by Kit Frazier
“What do you want?” he whispered.
A small noise came out of my throat, and I couldn’t speak.
His tongue flicked again, up my exposed thigh, stopping at the silk edge. He looked up at me. “What do you want, Cauley?”
“I want you,” I said, and then he slid my panties aside and his warm mouth covered me, his tongue hard inside me.
Heat pooled in my belly and shot through my veins like warm honey, and I arched up to meet him and he drove again and again and everything inside me seized, up and up, until I couldn’t stand it anymore, and then I screamed a small, wild scream as my fists clenched and my body throbbed.
“Yes,” he said, his voice hoarse, coming up beside me. He put his arms around me and held me tight as the waves washed over me.
He looked down at me, smiling, and I smiled back, spent but wanting more. I went for the buttons on his shirt and he helped so that he was over me, bare chested, his body moving in a rhythm as ancient as time, and I reached for his belt and charrrrrring!
I yelped and drew back like I’d touched a hot stove, and Logan swore a string of inventive swears.
He flipped open his phone, his chest still heaving, and he said “What?” and I was sorry for whoever was on the other end of that call.
His face changed, and he said, “When?” He nodded then, closing his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”
He disconnected and his gaze fell on me, softer now, and I felt something inside me break.
“You have to go?” I said, and my voice sounded small.
“Yeah,” he said, slipping back into his shirt. “The marshal that disappeared with Obregon? They found his cell phone.”
“Is he okay?” I said, gathering the sheets around me to sit up.
“I don’t know,” he said, buttoning his shirt. “There was blood on the send button.”
He buttoned his shirt, a pained look on his face. “I’ll be back,” he said, and I said, “I know.”
He opened the bedroom door, and I heard his footfalls down the hall and then the front door softly click shut. Suddenly, I felt very naked and very alone.
Marlowe came to the edge of the bed and stared at me as I slipped the jersey back over my head.
“How did you get in here?” I said. He laid his head at the end of the pillow, his little white eyebrows moving like he was trying to figure out where Logan had gone.
I rolled over and petted him. “Is it always like this with him?” I asked the dog.
Marlowe whined. “That’s what I was afraid of,” I said. “So, tell me, puppy, is it worth it?”
The dog jumped up onto the bed and turned twice. He woofed and laid down.
“Yeah,” I said, scratching behind his ear. “Me too.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Is she okay?”
Ethan was perched on the corner of my desk, waiting for me the next morning.
Just what I needed. I was tired and confused and a little embarrassed about my midnight tryst with Logan.
I was more than a little pissed with Selena Obregon for ruining my love life.
I sighed. “I don’t know. I called her this morning, and she didn’t answer,” I told him, moving his legs so I could sit down and log onto my computer. I Googled the Dawes County Sheriff “s Department. ‘I’m calling right now to ask a deputy to go check on her.’
I looked around my desk, which had been dusted, straightened, and rearranged. A small bowl of leaves and twigs was wedged between my AP Style Guide and the latest Robert Parker hardcover. I sniffed the bowl, which smelled like oranges and foot fungus. “What happened to my desk?”
“Mia and I came in early. She said your feng wasn’t shui-ing so we did an extreme office makeover.”
I growled. It was way too early in the morning for anyone to be messing with my shui.
“I can’t believe you let Faith stay by herself last night,” he said, and I put up my hand.
“Ethan, I am tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night. I have a headache. I have a horrible ginger cat who hates me. If you keep bugging me, I’m going to give the little beast to you.”
Ethan’s face fell, and I relented. “Look. I tried to talk her into staying at my mother’s or coming home with me, but she just wanted to go to her own house and sleep in her own bed, and that I can understand. She’s a big girl, she can make her own decisions.”
“I saw her on television,” Ethan said. “She didn’t look like she was in any shape to stay by herself.” He stared at me, processing the information. “When have you had time to get a new cat?”
“It belonged to Puck. There was a fire at Puck’s house yesterday, and Logan rescued the cat and now it needs a home.”
“And you’re taking it by Faith’s?”
“I’m going to find Faith and ask her if she can handle it. If she can’t, Logan’s going to keep it.”
Ethan blinked. “The FBI guy is going to keep a cat? The one who looks like John Wayne?”
“I’ve always thought he looks like Gregory Peck. And calling that big yellow monster a cat is pure charity. Last night it ate my sofa and made Muse so mad she peed in my ficus.”
“And now you don’t know where Faith is?”
I shook my head. “I found numbers for her mom and that stepbrother of hers, but neither one of them says they’ve seen her.”
“Who’s doing the memorial thing for her brother? Is there going to be a wake? You know press is going to want to be there.”
I shrugged. “I figure Faith’ll do the memorial. She said he was the only family she had, and I figure he felt the same way.”
I reached behind Ethan’s butt for the phone and called the Dawes County Sheriff “s Department.
“Hollis,” a familiar nasally voice drawled, and my heart dropped. “Hey, how’s it going?” I said, steeling myself. “This is Cauley MacKinnon. From Team Six?”
“Oh, right. The Obituary Babe.”
My eyes rolled back in my head, but I kept my voice steady. “I talked with the on-call guy last night to check on Faith Puckett, the girl whose brother was killed at the courthouse yesterday. I tried to call her this morning, and I didn’t get an answer.”
“You trying to drum up business for your little obit hobby?”
I ground my teeth. “I was hoping someone might drive by there and take a look. Make sure she’s all right.”
“The shooting at the courthouse?” he said, bloodlust in his voice. “You think she’s involved?”
Not a lot happens in Dawes County, and on the rare occasion a traffic stop uncovers half a joint or a bottle of pain pills, every cop in a fifty-mile radius shows up for the bust. I could tell Hollis was getting a hard-on.
“Faith was there during the shooting, but so was I, and so were a lot of other people,” I said patiently.
There was a disappointed silence over the line, and I said, “You think you could give me a call? Let me know if she’s there and if she’s okay?”
“Oh, sure. Can I get anything else for you? Wash your car? Change your tires?”
My eyes narrowed. “Thanks, but I’ve got Triple A. And I’d appreciate the call.”
He disconnected, and I looked up at Ethan, who was still balanced on my inbox.
“Will he do it?” E said, and I shrugged.
“Probably he’ll go check on her because he thinks she’s involved with the shooting, but I doubt he’ll call me back. Wouldn’t want to look pussy-whipped in front of his fellow officers.”
Ethan shifted, and my files crinkled beneath him.
“Is there something I can help you with, or have you and Mia decided that you’re a necessary addition to my office feng shui?”
“I want to show you something.”
He reached behind my computer and produced a video camera. My brows shot up. “Is that what I think it is?”
Ethan nodded. “I told Puck I’d edit the video for him.” He swung out the viewfinder and hit play.
I crowded in next to him, watching. The haunting strains of “Stranger Inside Me” shimmered from the camera’s speaker, and a tight shot of Faith’s eyes, large and dark, swam onto the screen. A shot of her delicate fingers summoning music like magic from the guitar strings, and then a wide shot of Faith onstage, pouring her soul into the collective conscious of the crowd.
A close-up of a woman in the audience, mesmerized, a single tear ready to fall, and then back to Faith.
I couldn’t tell if I was watching a really good music video or a personal love letter to Faith.
“Did you do this?” I said.
Ethan blushed. “I put it together from Puck’s shots.” The music swelled, and the screen faded to black.
Ethan sat quietly, his face strained, eyes ringed red. The boy had it bad.
Sighing, I closed the viewfinder and handed the camera back to Ethan. “I’m going by her place to check on her after work. Wanna tag along?”
With a renewed sense of purpose, Ethan headed back to the mothership to perform acts of God on errant computers, and I turned back to the digital grindstone to get some work done. It didn’t go well.
The thought of writing Puck’s real obituary made my stomach turn. I stared at the blank computer screen. Nothing happened. I kept thinking about Faith and how alone she seemed when Puck died.
When Daddy died, Mama’s friends at the Charity League, the church ladies, and Daddy’s cop buddies stormed the house with casseroles and kind words, offering to pick up mail, write thank-you notes, and take care of me and Suzanne the five years that the wheels fell off of Mama’s wagon. I thought about all of the ordinary angels who stepped up to the edge of hell and helped pull us through.
Faith didn’t seem to have any of that.
I picked up the phone and dialed one of those angels.
“Dr. Toni Basset’s office,” a young, unfamiliar female voice drawled in a thick West Texas accent.
I smiled. Dr. Toni had obviously employed another stray.
The girl announced me and patched me through, and Dr. T said, “Well, hello, stranger.”
“You got a new receptionist,” I commented.
“Yeah, your buddy Cantu found her over on Eleventh Street. Needed a job and a place to stay.”
I smiled. That was so Dr. T. And so Cantu.
“I see you’ve had a rough coupla days. They find that fugitive?”
“Not yet, but they’ve got the best guy working on it.”
I could see Dr. T sitting behind her sleek, black desk, dressed in a conservative gray suit. Her skin was the rich color of mahogany, her hair a closely cropped cap of autumn-tinted curls.
Because she was talking to a family friend, she’d have her feet kicked up on her desk, revealing shoes that cost a month of my salary, accented with perfectly polished purple-tipped toes. God only knew how old she was, but I knew she was at least as old as my mama. She didn’t look like a shrink, and she certainly didn’t look like a former cop.
Her voice was still thick and sweet as dark molasses, even when chiding me/
“I’m sorry I haven’t called,” I said. “I’ve, uh, been super busy.”
“I’ll say. I’ve seen the news, baby girl,” she said. “And I’ve spoken with your mother. In addition to being caught in the middle of a gunfight, it seems you may have a suitor.”
My eyes rolled back in my head. “The jury’s still out on that one,” I said. “I need a favor.”
“Of course you do.”
“The informant who got shot…he has a sister, Faith,” I said. “Ah, the one who looked like she’s been pulling her hair out?” “That one. I think she’s in real trouble.”
“You want to bring her by?”
I grinned. “Thought I’d give her your number, but I wanted to ask you first.”
“Mmm-hmm. And how you doin’ in all this, Miss Thang?”
“I’m all right,” I said. “Really.”
“We’re behind on lunch,” she scolded, and I sighed. “I know, and I’ve missed it.”
“Well, girl, we’re gonna have to do somethin’ about that.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “As soon as I’m finished with this Faith thing.” There was a silence over the line and finally she said, “Cauley, don’t get tangled up in this. I know you’re identifying with this girl, but remember, people experience trauma differently. This hair-pullin’ thing could be a real problem. It could be a form of cutting.”
“Cutting?”
“Self-mutilation. See if she’ll come in, but don’t be surprised if she resists help. And remember, a drownin’ swimmer’ll pull you under if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I know,” I said. “I just want to point her toward shore.”
“Give her my number. I’ll be looking for her call.”
As I hung up, I felt like a ninety-five-pound weight lifted from my back, and I turned to my computer to work on Puck’s obituary.
I pulled up a new Word document and sat staring at the screen, fingers poised over the keyboard, waiting for the words to come. Since nothing brilliant poured onto the screen, I checked my email, where funeral homes updated their death notices throughout the day. And there, among the octogenarians and untimely deaths, was Wylie Ray Puckett. I logged the stats the bare skeleton of his life and hit the Sentinel website to look at what Mia and I had posted.
I had done my job. The Sentinel got the story before anyone else, and because it was a shootout at a federal courthouse and an accused terrorist had escaped, the Associated Press was spreading my brief in every newspaper in the United States, but I found it hard to be proud.
I paged down, reading as I scrolled. Mia had captured Puck in a close shot, his cheek pressed to the granite step with that look of stunned silence. You could almost see the life slipping out of him. I swallowed, trying to quell the nausea pooling in my throat.
“FBI confidential informant Wylie Ray Puckett was gunned down in a gale of gunfire as he mounted the steps to the federal courthouse, where he was expected to testify in the trial of suspected Argentinean gang leader Selena Obregon, who managed to escape custody,” the web article began, and I nodded. Not bad.
But I ground my teeth as I read on. “In what can only be described as an escalation toward a possible gang war…”
“Damn that Roby Ryder! That’s not what I wrote,” I said to no one and picked up the phone to dial the City Desk downtown and say it to someone.
“Metro,” a familiar voice barked as I glared at the screen. “What the hell happened to my story?” I growled.
“It needed some punching up,” said Ryder, the prototypical News Boy and heir apparent to the Sentinel’s managing editor position.
“If anything needs punching up, it’s you,” I seethed.
“Wanna write my obituary, Cauley?” he said, and my eyes narrowed to slits.
“I would,” I said, “but I can’t think of a euphemism for dickhead.”
“Now, now. Don’t get a twist in your tube top. No need for hostility between friends.”
“This isn’t hostility. This is beyond hostility. Tanner’s my editor, not you. Only predators and long, slimy tapeworms can screw with a story like you can. You keep your nasty little red pen away from my stories, you got it?”
“Let me take you to lunch, and I’ll explain the way the big boys do it downtown,” he said.
“Why don’t you go fetch a newspaper in oncoming traffic?” I said.
I slammed the phone. And then I picked it up and slammed it again for good measure. That’s why I don’t use a cell phone at work. Slamming a smart phone lacks the brutality for a full-blown snit.
“Cauley,” Tanner said, sticking his head out of his office.
The voice of doom, if doom was delivered by a man who looked like Hugh Grant. Sighing, I trudged into the Cage, which is conveniently located right across from my desk, where Tanner can hear every inappropriate snit that pops out of my mouth.
Tanner shut the door behind m
e, and I hopped up on his desk, scattering the copy he was editing, and crossed my arms, daring him to let me have it.
“Castrating Rob Ryder is probably not the best way to earn yourself a position on the City Desk,” he said.
I wanted to say something witty and biting, but he was right and I knew it, so I sat on his inbox and sulked.
“You all right?” he said, studying my face, which was still scratched and bruised. I knew my eyes were bloodshot and probably a little hollow from the three hours of sleep I’d managed.
I smoothed my hair and said, “I’m fine. I’m just working on Puck’s obituary.”
“And Selena Obregon?”
“When Logan finds her, you’ll be the first to know.”
Tanner sank into his chair, his face drawn and tired, and reached over the photo of his wife for his jar of red licorice. “You did a good job yesterday. Real good.”
“Thanks,” I said, ambivalence clouding my judgment. I hadn’t been doing this long, and I was creating my own code of ethics as I went.
I knew I’d done my job and I’d done it well. But I wondered if it wasn’t chipping away at something inside me something that needed to stay whole.
Tanner chewed the end of the licorice and then he nodded. “Give it to Shiner.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“Give the shooting and Obregon’s escape to Shiner.”
“Tanner,” I said, my voice going up two and a half octaves. “This is my story. I broke it. I was the one who got caught in the crossfire, I’m the one who’s been working on it, I’m the one with the in.”
“And that’s why you’re handing off to Shiner.”
I shook my head, feeling the betrayal all the way down to my bones. “Is this because I’m a woman?”
“It’s because you’re becoming the story. Again.”
“It’s because of the burglarizing bird man,” I countered.
“That too.”
I wanted to scream. “I am an obituary writer. This is an obituary. If you take this away from me, you’re taking away the job you gave me.”