Page 3 of The Baby Clause
Maybe I needed a drink after all. What I was seeing couldn’t be real… was this a joke? If it was, it really wasn’t funny. I retraced my steps back to the door and opened it. This time, I did more than just poke my head out. This time I walked around the whole damn cabin looking for fresh tracks in the snow or any sign that some ass-hat was pranking me on Christmas Day!
By the time I was satisfied that no-one was hiding in the trees about to surprise me, I headed back inside, kicking the door closed. Next, taking my frustrations out on the fire, thrusting a log in place and viciously prodding it with the poker till the flames flared into life. Then I slowly crept towards the basket, my eyes fixed on it and my ears straining to hear the slightest sound. Peering into the hamper, I looked at the content again, yep it was still there… sleeping. Fuckadoodle, this could NOT be happening… This was all kinds of wrong. Wait a second and let me just pinch myself because I must still be asleep and this was me having a nightmare. OUCH!
Well, that settled it. I’m sick and I’m hallucinating. Yep, that’s got to be it. Because there was no way on this planet, I was looking at a sleeping baby. What I knew about babies you could write on the back of a postage stamp, but as long as it was still sleeping… I was safe. I… I just needed to report this. I needed to call the Sheriff and get him to come and take it away and find who it belonged to and basically get it as far away from me before it woke up and… NOOOOO!
“WAHHHHHHH!!!”
Oh, fuck…I gently shook the basket, hoping that would be enough to make it go to sleep again.
It didn’t.Ugh, how do people cope with this?
This was a wrong delivery. Somewhere out there was my basket, and this one was obviously meant for someone else. If this was Dennis’ idea of how to introduce me to his offspring, he was going to regret it.
“WAHHHHHHH!!!”
Oh, fucking hell… that noise it was setting my teeth on edge. I was so fucked. I had no idea what the hell to do with a crying baby!
I stumbled over my feet half a dozen times in my haste to grab the sat-phone and mashed down the pre-programmed button for the Weather Station.
“Weather Station Bravo, what is your emergency?” I looked back at the basket, fighting the urge to put my fingers in my ears.
“It’s Jerry Bucannon… Mason, I need Sheriff Mason…”
“Sheriff Carmichael is a little busy today. Can you tell me the nature of your emergency?”
My emergency? Wasn’t that damn obvious?I walked out to the porch, putting a little distance between me and the… thing.
“I woke this morning to find a baby on my doorstep. I need the Sheriff.”
“Sorry? You found a what on your doorstep?”
“A BABY!”
“Did you say baby?” The disbelieving voice on the other end was not helping my sense of panic, which was rising higher than the snowbank outside.
“Yesssss!” I, all but, hissed back. Desperation creeping into my voice. “Please, I don’t know what to do with it and I don’t know how it got here, but I need help!” I wasn’t beyond begging at this point. I just wanted the noise to stop. Only just as I was trying to explain this, the damn phone battery died. I headed back inside and checked the phone charger; noticing what I’d missed the previous night. That the cable wasn’t plugged into the power socket.
I looked at the box again… there was only one thing for it. I was going to have to …touch it… because no matter how much I’d like to flip the lid shut and put it back on the doorstep with a note of ‘return to sender’, I couldn’t. I shuddered at the thought of holding a baby in my hands. What if I dropped it? What if it still cried? I crept to the box like it might explode any moment and looked down. Okay, I could do this. Holding my breath, I reached in and touched one of its hands, its fingers closed around one of mine with a surprisingly strong grip. I looked down into its face, eyes the same shade of blue as my own, stared back at me.
Oh shit!
Sheriff
Mason Carmichael
Technically, I wasn’t scheduled for duty today, but seeing as I didn’t have a family or kids to go home to. I’d offered to swap shifts with one of my deputies so he could spend Christmas with his wife and pups. I didn’t mind; it got me out of the house and gave me a great excuse to decline the numerous pity invites I received each year. Sometimes I felt like I was a trophy that everyone was trying to win. At times like this, being Pack-Alpha was more of a burden than an honor. It was a responsibility I took seriously. And during my time, the pack had gone from strength to strength. Only there were a few who really pushed the limit of what my patience and disciple could stand. Namely, one very annoying but very sexy Fox shifter. Seeing him the other day did nothing to drive the thought of him from my mind. All it did was make me yearn for him more. Which, frankly, was ridiculous. He was ridiculous and his car was beyond that; the thing was orange! But the noise it made as it roared off went straight to my balls. No one had ever got under my skin quite like Jerry Bucannon.
As predicted, the storm had hit, and we had been receiving reports of all kinds of damage. There were a few fallen trees that needed to be cleared from some of the more minor roads and there were the snow banks that needed removing and if that wasn’t all. We were looking into the need to set off an avalanche charge to safely bring down the loose powder snow. The last thing we needed was for some freestyle snowboarder to head up the mountain and get himself trapped under tons of snow.
When the call came over the radio, I was already cranky. When my deputy said that Jerry had called, my first thought was he’d taken that damn car out when he promised me, he wouldn’t.
“Ah Sheriff, are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here Scotty.”
“Umm, we’ve had a call in from Jerry Bucannon. He seemed a bit panicked, then the line went dead…”
Scotty wasn’t the type of deputy who over-dramatized things. Saying that, Scotty wasn’t his real name. It was actually McBride, and he had a thing for Sci-fi, so ‘Scotty’.
