For You

Chapter Four Butch

I was sitting on my bed from last night, which had necessarily been converted to a table where Mom and Dad and I just had bacon, eggs and toast that Mom made on the RV’s stove when my cell rang.

It was sitting by my plate and I stared at it.

The front screen said “Colt Calling”.

Colt had never called me before and I’d never called him. I’d successfully avoided programming Colt’s number into my phone for two years as well as, I suspected, Colt doing the same with mine.

But there it was, his name on my phone. Not “unknown caller” but his name.

Somewhere along the line fucking Morrie had programmed fucking Colt into my fucking phone, the asshole.

And someone, probably fucking Morrie, had given Colt my number.

I snatched it up, flipped it open, put it to my ear and said, “Hello?”

“Your Dad have a word with you?”

I looked at my Dad sitting across from me then I looked at my plate then I looked out the window.

Then I blew out a sigh before I said, “Yeah.”

“When’re you gonna be over?”

I looked back to Dad. “It’s Colt. He wants to know when we’re gonna be at his place.”

Dad looked at the narrow door behind him and turned back to me. “After my mornin’ constitutional. I’m thinkin’ thirty minutes,” he lifted his hand, pounded his chest and let out a loud belch before he finished, “maybe forty-five.”

I closed my eyes. Dad’s “mornin’ constitutional” would occur in the room that also functioned as the RV’s shower. Not to mention it would happen in an RV which was about as big as my bed at home, save about five square feet.

At least that knowledge made the pill that I had to move into Colt’s house, and Colt’s bed, a little easier to swallow.

“You hear that?” I said into the phone.

“Christ,” he heard it, “tell Jack to back into the drive at the side,” Colt said to me.

“Gotcha.”

“I’ll be there when you get there.”

“Can’t wait,” I lied and I knew it sounded bitchy but what did I care?

“Feb.”

I waited but he said no more. “What?” I prompted, eventually losing patience.

“Nothin’. Later.”

“Later,” I replied then flipped my phone shut.

It was nine o’clock and the morning had started bad. This was mainly due to the fact that I was still in a shitty mood after seeing Colt give Amy Harris one of his killer grins. And also because I was in a shitty mood because I reacted to it the way I did, giving too much away.

Then the morning got worse when Dad told me I was moving in with Colt. He told me this using the voice he used when he’d tell me things like I had to clean my room, or I had to get my shit together and stop flunking chemistry, or when I had to go over to Old Lady Baumgartner’s house and vacuum and dust and clean out her cat’s litter box because she was so old she couldn’t do it anymore.

Of course being the age I was now I figured I could ignore this voice.

Then Dad told me about the killer’s profile. Then he and Mom gave me looks that showed precisely how worried they were.

Then I gave into moving into Colt’s.

I didn’t like it, but I gave into it. And even though I didn’t like it, hearing the profile, there was no denying Colt’s place, with him on his couch, his gun close and him knowing how to use it, was the safest place for me.

I used Dad’s morning constitutional time to get my head together.

So shy, sweet, pretty Amy Harris, who was no less pretty after two decades, comes into J&J’s for the first time in her life, doesn’t order a drink (by the way), has a gab with Colt which makes him smile at her and then scurries off.

So what?

It was a long time ago. A long, long time ago.

I needed to get over it.

Exhibit A was the fact that I’d lost half of my life to this shit. Drifting from town to town to try to escape it but in the end, never letting it go and landing right back where I started. There were some good times in that drifting and there were some bad but there weren’t many great times. None, in fact, that I could remember. And if I wasn’t careful, the next half of my life wouldn’t be much better.

Exhibit B was some guy was running over dogs and hacking up people because he was hanging onto some wacko delusion that he was connected to and doing this stuff for me. He probably had a crush or something which he never let go and now, decades later, it came to this, dead people and dogs in two states.

Therefore, evidence was pointing to the fact that I needed to get over it.

It was a long time ago, people had moved on but I was stuck in the past.

I needed to pull myself into the present, get passed this latest nightmare and get a life.

So that’s what I was going to do.

Dad rolled up to Colt’s house and I examined it out my window as he executed the four attempts he needed before he successfully backed the RV into Colt’s side drive.

He did this into a drive that at the back end had a one car garage with a long, sturdy, sided overhang under which was a speedboat under a tarp.

I knew Colt had a speedboat, Morrie and the kids talked about it, I’d just never seen it. Sometimes Colt took Morrie and the kids (and, used to be, Dee) to the lake in the summers. Both kids loved when their Uncle Colt would take them to the lake, they never shut up about it when they got back. They both knew how to water ski and they told me Colt went fast.

Colt, Morrie and I used to go with Mom and Dad to the lake. Dad didn’t have a boat but he’d rent one. I’d never got up on skis even though I tried. Colt used to tease that I was lazy but really I preferred tubing. You were totally out of control when you were tubing. You just held on as hard as you could for as long as you could and enjoyed the thrill. I also liked just sitting in the boat and letting the wind whip my hair around my face and beat at my skin. No better feeling in the world than having the landscape slide by while the wind was in your hair, whether you were in a speedboat or on the back of a bike.

I looked away from the back of the RV and out the side window to Colt’s house.

Colt had a crackerbox house in a crackerbox neighborhood that was so much better than Morrie’s neighborhood it wasn’t funny.

It wasn’t because the houses were large and grand and beautiful. They weren’t. They were small and one-storied but they’d been built in a time when houses needed to be put up cheap and space was all important so the houses were small but the yards were huge.

The neighborhood was better than Morrie’s because these houses had been there awhile. There were no rules that said what color you could paint your house or where you could park your car or what you could put in your yard. People had built screened-in porches on the front and decks on the back. They’d built extensions. They’d put in flowerboxes on the front windows. They had playsets and round, above-ground pools in their backyards. They had custom-made wood plaques with flowers painted on them on the front of their houses that proudly announced the Jones’s lived there (or whoever).

They had American flags hanging from slanted poles beside their front doors. Some didn’t fly American flags but purple and white ones, with a bulldog emblazoned on it, the high school mascot. In those houses you knew they had a kid at school, probably an athlete or a cheerleader or the owners were alumni themselves or both. Others were gold and black Purdue flags or red and white IU flags. Others still were seasonal, orange, brown and gold leaf designs in fall, pastel flowers in spring, Easter eggs, Halloween witches, Christmas poinsettias or snowmen.

There were tons of trees planted willy-nilly, not in formation, not in a design some landscape architect sketched on a pad. And the trees were big and tall with wide trunks that grew so far out they’d cracked the sidewalks and full branches that, when they had leaves in a month or two, would throw so much shade during the hot, humid summer months, the entire neighborhood would feel like a cool breeze.

It was a great neighborhood and Colt’s house was the house he bought for Melanie.

Colt married Melanie Seivers about five years after I left. Their divorce was final three years ago but she’d been gone a year before that.

She’d been in the year behind me in school – pretty, dark hair, dark eyes, sweet, quiet, a lot like Amy except Melanie was tall. I knew her in school and I knew her after it. She’d come over with Colt when I was there for family occasions.

You had to hand it to Melanie, even with me being what I used to be to Colt, she was always nice to me. Never made me feel funny, never made me feel like she felt funny around me. She was just a nice gal.

She couldn’t get pregnant though, not Colt’s faulty equipment, hers. She took it hard. Although my parents, Morrie nor Delilah ever talked much about it to me, when Mom called and said Melanie left Colt and they were getting divorced she finally talked about it, though not much.

“Some women… don’t know, Feb… they just see no purpose in life without kids. Melanie was like that, just slipped through Colt’s fingers no matter how he tried to grab hold. She gave him no choice, he had to let go.”

I knew what she meant though not about the kids. He’d had another girl slip through his fingers who he’d tried to grab hold. I figured he knew when to stop trying.

Melanie had moved to another small town at the other side of the city. Not far, as the crow flies, but with the city in the way and having to navigate the highways and by-ways to get from here to there, she might as well have been in another state. I didn’t know what she was doing now without kids or Colt in her life. I did know I thought she was all kinds of crazy for leaving Colt. Colt was a man with all that entailed but even I wasn’t fool enough to think, when you got down to it, he wasn’t a good one.

Once Dad turned off the ignition to the RV, Wilson and me jumped out the side door. I had him in a kitty carrier in one hand, I had my bag in the other and I had my purse slung over my shoulder.

Colt had been standing in his front yard watching Dad trying to park from attempt two through attempt four. He walked up to me when Wilson and me jumped down from the RV and without even looking at me he grabbed onto Wilson and then leaned around me and grabbed my bag and then he walked into the house.

I looked behind me to see Mom carrying Wilson’s litter box. She jutted her chin to the door and I sucked in a breath, let it out and then followed Colt into my new nightmare.

When I walked into the living room, the cat box was on the coffee table and Colt was crouched in front of it, opening the wire door.

I took this time to look around.

I was surprised to see Colt had pretty much erased Melanie unless she wasn’t that into interior design. The place wasn’t a bachelor pad by a long shot but it didn’t have flowered wallpaper or wreathes made of twigs or little angel figurines (all of which I imagined where the way Melanie would decorate her and Colt’s house).

There was a huge, double-wide frame on the wall, Colt’s purple and white high school football jersey next to his Purdue jersey, both laid out careful and identical, same number on each, sixty-seven, his last name “Colton” across the shoulders. They were pinned to the mat, framed in a box frame on the wall. I hadn’t seen it since he got it and sucked in a quiet breath just looking at it.

Dad had given that to him years ago for Christmas. Colt had liked it so much, after the wrapping fell away he took one look at it, one look at Dad and he left the room. I knew why; men weren’t good with displaying that kind of emotion. Dad got choked up too and hid it behind a cough. Mom just started crying. Morrie had followed Colt.

I shook off that memory because it included me getting choked up too at the time and I didn’t want to do it now so I kept looking around.

In the room there was also a long, wide comfortable couch and armchair that I could tell wasn’t exactly top-of-the-line but it was nothing to sneeze at either. Sturdy lamps with muted shades on top of dark wood end tables, framed photos here and there. I wasn’t close enough to see what was in them but all of them were of people. It was a nice place.

Kitchen to the right, dining area in front of it over a bar. I could see the kitchen had been redone and well, though not recently, but it definitely wasn’t original and someone had put some money into it and I was guessing that someone was Colt and I was guessing that he did it for no-baby Melanie in the hopes that a kitchen would calm the baby craving which was something a man would do or, to be fair, something a caring man would do for a wife who was suffering an ailment he had no way to cure.

To the back, a double-wide opening that led to a den which was where Colt spent his time, I guessed, mainly because it was where he kept his big, flat-screen TV (which was top-of-the line but it was my experience men didn’t fuck around when it came to TVs). There were two big reclining chairs at angles to each other in front of the TV with a table between them, a stereo in the corner, loads of narrow CD shelves chock full of discs around the stereo, neon beer signs that had been retired from the bar on the walls and a fancy pool table at the side. The den was not original to the house, an extension Colt or his predecessor put in. I was guessing on a cop’s salary with that kitchen and the speedboat, the extension was there before Colt bought that house for Melanie.

To the left, a hall which I knew, because I’d been in plenty of houses like this, led to two bedrooms and a bath.

“You’re here,” Colt said and I looked from the doorway of the hall to him.

He’d come up from his crouch and grabbed my bag again. Wilson, my fluffy gray, had two kitty paws out of the box, two kitty paws in it and he was looking around, getting his new bearings and probably wishing he had opposable thumbs so he could hack me up, such was his current shitty life finding himself in four different houses in four different days, only one of them home.

I didn’t have time to comfort my cat, Colt was showing what he meant by his words by disappearing down the hall.

I followed. He walked into the room at the end.

When I arrived I saw Melanie was gone from here too. Blue walls. Dark blue bedspread. Baby blue sheets. Over the bed a fantastic sepia print of the inside of Harry’s Chocolate Shoppe, an old bar on the corner of the Purdue campus that Colt, Morrie and I spent a lot of time in. The shot was of the bar and its barback, devoid of people, just the wood, the stools, the shelves, the bottles, the mirror behind the bar, looking as old and cool as it was in real life.

I wanted that print, it was fucking fantastic.

But the bed was what captured my attention. It was huge. It had to be a California king.

Colt was a big guy but I reckon even he’d get lost in that bed. Definitely I would. I climbed into that behemoth they wouldn’t find me for a month.

He dropped my bag on the bed and looked at me.

“Sheets changed, bathroom’s through there.” He jerked his chin and I saw that there was a master bath, another extension likely put in pre-Colt and Melanie, through an open door. “You can make yourself at home later. I got somethin’ I need you to do.”

I looked from the bathroom door to Colt but he was already moving out of the room. Again, I followed.

Mom and Dad were in by then. Mom was already in the kitchen making coffee. Dad had Wilson’s empty case and was heading toward a side door in the kitchen, one that probably led to the garage behind the boat. Wilson was plucking his way across the carpet, sniffing, smelling Puck and not liking it. Except for Wilson and me, everyone was no stranger to this house. They were comfortable, at home, welcome and something ugly slid through me that I tried unsuccessfully to ignore.

Colt stopped by the dining room table.

“Got my yearbooks out, need you to look through.” He tapped the set of four large, hardbound, plastic covered books on the table and then he picked up a piece of paper and waved it once before setting it on top of the books. “This is a roster of Mrs. Hobbs’s geometry class, second period, your freshman year. Look at these names, look at the books, think about anyone who might fit the profile we got yesterday, not just names on this list, anyone.” His eyes caught mine. “Your Dad tell you about the profile?”

I nodded.

“Good. Look. Think. Call me.” He was talking in clipped, short sentences and it occurred to me he wasn’t wasting time with me and it occurred to me this was because he was hacked off about something, likely my comment earlier that morning, or me walking out on him when he was being a total asshole last night or the fact I was in his house at all.

He turned to Mom. “Gotta get to work.”

Mom came to the kitchen side of the bar, put her hands on it and said over it, “Why the hurry? I thought you were off the case.”

“Body found early this morning just inside the city limits.”

I drew in breath and it was so loud Colt turned back to me.

“Somethin’ else, looks like a drug sale gone bad.”

Mom shook her head. “I remember a time when we didn’t have homicides and the only drug around was weed.”

“City’s stretchin’, ten more years, it’ll engulf us,” Colt said. “City spreads, crime spreads.”

This was the ugly truth. There used to be miles and miles of cornfields between us and the city. For fifteen years, each time I came home more of those fields were gobbled up by strip malls and housing complexes. We still were protected by a thin shield of farmland but it was weakening fast.

Colt’s attention came back to me. “Scour these books, Feb. Don’t go into J&J’s until you’re done. I’ll expect a call by noon.”

I opened my mouth to say something but he was again moving, around the bar. He went into the kitchen and bent to kiss Mom’s cheek. Dad came in from the side and Colt gave him a wave and then a “Later,” and then he was gone.

“Where’s he goin’?” Dad asked the door Colt closed behind him.

“Work, some drug person was murdered last night,” Mom answered, moving right to the cupboard where the mugs were knowing exactly where to find them.

“Shit, I ‘member a time when worst thing that happened around here was a bar fight at J&J’s. Cops came, tossed the boys in a cell to dry out overnight and let their wives take ‘em home the next mornin’.” He went up to my Mom and kissed the side of her neck. “We got out just in time, Jackie, darlin’.”

Dad could say that again.

He and Mom got out just in time.

Though, bad news for me, when they got out, I got back in.

Mom was cleaning Colt’s house. Dad was over at Dee and Morrie’s doing something Dee needed done that Morrie never found time to do. I had my cell in my hand and I had to make the call.

I’d spent an hour going through the names on that list and looking at every face in Colt’s yearbooks and reading what people wrote in it deciding, from what she wrote, that Jeanie Shumacher was a traitor (she pretended to be my friend!) and a slut (even though now she had three kids, taught Sunday School and used to be president of the PTA). And deciding from what Tina Blackstone wrote she was just a bitch (she’d always been after Colt, even now she’d slither up to him at J&J’s and give him her patented look and although I was avoiding him, I always smiled to myself when I saw him shoot her down, time after time). And I noticed Amy Harris never wrote anything at all.

Nothing shot out at me. Most of the names on the list were people I didn’t even remember and only barely remembered when I crossed-checked them with photos. A bunch of them were gone, didn’t live in town or even Indy anymore. I looked, I thought, but nothing came to me.

Nothing but one guy.

I flipped my phone open, found Colt’s name when I scrolled down and then I hit go.

“Feb,” he said in my ear.

“Loren Smithfield,” I said back.

“What?”

If we’d used the word back then, Loren Smithfield would have been known as a player. He was tall, dark blond with a bit of rust to his hair, good build but not an athlete.

No, Lore was the school flirt and definitely the school horn dog.

I had no idea how many girls he nailed. I just knew he nailed Jessie in her senior year of high school after sweet-talking her for the first three. She finally went out on a date with him and on date three, he got in her pants and took her virginity.

There was no date four and Jessie was heartbroken and humiliated even though she tried to hide it.

Loren tried to nail Meems, he tried to nail me, hell, he tried to nail everybody.

He sat beside me in that Geometry class and he flirted with me outrageously, not something many boys did seeing as they all knew about Colt and me and seeing as, if Colt ever found out, everyone knew he’d mess them up. Loren flirted with me all through school, especially during that class and in our junior year when he sat beside me in Psych.

He was smart, really smart, got good grades but it was more. He was what my Dad would call sharp. He was a quick thinker, good with words, thought things through three times as fast as anyone else which made him an excellent flirt.

He had great handwriting and signed his name cool and weird. Creative. Taking his time, even at the top of tests, putting these rock ‘n’ roll flourishes on it that I always thought were super hip even though he always made me feel a bit funny.

“Loren Smithfield,” I repeated to Colt.

“Feb, Lore doesn’t fit the profile.”

No, it was more that Colt didn’t want him to. Lore was a drinking buddy of Colt and Morrie’s. He didn’t come in regular, say, every night, but he was in J&J’s often enough, a few times a month and when he was he was sitting beside Colt at the end of the bar, Morrie in front of them, all of them engaged in man conversation, some nods, some knowing grins, sometimes low, rough laughter.

“He sat beside me in Geometry class. He flirted with me all through school. He nailed everything that moved.”

There was a hesitation then Colt said, “Lore’s been married three times, three kids, two with the first wife, one with the last. He works for his Dad’s construction firm and he drives a Ford F160.”

“So?”

“February, this guy we’re after, he’s got a desk job. Lore works with his hands. And this guy probably can’t get it up, not unless he’s doin’ somethin’ sick. Lore made those kids the old fashioned way, not through a test tube. And you think Lore would be as successful as he is if he’s into sick shit?”

I knew what Colt was saying. Lore had three wives because Lore had not changed. He still nailed everything that moved. He didn’t search for his pieces out of town but did his thing right under everyone’s noses. His wives, eventually getting sick of it, kicked his ass out.

I’d been around, I knew there were folks out there who liked their kink and sometimes that kink could get dirty and even creepy. But I didn’t figure in this ‘burg, which happened to be placed smack in the middle of the Bible Belt, that there would be that much choice of women who’d put up with dirty, creepy kink.

“And the witnesses saw a silver sedan exiting the alley, not a Ford F160,” Colt continued.

“Loren isn’t stupid, Colt. If he drove a woman into an alley in the morning hours in order to kill her, he wouldn’t use his own truck. He’d rent a car.”

“There somethin’ I don’t know about you and Lore?”

Colt’s voice had turned funny – harder, abrasive, he was pissed about more than me pointing the finger at his buddy Lore.

But I had other things to worry about.

I couldn’t say I liked Lore, I couldn’t say I disliked him. He was a good guy mostly, funny, interesting. Still, I avoided him, for different reasons than I avoided Colt. Loren was persistent and I didn’t want to give him the inkling he had a way in because if he had it, he’d never let it go.

This wasn’t easy for me, pointing a finger at someone, even a jerk which Loren definitely was. But we were talking murder.

“No, there’s nothin’ you don’t know.”

“Don’t keep shit from me, Feb, not with this.” His voice was still pissed, actually now it was more pissed.

“You think this is easy for me? Lore’s got kids. Jessie slept with him in high school. Turns out it’s him, Jessie’d be creeped out for years. Those kids –”

Colt interrupted me. “That all you got?”

I pulled my hair away from my face, holding at the back and stayed quiet.

Then I let my hair go and repeated softly, “This isn’t easy for me, Colt. It’s not only not easy, I don’t like it,” I paused and swallowed before I finished, “not at all.”

We were both quiet then.

Colt broke the silence and he didn’t sound pissed anymore. “Go back over the list, Feb. There are three men on that list still in town or close to town who fit the profile. And they have silver cars.”

I was a little surprised he knew that much and was that thorough. He knew what he was asking me to do that morning, he knew exactly.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Not sayin’, just look at the list.”

“I thought you weren’t working this case?”

“Not officially but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna sit on my fuckin’ hands when you’re findin’ dead bodies, cryin’ in my arms and my dog’s dead.”

That made me go quiet again.

Colt wasn’t quiet. “Feb, go back to the list.”

“All right.”

He didn’t say anything for awhile and for some reason I didn’t let him go just stood in his kitchen with him on the other end of my phone.

He again broke the silence by saying, “I’ll talk to Sully. Someone’ll look into Lore.”

That didn’t make me feel better at all but I was glad he trusted me on it.

“Okay,” I agreed.

“Later.”

“Later.”

I flipped my phone shut and went back to the list.

She walked into J&J’s when I was behind the bar.

It was late afternoon but it was Saturday and we had a decent crowd, nothing overwhelming but enough to make me think people had not yet cottoned onto the situation, therefore avoiding J&J’s and me like the plague.

I felt my neck get tight when I saw her.

Susie Shepherd.

I’d never liked her because she wasn’t easy to like. Won every competition going, had so many tiaras she could convince herself she was queen of the world (and I suspected she did). She was also head cheerleader since she was a sophomore. It was unheard of for a sophomore to be head cheerleader the top spot always went to a senior. But Susie’s Daddy made it so, meaning Susie had cheated girls out of the top spot for two years running. I was no cheerleader but I thought that was low.

Since then I kept in loose touch with Wyatt Taylor sharing a drink with him every once in awhile when I hung at J&J’s while I was home. Wyatt had been in Colt and Morrie’s crowd but he drifted away after school mainly because he got a Master’s degree and a great job that meant a lot of travel, even some of it out of the country. Though they remained friendly, he wasn’t exactly in with cops and construction workers.

Wyatt had dated Susie, fallen deep and asked her to marry him. Then she thought she’d nailed it and showed her true colors so he called it off. Told me he got a visit from her Daddy and a trip to Hawaii if he kept his mouth shut about dumping her. He went to Hawaii. Still everyone knew he was the one who dumped her mostly because she was a bitch.

She sidled up to the bar, eyes on me and I was surprised, the way she was acting, that she hadn’t put on rubber gloves and donned a contamination suit and mask. Beer and shots at J&J’s was not Susie’s style.

I’d often wondered how Colt got caught up with her but looking at her I no longer had to wonder. She was always beautiful when she was young and now. A knockout.

However, considering all the shit that had come at me the last few days, I totally forgot about her. Now I was going to be sleeping in her boyfriend’s bed.

This was not good.

Morrie was in the office, Dad was down the bar and Ruthie was casing the crowd, getting drink orders.

It was up to me mainly because she came right at me.

“Hey Susie,” I greeted, taking a step toward her as she slid on a stool with a look on her face that said she’d rather the stool was disinfected before she put her immaculate ass on it. “Get you a drink?”

I was trying to be casual. She knew all about me and everyone knew Colt wanted nothing to do with me. Furthermore, her boyfriend was a cop, he’d need to talk, let shit go and she, in my mind, was that source. She had to know the way it was.

“Diet,” was all she said and I turned, leaned, nabbed a glass off the back of the bar then twisted back, grabbed the beverage gun and dunked the glass in the ice bin. “Lots of ice,” I dunked it again, “add a lemon.”

No “please” nothing. I was her minion, this was an order.

I could see she was still a bitch.

I pulled a lemon out of the tray and slid it onto the side of the glass. I even threw in two thin, red straws just to cap it off. That night I was going to be sleeping in her boyfriend’s bed, she deserved more than one straw.

She took the glass, sucked on the straws and turned away. I saw Joe-Bob was watching her like he was a flightless chicken in a coop and a fox just dug under the wire.

Thankfully I was dismissed so I took off, going to office, telling Morrie I was going to restock the fridges then hightailing it to the back storeroom.

When I got out carrying a mixed box of beers, Morrie was behind the bar, his eyes on Susie (who was ignoring him) and his cell to his ear. Conversation in the bar was muted. People were waiting. They knew there was going to be a showdown, Susie was itching for it.

I ignored all this and got down to business with my box and the fridges, crouching low and rotating the new with the old.

It took five minutes from Morrie’s call to Colt arriving at J&J’s. I wanted to escape but I didn’t want what my escaping would say to be said so I just slid the box down to the next fridge and kept right on restocking.

“Colt,” I heard Susie say.

“What the fuck’re you doin’ here?” was Colt’s not-so-friendly response.

This surprised me. I thought he’d ask her outside to go sit in his GMC or take her to the back office. That was Colt’s style. Not confronting her in the bar.

“Having a drink,” Susie replied.

“Bullshit.”

“Now, Colt –”

“You want this, let’s do it,” Colt invited and I kept right on rotating, pulling the old bottles out, setting them aside, putting the new bottles back, setting the old ones in front of them.

“You aren’t answering your phone,” Susie told him.

“I am, I’m just not doin’ it when you call.”

Oh Lord. Maybe she wasn’t his girlfriend anymore, what did I know? Colt, nor Morrie, nor anyone kept me in Colt’s romance loop.

“What’d I tell you?” Susie said, her voice now nasty. “Wound up with February. Three days it’s been and she’s already in your house.”

Fuck, I just knew this was about me.

I decided that was my cue to escape. I stood up and closed the fridge with my foot, preparing to make good on my plan.

“Don’t you move,” Colt ordered, his voice hard, my eyes went to him to see he was addressing me.

“What?” I asked.

“This is your place. It’s not hers to make you feel uncomfortable in it,” Colt said to me.

“Thinkin’ you two should take this into the office.” Dad was now there.

Susie ignored my Dad. “Tina Blackstone called, said she saw you carrying her cat and her bag into your house.”

I also forgot Tina Blackstone was Colt’s neighbor and Susie’s friend (though Susie probably didn’t know that Tina tried it on with Colt on a variety of occasions). And I forgot Tina wasn’t only a bitch, she was a busybody and she drained her ex dry which meant she didn’t have to work but part-time which meant she had time to spy on Colt for Susie.

“And this is your business because…?” Colt asked.

“This is my business because I don’t want to see you make a fool of yourself. Not even a week, Colt, and you’re publicly gagging for it. It’s sad.”

I felt my head get light while visions exploded in it of my fist connecting with Susie’s face.

I knew Morrie felt the same way because he suggested, “And I’m thinkin’ that our soda’s flat, Susie. Maybe you should go to Frank’s, see if you like his soda better.”

Susie ignored Morrie too. “So let’s see if my guess is correct, Colt. Ask her. Ask her to get down on her knees and suck your cock. She’ll be over that bar so fast–”

I moved in, so did Morrie and Dad and the whole place went quiet, already listening, now they were doing it openly but Colt put his hand up, palm out, toward me never peeling his eyes from Susie’s face and for some reason me, Dad and Morrie froze.

“Daddy’s gone Susie,” Colt said in a voice that rang loud in the big, silent bar, “so you got only your money to protect you and since I don’t give a shit about your money then I’ll give it to you straight. I fucked you because I was drunk and actin’ stupid and you reminded me of February. I kept doin’ it because I could keep pretending that was true until you proved yourself to be the bitch you are and I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Puttin’ up with your shit wasn’t worth getting off. I gave you too many chances to turn my mind to you and you never took a single one. So like I said three days ago, it’s over. I’m done. You wanted a scene, there it is. You got it.”

I was trying not to think of the fact that Colt just told me, my brother, my Dad, his ex-girlfriend and around twenty citizens in our town he fucked Susie because he could pretend she was me but it was impossible not to think about it because he did it. Right then, right there, right in front of me.

Susie leaned toward Colt. “You’re a fool.”

“Only one thinks that is you. Fuck, probably half the guys who’ve fucked you think of Feb when they’re doin’ it,” Colt replied.

Morrie laughed at this, so did others, several of them, I just didn’t see who they were because I couldn’t tear my eyes off what was happening in front of me.

Susie had no ready retort because there was none to be had. She’d played out a faulty strategy and right then she knew it.

Finally she tried another faulty strategy, false bravado and she hissed, “Don’t think after this Alexander Colton, you can come crawling back to me.”

“As ever, you got a creative memory, Sooz. Wasn’t me who did the crawlin’. I figure, I asked, it’d be you who got down on your knees.”

“Go to hell.”

“You’re in my space, means I’m already there.”

Colt was good and I made a mental note not to get in verbal fisticuffs with him. Susie had made an art out of being a bitch. I was surprised he’d bested her. He’d wipe the floor with me.

She slid off her seat, hitching her bag on her shoulder and throwing a glare at Colt as she went.

I decided not to remind her she owed us for the soda. Colt had already rubbed enough salt in her wounds, we could do without the buck fifty.

She exited with her head held high and a flounce of her hair. Joe-Bob breathed an audible sigh of relief. All eyes in the bar swung to Colt and me.

“In the office,” Colt clipped at me and then started walking toward the office.

I figured my best bet was to follow him so I did. I closed the door behind me and leaned my back against it. Normally distance from Colt was paramount though lately this wasn’t working for me. But after what just happened and what he’d said, distance was fundamental.

“Sully and me have managed to keep the town from talkin’ about the notes, The Feds and your involvement with all that shit. People seein’ you and me comin’ in and out of this office, what happened at the Station and Tina Blackstone’s big fuckin’ mouth, we got no control over. With all that’s goin’ on, you gonna be able to deal with this?”

Colt had evidently decided to ignore what he said to Susie which I thought was a good play and I let him have it.

“Yeah,” I told him.

“They’re gonna jump to conclusions.”

“They always do.”

“I need to know you aren’t gonna lose it.”

“Lose it?”

“Lose it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Go off half-cocked.”

I stared at him then I repeated, “What do you mean?”

“You’re not exactly known for havin’ a level head, Feb. You got a lotta stress. Shit’s gone down before and it didn’t involve murdering psychos and bitches like Susie and you disappeared for fifteen years. Can’t keep you safe if you haul ass.”

Now I was losing my temper and that mental note I made not to get into verbal fisticuffs with Colt got lost somewhere in the flutterings of my brain.

“How did this get to be about me?”

He ignored my question. “I need your assurance you’re gonna be able to ride this out.”

“I can’t believe this shit.”

“Just promise me, it gets too much, you’ll talk to Morrie, your Mom, Jessie, Mimi, whoever the fuck and you don’t just take off.”

It was then I lost it. Covering the distance between us in three pissed off steps, I got right in his face and when I spoke I did it loud.

“Colt, I was twenty-five and had just been beaten to shit and humiliated by my husband when I took off. Half the town feelin’ sorry for me, the other half thinkin’ I’m an idiot. I couldn’t hold up my head. You have no clue how that feels but, let me tell you, it feels shit. You hear me?” I shouted. “I had nothin’ to keep me tied here and so I left. Now I got ties. I got this bar. I got my respect for my brother. I promised him I’d pull my weight as a partner and that’s what I’m gonna do and I don’t fuckin’ appreciate you insinuating I’d do anything different.”

His voice got low and conciliatory when he spoke again but he didn’t back down or move out of the space I’d taken. “I appreciate that, Feb, but you gotta appreciate that I know you aren’t exactly known for sharin’ and they don’t make a break in this case soon this shit is only gonna get worse before it gets better.”

“I’m not an idiot, Colt, I realize that.”

“Then you can’t think you’re gonna go it alone. You try, you’re gonna collapse under the weight of it or you’re gonna feel that pressure and disappear.”

“You don’t know me well enough to say that.”

His voice lost its conciliatory tone when he said, “You know I do.”

“I’m not who I was, Colt.”

“Fucking hell, Feb, I know that too, been livin’ that nightmare for a long fucking time.”

“Poor you,” I spat, so lost in my anger I didn’t even begin to think what I was saying or if I should be saying it, “try livin’ my nightmare, you asshole.”

It was his turn to get in my face. “You’d share it with me, I’d take that shot.”

“Why are you doing that?” I shouted. “I don’t need to share what you damn well know.”

“That’s your constant refrain, Feb, is it sinkin’ in yet that maybe I’m not lyin’ and I have no fuckin’ clue?”

“Not even for a second!”

“Christ,” he bit off but I was done and I took a step back.

“This is so over, why we’re still talkin’ about it is beyond me.”

“Maybe because it means something?”

“To who?”

“Fucking hell,” now Colt was yelling, “you think two people don’t give a shit about something would be shouting about it?”

I had no answer to that mainly because I had no intention of even thinking about that.

He read me and closed the distance I’d gained, getting back in my face. “There’s a lot of people we both care about tied in this shit and now it’s in their face. Again. We need to talk it out so we can finally shut it down and move, the fuck, on.”

“I’ve moved on, Colt.”

“Bullshit, Feb, you’re stuck, same as me.”

I turned away from him toward the door but he caught my arm and whirled me right back.

“We’re not done.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I snapped and then told him what he already knew, “we are. We have been for twenty-two years.”

I caught his flinch before I yanked my arm from his hand and walked right out the door. It was embarrassing knowing that everyone heard. Some of them pretending they didn’t; others not bothering. But taking a page out of Susie’s book, I kept my head held high and lifted my hand to slide it under my hair, pulling it off my neck and shoulders to let it fall down my back.

I went right behind the bar and asked, “You need another, Joe-Bob?”

“Always need another, Feb,” Joe-Bob answered quietly and I knew his eyes were gentle on me but I didn’t meet them when I got him his beer.

I spent a lot of time with Joe-Bob. He was mostly a silent drinker, looked older probably than his years; wife had left him, kids long gone. He didn’t talk much when he got loused, he’d sometimes get in the mood to share but it was rare so I didn’t know him all that well. Still, he was a fixture in my life and had been awhile and seeing his eyes gentle on me I knew would undo me.

Colt wasn’t through with me, I should have known he wouldn’t be by the way he treated Susie.

As he walked down the bar toward the door, he said loud enough for everyone to hear, “See you at home, Feb.”

Two could play that game.

“I’ll be late,” I called to his back, “pull the covers back for me, baby.”

He stopped with the door open in his hand, his eyes sliced to me and it was a wonder I didn’t cower under his dark look but he didn’t hesitate before he openly gutted me. “Honey, you know I’d do anything for you.”

The door closed him from sight and the bar was silent for a good four beats before the murmur of conversation jumpstarted my muscles.

Morrie slid close to me. “Feel like talkin’ about Colt yet?”

“Fuck off, Morrie,” I snapped.

“Didn’t think so,” Morrie muttered but there was laughter in his voice and I just caught him exchanging a smile with Joe-Bob before they wiped their faces clean and I got down to the business under more than a dozen curious eyes of wiping the bar top, every fucking inch so spotless it was sparkling.

Colt lay on his back in the dark on the couch with the light he left on for Feb outside shining through the blinds he closed at the windows. He’d discovered that sitting on his couch it felt just fine, but lying on it, even not the pull out, it was lumpy.

Feb’s cat, who had given him a wide berth in the short time he was home before he settled on the couch, jumped up at Colt’s feet. The animal rightly hesitated before he made his way up Colt’s leg to his stomach then to his chest. Then he stood there for a moment before he lay down on his belly.

Colt wanted to shift the damn thing off him but instead his fingers went to the cat’s neck and he rubbed it behind its ears. The purring started immediately.

Trying to keep his blood pressure down, Colt didn’t think of February and their fight that day.

In the attempt to do the same thing, he kept his thoughts off Susie and the idea that her behavior at J&J’s might have scratched her name on a hit list.

Instead, he thought of Amy Harris.

He’d gone to the bank that morning only to find she’d called in sick. Dave Connolly, her manager, wasn’t put out by this, he was worried. Dave told Colt that she’d been working there forever, before he was even hired there, and as long as he’d been there she’d only taken half a day off once, in order to go to her grandmother’s funeral. She came in even if she had a cold or a headache and since she lived close she was always the first one there when it snowed because she’d leave early and walk.

With no Amy to be had at the bank, Colt went to her house. Her car was in the drive and even though he saw movement at her draperies she didn’t answer the door when he rang the bell. Not the first ring, or the second, or the third.

Colt was a cop in a small town. Years ago not much went down, speeding tickets, kids joyriding, a party at someone’s place that got too rowdy, a fight at J&J’s. Every once in awhile there was a domestic disturbance, sometimes folks would call with their concerns about how their neighbors were treating their kids.

Now there were more drugs, not just kids experimenting but adults flat out using. This meant more crime all around. He’d seen a lot, heard a lot, knew people did some shitty things to their neighbors, their partners, their kids, themselves.

Still, he didn’t have the relentless experiences a city cop would have.

Regardless, that didn’t mean he hadn’t learned from what he saw and one of the first things you learned when you were a cop was to watch the way people behaved. Not what they said but what they did, the expressions on their faces, the tone of their voice and always go with your gut.

And that ice-cold feeling Colt felt assaulting him last night came back when Amy disappeared after surprisingly showing at J&J’s, essentially the scene of a crime, and behaving the way she did, especially when it came to Feb. His gut was telling him something about Amy wasn’t right. He couldn’t break down her door but he could dig and that’s what he spent his afternoon doing after the incident with Susie and Feb.

He found Amy had good credit; was current on all her bills; was close to paying off her house because, a lot of the time, she made double payments (which meant on a teller’s salary she didn’t have a whole helluva a lot of other shit to spend her money on); and never even had so much as a parking ticket.

Earlier that night, he called Dave Connolly at home and asked if he’d heard word from Amy, telling Dave she came around to J&J’s last night, didn’t look sick but was acting peculiar and he was checking up on her that day because he was concerned.

Dave, Colt discovered, needed to take management classes. As long as Colt knew him, he’d always been a talker but even though she was an employee, with just a little coaxing, Dave didn’t hesitate in talking about Amy.

Not that there was much to say outside of what he already told Colt at the bank. She was a dependable employee, he could count on one hand when her drawer came up not balanced at the end of the day, she was just social enough to be liked by her colleagues but not social enough to call any of them friends and mostly she kept to herself.

“So shy, it’s ridiculous. It’s a miracle she can talk to the customers,” Dave said. “Don’t even know if she has any friends, never talks about them or what she does on the weekend. Know she’s close to her Mom and Dad but they live in Arizona now. Think she collects butterflies because all the girls get her shit with butterflies on it if they’re her Secret Santa or crap like that. Seriously, Colt, she’s so fucking shy, I’m surprised she’d walk into J&J’s without getting hives.” He hesitated before saying, “Damn shame. She’s fine. Pretty little thing, everyone thinks so.”

That sounded like Amy. He hadn’t paid much attention but what he could remember, that was the way she was in school too.

It also sounded strange in a way Colt didn’t fucking like when people were getting murdered and Feb and his necks were on the line.

And last, with no friends and no family close, it meant, unfortunately, he had no leads on Amy.

He heard the key in the door and he knew Feb was home.

The minute she entered, her cat deserted Colt and walked across the room, still purring.

He heard the rings on her hand sliding on the wall as she searched for the light switch and then the outside lights went out. Feb wore silver at her neck and ears, often at her wrists and she wore it on her hands too, always had on a variety of silver rings, could be a few fingers, could be almost all of them.

He wondered if she wore those rings to bed.

The purring escalated and moved and Colt knew Feb had picked up her cat and was on the move too.

She was in the hall when he heard her whisper to her cat, “Quiet, Mr. Purrsie Purrs. I know you’re glad I’m home.”

Jesus, she called her cat “Mr. Purrsie Purrs”. Colt didn’t know much about cats but he knew hers wasn’t a stupid one and if the damn thing understood English and recognized this affront to his dignity he’d scratch her eyes out.

She closed the door to the bedroom but the house hadn’t been built out of high quality material, you could hear everything. Therefore he heard the toilet flush and the tap in the basin switch on and off, on and off, on and off, washing her hands probably her face, brushing her teeth.

Then silence and he knew she’d climbed into his bed.

“Christ,” he muttered in the dark.

His phone on the coffee table rang and vibrated, both loudly, and he shifted and snatched it up, seeing Sully’s name on the display before flipping it open and putting it to his ear.

“Sully.”

“I wake you?”

“Nope.”

Sully was quiet then he said, “Shit, Colt, we got another one.”

Colt closed his eyes and sat up in the couch. “Talk to me.”

“Guy’s name is Butch Miller. From the history Feb gave yesterday, she’d worked at his bar years ago. Idaho Springs, Colorado. His body was found by his girlfriend. The minute it hit the system, it came up with big, honking ping. Warren and Rodman are already on a plane.”

“God dammit,” Colt swore. “I’m guessin’ it’s the same MO.”

“Down to the letter to Pete’s,” Sully told him, “including the tulips and the frickin’ Pottery Barn vase. Means this guy did Pete, came up here, did Angie, spent the last two days takin’ a road trip and did this Butch guy.”

“Also means he knows her better than we expected, he’s goin’ after folks from the last seventeen years, not just folks in town,” Colt replied.

“Yep.”

“This is not good,” Colt stated the obvious.

“This is not good,” Sully repeated.

“Are you getting anywhere?”

“Lore’s in town and has been without leaving, alibis for every move he makes. You know Lore, he’s not much into bein’ alone.”

This wasn’t a surprise. “What about the other three?”

“Two, we’ve had conversations with. They’re unlikely. Denny Lowe, though, right now is prime suspect.”

Colt thought about Denny Lowe.

Denny had lived in that town most of his life. Pipsqueak of a kid, no meat on him, always had greasy hair, grew up late, took a whole helluva lot of shit in the meantime and was teased viciously, mostly by Susie Shepherd and her gang. But when he grew, he grew. Susie had graduated by then but everyone was shocked at how he’d turned out. Good-looking guy, not tall, average height, built lean but tough. He was painfully shy like Amy, but once he came into his own, he seemed to shake it off. He wasn’t the most popular kid in school but he wasn’t a whack job either. Sully’s search into him showed he’d gone to Northwestern and got out doing something with computers, moved home, making a mint, lived on The Heritage in a big house off the golf course with a wife, no kids. Colt didn’t see him much, sometimes at Frank’s having dinner with his wife, sometimes at the grocery store, again always with his wife, a couple of times at the liquor store, not with his wife.

He’d been in J&J’s but he was nowhere near a regular. Colt hadn’t seen him there in years. Definitely not since Feb got back.

Still, he fit the profile.

“Colt?” He heard Feb call.

He was looking at his lap and thinking about Denny Lowe and missed Feb coming out of his room. His head came up and he saw her dark silhouette in the hall.

Damn it all to hell, now he was going to have to tell her about this.

“Give me a second Feb,” he muttered, twisted and turned on the light behind him then twisted back, saw her wearing nothing but a big t-shirt, her cat in her arms. He aimed his eyes at his lap so he wouldn’t get another glimpse of her legs and said into the phone, “Why’s Denny on your hook?”

“He’s disappeared. His wife has too. No one answering the door and he’s not been to work. They said he has the week off.”

“So maybe he’s on vacation.”

“Maybe. His car sure as fuck is gone but no airlines have him or his wife on their reservations list. Family and friends don’t know anything about a vacation. And you use your credit card on vacation. No transactions on hers or his. Funny thing, though, last coupla months Denny Lowe has been making hefty withdrawals from their joint account. Sum total, he withdrew fifteen G’s.”

That cold slithered around his chest and he asked, “Where’s he got his account?”

“County Bank.”

Shit, where Amy worked.

“Sounds like that hook’s in deep,” Colt remarked.

“Deep enough for you to talk to Feb about him,” Sully said.

Fucking shit.

He lifted his head, found her eyes, noticed she’d leaned a shoulder against the wall and her cat was purring as she scratched his neck and said, “She’s here. Just in from J&J’s.”

“After the scene at the Station maybe you should get some bourbon in her before you do it.” Sully was trying to make a joke.

Colt didn’t feel like laughing. “Feb drinks rum.”

“Right,” Sully still thought it was funny. “Heard about today at J&J’s, man. That shit’s flying around town faster’n snot. I know you like that house, hope you two can live under the same roof without that roof blowin’ clean off.”

Colt was losing patience. “You wanna chat or you want me to talk to Feb?”

“Get the rum. Talk to Feb.”

“Later.”

Colt started to take the phone away from his ear but Sully’s call stopped him. “Colt?”

“Yeah.”

“I know you don’t wanna hear it but I’m gonna say it. Accordin’ to Lorraine, you two were born to be together. And what I heard Feb say yesterday…” He let that hang but before Colt could get in word one, Sully continued. “You don’t sort your and her shit out, man, it’ll be a tragedy.”

“You done?” Colt asked.

“I’m done.”

“I’ll call you if there’s something to report. Later.”

“Later.”

He flipped his phone shut and threw it on the coffee table. His eyes went to Feb and she was still leaning against the wall, holding her body like she was bracing.

“You still drink rum?” he asked her.

“Just tell me,” she replied.

He threw back the blanket and got up, walking to the kitchen. He flipped on the lights and went to the cupboard where he kept his spirits. Dee drank rum like Feb, he knew he had a bottle and he was right. He pulled it down along with the Jack and grabbed some glasses.

“Colt, seriously,” she said to his back.

“What do you cut it with?” he asked.

He heard her sigh then she said, “I’ll get it.”

He twisted to her. “You mix enough drinks. What do you cut it with?”

She stopped moving toward the fridge, stood still for a moment then headed to the opposite counter. He watched her lean against it but drop her cat.

“Diet,” she finally answered.

He opened his fridge and couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Holy fuck.”

The fridge was brimming with food and beverage. It’d never been that full, not even when Melanie lived there and Melanie loved to cook.

“What?” Feb asked.

“Jackie’s been here,” Colt answered, grabbing a couple of cans of pop, diet for her then he put his back, thinking he’d prefer his bourbon cut only with ice.

He mixed her drink, poured his, dumped ice in, handed hers to her and stood close. She had her back to the counter; Colt had his side to it. She had her waist against it and he rested his hip beside her.

He watched her take a drink, her eyes on the floor.

“Don’t know if I can soften this, February,” he told her the God’s honest truth.

“Don’t try,” she told the floor.

“He did someone you know, in Colorado, guy named Butch Miller.”

Her head twisted around so fast the drink in her hand shook and the ice clinked against the sides.

“Colorado?” she asked quietly.

Colt nodded.

“Butch?” She was still being quiet.

Colt nodded again.

She took another drink, this time definitely a drink not a sip, and her eyes returned to the floor.

“This guy do you wrong?”

She licked her lips, kept studying the floor and nodded her head.

“What’d he do?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It does, Feb.”

She twisted only her neck to look at him. She was losing it; he could see it plain on her face. “Yeah? Why?”

“It was private, between you two, we need to know. It was public, that’s something else.”

She held his eyes for awhile before she looked away and muttered, “Fuck, that makes sense.”

“What’d he do?”

She moved her neck in a circle then lifted a hand to pull the hair away from her face, holding it back behind her head then, fast and low, she said, “He owned the bar I worked at. We hooked up. It was good for awhile then it turned bad. I took off after it did.”

“How’d it turn bad?”

“He cheated on me.”

“Were you exclusive?”

She dropped her hand but didn’t lift her eyes. “I thought we were but apparently he didn’t agree.”

“Anyone know about this?”

“Me, Butch, the woman he was screwing.”

“Anyone else?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

She looked at him then. “No, I’m not sure. Butch may have bragged about his escapades, she might have too. I didn’t know who she was and didn’t hang around long enough to chat. Just packed my shit and got out. What I saw, she looked like a snow bunny, probably a tourist or a city girl up the mountain with her lift ticket clipped to her parka. I was workin’ the bar, came home because I felt like crap and caught them in the act.”

Jesus, and he thought his scene with Susie that day was bad. No comparison.

“You lived with him?”

Her eyes slid away but he caught the pain that sliced through her face. It wasn’t raw but it wasn’t easy to see either. “Just moved in the week before.”

“Fuck, Feb.”

She took a sip from her drink and said to the floor, “He was a handsome guy who owned a bar in a cool town. He knew how to have fun and liked to do it, obviously with anyone who struck his fancy.” She shook her head. “Even though it felt shit he cheated on me…” she paused, took another drink, shook her head again then whispered, “Butch.”

Colt lifted his hand to the back of her neck and pulled her to him. She didn’t resist, just fell to the side, her shoulder hitting his chest and sliding along it until it was tucked under his pit and her temple hit his collarbone.

He kept his hand at her neck but tightened it.

He gave her a minute before he took his hand away but only to slide her hair out of his way so he could hold her there skin to skin. Again she didn’t resist, didn’t move away, even standing in his kitchen, in the middle of the night, her wearing nothing but a t-shirt, Colt wearing nothing but a pair of shorts.

“You okay?” he asked.

“No.”

He gave her neck a squeeze.

“I know, Feb,” he said softly, “but you okay to keep talking?”

Her head came back and she looked at him. “More to say?”

“I gotta ask a few questions about Denny Lowe.”

Those lines formed at her eyebrows again and she pulled away. He dropped his hand, took her glass, refreshed it and walked back to her, resuming his position.

She let him, didn’t move away, just tipped her head back to look in his eyes.

“They’re investigating Lowe,” he told her. “You remember him?”

“I, yes, I…” she stopped and her head tipped to the side, “Denny had it rough, Colt, Susie was a bitch to him. But he pulled it out, got the last laugh. He was gorgeous when he graduated. Half the girls in my class had a crush on –”

She stopped talking suddenly, her face blanked of everything and she took a step to the side, sliding down the counter.

Then she turned to face him, put her hand to the counter and leaned into it heavily.

“What?” Colt asked but she didn’t speak, so he moved into her and repeated, “Feb, what?”

She focused on him and said, “Freshman year, in lunch, during lunch…” she stopped and shook her head, looking to the side before she hissed, “fuck!”

Colt slid his hand under her hair and curled his fingers around her neck again, putting pressure there for a different reason, to keep her attention on him. He got what he wanted, she looked back to him.

“February, tell me what.”

She nodded but it was jerky. “Susie was going after him, her and some of the cheerleaders, a few jocks. God, I don’t even remember who was there but I remember it was Susie doing most of the talking.”

When she stopped speaking, Colt prompted, “What happened?”

“I waded in,” she told him, “me and Angie, but mostly me. I was always the one with the big mouth.”

This was true.

“And?” he pressed.

“And nothing, that’s it. I just walked over to them and told them to fuck off, leave him alone. I wasn’t nice about it either. Susie had a few words for me but the jocks drifted away, probably because they knew you and Morrie wouldn’t like it if they got into it with me. Once she realized she didn’t have anyone at her back, Susie backed off too. Denny was long gone by then. He didn’t do anything, say anything, just escaped as quickly as he could. I didn’t even see him go since I was into it with Susie. He just vanished.”

“That the only time you did that?”

She nodded.

“Denny ever say thanks, show gratitude, anything?”

“Nothing, I didn’t know he knew I existed,” she told him then her eyes, still on him, went far away and she went on. “I’d smile at him in the halls. I remember. I’d smile at him even when he was scrawny. But also when he filled out,” she focused on Colt again and finished, “he never smiled back, looked right through me.”

Colt had never been scrawny and he’d never been teased, growing up he had his own hell to deal with but it wasn’t that.

February had never been scrawny either and, because of him and Morrie, definitely never teased. She was a pretty little girl who grew into a very pretty teenager who grew up to be a very beautiful woman.

A pretty girl smiling at a shy, skinny, taunted kid with greasy hair, fuck, it must have felt like the clouds opened up and angels shined their light on him.

“Denny come into the bar very often?” Colt asked.

“I haven’t seen him since I’ve been home,” she answered and then said, “Colt, I don’t think I’ve seen him since high school.”

“Far as we can see, he fits the profile, Feb, and he’s disappeared and he took fifteen K out of his bank before he did.”

Feb dropped her head back and closed her eyes. “This can’t be.”

He gave her another squeeze at her neck to get her attention and he got it. She righted her head and looked at him again.

“All sorts of shit trips triggers,” Colt said gently, “maybe that tripped his.”

“That’s insane.”

Colt couldn’t help it, he smiled. “Honey, he’s the guy, he’s not acting exactly normal.”

The skin around her eyes went soft as did her eyelids and her lips tilted up at the ends before she muttered, “This is true.”

He’d never seen her face get soft like that, never seen that little smile, her look saying a lot, sharing humor but still holding something back. Fuck, but it was sexy as all hell.

She didn’t move, didn’t pull away from his hand when she kept talking. “I can see him knowing about Angie, he was in that class, he could take the note. And Pete,” she didn’t even hesitate in saying her ex’s name, Colt was surprised to note, and she hadn’t said Pete’s name in Colt’s presence since the day she showed up bloodied and broken on Morrie’s doorstep, “everyone knew about him. But Butch?”

“It’s him, there’s a trail and we’ll find it.”

She studied him a moment before she nodded then her eyes drifted to his throat. “Will you do something for me, Colt?”

What he’d like to do was tell her to stop calling him Colt and call him Alec again but he didn’t say that.

Instead he said, “What?”

Her hand came up and she grabbed his wrist which was holding his bourbon. She lifted his hand with the glass up between their bodies and she rested her glass to his. She kept her head bent, her gaze on their drinks for a second before she looked at him.

“Angie was fucked up but she was a good person. Her parents were nearly as shitty as yours and she wasn’t touched with a lot of love,” Feb said softly then he felt her put pressure on her glass against his. “To Angie,” she whispered then she took a drink.

Colt put pressure on her neck and she came a few inches closer before he took his own sip.

When they were done, she put her glass up between them again and taking her cue, he rested his against hers. Her eyes grew soft, this time in a different way, before she kept speaking.

“You had a great dog, Colt.”

Fuck, she was killing him.

“I know,” he whispered.

“To Puck,” she whispered back and he felt his glass press into his hand before they both lifted them and drank again.

“This’ll be harder,” she told him, her glass again against his and her eyes again at his throat.

“Do it,” he murmured.

She looked at him and said, “He was a dick, but he didn’t deserve that,” she pressed her glass against his. “To Pete.”

Colt thought if Pete Hollister were ever to have a toast made to him that said it all, that was it, so he drank as did Feb and they resumed their positions.

“You didn’t know him and he fucked me over but he was a fun guy who made me laugh,” she pulled in a short breath and let it out on a shorter sigh. “To Butch.”

On the last toast, Colt drained his glass dry, so did Feb and he put his on the counter, taking hers out of her hand and placing it beside his. Then he used his hand at her neck to pull her body to his and wrapped his arms around her.

She slid her arms around his waist.

Then she whispered into his chest, “See. Told you I’m not gonna leave.”

“You’re doin’ great, baby.”

Resistance he didn’t know she was holding in her body drained away and she softened against him.

“Can I cry now?” she asked but her voice said she was already doing it.

“Have at it.”

Four days, four deaths, four times Feb cried in his arms.

He’d be the fool Susie accused him of being if he didn’t admit he liked the feel of her right where she was.

But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t fucking jump for joy when this shit was over and at that moment he’d sell his soul so she’d never cry again.

When he heard the tears subside, he said, “Thank you.”

“For what?” she asked his chest.

“For trusting me enough to give that to me instead of keepin’ it in and lettin’ it eat more of you away.”

She gave a slight jerk in his arms, not resistance, surprise, before she settled back in.

Finally, she tilted her head back and he looked down at her but he didn’t move his arms.

“I need to go to sleep,” she said softly.

“You gonna be able to do that?”

“I’ll take some of Doc’s pills.”

“That okay if you’ve been drinking?”

“I’ll check the bottle.”

Without another tactic left to him to delay, Colt let her go.

She started to the door but turned in its frame and looked back at him.

“I know it’s heavy, Colt. Thanks for sharing the weight of it,” she whispered then she walked with a hurried step, leaving him staring after her long after she disappeared down the hall.

Yes, she was fucking killing him.

Colt turned out the kitchen light, went to the couch, sat down, picked up the phone and called Sully.