Thicker than Water

by Danae Ayusso

  James cocked an eyebrow. “Cat’s never let anyone touch anything of hers. She just gave you the keys to her Bronco?” he asked skeptically.

  Colt waited for James to lock the door behind them before he headed to the borrowed Bronco in question. “She didn’t say I could use it, per se, she told Emma that Bigfoot could borrow it if needed and that she’d kick his ass if he brought it back full of hair or with an empty gas tank.”

  James laughed. “Yeah, that sounds like Cat. I was going to head to Grandmother’s place for dinner. Did you want to join us?”

  Colt shook his head. “I’m just going to drive around and clear my head before returning her Bronco. I need to organize my thoughts some and the only way to do that is to talk it out with myself. You know how I am, Jimmy.”

  “Let me know if you need anything,” James said with a forced smile and waved.

  Trying to organize his thoughts was a lot harder than it should have been. Mainly because he kept thinking about Cat Rogers at every turn. In his mind, he was going over the initial forensic report from the latest body, but the face was that of Cat without her costume. Colt was scared, terrified even, that she’d be next. It only made sense in his mind that someone he couldn’t stop thinking about and who physically fit into Pope’s type could be the next victim.

  He couldn’t handle that.

  Colt pulled up into the driveway and parked next to the rookie’s cruiser then killed the engine. He hadn’t told Mickey to stay with Cat, but he expected no less from the young man who obviously has a crush on the enigmatic woman. Once again, there was a pang of jealousy that stabbed at him that was completely unfounded in his mind since Cat wasn’t his, but it left him disquieted that he was feeling it again when it pertained to the frustrating woman.

  If something happened to her and it was his fault, Colt couldn’t live with that. It was hard enough to try to believe everyone else when they said that Vicks’ death wasn’t his fault, but if something was to happen to Cat, that would push him over the edge. Cat was innocent, in his eyes, since she wasn’t local and was a stranger. Pope couldn’t get wind of him spending time with her, it could prove to be fatal if he did.

  “Time to put an end to this,” Colt mumbled before getting out of the Bronco.

  ****

  The knock at the door caused Cat’s head to snap to the side. She slipped her hand under the counter she was working at and wrapped her fingers around the grip of the Glock hidden there.

  Mickey headed towards the door.

  “Stop!” Cat barked at him and he stopped in mid-step and looked at her curiously.

  “Sorry,” he instantly apologized. “I was going to look out the peephole first,” he assured her.

  Cat shook her head. “Never look out the peephole,” she scolded, and thumbed through the video feeds on her cell phone with her free hand.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  Cat smiled at the image on her cell phone of the hulking blond standing on her front porch looking up at the hidden camera with a raised eyebrow. She released her hold on the gun, then came around the counter and unlocked the deadbolts and locks before pulling the door open. “Detective,” she greeted, waving him inside.

  “Ma’am,” Colt said with a nod and stepped around her, setting the grocery bag on the counter.

  “Probie,” Cat said, keeping the door open. “Look through the peephole,” she instructed.

  Mickey looked between Colt and Cat before humoring her.

  When he put his eye to the peephole, Cat put her fingers against it on the outside. “Bang. You’re dead,” she said, pulling her finger gun away then blew on the barrel. “Never look out a peephole. The person on the outside can see the movement eclipsing it on the inside and it’s the perfect way to take out the security detail,” she explained, closing the door and locked it.

  Mickey just stood there with wide eyes.

  Colt smirked; he expected no less from her. “You’ve been busy,” he grumbled under his breath, his eyes moving around the room before returning they returned to her.

  “Yes and no,” Cat said and headed back to the kitchen. “The dough is done rising so I was going to toss it...you’re early. Is something wrong?” she asked, washing up in the sink.

  He shook his head and hung his jacket up on the hook behind the door. “Notifying the family went as expected; Mother got hysterical and Father was surprisingly calm, but in my professional opinion I think he was in shock.”

  “To be expected,” she agreed and tossed some dough in the air and effortlessly caught it, stretching it with each kneading and toss. “You’re going to speak with them tomorrow?”

  Colt nodded, watching what she was doing.

  “Did you want company?” she asked, looking up from the dough in her hands to him. “Two men, since I’m assuming Jimmy wants to tag along like a lost puppy, might be overwhelming for parents who just lost their daughter. Since the perp is male…there is no mistaking that…it might help if a woman was there while you questioned them. For some reason, my gut is telling me that Raven wouldn’t be the most helpful and would only antagonize them.”

  Colt nodded his agreement. “We’ll go in the morning. Probie, do I need to say it?” he asked, looking over at him.

  Mickey stood there in a white undershirt and light brown uniform pants. His boots were off, leaving him standing in his socks, and his utility belt and gun were slung over one of the backs of the stools at the eating bar.

  You were told to bring her over the files, not move in, Colt mentally sneered.

  Mickey shook his head. “No, I was already warned that anything said in the cabin stays in the cabin and is off the record...way off the record.”

  “I’ve trained him well,” Cat teased, flipping the dough behind her back, effortlessly catching it in front of her.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” Mickey asked.

  She shrugged and draped the stretched dough out on the wooden pizza board on the counter. “When I was younger, I used to wait tables and flip dough at my uncle’s pizzeria in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn…Ohio. When mio madre finally loosened her hold and gave permission for mio padre to see me again, visitation if you will, it had to be in a neutral public place. We’d go to Sunday service together then we’d go for pizza at Jovanni’s. Just sitting around playing video games and telling mio padre about my week and schooling was boring and could only fill so much time, so I started making pizzas to pass the time.”

  Colt smiled. He loved listening to Cat talk especially when her accent flared.

  Mickey sighed contently. “I’ve never had homemade pizza before.”

  Cat snorted. “It’s hardly homemade, it’s just Cat made. Garlic infused olive oil with ricotta, mozzarella, parmesan and fontina cheeses, hickory-smoked prosciutto, and fresh ground pepper, topped with a balsamic glaze. We called it black and white pizza...it was Madre’s favorite. Padre once made it for her when they were fighting over the visitation agreement; he wanted overnight visits and she was hell bent that it’d never happen. They more calmly discussed it over pizza...he didn’t win the argument, not even close, but he was happy that they were more civil about it. Amazing how a damn pizza could prevent another civil blow up that rivaled that of the Castellammarese War.”

  “How long did you toss dough?” Colt asked.

  Cat smirked. “Interesting choice of wording,” she commented and he cocked an eyebrow. “Until I was fourteen,” she admitted. “When Jovanni died, the place went downhill and it was no longer neutral territory.”

  Mickey forced a smile. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, trying to steal her attention from Colt.

  Cat gave him a look. “Accidents happen. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Car wreck?” Mickey surmised.

  “Ice pick,” she said.

  “But of course,” Colt said under his breath.

  Mickey looked at her with wide eyes and his mouth hanging open; he wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.

 
; She wasn’t.

  Once the pizza was in the oven, Cat cleaned up. “You have the initial forensic report?” she asked.

  Colt pulled the report from the back of his pants and held it up; he’d smuggled a copy out of the station for her.

  “Good man,” she said with a chuckle. “Probie, after dinner, call it a night.”

  Mickey pouted but nodded his understanding.

  Six pizzas and a dozen bottles of Coke later, Mickey was pouting as he headed towards his cruiser. Colt and Cat watched from the doorway as he went. She wanted to make sure he made it to the car, and Colt was enjoying the feel of Cat’s body as it pressed against the side of his because they filled the doorway.

  Once the cruiser’s taillights disappeared, Cat chuckled. “He’s a sweet kid,” she said.

  “He has a crush on you,” Colt stated the obvious.

  “At least one person does,” she huffed and ducked around him.

  Colt followed, closing the door behind them and locked it. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” she grumbled and pulled her wig off and unbraided her hair. “I’m going to shower. Can you pick up the dishes and I’ll wash them in the morning?”

  She didn’t wait for him to respond and closed the bathroom door behind her.

  Colt continued to stand there looking at the closed bathroom door. This wasn’t what he was planning on doing tonight. He was going to say thanks for the help and leave. But, like Mickey, he made himself comfortable and hung on her every word. That wasn’t normal, not in the least, and yet he found himself acting just like the love struck rookie he just sent packing in order to have Cat all to himself.

  “Get it together, Fury,” Colt grumbled under his breath, running a hand through his hair in frustration. “She really isn’t that interesting or hot,” he said, trying to convenience himself, but it was a losing battle.

  Cat was that interesting and hot doesn’t even begin to cover it.

  “Trying to talk yourself out of being here, huh?”

  Colt spun around to find Cat leaning against the bathroom doorframe, a toothbrush in hand; he hadn’t even noticed that the shower had stopped.

  “Yeah, that’s one way of putting it,” he admitted, his eyes moving over her.

  Cat’s long hair fell over one shoulder like a wet, silky curtain of black. Her mile-long legs looked even longer in her tiny cotton panties. The oversized sweatshirt she wore fell off of one shoulder and hung midway down her backside.

  “How’s that battle of wills working out for you?” she mumbled with a mouth full of toothpaste before continuing to brush her teeth.

  “Not well,” he reluctantly said.

  She chuckled, wiping the spit and foam from her chin. “Honesty is the best policy,” she said as she ducked back into the bathroom to rinse her mouth.

  Even with toothpaste dripping down her chin, making her appear slightly rabid, Colt still thought she was beautiful. That didn’t seem right to him; she wasn’t wearing makeup, wasn’t dressed up, her hair wasn’t styled, and she was doing one of the most unattractive things a person could do in the company of another, but despite all of that, she was still beautiful to him.

  “Why don’t you take a shower and change into something more comfortable,” Cat said as she headed towards the fireplace and tossed her spent toothbrush and comb inside. “Mrs. Paterson brought over a bag of clothes for you.” She motioned towards the bag under the coffee table. “She thinks we’re sleeping together…she’s kind of a strange old broad.”

  Colt’s eyes widened. “She thinks what?”

  “She knows you stayed last night, and then left this morning in different clothes…honestly, it doesn’t take detective skills to deduce why she thinks that we’re hitting the sheets. Speaking of which, my back is killing me. Can we move the war room to the bedroom so I can stretch out?”

  Colt continued to stand there giving her a look; Emma is out of her damn mind!

  Cat gave him a look in return. “Hey! Get your merda together. I have some theories I want to run by you regarding the sick sonuvabitch killing people.”

  Colt blinked a few times and reluctantly nodded. “I’ll join you after I shower,” he mumbled, grabbing the bag from under the coffee table and quickly hurried to the bathroom, the door slamming shut behind him.

  “Some people’s Detectives,” she huffed.

  After pulling the covers back on the bed, she slid under them, getting comfortable on a mound of pillows, and started organizing her notes.

  ‘That’s one way to get a man in bed.’

  “Shut it,” Cat hissed, looking over at the picture on the nightstand. “I know, you’d be laughing your ass off at my anything but subtle ‘get a man to notice me’ techniques, but I’ve never been good with men. Case in point, I slept with you, didn’t I?”

  The picture didn’t say anything, but she knew what Frankie would have said.

  ‘Don’t hate on perfection, Rossi. You know it was the greatest four seconds of your life!’

  “What’s wrong with trying to get some?” she rhetorically asked.

  Frankie would have been encouraging Cat to get laid since she seldom showed interest in anyone, with good reason. Her parents weren’t the picture of a functional relationship, and her mother still held her wedding vows sacred even after she her husband split. Frankie wasn’t the picture of normality either when it came to relationships: he a different girlfriend every week.

  “I mean, if what Mickey said is true, and Colt really hasn’t been down the mountain in five years, that’s got to be the worst case of blue balls in history…oh,” she gasped, realization washing over her.

  Cat scrambled from the bed and hurried back into the living room and quickly read through the file on the first victim: virgin.

  “Oh wow,” she said.

  “Oh wow what?” Colt asked from the bathroom, a disposable toothbrush in hand.

  Cat spun around and looked at him, her eyes widening. Colt stood leaning against the doorframe in a pair of low riding cotton pajama pants and a tank top. The thin white cotton was stretched nearly to its limit as it struggled to cover the expansiveness of his broad chest, and his arms appeared thicker and layered with corded muscles that made her long to dig her nails into them and hold on. His damp hair framed his face, hanging just above his shoulders, and gave the man a slightly softer look.

  “Huh,” she huffed and pushed her falling hair out of her face. “I suppose turnabouts fair play, but still, this is criminal.”

  Colt cocked an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?” he asked, peppering himself with toothpaste and she smiled wide. “Damn it,” he grumbled and headed back into the bathroom to rinse.

  Too damn cute!

  Colt glared at her when he exited the bathroom. “What were you saying?”

  She continued to smile. “It’s not important. Did you want to play Detective with me, Fury?” she purred with a mischievous sparkle in her light blue eyes.

  Colt groaned, trying to keep a rather noticeable part of his anatomy from making an unwelcomed appearance. “You make it sound so dirty,” he complained.

  Cat laughed. “Usually I’d say, Yes, that was my intention all along, but now not so much. Come on, let’s play Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys in bed…okay, that one wasn’t intentional,” she said with a chuckle when he glared at her.

  Once Cat was under the covers and Colt was on top of them with a quilt wrapped around him, she pressed the button on her phone attached to the docking station and music started playing softly in the background.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I think better with a soundtrack.”

  Colt nodded his understanding.

  “In looking over this…are you comfortable?” she asked, looking up at him.

  “Why are you suddenly stalling?” he asked pointblank.

  Her full lips twisted into a pout. “Mannaggia, you caught me. I was just doing some math in my head when I realized something, and it made me fe
el like a puttana so I’m reeling it in…or at least, attempting to. I’m not very good at that in general so it shouldn’t be too damn hard to shoot myself down, anyway, don’t worry about it. When the FBI profiler came out the first time, did they go down the checklist-”

  Her words trailed off when Colt pulled the papers she was looking at away from her. “Go back to what you were initially talking about,” he said. “Puttana …okay, that isn’t where I should have started. What are you talking about?”

  Cat sighed and looked at him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know that the first victim was your fiancée and I went all nosy detective on you without regard for your feelings and emotional state,” she said and looked away from him. “Aside from that, what I’m really sorry for is that she died a virgin, and knowing what I think I know about you, you’re one of those types that most likely mates for life thus you haven’t been laid in years, if not ever. So…sorry, tact is not my strong point. Frankie used to tell me all the time that the only reason I could get someone to talk is because I was either beating on them or was about to shoot them, interrogating was his thing, not mine. He was a people person and I was the…well, brawns and brains I suppose. Sorry, I’m rambling and making this even more awkward than it was before. Forget I said anything. So as I was saying, typically serial killers tend to start young or start small and naturally progress to murder. Did you check into animal killings and mutilations for the past twenty years?” she asked.

  Colt handed her back the papers he’d taken from her and picked up one of the files between them on the bed. He didn’t want to discuss Pope, not anymore, now he wanted to talk about Cat.

  He cleared his throat before speaking, trying to use the quilt wrapped around him to hide the slight pitch in the front of his pajama pants. “We did, there was nothing substantial,” he said in a clipped tone and she cocked an eyebrow.

  Obviously he couldn’t hide his irritation over talking about the case instead of what she was rambling about, not that he actually wanted to talk about his lack of a sex life with anyone, but he was pretty damn sure that she might have been, in a very roundabout way, trying to explain to him that she was coming onto him, or, at the very least, trying to flirt with him, but now she thinks it’d be inappropriate because of Vicks.