near his revolver.
“What knife?”
He took a menacing step forward, and Amber whimpered. The carving knife she’d forgotten she clutched in her hand clattered to the floor. In the next moment, the cop was all over her. He grabbed her arm, yanking it around her back.
“You’re hurting me.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, she felt the cold steel of handcuffs clamp on her wrist.
Something snapped in her then, and Amber fought. A fragment of the self-defense she’d been taught flickered through her. She kicked out at him. “No! You can’t do this. I won’t let you do this…”
One of her kicks connected and she heard his intake of breath. Her small victory, however, was short-lived. He held her tightly and secured the other wrist.
“Lady, if you don’t settle down,” he said, his voice a deceptively calm growl, “I’m going to add resisting arrest to your charges.”
It wasn’t so much what he said as the way the words sounded that got to her. They held a rumbled warning of coming pain. She knew that tone, knew what would happen to her if she defied him again. She’d tried to fight. She’d tried to remember she didn’t have to be a victim. She’d also tried to remember how to defend herself.
But he had the physical advantage of height and weight and strength. Resistance was futile, she realized. Why did it always have to be this way?
Amber closed her eyes and surrendered to the inevitable.
The handcuffed woman went limp, and Paul had to move fast to catch her before she hit the floor.
Police Chief Paul Evans commanded a force of forty sworn officers and a full complement of dispatchers, secretaries and other civilians whose job it was to maintain the peace in Wayside. He’d been warned that the Wayside Revelers had a tendency to get out of hand at their events. So he’d been on patrol in the vicinity of the community center.
When he heard first a shout and then breaking glass, he’d called for backup and rushed in, just in time to have a small, blond beauty threaten him with a wicked-looking blade.
Even now, with the hellion subdued at his side, his officers swarmed the building rounding up rabble-rousers.
He turned to call one of the officers—
Thwack!
A mound of potatoes au gratin hit his forehead. Paul spotted the culprit, a little old man who quickly ditched the serving spoon he’d used as a missile launcher. The man then snatched up a serving tray lid and used it as a shield against the lemon tarts hurled his way.
“Jones!” Paul bellowed.
The cop sprinted forward.
“You there,” Paul ordered the old man. “Stop it.”
The devilish gleam in the elderly man’s eyes was replaced by an expression of innocence and fake senility. “Me?”
“Yeah, you.”
Dragging along a remarkably subdued knife wielder, Paul unlocked a second pair of cuffs.
“You’re arresting me?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Hot diggity!” The little man stepped quickly to don the cuffs, showing pretty amazing dexterity for someone his age. Paul put him at close to eighty.
“Take these two out to my squad car,” he said to the young officer. “I’ll go round up some more of them.” He wiped his brow, shook potato goo from his hand and glared at the old man who was still grinning at him.
“Assaulting an officer could earn you some jail time, sir.”
“As long as you have cable, that’s fine by me. I like to watch wrestling.”
“I’ll just bet you do,” Paul muttered, walking away and stepping around a huge puddle of beets. The whole place was a wreck.
In the police car, Amber stared out the window, her face an expressionless mask.
“Isn’t this fun?” the little man asked.
It took a moment for the question to sink in and for Amber to comprehend that the pain hadn’t kicked in yet. She turned toward the voice, expecting to see her tormentor. Instead, she came eye-to-eye with an elf. Her eyes widened and her mouth, a thin line, began to tremble.
The man looked alarmed. “Aw, please don’t be mad. It was just a little pastry. It didn’t hurt, did it?”
Amber opened her mouth but no words came forth. Her tongue felt like sandpaper. She blinked once. Then again. And then the tears she’d hoped to hold back started to fall.
The man moved as if to comfort her, then, too late, remembered his hands were cuffed. He almost toppled into her lap. Amber squealed and pressed her back to the door. The little man righted himself.
“Oh, honey. It’s not that bad. Really. They’ll just take us down, do some fingerprints and then give us a good lecture. I missed last year’s dinner-dance, but that’s what I’m told happened.”
Amber just moaned.
To the casual observer, the Main Street district of Wayside, Oregon, might look a whole lot like Mayberry, R.F.D., but the police bureau was a reminder that crime happened in the town just like it did in every other American locality.
Once inside the large oak and cherry doors of the police bureau, it was apparent to any visitor that despite Wayside’s size, it had a state-of-the-art police department, fully equipped to handle any twenty-first century criminal activity and to protect the town’s citizens from such.
A long line of Revelers was herded past the intake desk and into lockup.
Amber stood in the midst of about thirty-five food-stained wretches, most of them incredibly self-satisfied over this bonus extension of their night’s festivities.
“My name’s Silas,” someone said.
Amber looked beside her. There stood her pie thrower, the little man from the police car. Having recovered enough to speak, Amber opened her mouth to give him what-for. But a voice boomed out over the general hubbub, drowning out her first words.
“Listen up, people.”
Amber’s skin prickled at the voice. She turned toward the voice and got another jolt when she looked at the man who’d cuffed and arrested her.
“My name’s Paul Evans and I’m the police chief here.”
“Hi, Chief Evans.” A couple of the Revelers called out the cheery greeting.
“Welcome to Wayside,” the little man at Amber’s side hollered.
Amber watched the big cop shake his head in bemusement. She rubbed her wrists. Though the handcuffs had been removed she still felt the weight of the
