Page 15 of Cisco

Cisco wasn’t vain. He’d been told enough times in his life that he was good-looking, and he barely had to lift an eyebrow to attract women who would eventually take him home to their beds. But Hilly… She’d not only looked indifferent; at times she’d seemed downright repulsed by his presence. And that hurt.

Cisco sighed and refocused on the road.

Shit.

He wasn’t on the right route.

His plan had been to go back to his bungalow, change into civvies, then grab his truck to visit his parents, but somehow his preoccupied brain currently had him heading past his place and directly to his folks. He’d just have to roll with it, because he wasn’t wasting another minute to spill his guts.

Yeah. He might be thirty-three, but sometimes when he was troubled or confused, he ran things by his family. Still, if he rode up in uniform on a Saturday afternoon at a time when he was normally getting ready for work, his ‘rents might freak.

Better give them a heads up.

He pulled to the side of the road—well onto the shoulder so he wouldn’t get sideswiped—and extracted his phone from his pocket before hitting his mom’s number.

It only rang once.

“Well, hello, my favorite son,” Selma Andera answered.

Cisco snorted, as usual. “I’m your only son, Ma,” he rejoindered.

“Which makes you my favorite,” was her patent answer, and it made Cisco warm inside.

What would he do without the two, wonderful people who’d adopted him at the age of three from Uruguay? He couldn’t imagine. He’d certainly gotten lucky. He’d been told that he’d been surrendered to an orphanage there by whatever people had raised him to that point, and his now-parents—his father a native of Uruguay, and his mother who’d met the love of her life as an exchange student and married him within months—had adopted him before moving back to his Mom’s hometown in Maine.

He had no memory of his early years before them, and had no interest whatsoever in pursuing his roots. As far as he was concerned, Selma and Genero Andera were his parents, and that was that. They’d loved and nurtured him with everything they had for all but three years of his life, and Cisco knew he couldn’t have asked for better family.

“So, to what do I owe this unusual Saturday call?” she asked, then her voice fell. “Don’t tell me you’re cancelling for dinner on Monday night.”

“Nope. Not at all,” Cisco replied. “I’m actually on the road to see you right now, with good news.”

“On a Saturday? When you’re due at work in…two hours? It must be some great news to take you out of your routine.”

Yeah. Cisco had routines. One might even say he was a bit OCD. Not in the “touch the light switch three times and count backward to ten while tying his shoes” kind of way. But in a “everything has a place, and certain time-slots during the day were devoted to habitual proceedings” manner.

“You’ll just have to wait and I’ll…” Cisco trailed off. There was a beige car approaching from the opposite direction, traveling far too fast on the smallish, rural road. “Gotta go, Ma,” Cisco barked. “Somebody’s headed this way speeding like a bat out of hell.”

“Go do your job,” his mother replied swiftly. “We’ll see you soon.” She hung up, and wasn’t that just like her. She never got in the way of what Cisco needed to do.

The person in the small Toyota flew by Cisco. He pulled out of the turnoff and followed, calling it in on his clipped mic.

“This is One-Victor-Bravo, reporting an 11-95 on Forest Ave.”

Maybe it wasn’t a routine traffic stop, because even though he’d turned on his lights and siren, the car hadn’t slowed one bit. Why was that? “Operator not responding. Requesting backup.” Cisco gave his exact location.

“Copy that,” headquarters responded, then came back ten seconds later. “Unit Two-Zebra-Charlie enroute. ETA four minutes.”

“Ten-four, dispatch.”

Cisco engaged his ALPR, which would, within seconds, give him a read on the license plate and let him know who he’d be dealing with.

Before the plate capture came through however, Cisco sped up until he was right behind the vehicle. He saw a lone woman driving, with no one else in the car. He keyed his external mic. “This is the Orono Police. Pull over,” he barked once.

The response was almost immediate as she slowed down, which was kind of odd. She’d ignored his siren and lights, but responded to a verbal hail? The woman’s brake lights came on as she stopped, and Cisco pulled up directly behind her. By that time, her plate had been processed; coming back as belonging to a Deborah Gorner, place of residence, Bangor. No priors.

Cisco got off his bike and approached her driver side window, which she’d just eased down a few inches.

“License and registration, Ma’am,” he politely requested.

---