Thicker than Water

by Danae Ayusso

  “His eyes are gorgeous,” she said, pulling a high collar, long sleeve ivory shirt on and tugged the sleeves down over her fingers, stretching the cotton, and made sure it pulled up around her neck. “Unlike the murky brown ones I’m stuck with. God,” she huffed, pulling an oversized gray knit sweater over her head and it automatically draped over one shoulder and hung midway down her backside, “his arms, crawling all over his strong thighs...his scent. For looking like a dirty mountain man, he smelled really good.”

  Cat stepped into a pair of black panties, sliding them up her thighs and over her round backside before pulling on a pair of fitted black pants. “Obviously I’ve been in Montana too damn long because I’m sniffing random men and enjoying it. That sure in the hell isn’t normal. And obviously it’s been too damn long since I’ve been around men with way too much hair product and shirts tighter than mine if I’m spending more time thinking and talking about a bitter, guilt-ridden man with longer hair than me, who is most likely in his sixties.” She pulled the silver necklace off of the picture frame on the nightstand next to the bed and fastened it around her neck and the delicate white gold cross rested just below the hollow at the base of her throat.

  Reluctantly, she picked up the picture of the smiling man and woman in the black and white photo and looked at it. For a brief second, it made her smile and she could remember the moment captured in film as if it happened only minutes ago: the taste of the crowd, the smell of Bourbon Street, the jazz music, the fragrant food, but most importantly, the laughter.

  “Frankie, where are you when I need someone to smack some sense into me?” she asked, her fingers caressing over the face of the smiling man wearing a crooked princess crown and Mardi Gras beads in the picture. “Why couldn’t you have gone south?” she whispered, shaking her head. “You should have gone south instead of east. Goddamn it, why did you have to pay such good attention at the Academy?”

  Cat wiped away the tear that had formed at the corner of her eye, and checked her makeup before slipping into her shoes and gloves then locked the deadbolts behind her. She hurried to the estate to talk to Emma, to inform her that she wouldn’t be coming over for dinner—she needed to be alone at the moment. She unlocked the backdoor, slipped inside and relocked it behind her.

  “Mrs. Paterson,” Cat called out as she entered the kitchen, “I have to cancel...” her words trailed off and she stopped in mid-step.

  Standing with his back to her was the reason why she was canceling dinner. His shoulders were wide, back long and littered with white, barely visible, scars. Each of his movements caused the corded muscles in his back and shoulders to contract and tighten, presenting her more than one handhold. A white towel was wrapped around his waist, hanging to the top of his knees, but it struggled to hide the strong thighs and firm backside it was wrapped around. His long, dark blond hair hung nearly midway down his back and it looked thick and silky....

  Cat clenched her hands into fists to keep them from shaking.

  “Emma’s resting,” Colt said as he searched through the drawers in the kitchen with one hand, the other was holding onto the front of his towel to keep it around his waist.

  “She isn’t taking the news of the body well,” Cat surmised, struggling to articulate herself and to pull her eyes away from him.

  It was a losing battle.

  Colt turned to face her and huffed.

  Cat’s mouth fell open with a popping sound.

  His broad chest was well defined from living off of the land. A thin coat of golden hair covered the expanse of his chest and tapered down his impressively defined abs, the golden trail disappearing under the edge of the stretched towel.

  Men who look like this don’t exist outside of the covers of romance novels, Cat reminded herself.

  “Do you know where the shears are?” Colt asked, the unmistakable sound of irritation in his tone.

  Absently, Cat nodded.

  “Would you care to enlighten me as to where you have hidden them?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

  His belittling, and slightly teasing, tone pulled her from the romance novel comparison and effectively brought her back to reality.

  “Why do you want them?” she asked, leaning against the doorjamb, crossing her arms over her chest in defiance.

  Colt gave her a look, realizing that he just inadvertently challenged the stubborn woman in some way, and since she was possibly even more stubborn then he was, it would be a long, pointless, and, most likely, losing battle. “Emma said that I need to clean up because the neighbors will think she raised a hippie,” he said with a sigh and leaned back against the edge of the counter and folded his arms across his chest, causing the corded muscles to contract and hardened under her scrutiny.

  Cat looked from his thick arms to his face; this was no man in his sixties, this was a man who couldn’t have been much older than herself, and that presented a very real problem, one she never imagined having. “Mrs. Paterson raised you?” she asked.

  “In not so many words,” he said in a clipped tone.

  Cat nodded, well aware that she was being nosing, and if she were nosy he’d be in return, and neither could afford that. “How long did you want it?” she asked, heading into the kitchen and rummaged through one of the drawers, producing a pair of dangerously sharp scissors.

  Colt held his hand out. “I can handle it.”

  “I’m sure you could,” she agreed and pulled one of the chairs from the breakfast nook and set it in the middle of the large, country styled kitchen and motioned for him to sit. “But you’d never get it straight and then you’d go from looking like a dirty hippie to an escapee from Blackwell Island. Sit,” she said, pointing to the chair.

  The accent was back and it intrigued Colt, so he sat, carefully holding onto the front of his towel as he did.

  “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?” Cat teased.

  “No, I suppose it wasn’t,” he reluctantly agreed. “Not too short...that isn’t me anymore,” he mumbled the latter.

  She nodded. “Tell me about the case. It’ll help to distract you from the suspicious woman standing behind you with a lethally sharp pair of scissors that she could easily stab into your jugular.”

  Colt looked over his shoulder at her and she smiled wide, holding the scissors up, looking slightly psychotic. “Keep it up and I won’t leave a tip.”

  “Fair enough,” she said and forced his head back around and, unable to deny the call any longer, she pulled her gloves off, tucking them in her back pocket before she ran her fingers through his hair and instantly fought the moan building in her chest.

  Never had she found long hair on men attractive.

  Never had she given a blond a second glance.

  Never did she find a white guy appealing.

  But she was finding that all the above suddenly no longer applied for some reason and she didn’t know why.

  Colt’s hair was thick, and felt like damp strands of cashmere against her skin.

  Obviously it’s been too damn long since I’ve touched someone, allowed something other than gloves and fabric to caress my skin... Is all of him this silky soft? she found herself wondering.

  “Is there a problem?” Colt asked, his voice deep, thick with something that was as foreign to her as it was him.

  Cat shook her head and headed back to the drawer she got the shears from and returned with a rubber band. “Locks of Love could use your hair. It’s thick and satiny, the coloring is natural and...a child with cancer could use it. Is that okay?”

  Colt nodded quickly. “Of course,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of that. Thank you.”

  “It isn’t thankworthy,” Cat assured him, then gathered his hair and wrapped the rubber band around it before bringing the scissors to his hair. In one swift squeeze of the scissors, she was halfway through the bundle of hair and quickly followed with a second squeeze. She handed him the long, thick ponytail, and returned her attention to cutting the rest of his now, just above the
shoulder-length hair. “Tell me about Dei Sponsa,” she whispered, desperately trying to distract herself from the strong length of muscular neck and expanse of shoulder, which she kept envisioning kissing and nibbling as she trimmed the ends of his hair, making the sides even.

  Colt didn’t want to talk about Pope, not in the least, but he needed a distraction, especially since he was wearing nothing but a towel that would hide very little, especially the arousal that was threatening to present itself.

  He was angry at himself for the sudden heat coursing through his body. It isn’t right to Vicks and what we had...to her memory! he kept reminding himself, but each time Cat’s long, slender fingers pulled through his hair, the heat and intensity coursing under the surface, something he hadn’t felt before, warred with what he thought was right, what was gentlemanly and proper, and the memory of Vicks.

  “Dei Sponsa,” he struggled to articulate, fighting the stirring in his loins, “was named that by the FBI because it’s what he carves in the chest of each victim. We call him Pope.”

  Cat snorted once, humorlessly. “Amusingly sacrilegious choice in pet name,” she commented.

  He shrugged ever so slightly. “Yes, I suppose it is. The other was a mouthful and I didn’t want to give him the pleasure of using the name that he apparently wanted.”

  The corners of her mouth pulled up on one side. Stubborn man, Cat mused; she can appreciate that.

  “There’s no connection between victims other than they were virtually carbon copies of each other: tall, thin, dark hair, light eyes, pale, quite, in helping others field of work-”

  “Virgins,” Cat interrupted, and his back visibly stiffened.

  “Yes,” he said in a cold, clipped tone.

  “Were they raped?” she pressed, coming around to the front of him and trimmed the sides so they framed his face more instead of falling flat with the rest of his hair.

  “No.”

  Cat stopped and looked at him curiously. “That’s rare. According to FBI profilers, an extremely high percentage of serial homicides involve rape or sexual assault, either in the beginning and it escalates to homicide, or the intent is always homicide and the rape is simply the opening to the grand finale,” she said, her eyes moving over his face many times but it was slated expressionless as stone. “How long between bodies?” she asked.

  “First victim was reported missing when she didn’t come home from work, seven days later her body was found,” he said, his voice level and void of anything that could be construed as emotion. “The second was reported missing by her roommate, five days later she was found.”

  Cat nodded. “The first is usually the most difficult,” she commented, coaxing his head up by the chin and he reluctantly complied. “The first usually leaves the most evidence behind because it’s new thus they are more likely to make mistakes. As the killings progress, apprehension and guilt rolls into escalated pleasure of the kill,” she continued as she trimmed his beard down. “Did he get sloppy on the first, Fury?”

  Colt swallowed hard. “No.”

  “So, in theory, it most likely wasn’t his first kill and he knows about crime and processing a crime scene,” she said pointblank.

  “Much like you,” he accused.

  She offered a small smile. “I wasn’t here five years ago, Detective,” she reminded him. “And I’m not religious, not enough that would warrant reenacting, in a sick and extremely deranged way, an offering to Christ. Dumpsites?” she continued, running down the standard list that any cop would use when going over a report.

  “Remote.”

  Cat shook her head. “So the entire state of Montana would constitute a giant dumpsite?” she countered, and went to the sink then turned on the water and let it run hot.

  “I suppose,” he agreed, watching her curiously, his eyes moving over her form from behind. “You aren’t armed.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him. “I’m always armed, Fury.”

  “Why is that?” he asked since she was seemingly open to conversing without turning it into a competition and he allowed his eyes to work over her body again and again, trying to figure out where she was carrying, all while trying to push away the thought of pulling her clothes off layer by layer to see if his gut was correct about where she was hiding her personal arsenal.

  Cat smiled before returning her attention to the steaming water in the sink and dropped a clean hand towel into it. “In case you haven’t heard, there’s a serial killer on the loose.”

  And the verbal evasion begins, he mentally groaned.

  “I’ve heard,” he grumbled, entertaining her little game for some unknown reason.

  She rung out the hot towel and returned to him, then angled his head back. “You need a shave,” she said when he opened his mouth to protest.

  “I think I can manage,” he said in a clipped tone.

  “I’m sure you can, but this is a full service barber shop,” she amusingly informed him then wrapped the towel around his face and smiled when he hissed.

  “Are you going to smother me while I’m not looking?” he asked, the sound of a smile in his voice.

  Cat shook her head and smiled despite herself. “As much fun as that sounds, I think Mrs. Paterson wouldn’t be very happy with me if I dirtied her kitchen...again.”

  That would be your only concern, he internally retorted.

  “But of course...what are you looking for?” he asked when he heard her open and close several drawers.

  “Something to kill you with,” she said indifferently.

  Colt pulled the rapidly cooling towel off of his face and looked at her and he cocked an eyebrow. “You are not using that on me,” he informed her.

  Cat smirked and batted her lashes as she ran the antique straight razor up and down the length of the leather strap secured to a coat hook by the backdoor. “Yes, I am,” she informed him.

  He knew it was a losing battle. “Do you know how to use that antique?” he reluctantly asked.

  “Possibly,” she said with a shrug. “I was the understudy in my middle school production of Sweeney Todd. That should be experience enough.”

  “You can’t be serious,” he groaned but a smile tugged at the corners of his lips.

  She smiled wide, a face-consuming smile that made her look slightly crazed, and she gripped the handle of the razor as if she was completely imbalanced.

  Colt shook his head. “Surprisingly, looking like you fell out of the Shining fits you.”

  Cat rolled her eyes. “That’s disappointing. I was hoping to scare you-”

  “Into submission?” he interrupted.

  “Are you offering?” she countered as she mixed the shaving lather with a brush. “You shouldn’t offer what you don’t intend to actually give,” she scolded when he didn’t say anything. “Those in law enforcement...even those who don’t consider themselves being on the force any longer...are a special kind of breed, Fury. But Detectives,” she said dramatically and rolled her eyes, “those are the worst. They are always right, in their minds, and have to have the last word, are argumentative...it’s a constant pissing contest with them, and you don’t even want to get me started on their egos.”

  The accent was back and Colt was even more intrigued then he was before.

  “You speak from experience,” he surmised.

  Cat opened her mouth, but promptly closed it and turned her attention to the peaking lather she was working on. “They’re portrayed all the same on the tube and in books,” she said with a shrug. “Head back, I’ll start with your throat so I’m less tempted to slice it Sweeny Todd style.”

  His lips twisted into a contemplative pout.

  “I promise I won’t kill you,” she assured him.

  Colt snorted. “For some reason, I believe you.”

  “Gee, thanks,” she scoffed and rolled her eyes then mischievousness danced in them before she slapped the lathered brush against his cheek, splattering the white peaked soap across his face and neck.r />
  Colt opened his mouth to complain so she raised the brush and cocked an eyebrow, readying to smack the other cheek, and he wisely closed his mouth and tilted his head back.

  “The smartest thing you’ve done all day, Fury,” she mused and worked the brush into the coarse golden hairs under his chin.

  Colt kept his eyes open and followed each of Cat’s movements. He wasn’t scared of her in the least, and that was most likely due to the masochistic side which he discovered he had when Vicks died, and that was seemingly resurrected with the reappearance of Pope. The woman who was watching what she was doing carefully, and each methodical swipe of the blade which was followed by wiping it off against the towel slung over her shoulder before she repeated the cycle, was interesting to him. Never would Colt have thought Cat a blonde, it didn’t fit her features in the least, and the shortness of her hair gave her a slightly boyish-sixties-mod look that he wasn’t overly fond of. Every time she blinked, he could have sworn that he saw a sliver of light blue peek from under the murky brown, but when he looked again it was gone.

  Am I imposing blue eyes on her because that’s what Vicks had? he wondered. She would look amazing with dark hair...then again, if she had dark hair she’d be Pope’s type, for the most part. Cat is way too mouthy to be Pope’s exact type, and there’s nothing virginal about her. The woman radiates with sexual confidence and maturity... Sexual maturity? Good God, Colt, did you just say that? Is that the polite way of saying she’s a slut? I highly doubt Cat’s a slut, she’s way too paranoid to be sleazy, but there is something... Should I warn her that she could be Pope’s type if she did something drastic like grow her hair out or dye it? Her tall figure and slightly slender frame is his type...mine as well. Hell, her body is every man’s type. Thankfully, Cat would scare Pope. She’s too bossy, argumentative, and street smart for her own good, obviously.

  “You don’t honestly think that I’m going to kill you, do you?” Cat asked, well aware that Colt was watching what she was doing closely.

  When she pulled the blade away to wipe it clean, he shook his head and swallowed hard. “No, not at all. If you wanted to, you could have done it multiple times by now. I was just thinking, putting together notes really,” he said; it wasn’t entirely a lie.