops.
Status quo.
Now, with the detectives finally rolling up, CSI would get to unspool their tape measures and start their slow, methodical dance over the scene.
The homicide cops were creatures of myth and legend to the street troops. They all started in the same place—working the jail, pounding the streets—but the ones who clawed their way into homicide became something else entirely. It was the most coveted slot in the bureau if you liked having all the resources you needed, liked working cases that kind of mattered sometimes, and didn’t mind the endless overtime.
More than you could ever want, actually.
They were dedicated, driven people, incapable of letting things rest. Every single one of them was divorced. Most were alcoholics. And they were often the only people on Earth who gave a flying fuck about the murder victims they worked—because it was their job to give a fuck.
Rollins was the lead on this little show.
Scott had known her for years—seen her in the jail when she came to interview suspects, worked with her on more than a few Northwood homicides since he’d been out on patrol. She was mid-forties, attractive in that older-woman way for men who had Mommy issues. Sleepy eyes but well dressed, because homicide was mandated “business professional” at all times. Nobody knew why. All the other detective divisions were allowed business casual, but homicide was suits, ties, skirts, heels. No exceptions.
Rollins wore a charcoal-gray skirt suit tonight, jacket tailored close, the blouse under it pale blue silk. Her shoulder holster carried her sidearm tucked neatly under her arm, the gold detective’s badge clipped beside it, gleaming when the light hit. She had her hair pinned up tight, not a strand out of place, makeup understated but there. She looked like she was headed for a courtroom or a funeral, not a taped-off street in Northwood.
She scanned the scene with a weary professionalism, then let her gaze settle on Scott. He could see her turning his name over in her head, pulling it out of the file cabinet.
“Dover, right?” she said at last.
“That’s right.”
“You first in?” Rollins asked.
“I was,” Scott said.
She gave a short nod. “Alright, Dover. What’ve you got?”
Scott flipped open his notebook. He’d already written it all down—clean, chronological, no gaps. “We were dispatched at zero-zero thirty-six hours to a ShotSpotter hit. One round, 3500 block of Amherst. I staged at North and Tamoshanter until Eleven-Adam arrived, then we rolled in together. Street was dead quiet. No one out. No sound, no movement. I knew before I even saw him that someone had been shot. This place is usually party central on a Friday night.”
Rollins glanced up and down the block, taking in the heavy silence. “Street’s still empty.”
“Yeah,” Scott agreed. “And now we know why. White boy. Nice clothes. Doesn’t belong here.”
Rollins gave the faintest smile. “That makes sense.”
“Body was right lateral in the roadway, head toward the gutter. Single GSW through the face. Exit wound took out the back of the skull. We followed protocol—rolled him over, initiated CPR. When I tried to ventilate, air came straight out the exit wound. Brought blood and brains with it. Got on my boots.”
Rollins’ mouth twitched, the closest she came to sympathy. She’d been there before.
“Medics entered at zero-zero fifty,” Scott continued. “Official time of death was called at zero-zero fifty-three. Scene’s been static since.”
“Anything on him?” Rollins asked.
“Carter pulled his wallet before rolling him over. Dropped it right there.” Scott pointed to where it still sat on the pavement. “We haven’t touched it since.”
“Good,” Rollins said, approving.
“There’s also an ankle monitor on his left leg,” Scott added.
That drew a genuine smile from her, sharp and wolfish. “If it’s working, I’ll have a perfect timeline of my victim’s movements. That’s a gift.”
“Any witnesses?” Rollins asked, though her tone didn’t carry much hope.
“Two neighbors opened up,” Scott said. “Both of them gave the same answer: I didn’t see nothin’, I didn’t hear nothin’, I don’t know nothin’.”
“Par for the course in Danger Island,” Rollins said.
“Yeah.”
“Cars?” she asked next.
“We ran every car within a hundred feet. Most are expired, couple belong to locals. Nothing that looks like our victim’s ride.”
She studied him for a second. “You work Northwood. You know Danger Island, right?”
“Unfortunately.”
“What’s your impression of what happened?”
“You mean other than some rich white guy from the suburbs with a fetty habit got ripped at Danger Island and then shot for his trouble?”
That drew a quick smile. “Yes. Apart from that?”
Scott shrugged. “There are ten or fifteen dealers I see regular here. I got five or six of them in my puke-box.”
Rollins tilted her head.
“Puke-box is what we call the folder,” he explained. “Department system lets us save FI’s, field interview cards, little bios.”
“Ahh,” she said. “Back in my patrol days we called that a scrote-hole.”
“Some of the older guys I trained with in District 5 called it that. Uh ... not that you’re old or nothing. Uh ... I mean ... maybe I’ll shut up.”
“Good instincts when talking to a woman he was jerked out of sleep and hasn’t had coffee yet.”
“Anyway, my frequent flyers out here are Rainbow, Hard Core, Squeaky, and Little Timmy. Rainbow doesn’t do fetty—just weed and rock. The rest sling weed, rock, and fetty.”
“I want the real names of every Danger Island dealer you’ve got in your puke-box,” Rollins said.
“I’ll send them in an IM,” Scott said.
“Good.”
She lifted her chin, signaling her partner over. Detective Jefferson—big man, sharp suit, gold badge clipped above the belt line—joined her. They spoke briefly, then Rollins slipped nitrile gloves on and pulled out her phone.
She stepped under the tape, careful with her footing, moving slow around the body. Jefferson hung back. One of the CSI geeks trailed her with an evidence bag.
Rollins crouched, braced, and snapped pictures of the wallet on the pavement. Then, using two fingers, she flipped it open. The California driver’s license was right there.
She read it aloud. “Bartholomew Winthrop the Third. Date of birth: six-twenty-two-oh-four. Gardenville address.”
She passed the wallet to CSI, who dropped it into a baggie and sealed it.
“Sergeant Yee,” Rollins called. “Run that name, please.”
“On it,” Yee replied.
The face was too wrecked to place, and Scott had never met him in person. Just another dead white boy in nice clothes—until Rollins said Gardenville. That was the click. He knew the name. He’d heard it recently, in connection with one very stupid asshole.
“Son of a bitch,” Scott muttered.
Rollins looked at him.
“I know who this is,” Scott said. “Didn’t put it together until you read out where he lives. My roommate, Winslow—she’s popped this guy a couple times in the last month. First time was fetty in the park, plus a one-forty-eight. Second time he was sucking Booger’s dick in the same park. Had fetty on him then, too.”
Rollins raised her brows. “Booger?”
Scott nodded. “Yeah. You know him?”
“Sure do. How’s he doing these days?”
“Still around, still slinging fetty, apparently for blowjobs now,” Scott said. “Same as always.”
“Good for him,” she said dryly, like she’d just heard that a friend’s kid had finally graduated community college. “And that makes the story a little clearer.” She looked back down at the body. “He came to Danger Island to score and got shot in the face instead. And his car stolen.”
She straightened, brushing her palms together. “You know what kind of car he drives, Dover?”
“Winslow told me, but I don’t remember right now.”
“It’ll come up on the ID check anyway,” Rollins said.
Sergeant Yee came over, notebook in hand. “Here’s what we’ve got on our drug consumer here. Male, twenty-one. Currently out on bond. Conditions are to stay home when he’s not in rehab or at work. He’s unemployed. Facing charges of lewd behavior, possession times two, one-forty-eight, and driving on a suspended license. He drives a two-thousand twenty-five Mustang, but the reg’s expired and it’s still in the impound lot from his last arrest. His DL is still suspended from a past DUI arrest. Lives at home with Mom and Dad.”
Yee looked up, a grin tugging at his mouth. “Take a wild guess what Daddy Warbucks’ real name is?”
“Bartholomew Winthrop the Second?” Rollins asked dryly.
“Bing-bing-bing,” Yee said, making the little game-show bell noise.
Rollins smiled, tired but genuine.
She turned to Scott. “Your body cam and dash cam—were they live?”
“Both were live and nationwide as soon as I pulled up,” he said.
“Good. Flag those recordings at end of watch. I’ll want to see what the scene looked like before you started medical.”
“You got it.”
Yee snapped his notebook closed. “Alright, Dover. Clear the call, put yourself on downtime for reports. Go back to the station, sit your ass down somewhere, and pound ‘em out before the nice homicide team finishes here.”
Scott nodded. “Will do.”
He turned and headed back toward his Tahoe. The adrenaline was already starting to wear off, leaving only fatigue and the certainty of hours at the keyboard ahead. On the way back to the station, he decided, he’d swing by the twenty-four hour Starbucks. Caffeine before paperwork was just common sense.
Scott pushed through the glass doors into the twenty-four-hour Starbucks. The place was humming soft under fluorescent lights and espresso steam.
A few tweakers were hunched over coffees at the corner tables, pale and jittery but quiet. They knew better than to act up in a cop-friendly Starbucks. Truth be told, most Starbucks were cop-friendly. The company culture liked uniforms coming through the door—it was free security, and it kept the sketchier customers in line. Deputies liked them too: plenty of caffeine, plenty of light, clean bathrooms you didn’t mind actually sitting down in. And everything on the menu was half price. Even those grilled cheese sandwiches that were so good but so unhealthy.
A homeless guy nursed a hot tea by the window, staring into space. Two college kids in hoodies tapped at laptops, earbuds in, pretending not to notice the uniform. And in the corner sat a “security guard” in a faded gray polo, fat and mid-thirties, snoozing with his arms folded like it was his living room recliner.
Scott shook his head and kept walking.
At the counter was Lynette. Mid-twenties, cute, big tits, all smiles. A badge bunny of the classic variety. She flirted with any man who wore a badge and carried a gun in service of the great County of Heritage. Everyone knew her reputation. Ask her out on a date and you would get laid. Guaranteed. You didn’t even have to buy her dinner first if you didn’t want to.