He parked the cruiser behind Branna’s car that Katie was using, and walked over the gangway to the deck. He looked around the outside but saw no sign of her onboard or in the water swimming. Everything seemed locked up, so he knocked a few times. Looking in the windows, he couldn’t see her there either, but something was niggling at him. Cops’ intuition, his mother called it, and maybe after years of sensing trouble, Cubby could pick it up quicker than most. Trying the handle, he found it locked. Rattling it, he wondered if he could break in like they used to when they wanted a place to vanish for a few hours as kids. Bending at the waist, he placed his hands beneath the door and gave it a sharp jerk upwards, and heard the lock give. He was the sheriff, so technically it wasn’t breaking and entering, and he was concerned for a citizen on board, so well within his rights to do what he had.
Opening it, he walked inside and smelled the alcohol. Anger started to simmer, but he tamped it down. Katie McBride had problems and yelling at her wouldn’t help either of them.
“I know you’re in here, Katie.” He walked through the cabin and into the bedroom. Circling the bed, he found her wedged between the closet and the bed. She wore a long t-shirt and pale lemon panties, held a bottle of bourbon in one hand, and was trying to get a good glare going.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, breaking in here?”
Her words weren’t too slurred, so she couldn’t have been at it too long, although maybe she was just getting immune now. Either way, it wasn’t going to continue. This would be her last night, because he’d personally make sure of it.
“Came to visit with an old friend.” Cubby moved closer and dropped to his haunches before her. He would tell her when she was sober about the jacked-up price on her head; now was definitely not the time.
“I don’t want visitors and we’re not friends, so leave. You’re trespassing.”
“Give me the bottle, princess.”
He held out a hand and waited.
“Go to hell.”
“Try again.”
“I’m allowed to have a few drinks, there’s no law about that… I know, because in case it slipped your mind, I’m a cop.”
“It’s certainly not illegal; however what it is, is dangerous for you to continue abusing yourself with this gut rot. I’m not sure what’s behind this, Katie, but you’re running from demons, and this,” he said, pointing the bottle, “is only a temporary fix.”
“I don’t need your help.” She was hugging the bottle now.
“Okay, so how about I go get your parents, Jake, and Branna. Maybe they’ll bring your niece along to see her drunken aunty.”
“No.” Her head rolled from side to side. “They shouldn’t see me like this.”
“Why shouldn’t they see you like this?”
“Because they wouldn’t take me seriously again, and I tried to so hard to make sure that didn’t happen.”
“You think your family don’t take you seriously?”
“I gave them no reason to, and now I have… I’ve ruined it, and failed.”
She finished the last in a whisper. Cubby wasn’t sure what the hell any of that meant, but he’d leave that for later too. “Hand over the bottle.”
She gripped it in one hand and tried to take a swing at him with the other one, but as it was her injured one and she didn’t have on the brace, it didn’t go so well. “I don’t need you here. I don’t want them here either; I just want to be alone!”
“Not happening, baby.”
Cubby pulled the bottle free and placed it on the bedside table; he’d get rid of it later. Standing, he stripped off his shirt and shorts so he was left in his boxers.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re going to sober up, then we’re talking, you and I.”
“I’m not having sex with you!”
“No. Nice as that would be, princess, I’ll take you sober—if and when we get around to that.”
Cubby scooped her up and pulled the t-shirt over her head, exposing a white sports bra, and walked out of the bedroom.
“Let me go, you bastard!”
