Off Limits

OFF LIMITS

BY
HALEY JAMES

Copyright 2015 Haley James, all
rights reserved.

No
part of this work may be reproduced without written consent of the author. This
book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.

NOTE: This book is for a mature
audience only due to adult conduct.

Epilogue

The crime was brutal, that much was
obvious. The amount of blood splattered around the room alone was enough to
make any human in their right mind nauseas. The walls were covered, the sheets
drenched, and the carpet destroyed. The bedroom nightstand table lay overturned
on its side, broken picture frames flooded the floor,
all
showing the sign of the struggle that had taken place.

The woman’s body lay motionless on the
bed, her limp hands tied to the bedpost, and her legs too covered in the rich
red liquid to make out. Looking at her now, no one would know how beautiful she
had once been. No one would know her laughter had once filled the empty void in
so many people’s hearts. Her once naturally straight and perfect blonde hair
now lay stained with dry blood and bald patches where her murderer had spent
hours ripping her hair out of her sculp.

The setting was a quite suburban
neighborhood, the house a light red, and like something out of a movie,
surrounded by a white thick fence. It was the type of small town where no one
locked the doors, the kind of town where people were raised to believe in the
good. And it was the kind of town where a crime so brutal was sure to cause a
stir hard to recover from.

In a few hours, Ashley Miller’s sister
would walk through her front door, just like any other Friday. She would set
her sister’s cup of coffee on the counter and walk to her bedroom to wake her.
Only the second she set foot on the first step to the second floor, she would
smell it, the awful stench to a tragic crime. And as she ran up the stairs
faster than she thought she could run, she would see evidence of the fight that
had started in the hallway then continued into the bedroom. And then, unlike
any other day of her life, her sister would find Ashley’s lifeless body.

An investigation would begin and a small
town in Texas would turn into absolute pandemonium. Then an obsessive hunt for
the woman’s killer would begin, ending in awful tragic circumstances.

That, however, was in a few hours. For
now, Ashley’s body would stay put, with the town of Burberry sleeping soundly
in their beds thinking that everyone was as always safe and sound.

Chapter one

Melissa Miller pushed her foot
down harder on the petal of her jeep careful not to collide into the rail on
the side of the narrow road she was speeding down. The leaves had started to
fall slowly off the trees indicating that fall was approaching, and on any
other day she might stop to admire the beauty of the season change. It wasn’t
any other day though. Today was the day Melissa had been waiting for, the day
her sister’s killer would finally be brought to justice.

Sure, she had said this before,
but today was it, she could feel it with all she had in her bones. Today she
had finally found the break in the case she was waiting for, a year later. A
year after that awful morning when she had walked into her worst nightmare,
finding her older sister strangled and beaten to death in the bedroom of her
two story red farm house.

A full year and the son of a bitch who
had done unthinkable things to her flesh and blood was still walking around on
the streets of their town, free as the wind. Melissa still had to see him
everyday, knowing what he had done, and it took everything inside of her to not
smack the smug look off his face every time she passed him on the street.

Today though, she would show him. Today,
he would know the pain she had felt for the past year of her life every single
day. She couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when they slapped those
handcuffs on him and toted him off to a nice gray cell for the rest of his
life. The thought alone was enough to make her heart beat faster in her chest
and she had to remind herself to breathe as she neared the police station.

As she swung the wheel of her jeep around
the sharp turn and into the parking lot her small frame practically slid over
into the center council. People often told her she was too small to be driving
such a big car, but it was easy to underestimate just how brave 5’5 Melissa
Miller really was. Easy to underestimate just how far she was willing to go for
the things she cared about, and today was no different.

***

Mitch Manner peeked through the blinds of
the window next to his desk and sighed loudly as Melissa Miller’s green jeep sped
into the parking lot of his precinct. The car came to a screeching stop in the
middle of the parking lot coming about an inch from crashing into his squad
car.

He shook his head to himself and frowned.
Didn’t she realize she was much too small of a woman to be driving such a big
car? It was beyond dangerous; she clearly couldn’t handle the power behind it.

The door to the sheriff’s office swung
open and sheriff Freeman came storming out with an intense red burning from the
inside of his eyelids. “That crazy bitch is here again!” the sheriff gasped
loudly stomping his way over to Mitch’s desk, “look at her, she has some sort
of paper work with her.”

Mitch glanced out the window and noticed
that Melissa did indeed seem to be picking up a bunch of papers off the ground
that she had dropped.

“You better put her in her place, Mitch,”
the sheriff continued, “a year later and she’s still poking around causing a
stir all over town, people are starting to complain, Mitch, people are starting
to talk, Mitch… it’s a wonder she hasn’t been locked up yet, acting like an
absolutely crazy, a raving lunatic that woman is.”

“Oh, come on, boss,” Mitch says as he
glances out the window again, now she was chasing a piece of paper toward the
edge of the grass, and he wasn’t sure, but it seemed like she might be mumbling
something to it, “she isn’t that bad.”

Sheriff Freeman scoffs loudly to himself,
“get rid of her, Mitch, I mean it,” he says, stomping back toward his office,
“and for good this time.” He slams the door to his office just as the front
door to the police station swung open.
   

Melissa’s small frame bursts through the
door practically getting hit by it as the wind closed it roughly behind her.
Mitch gives her a once over. Dark brown hair a mess, glasses tilted to the
side, and bags under her eyes indicating a lack of sleep. Her jeans were worn
and her sweatshirt looked like she had spilled coffee on it earlier that day.
Who was he kidding; she was kind of a mess.

“Well, I’ve done it,” she declares loudly
making her way over to Mitch, tripping over her own two feet as she went, but
recovering before her body hit the ground.

Mitch rolls his eyes. “Would you watch where
you’re walking, you’ve only been doing it for 26 years now.”

Melissa throws the mess of papers in her
hands down on his desk choosing to ignore his sarcastic comment. “There you go!
You’re welcome.”

Mitch glances down at the pile of papers
in front of him like it’s about as interesting as someone putting a pile of
rocks on his desk. This was a story he had heard one too many times, at least
once a week Melissa Miller was in here with some new “evidence” she herself had
discovered, because apparently the police didn’t know how to do their job.

“And what,” Mitch says picking up one of
the papers in front of him and pretending to give it a once over, “exactly am I
looking at here?”

“This is the key to locking Charles Morgan
up for good!” she announces happily.

“Oh, yeah?” Mitch says setting the paper
back down on his desk, “what is it this time? A secret name change we didn’t
know about? Is he selling children on the black market? No, no, I got it, he’s
really a woman trapped inside a mans body.”

Melissa’s eyes narrow, shooting daggers
into Mitch “Well, this is exactly the type of thing that keeps my sister’s
killer out on the streets after all this time.”

Mitch leans back in his chair and shoots
Melissa a sympathetic look. “You have to stop, Mel, you just have to stop,
people are starting to talk.”

She takes a step back and crosses her
arms across her chest. “Well, I don’t care what people say.”

“I know you don’t,” Mitch stands up from
his chair, revealing his 6’2 frame and walks around his desk so he’s facing
her, “but the sheriff does.”

“Well, maybe, if the sheriff was a little
less concerned with what people thought and more concerned with justice my
sister’s memory would have a little peace.”

The comment tugs on Mitch’s heart just a
little bit, and he can’t help but to feel bad for the woman. I mean, here she
was, after all this time still messed up from that morning so long ago. And the
worst part was that there was nothing he could do about it. He had been trying
to put the pieces together for a year now, but every lead seemed to be a dead
end.
   

“What do you have here, anyway?” he asks
her tearing his eyes away from hers and back toward his desk.

Melissa’s eyes light up and for a second
she looks hopeful again. “He has another piece of land, Mitch! Upstate! One he
never told the police about in the initial investigation! Why wouldn’t he tell
us? I mean you…why wouldn’t he tell you if he had nothing to hide…”

Mitch eyes scan the paper in front of him
and he frowns, “this isn’t his land, it’s his brothers land, probably a
vacation home, or something for his family.”

“Or,” Melissa says waving her arms around
as she talks, “he put it in his brothers name to get us off his track, who
knows what he’s hiding up there! This could be the brake we have been waiting
for! I figured me and you could take a drive up there tonight after dark
and—“

“Whoa, whoa, slow down there, Nancy Drew,”
Mitch says cutting her off. “First of all me and you aren’t driving anywhere,
that would be against the law without a search warrant.”

“So get one,” Melissa says rolling her
eyes, like she’s talking to a two year old, “isn’t that what police officers
do?”

“No, it’s not what we do, we need
probable cause, and we have none. His brother owning a house upstate doesn’t
prove Charles Morgan is hiding anything, just like him having a sexual
relationship with your sister doesn’t prove he killed her.”

“He wasn’t having a sexual relationship
with her! He was stalking her! Following her all around! How many times do I
have to tell you before you get it!”

“Not according to him,” Mitch says
slowly.

Melissa snatches one of the papers out of
Mitch’s hand and laughs sarcastically. “Forget it. I should have known better
than to come to you. You don’t take anything I say seriously.”

Mitch rubs his temples with his hand and
sits down in the chair in front of his desk. “Melissa you’re acting unreasonable
again. Now like I told you last time, you can’t just go around making up
evidence…”

“Oh, don’t you dare! This isn’t high
school anymore, Mitch. I don’t have to listen to you! You aren’t the captain of
the football team and everyone’s hero, you might have had me star-struck back
then but not anymore! I’ve grown up and you’re a police officer now so I
suggest you start acting like it.”

“Star-struck?” Mitch says allowing an
amused expression to come across his face.

“Ugh! Just forget it!” She throws her hands
up in the air and snatches her papers up off his desk in one swift moment,
marching toward the door.

“You have to stop, there’s going to be
consequences to your actions soon, Melissa, I can only do so much.”

“I won’t stop,” the small woman says as
she opens the door, “until the man who killed my sister is off the street.”
Then she lets the door swing shut behind her leaving Mitch alone once again.

Chapter Two

Melissa walks through the front door to
her small red house, throwing her keys across the breezeway and letting them
land with a hard thud against her perfectly painted wall. The nerve of that
Mitch Manner, who did he think he was, anyway? Just because he had been the big
man on campus all through high school and college didn’t mean he knew
everything now. She was a different person now, she wasn’t the same naive girl
she had been back then, she didn’t have to put up with his bullshit.

She was a strong independent woman now!
She could care less what that Mitch Manner thought of her. He was of no
importance to her! I mean, honestly, acting like a child he was. Dismissing her
evidence like it was nothing more than a joke, implying that she would ever give
up on trying to put that good for nothing jerk behind bars! She would show them
both. Mitch Manner would regret the day he ever doubted Melissa Miller!

And then, all of a sudden, almost like a
flash of lighting shooting across the sky in the middle of a perfect sunny day,
her emotions changed. All the anger she had felt in her body, all the negative
feelings that she had felt with everything she had inside of her faded to
black, and all she was left with was sadness. Because, let’s face it, stupid
Mitch Manner wasn’t the real problem, the real problem was the fact that she
had yet to come to terms with her sister’s death. And no amount of bickering
with the town’s heartthrob was going to fix that. Just like no amount of books
she read, or no amount of research she did, or no amount of hours she spent in
the office was going to erase the sadness that lived in her soul. And now
looking around her empty house, she was reminded all too well that once again,
she was alone.