Sexoslavia

Author’s note: This story is a stupid ripoff of a stupid show recently airing on Netflix called Murderville. I’m sorry.

Meet Jerry Portland, Human Trafficking Division. For Jerry, every day means a new case of sexual enslavement, and a new celebrity guest star as his partner. Today’s celebrity guest: movie star Scarlett Johansson.

But here’s the catch. Scarlett isn’t being given a script. She has no idea what’s about to happen. Together, she and Jerry will have to improvise their way through the case. But it’ll be up to Scarlett alone to identify the sex slave.

So join them as they punch a one-way ticket…

To Sexoslavia.

“I cannot wear this into a  high school, Jerry.”

“That’s what you said about wearing your uniform into the mall.”

“And I was right! Everybody was staring at me. I wouldn’t have worn that outfit into a strip club.”

“What would you wear to a strip club?”

“We need to go to a real store to get me a real outfit. I’m going to go to jail dressed like this around children!”

Of all the trainees in all the world, somehow I get saddled with the most uptight prude of them all. Sure, her outfit was risqué, but answer me this: when you’re trying to fit in in the jungle, do you wear a safari costume and announce to everybody you’re a poacher, or do you skin a goddamn tiger and rise to the top of the food chain on day one?

Well that’s what I asked my rookie. She was a safari gal, if her bellyaching over her schoolgirl uniform was any measure.

“I don’t get you, PSV. You aren’t happy wearing that. You weren’t happy in your uniform. You weren’t happy with the clothes you wore to the station.”

“I was perfectly happy with my clothes I wore to the station.”

“Oh yeah? You sure seemed eager to take them off at Maning’s.”

“His name is Manning! The sign was a typo!”

“His whole worthless life is a typo, as far as I’m concerned. Now try to smile. The new girl won’t make any friends if she can’t even smile.”

Scarlett checked her makeup again in the mirror on her sun visor. Way too heavy for any woman with so much as an ounce of class. Still not enough to go with that outfit, though.

We pulled into the parking lot. We were running a little late, but only enough to be cool. With this rookie dragging me down I felt crippled, but at least that gave me the right to slide into the final remaining handicapped spot.

“Let’s go over the plan one last time, shall we? Show me I wasn’t just talking to hear myself speak.”

“You told me the plan standing outside my space in the women’s dressing room. I couldn’t hear half of it because the staff kept telling you that you needed to leave.”

“I was in the women’s dressing room because I have my partner’s back, always,” I retorted. “Maybe someday you’ll appreciate that.”

“I can tell you right now  that I won’t.” She brushed her hair away from her forehead. “OK. So we’re posing as a new student and a substitute teacher.”

“And I’ll be the teacher, obviously.”

“You say ‘obviously’ but you’re barely older than me. If you’re so certain you can rewind the clock for me, I don’t see why you can’t just do that for yourself and let me be the teacher.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re older than me, actually.”

“Anyway–”

“Like, significantly older. I would peg you for… fifty-one.”

“Seriously.”

“No. Fifty… five.”

“Thirty-seven. How about you? Because I see a little bit of gray in your mustache there, and–”

“Anyway, so you go in as a student. Just like last time, you’re undercover. Your goal is to infiltrate the youth culture. Our intel says that unlike Maning , this is something bigger. Pervasive. You understand?”

“I get it,” she said seriously.

“You sure? Because you might want to write that down. ‘Pervasive.’ Could be one of your vocab words.”

“Since I’m going to be a student for one day, I think I’ll make it, but thanks.”

“Not gonna lie, I like your confidence, rookie. Now I’m gonna head in there and see if I can’t learn what there is to learn from the faculty perspective. I’ll make sure they’re expecting you. Once you get in, just go where you’re told, try to blend in, make friends with the kinds of girls who might be getting roped into sex slavery.”

“I’m not sure that’s a ‘kind of girl.’”

“You know what I mean. The hot ones.” I stepped out of the car. “Good luck, rookie! Try not to whore yourself out for info like you did with Maning .”

Whatever she said was lost when I shut the door behind me, popped my collar, and headed into the building.

We rendezvoused at lunch in the corner of the student cafeteria. It was meatloaf day in the cafeteria, and they couldn’t have chosen a more suitable meal. If there was one thing this school was flooded with, it was hot, tasty meat.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t be referring to these girls  as ‘hot tasty meat,’” Phone Sex Voice rebuked me in her sexy phone-sex voice. Try as I might, I couldn’t take any criticism her sultry intonations delivered seriously.

“You’re one to talk.” I grinned. “How’s it feel, jetting back in time to your prime?”

“For your information, I was Esquire’s sexiest woman alive not once, but twice. I won’t even tell you how much they’d pay me to do nude. It would literally make you shit your pants. And that’s as a mother of two, thanks.”

“Still, gotta feel pretty good, I bet.”

With some reluctance, she shrugged in the closest thing to agreement this disagreeable vixen had in her. She’d said thirty-seven, but just in case I’d shaved off years like she was forty-five. For the best, I figured. Women lie about their age the way men lie about how hair their scrotums are. Besides, she was an actress, and you can’t play a sexy teenager in a Hollywood movie without being at least twenty-five.

“It feels good, I guess. Kinda crazy how much… tighter, everything feels. I’m definitely fitting in, though. Thanks to your help, I think this undercover is going good .”

“Everything, eh?” That sounded like code for “pussy” to me, and I don’t mean the codes I’ve used with past partners to bail me out when I get in over my head. Scarlett didn’t elaborate. “So, you’ve been here for over three hours. What have you learned?”

“So far, it’s been a pretty typical day, I think. I’m making connections, but nobody’s been acting out of the ordinary.”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” I repeated skeptically.

“I’m keeping my eyes open, but so far…”

I shook my head. “That. That girl, right there. You’d call that ‘ordinary.” I pointed.

“I know her, I think,” Scarlett said softly. “I think she was in my second period.”

My pointing didn’t go unnoticed, however. The blonde gave me a cold look. “Something wrong?”

“No, I was just admiring your outfit is all .”

Two hands went on two hips. Literally, on them, because there was nothing in between. Her “clothes” were a bunch of black leather straps meeting at metal  rings at her nipples, pussy and the small of her back. She’d be more decent naked. “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before. Are you new?”

“First day. New substitute teacher. Jerry Portland. Not a cop. Don’t even know why you’d wonder.”

“Right. Well, as it so happens, Mr. Portland, I’m the founding member of Pride, a student collective of women who refuse to allow the patriarchy to tell us how to feel about how we choose to display our bodies.”

Scarlett nodded supportively. She was deep undercover this time. My fault – no, make that my credit . She was so deep she could barely tell she wasn’t one of them. Can’t really pull off the de-aging without it.

“You look like a hooker who markets exclusively to middle-aged vegans. Go eat your lunch.”

The girl glared, but went on her way. Good for her. Hot blonde with tits like those, she was going to have a hard enough time being taken seriously in life without embarrassing herself in front of pathetic authority figures like teachers. I had half a mind to take her aside and show her how a real man embarrasses a teenage girl in bondage gear, but something told me that if she didn’t already know, life would teach her soon enough.

“How about you, Mr. Portland?” Scarlett asked dryly. “Any luck?”

“I’m Mr. Landport, here. Undercover, remember? You are using the identity I registered you under, aren’t you?”

Scarlett thrust forward her tits. I was halfway to taking a handful when I realized one of them had a nametag on it, right there on the bare boob bulging out of her tied-off little schoolgirl ensemble. Tonya Carringtonbergsonfield , it read. I should know. I read it twice.

“Well?”

“Hmm? They’re very nice.” Her face darkened. “Oh, you mean the investigation. So far, nothing damning, but you’d have to be an idiot not to notice something off about this place. I don’t think it’s the faculty. I had lunch in the faculty cafeteria, sat  next to a nice young teacher named Lyons. Real go-getter energy in that one.”

“That’s my second-period teacher!” she exclaimed, sounding more the schoolgirl than I suspect she wanted. An undercover agent who couldn’t break character… color me impressed, at least as much as I was by her ta-tas.

“Oh yeah? I do remember him saying that’s his favorite period.”

Scarlett turned scarlet, then. “I… can see why.”

“Oh? Anything interesting?”

“I can’t say!” she squeaked. “What happens in sex ed stays in sex ed, Mr. Landport.”

My eyes narrowed. Years of experience told me there was something off about the way she said that. Maybe it was the way she was half-dressed, or maybe it was the way her thighs squeezed together when she spouted the line. Maybe it was the cum blob dried in her hair. Maybe it was just a hunch. I took her by the elbow and led her into the nearest private place I could find. The girl’s restroom.

“Shouldn’t you be in the men’s room?!” exclaimed the ugliest hot girl I had ever seen in my life.

“Shouldn’t you be demanding a toll for crossing your bridge somewhere?” She burst into tears and fled. Meanwhile I found us an  empty stall and closed it behind us.

“Well, that girl’s traumatized for life.”

“Her? What about me? Ass   that tight , I feel personally attacked. Now, I’m going to let up on your immersion a bit here so you can tell me about your second period.”

“No, it’s really better if you… If… Oh shit.”

“It’s fine. You don’t look a day over forty.”

“No, not that. Jerry, I… Oh god. Mr. Lyons, he…” She shook her head, memories reorienting themselves back out of this reality. “I wasn’t even supposed to be in that class! I was supposed to have physics.”

“Get lost on your way to the lab? My, but aren’t you a walking metaphor for your entire gender.”

Her nostrils flared. “No, it’s… Lyons, he was in my first period, but as a student. I was trying to be make some friends, talking to these girls Lauren and Joanna, and one of them asked me if I was in Mr. Lyons’ sex ed class, and I said I didn’t think so, and she said… Right. ‘Damn, well you sure belong in there.’ And I remember seeing Lyons’ face split in two, and suddenly he was typing something in his laptop.”

I took a seat; once she realized there was no standing in such close quarters without inviting me to look up her teensy weensy plaid skirt, she took a position kneeling front  of me. “My oh my, but that is…. fucking pointless. God damnit, PSV, don’t you have any concrete data? You let that slide?”

“Will you let me finish? See, that’s when things went crazy. Suddenly, my schedule said I was  in his second period. And that class…” She shook. “Jerry, it’s not a class. Or, well, it is, but it’s literally teaching sex. As in how-to.”

“That hardly seems right.” Scarlett nodded. “No, I mean a woman your age and experience–”

She clenched a fist. I fist-bumped right back. My partner had to be able to take a little teasing. Outside, somebody turned on the sink. We lowered our voices. “So, what’d you wind up learning?”

Her gaze slid down to the floor. “I sucked him off. Oh my god, I sucked off a high school student. He told me to, and… I was so deep undercover, I didn’t question it. Like he was just another teacher, telling me what to do, and I needed  to get an A.”

“The old anything for an A routine.” I shook my head. I’d seen more than a few ladies employ that tactic to get ahead. Sad to see it in my trainee, though.

“I don’t suck dick like that, Jerry. No, I don’t suck dick period , especially not some smarmy teenage fuckface. But this morning, I got down on my knees when he snapped his fingers and I… I moaned . Oh god, I fucking moaned, like he was doing me a favor. And he wasn’t, but I acted like he was.”

“Putting those acting chops to some use for once? That’s good.”

“When I get my hands on him, I swear to god I’m gonna…” She snarled. “The crazy thing is, I was totally convinced our prime suspect was someone else altogether.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, there was this other guy everybody was talking about second period. Conner Fishers. Everybody  in class was talking about him. Like they’re obsessed  with fucking him – and these are all the hottest seniors in school, mind you. They talked him up so much it was like it was infectious. I got a look at him between third  and fourth period, and… I thought I saw it at the time, but now I’m questioning myself. I was hoping to bump into him at lunch, but… now I guess Jordan Lyons is our guy. Maybe doing a favor for his buddy Conner, using whatever twisted scheme he’s got to nudge some girls toward him?”

“Fishers and Lyons, in cahoots, hmm. Good. Let’s get you back in that cafeteria, see what confessions those natural dick-sucking lips of yours can extract from the other member of this inseparable duo of arcane masterminds.”

Whoever it was running up Northside High’s water bill at the sink started coughing up a storm suddenly, like some holdout from that god-awful universe where this pandemic hit and a bunch of dorks started a murder cult. A co-conspirator, maybe? I hopped up to catch sight of our eavesdropper, lurking in the girl’s room like a creep, but all I caught was a wisp of red hair trailing out the door.

My movement had knocked Scarlett on her ass. No panties, I noticed. She was an actress, all right, always in character. She accepted my help up . “You and I are going to have a serious talk about the way you talk to women when this is all over, Jerry. Serious .”

“What’re you gonna say with some kid’s dick in your mouth?” I laughed and helped her to her feet. “You’re all right sometimes, rookie. I just might be taking a liking to you.”

“Look, go ahead and put me back into play. I’m gonna find this Fishers, and see if I can’t find out how he’s got every halfway cute girl in this school tied up in knots over him.”

I granted her wish, and before my eyes she dropped a decade and a half. “Go get ‘em, Tonya.”

“You know these kids recognize me, right? This nametag isn’t fooling anyone.”

“I thought you called yourself an actress.”

I was keeping an eye on her now. She had some promise, I’d grant, but like my dad always told me, promise in one hand and shit in the other, then see which hand fills first. Broke a lot of promises, my old man. One of the best.

Scarlett found Fishers before I even finished up dropping a deuce in the girl’s room. She’d been barking up the right tree, all right. He was sitting there at a table with that snotty bitch in the bondage gear, this crazy hot fat chick, and one of the hottest blondes the American high school fantasyscape  had to offer. There were others, too, but everything at that table with a pair of tits was focused on one man, and one man only. You could smell whatever trickled out of the female vagina dribbling out by the gallon at that table. Or maybe I just haven’t had meatloaf for a while.

I positioned myself where I could listen without being too obvious, a few feet behind an unremarkable douche that could only be Conner Fishers. I took a good long look. There was something vicious in this one. Sent a chill right up my spine to look at him.

I had to hand it to her. Rookie or no, she was going for it again. I’d only been in that high school girl’s bathroom for ten minutes, and already she was perched on his lap, giggling at whatever stupid thing he’d said while I walked up.

What could make Lyons’ sex ed hotties fixate on a guy like this? Scarlett’s theory about the two of them being allies was spot-on in my book. You’d have to really love the little bastard to throw so much quality pussy his way.

“Has anyone ever told you that you look a lot like a younger ScarJo?” Fishers asked, unable to pry his eyes off of her.

“Yeah? Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?” she cooed at him, teasing his chin. Oh sure, when Fishers says  ScarJo, suddenly it’s a lovable pet name.

“A good thing!” he stammered. “I love, um, her movies. She’s really, you know, talented.”

“I hear she has some ‘talents’ that would blow your fucking mind,” she whispered into his ear.

“You know, new girl – Donna, was it? – maybe  you and I should hang out sometime. Maybe Olivia and I could show you the ropes, who’s fun, who’s lame, who’s good, who’s off limits. All that stuff. What are you doing after school?”

“I think she’s a little more worried about who  I’m doing after school,” my partner murmured into Fishers’ ear.

“Oh! Oh, wow. Man, you know, I… I mean, yeah, Kirsten’s a good person to know, you know? I think I’m, um, doing something after school. Right, Heather?”

The big-titted bondage whore smiled adoringly. “I’d love that, Conner.” Hard as they were, I was surprised her nips weren’t cutting through those little steel rings around them.

Scarlett patted her chest, offended, but not offended. “Conner! Did you think I meant I was going to try to sleep with you after school?” The boy sputtered something inarticulate. “Because we don’t have to wait that long.”

“Tonya!”

“Call me ScarJo,” she purred in that phony-sexy-voice. “Or call me whatever name you like, so long as you take me somewhere right now where I can scream out yours.”

“Daaaamn, new girl’s a full-on ho!” exclaimed the one with the eyes that didn’t quite focus on the same point.

“I, um, I’m kinda seeing someone, right now? It’s complicated.”

She kissed him. Poor little dweeb – mastermind that he was – had no choice but to kiss back. The other high school girls glared like she’d come in their meatloaf, but nobody interfered.

“Oh my god, wow. I don’t know who said what to make this happen, but…” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Just because you’re a movie star doesn’t mean you’re not a real person. I wish I could, Miss Johansson–”

“ScarJo. For you, I’m your ScarJo.”

“But I can’t. It wouldn’t be right, taking advantage of you.”

“That’s so  sweet, Conner,” said one girl, Olivia I thought.

“Oh my god, you guys are all insane,” grumbled the only girl at the table not actively fluttering her eyelashes at him, a tightly built chick who didn’t think anyone noticed her hand idly stroking between the legs of some awkward-looking ginger boy.

“I’ll pay you. Fourteen million dollars. That’s my Endgame  money. I can find out the royalties and give you those, too, if you want. Just one time. That’s all. I’ll be so good, you’ll never want one of these little girls again.”

“God, aren’t you married?” Times like those, I couldn’t help myself.

“I don’t care. You can record it, if you want. We can show him how much more of a man you are, Conner. I want him to know. Just say yes.”

“Holy cow .” His eyes were wide, shell-shocked. Or at least he was acting the part. This  Fishers could give my partner a run for her money in the theater department. Except where out-of-this-world curves and voice that turned sausages to rebar was  concerned.

Some teacher I didn’t recognize swung by just then and broke it up. Apparently for all its depravities, Northside had a policy against girls without underwear dry humping guys in the cafeteria. A real old school kind of place. Only not, you know, old.

I met my partner again after school at my  car. Her eyes darted over and over back toward the school, though I didn’t notice any tail she might have picked up. Just the tail she’d brought with her in that schoolgirl skirt that was now partially unclasped. School was out, looked like.

She slid into the front seat, sighing despondently. “Please tell me you did some real detective work this afternoon.”

I retrieved my badge from the cup holder. “Of course I did. You think they gave me this because I don’t  do detective work?”

“They gave you a ‘Bikini Inspector’ badge for your detective work?”

“Huh?” I checked. She was right, for once. “Damn, I wonder where I put the real one. But yeah, I managed to sniff out a well-hidden secret. You look exhausted, though. Must’ve been busy. What’d you turn up?”

She once again glanced back to the school doors, her neck swiveling as I pulled out of the parking spot. “I think I’m going to dye my hair red again,” she responded absently. “I’ll call my beautician, but for now, maybe we can stop by a pharmacy and get it started?”

“I think there’s a CVS on the way back to the station. Not sure it’s going to do much to keep you undercover though.”

“Under… what? No, Jerry, I’m in love,” she sighed. “And before you say anything, no, it’s not part of whatever’s going on. Conner would never do something like that.”

“Agreed, but I’m still curious how you know.”

“I know because I… because he…” She sighed, her head slumping back against the seat rest, eyes sliding closed, hand drifting up her skirt. “We made love.”

“Just for the sake of argument, you do realize that someone using mind control powers to make you fuck him might, indeed, ‘make love’ to one of his victims.” I grit my teeth at the solid wall of traffic locking us into the student lot. At this rate, we were going to be Nighthawks forever.

“No! He didn’t make a move at all. I was the one who made a move on him.”

“Go on. And don’t be stingy with the details. I want to believe you, but when you’re up against the sort of master genius that’s at work at Northside High, the truth could be hiding behind any detail.” Besides, she was a garbage conversationalist, so for once maybe I’d get something other than sass and whining out of her.

“I was in his seventh period,” she began. Immediately, I could tell she was telling the story as much to relive it herself as to impart anything to me. “Yearbook class. It was perfect, really. The teacher was totally preoccupied with this kid Jordan – Mr. Lyons, my sex ed teacher I told you about? Oh my god, bless her heart. He was goofing off, even flipped her off when she asked him to get to work, but she just dug in and knelt down beside him and practically begged him to make an effort. I could never do that, not even with my own kids.” She tilted her head, considering. “Will Conner want to help raise them?”

“Hard to say at this point.”

“She didn’t even notice I’d come into class, I don’t think. Not at that point. So I saw Conner come in, and I ambushed him right away. There was this little side part of the room, with some crappy old computers in it, and a big curtain that walled it off, kind of, so I dragged him in there and threw the curtain closed.

“He was confused, obviously. After lunch, word got out and pretty much everybody gave up acting like I wasn’t me, or a younger me, or whatever I am, so I can imagine it caught him off guard. That was fine, though. I just kissed him, and kept kissing him, and there was this lumpy old thinking couch back there that I pushed us onto. I went after his zipper, finally. And it was working. It was working , Jerry!” Suddenly she slumped down, head following forearms onto the dash.

“Sounds like your self-esteem is in a good place,” I reassured her. “What went wrong? Conner not into the milfier types?”

She snapped back upright, glowering as only an actress acting like a bitchy teen could. “I barely look older than he does right now, thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome.”

“That was sarcasm! God, you’re almost as bad as those two stupid skanks who… I’m getting ahead of myself. So like I said, I was all but begging him to let me at his cock, but he’s thinking ahead and he stops me, runs over and calls out to his teacher that he’s gonna help bring the new girl up to speed, if she could keep the class focused. Such a teacher’s pet, right? Freaking adorable. Except…”

“Except…?”

“I guess a couple of these girls, I guess they’re his girlfriends or something? The who belongs to who of it was unclear. But it’s that Come-Whip-Me-Playmate blonde from lunch – and don’t pretend you don’t remember her because the whole cafeteria saw you checking her out, Jerry – but also there’s this really pretty redhead, Amanda – we, um, met? in second  period – and she’s got legs like she’s wearing stilts. Unreal.

“And they see me on him, because the second that curtain shut I was on . him.  And for a minute, or five, or something, I don’t really know, they just watched. Which was great, because hey, more for me, right? Because everything  about him is just so fucking sexy . Did you ever meet someone who, the moment you laid eyes on them, you just knew  would be the best sex of your entire life?”

I looked my partner over. Her tits bulged and bobbled out of her top, better poised to make a break for it than any perp I’d ever nailed. Every time I had to tap the brakes to stop myself from running over another teenage idiot, she was tucking them back in, barely noticing, nipples ready to slice through the sheer white cotton.  Her skirt was hanging on for dear life, baring thighs that didn’t need much help from the boys down in graphics to strangle the life out of supervillains. Lips that couldn’t help but promise a vigorous beej.

“Nope.”

“Well you haven’t met Conner then, because mmmmm …” She treated herself to a few fondles. “Anyway, he eventually noticed and got all embarrassed. He was all ‘It’s Scarlett Johansson , you guys – I couldn’t help myself’ which is the kind of flattery I could live off of, you know? But these girls, it was like… He said something, what was it? Something about how they get when they get jealous? And anyway, before I know what’s going on, it’s a free-for-all. Blondie’s smothering him in boobs, Leggy’s grinding on him. But I’m not gonna be shown up by some high school sluts, you know?”

“Right, that would make this whole thing embarrassing.”

“Exactly. So, you know, I know. You know? When guys see me, I know what they think. So I shred my top off, and before I even know what I’m doing, I’m titty-fucking the shit out of him, and yeah, there’s nothing those two could do to compete with that. They tried. Conner – such a freaking sweetheart! – he even gave them a turn, to appease them I guess, but they didn’t have anything  on me. When he came, it was all over me . These .” She hefted her tits; neither she nor the trio of boys walking by seemed to mind that they popped completely out of what remained of her now buttonless blouse.

“So let me get this straight, PSV–”

“Oh god, do you think Conner would like it if I offered him phone sex? I stuffed all the cash I had on me down his pants – I said I’d pay him, so I didn’t want him to think I was a tease, but maybe I haven’t been thoroughly considering all my assets, you know?”

“Let me get this straight, rookie. Somewhere between this kid sucking you into a jailbait foursome and jizzing all over your tits in the back of his seventh period while both of his girlfriends cheered you on, you decided he was above suspicion. I got it straight?”

“Conner has nothing  to do with that. If you even suggest he’s under suspicion, I’ll–”

Right then, I let her snap out of it.

Her words caught in her throat. Scarlett’s eyes bulged in shock and maybe horror as she inspected herself, quickly finding the little flecks of dried cum from her afternoon delight. She hastily stuffed herself back into her top, so aggressively it only undid the knot and prolonged the whole thing. While she was trying to figure out how to retie  it – not a look she went for often, evidently – a redhead who could only be the one she’d mentioned in her story slipped between my car and the one in front of us. She noticed my partner and came around to her window.

She waited for the window to come down, though I only lowered it a crack. With that skanky schoolgirl skirt of hers, my partner already had enough crack showing in this car. “Ms. Johansson? I don’t know how you got roped into this, or who this guy is, but I’ll do my best to get you back where you belong, all right? And I hope today wasn’t too weird.”

“No, it was… It was, um…”

“Yeah, I know. I bet you don’t tit-fuck two different guys with the help of the same two girls on the same day very often, huh?” The redhead flinched, like it had been hard to get the words out. “Anyway, that was my bad. Don’t hold it against Conner, OK? I was only messing with him. See you tomorrow, maybe?”

“Uh, yeah. Tomorrow,” stammered my blushing partner.

The girl smiled apologetically and walked off. As she passed between a pair of bushes, she faded away like a leggy mist in a breeze.

“Well, looks like I was right. Sexy redhead, as always. Glad I trusted my intuition.”

We were out of the lot and blocks away before she calmed down enough to reply. “No more teenagers, Jerry. OK?”

“Still saving yourself for that one, huh? Oh, and I got a text from Captain Brindley. I guess your husband called the station looking for you? Or was it his divorce lawyer? Or did he tell you to get one?” I shrugged. “I’m not your answering machine rookie.”

“Oh god, I actually sent those texts…”

“Don’t you worry, PSV. Spouses and cops don’t mix. And if things don’t work out for you as a cop, I’ll bet Conner would take you in if he’s as sweet as you said he was. So come on, rookie, let’s get you to CVS and then we can talk about tomorrow. You still have one more investigation to go before we nab us a perp.”

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