While You Sleep

I gave her a big hug and glared at Millicent, who just smiled sweetly at me.

"Danielle, I have to stop by Katrina's school to get her records transferred. When I was there before they started the process but it seems to take inordinately long to do these things. I asked them to have everything ready in an hour so I'll stop back and pick them up. You can, of course, come and visit Katrina any time you'd like. I'll arrange it with the airlines to make it easier for you to get on a flight whenever you want; unless of course, you're unable to travel for some reason. But even in that case, you can call her every day."

"Danielle..." the bitch kept saying my name like she was practicing it. Or like she wanted me to know that she knew me. "...my offer, including the card is good for twelve hours. Agent Williams will be here until eleven p.m. tonight. If he doesn't have the signed papers in his hand by then..." she smiled again. "...we play hardball."

She and my daughter walked towards the door. As I watched them get into the limo, I was angry. This hadn't gone the way I wanted at all. The bitch expected me to divorce Rick for thirty five grand a year. I could live on that. I'd actually be better off than I was now. But thirty five grand was chicken feed compared to what Rick would be getting. I sat there on the couch fuming.

It was probably less than an hour after she'd left that my front door flew off of its hinges and landed in my living room. A stream of guys in gas masks and bullet proof vests with DEA printed on them burst into the room. Two of them handcuffed me with zip ties and laid me down on the floor while they fanned out and searched the house.

In less than four minutes they came out of my bathroom and kitchen carrying several large plastic bags of white powder.

"Look what we found in your house, ma'am," smiled one of the agents. "I'm sure that you know nothing about this, right?"

"Of course I don't," I said. "Look I'm an alcoholic and probably a slut, but I don't do drugs."

"Lady, you've got enough stuff here to get half of the city high," he laughed. They picked me up and walked me outside where I got the biggest shock of my life. Donnie was standing outside. He was also handcuffed and wouldn't look at me. As I walked past him towards the waiting squad car, he hobbled around to face me. He had a smirk on his face and shrugged his shoulders.

"Why, Donnie?" I screamed.

"Let me guess," he smirked. "You really thought, I'd come down to this rat trap for the pussy?"

He laughed a couple of times. "Don't kid yourself, Honey. You ain't that damned special. I can get pussy anywhere. Let me give you one more piece of advice...Don't drop the soap."

An hour later I was in a holding cell talking to my court appointed lawyer. I told him about how I was innocent and I'd been used.

He told me that Donnie had made a deal for a lesser sentence. He'd named names including mine. He had ratted out the guy, Marinelli, that he'd been supposedly storing the drugs for. And he'd ratted me out as well. Marinelli and his group were looking to do major time for manufacturing and selling the drugs. I was up for possession of large quantities which carried a far stiffer fine than if the amounts found on my premises were considered only for personal use.

Donnie would get a very light sentence because all they had on him was transporting. He'd get time served and have to testify at the trial. After that, he'd go into witness protection and start all over again. The feds were probably going to set him up in business so he'd be able to do things the way he wanted instead of waiting thirty or forty years for his dad to die.

"Danielle, you're looking at twenty years minimum," he said.

"Nope," I said. "I've got a get out of jail free card."

* * * * * *

Millicent

I already liked her. She was a smart, quiet little girl. In some ways, she reminded me of myself at that age, only...better. She isn't spoiled and she has great manners. She probably learned that from her daddy. As I sat in my usual spot by the bed holding his hand, I had to be very careful. Rick had bullet wounds to both arms. The tendon that connects the biceps muscle to the bone in the left arm had to be surgically re-attached. If I moved his arm too much, it would irritate the already inflamed muscle and cause him needless pain and prolong the healing process.

The door opened behind me and I could tell who it was by the way he walked.

"Hello Daddy," I said.

"What did you do?" he asked.

"I put a bunch of drug dealers in jail and got a lot of drugs off of the streets," I said. "I also arranged career improving busts for several DEA agents. It's a win-win situation."

"And you did all of that out of the goodness of your heart?" he asked.

"Nope," I said. "I did it for Rick. I sped up his divorce. He was going to get it eventually but..."

"Do you know why the divorce process takes so long?" he asked.

"Don't know, don't care," I said. I knew he was going to tell me anyway.

"It's so that both parties can be sure. Almost thirty percent of the time, the couple decides to stay together. Some of them, where the divorce is granted, they end up getting married all over again anyway," he said. "Did you know that your mother and I almost got divorced?"

"Yep," I said. "I was eleven. Even then I knew it wouldn't happen. The two of you loved each other too much. You didn't belong with anyone else. And there were no other people involved in your divorce. You just needed to learn to stay at home more. But this is different, Daddy. She was stretching things out just to try to hold onto him more for the money than anything else. Besides she may not even give him the divorce now."

"So if he's been waiting three years for the divorce, why is it so important that he get it now?" he asked.

"Because I have no intention of spending another day without him, Daddy," I said. He smiled and ran his fingers through my hair. I knew he'd know what I meant by that. It was the exact same line he'd told my mom's dad when he told him that he was marrying her that day.

He paused at the door. "Your friend Polly has asked for the state department to send in a group of advisers to help with the reorganization of her country's government. It seems she wasn't prepared to be a queen. She wants you to call her too. I think she's going to want you to come back and help her prepare for her coronation. She says it's going to be a huge party."

"I'll call her but I'm probably going to miss it. I've grown out of that party girl stage. I have no intention of leaving here until Rick is ready. I do have to spend some time with mom too. I'm not prepared to be a step mom yet, so I need her help. I need to learn some stuff."

"You'll do fine," he said smiling.

My phone rang. "Yes Danielle," I said. "You still have time left. You have several hours, in fact."

"The papers are signed and your Agent Williams has them," she said. "I'm out of jail and back at home. Your DEA agents knocked holes in my walls. Who's going to fix them? And when does my first check arrive. Do I get paid every week or every month? Can I still write a book about my life with Rick?"

I hung up the phone in shock. The fingers I lightly held onto had squeezed back, so I had no time for her bullshit. His eyes fluttered and then slowly opened.

"Told you to go to the bridge," he said. "Where are we?"

Rick made a full recovery from his injuries. It was a long slow process and Rina and I were there with him every step of the way. Rick was a national hero, so needless to say, things didn't go quite the way I'd thought they would. He started off making so much money doing speaking engagements that we were set for life. And speaking of engagements, I asked him to marry me as soon as his divorce was final.

Danielle came to visit Katrina a few times but was never really comfortable and simply stopped after a while. The last we heard, she'd hooked up with some guy she met and just disappeared after a while. I did have it looked into and I think Rick did too. The last anyone knew she'd gotten into a car with some guy other than the one she was living with and no one has seen her since.

Rick didn't last long on the public speaking circuit though, because daddy and the party convinced him to run for the Senate in one of our battleground states. His Senate run was a success and they see great things in his future. The more time passes, the deeper in love we discover that we are. We do have our arguments from time to time but they're more like differences of opinion from our divergent backgrounds. We both have some old habits to break but they're nothing serious. He still has that habit of watching over me while I sleep, but now he does it from the bed right beside me.

The end