*All characters are 18 years of age or older*
"Good girl. Good girls." I said wonderingly. They both moaned in unison.
Then, the doorbell rang.
I stood, stunned to be reminded that anyone else even existed on the planet. Two beautiful women were in front of me, one of them topless, both looking up at me with desire in their eyes.
And then the doorbell rang a second time.
I awkwardly got my pants on.
"Stay here." I said to the bewitching pair, probably unnecessarily. I went out into the vestibule, barefoot, and opened the front door to see Sheriff Hardy frowning at me.
Holy shit.
My stomach sank and my face burned. I was so certain I was about to be arrested for brainwashed-sex-crimes that I had difficulty understanding him as he said:
"Hey there, Mac. Sorry for the late visit, but we've got a situation at the station... computers are all on the fritz. I hate to ask, but could you come take a look?"
"Uhhh... yeah. Yeah, sure." I stammered. I don't think he would have taken 'no' for an answer, and I was so sure I was going to be busted that the relief in realizing I wasn't would have made me agree to just about anything.
"Go get some shoes on."
Sheriff Hardy was old school. If there was a costume contest for small-town cop, he would win: he had the beer-gut, '70s porno mustache, the tan uniform, and I'm sure if it wasn't already dark he'd be wearing his aviators. I had helped network the station computers when I was in middle school, and ever since then I was their de facto IT guy. When I was younger, it felt cool to get called in to help the deputies format a hard drive or restart a router. These days it rankled a little. I mean, people usually get paid for that kind of stuff.
I slipped quietly back into my place and fumbled my shoes on.
"I have to go, I am so sorry."
Two pairs of eyes, one crystal blue and the other coated with black makeup, looked over the back of the couch at me. What the hell was I doing?
"Katie... you should get cleaned up. Tanya... make sure Katie is okay. Stay with her."
Tanya wrapped her arm around Katie's bare shoulders protectively as they both stood. Sheriff Hardy squawked his siren twice from outside, making me jump.
"I promise I'll be back soon." I said frantically and then dashed out the door. The sheriff didn't even wait for me to buckle my seat belt.
"So... what's the problem?" I asked as he drove.
"Maybe some kind of... virus?" Hardy said. "Wouldn't be a big deal, but all of our case data is on those things... so we can't do shit unless you can figure out how to get rid of it."
"Damn." I said, with a sinking feeling that I was in for a long night. As his patrol car cruised down main street, away from my apartment, every fiber of my being cried out with the wrongness of leaving those two alone. I wanted to be back with them. There was so much I wanted to do. The memory of their willing faces swam in my mind.
We pulled up to the station and went inside. Sheriff Hardy led me past the empty front desk to the open office where the deputies each had work spaces. The whole place was bathed in an eerie green glow. I could see that every desktop was displaying the same thing: it looked like those old Matrix screensavers, with green text cascading down from the top. Cute.
"My computer is the same shit. Think it's a virus?" Hardy asked a little nervously. He didn't want to let on, but I knew this was serious. Everything was digital now: arrest records, case files, bulletins from other departments. If someone wanted to make it so the sheriff's office couldn't do its job, this was the way to do it.
"Could be. I've got a few things I can try." I said, sitting down at the nearest desk and trying the keyboard. Nothing.
"Well, I'll be in my office. Give a holler if you get it working."
I grunted noncommittally. And, I am somewhat ashamed to say, I got lost in the work for a while. First I just watched the green characters washing down the screen. I didn't recognize any of them, all nonsense squiggles. Then I started to systematically troubleshoot. It quickly became clear that this was a legitimate cyber attack. None of the inputs were responsive. It is hard to believe that I forgot, for a moment, the two women waiting for me at home, or anything else that had happened that day. But I am a nerd. And I couldn't even boot into safe mode from the BIOS. Whoever had done this had basically bricked every machine in the building. It was impressive.
"What are you doing here so late, you little shit?"
I looked up to see Stephanie leaning in the doorway behind me.
"Good evening, deputy Diaz. I hope the sheriff doesn't hear you using that kind of language around a citizen."
Stephanie used to be my next-door neighbor, growing up. Yes, she was a cop now, but I couldn't help smiling at her despite the fact that she could arrest me and kick my ass in the process. To be fair, she could always kick my ass. She's three years older than me, so when I was a freshman she was a senior. She didn't have to, but she looked out for me. When the jocks figured I was easy prey, she convinced them to hunt elsewhere. She broke Troy Barnslowe's nose with a clean punch when he tried to grope her the year before, so they knew better than to mess with her or anyone she declared off limits.
Of course I had a crush on her. But she ended up marrying Ronnie Drake. It was the kind of thing that made all of us shake our heads when she wasn't around: Ronnie was an asshole. She hadn't even taken his name, so some of the eligible bachelors in town held out for a while, thinking the pair might split and she'd be single again. No such luck. Instead, she became one of the toughest deputies in town. If you got pulled over, you prayed it wasn't Diaz. She never let anyone off with just a warning.
Somehow, she managed to make the deputy uniform look good. Her dark brown hair was short at the back and tousled expertly in a long swoop to one side. We used to whisper that she must go across state lines for a haircut like that. The tan shirt hugged her chest, visibly straining on a few buttons. Tonight, there was an extra swagger in her step as she prowled over to me. Maybe she had just busted somebody.
"Can you crack the code?" She asked wryly.
"Nope. This may be beyond my pay grade." I snarked back at her.
"What? Giving up already? Did you try..." She leaned over me to fiddle with the mouse.
"Seriously? Says the girl who couldn't figure out how to turn on her Playstation?"