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Royce(2)

By:Kathi S. Barton


It had been over fifty hours since she’d been to bed. She had gotten here to work her first part of this shift at two in the afternoon the day before yesterday. Kasey had worked as a bartender the night before that and helped clean the hotel rooms with her mom that morning before coming in. She was looking at the monitors when a group of men and women came in. They all badged in but the one in the middle. Kasey turned to stop him.

“Excuse me. Sir.” She’d said it louder when he all but ignored her. “Sir, you didn’t badge in. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to come back and do so.”

She nearly swallowed her tongue when he turned to look at her. Now here was a man to keep a woman up all night and have her not care if she was tired. She flushed at the thought, wondering where on earth that had come from. The man next to him tried to step between her and the man, but she stopped him with a hand on his forearm.

“He doesn’t need to badge in. He’s—”

“I don’t really care who he is. He could be the Czar of Russia for all I care. But he still needs to badge in.” She looked at the man who had been silent as she and the man next to him argued. “Look, the man who owns this building went to a great expense to put this thing in. It’ll take you all of two seconds to simply flash your badge at it. You don’t even have to dig it out of you—”

“Look…Officer York, I don’t think you—”

The man had grabbed her arm and she acted out of reflex. He was turned away from her with his arm up to his shoulder blade before he could finish his sentence. She forced him to the floor before she could think that she might have overreacted.

“I’m sure we can work something out that doesn’t involve breaking the arm of my brother, don’t you think, Officer York. Jesse?” The man helped his brother up when Kasey stepped back and let him go. “Now, you were saying something about a badge. I don’t believe I’ve ever been stopped for one before. Is this really necessary?”

She didn’t like to be a bitch, but she’d read about this sort of thing happening when a gunman wanted to take out the top guy for whatever reason. She wasn’t going to be the one to let the bad guy in on her watch. She didn’t think this guy looked like a shooter, but she was sure that lots of people said that about their neighbors all the time when they happened to shoot up a restaurant or place of business.

“Yes, sir. Why just last year at the Christmas party, the owner was telling us what a fine job we’d been doing keeping that little machine in proper working order. He did pay for it and all and was glad that it was being put to fine use. I’d really hate to disappoint him by letting someone get by me without letting them have the opportunity to make his day.” Kasey smiled, but her stance was firm. She didn’t have any idea who the owner of this building was and if asked, he probably didn’t have a care in the world about that stupid badge machine, but now it was a matter of making a point. A point that she’d been right and Jesse—staring at her as if she had two heads—had been wrong in thinking she was going to just let this go.

“I don’t believe I have a badge, Officer York. Perhaps you could see if I do and then bring it up to me. I’m late for a board meeting and there are people waiting on me.” The man smiled at her charmingly and she figured that worked for him a lot.

“I would be happy to see if you do, sir. And if you don’t, it’ll only take three minutes to print one up for you. This is very important, you see. The reason we have the people badge in and out is so that in the event of a fire, we have a roll call already built in to see who is in the building when they come in and out. It’s for your own safety.”

He stared at her for several seconds before he walked to the desk with her. She was just pulling up the badging program to search for his name when Mike came up beside her. He jerked on her arm so hard she knew he was going to leave a bruise.

“What the hell are you doing?” he snarled at her ear. “I told you to stay out of the lobby until everyone was gone.”

“This man didn’t have a badge. I was just seeing if he had one.” She started to put in her password when Mike pulled her back again.

“Don’t,” the man said in a low voice.

Kasey pulled her hands off the keyboard and Mike stepped back. She looked over at the man who seemed to be willing to look up his badge information, then she looked at her boss.

“She doesn’t know what—” Mike started with a stammer.

“Apparently she does. Now step back so that she can see about my badge.” He turned to her with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “What do you need to look up my name?”