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Eternity.

Eternity had come and passed and Eleanor's butt was still stuck to the same stupid, cheap and downright fugly chair that was not only scratched to within an inch of its long (and undoubtedly stinky) life, but was also nailed to the floor.

Yes. Nailed. To the floor.

As if there was even someone out there in this whole Universe that would run out of a police station with a chair.

Cuffs? Yes.
Badges? Yes.
Their file? Yes.
A chair? Eff no.

There wasn't even a stupid clock in the room. Eleanor had no idea how much time has passed since she'd been there, but if her breath and bladder were an indication, the detective was rapidly approaching his 48-hour limit, which meant that she'd just have to squeeze her legs a bit tighter for a few more minutes and then she'd be home free. And she'd make friggin' sure that once she reached her home she'd set everything on fire and slip out just as the firemen were publicly declaring that her carcass was burned to a cinder.

No.

Farther than a cinder.

They'd just sweep her floors (or what remained of them) a bit and place the dust into an urn and that would be her burial.

After she stuck around long enough to see her urn and make sure they didn't buy the cheap, plastic kind, she'd slip off the radar (until she forgot what a radar even was), make her way to the border (whilst surviving on the 19 dollars she had on her person) and then dig a hole big enough she could crawl under and illegally enter Mexico. After which she'd shack up with the first fisherman she met. And then they'd take off to some unknown, remote island, where she'd give him fourteen children in exchange for his sacrifice.

Of course, she'd have to bewitch him at night, in the presence of no lights whatsoever and convince him to marry her that very night, without having him see her or know anything about her.

Or maybe her luck would finally turn for the better and she'd stumble onto the only man on Earth who had a teenage-gammy fetish.

Hmm..

Still. She'd look into buying some weed or hiring some witch to put a love spell before actually approaching her fisherman soon-to-be husband.

But first she'd pee half her body weight.

The door to the interrogation room opened slightly. “Eleanor Bethesda Prickett?”
Her parents.

Her freaking, freaking parents.

That was not a voice she knew. She whipped her head towards the door and just barely managed to keep back a very creative answer. She did not want to extend her 48-hour stay on account of verbally assaulting an officer. Even if that particular officer would subsequently break her in half.

“Yes?” She asked, just as she saw a tall, very pretty but exuding badass blonde enter. She was dressed in police uniform, the saggy material doing nothing to hide her lean body. She pinned Eleanor to her chair with her icy-blue gaze. The officer looked as if she'd just stepped out of a Pepsi commercial or something.

Eleanor just barely managed not to melt to the floor in a green, green puddle.

Did no one on this effing planet have ugly genes anymore?

"Just Eleanor Prickett's fine."

The officer sat on the corner of the table, placing a folder in front of her. “Just sign this document here and you're free to go.”

Eleanor felt her eyes bulge out.

She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, until she had all her functions under control, or at least enough so she could shriek, “What?”

The officer's eyebrows snapped together.

Eleanor knew she was treading on thin ground, but her butt and most importantly, her bladder, pushed her past the point of caring.

“Are you freaking kidding me with this?” She yelled, trying to raise her arms, only to have them shoved down by those effing, effing chains. “You tie me up like I'm the reason Ebola's a thing now and you keep me tied up, not letting me go to the bathroom or drink some water or maybe eat something and then you tell me I can go? Well, eff that! I'm pressing charges! I'm issuing a complaint! I'm..I'm.. I don't know what I am, just know that what I am is not good and I'm not going to stop until I. Toast. You. All!” She finished, panting.

The officer, who, upon closer inspection, was named Atherson, continued to look at her as if she hadn't spent the last couple of minutes screaming her head off, entirely within her rights to do so. She stared at Eleanor as if she had, for all intents and purposes, blocked out her meltdown (which gave Eleanor the sneaking suspicion she had had to deal with this type of situations often).

Eleanor heaved a big sigh. “Just give me the papers.”

Atherson pushed the papers her way, along with a pen (that barely had any ink left). The moment the tip of the pen touched the paper, Eleanor looked up at Officer Atherson and asked in a tart tone: “I'm not signing some bogus confession or something, right? These are just the release forms.”

Atherson watched her with a blank face and nodded.

No verbal affirmation.

Huh.

Oh, well. She'd get her revenge later.

After a satisfying trip to the bathroom.

Eleanor signed the documents and passed them back to Officer Atherson. She took them without a second glance, unlocked her cuffs, that is both set of cuffs, and exited the room.

“Rude.” Eleanor grumbled. She bent down to massage the pins and needles out of her arms and legs. Whilst she was busying herself with this task, she heard the door open again.

“What?” She asked waspishly. “Did I commit some other crime in the five seconds you've left?”

“Cupcake, I'm here to pick you up.” She heard an attractive, inky voice say.

As was Eleanor's destiny, she had to pay the price and slam her head into the table, trying to right herself before she could look at her new visitor. She heard his chuckle through all of that.

So past the point of civil behavior, she turned her head towards the source of the voice and..

Snapped her mouth shut.

Her new visitor was over six feet of finely sculpted muscle, encased in a slim but still powerful frame. He wore extremely faded jeans, motorcycle boots and a black tee advertising some band she'd never heard about (but probably was really famous). But what made her stop and stare were his dark eyes, that had an amused glint in them (no doubt from her smashing her head into the table), black curly hair that desperately needed a haircut and the most badass goatee she'd ever seen, that surrounded what looked like a superior set of lips. In short, he was hot. Hot hot. Hotter than hot hot. Almost as hot as Ulrich, though who was she to say? She was biased.

The thing is, Eleanor learned her lesson.

Hot guys boded trouble.

Too much trouble.

Cuff trouble.

“Oh, man.” She whined, curling her fingers into her poor, beaten-up purse. “What did I do to you?”

She watched in alarm as a sexy smirk spread slowly on his face.

Oh, frig.