Stolen in Love

by G. G. Andrew

  Boyd’s head whipped up. “You should really have led with that.”

  She sighed. “Sorry. Trying not to think about it, actually.”

  “You okay?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe they were looking for Hot Haven gift cards.”

  “You know I don’t treat my employees that well,” Boyd quipped. His lips parted to speak—but then they closed again.

  Kim guessed what he’d been about to say. Unless you stole them. Boyd had about as much filter as she did most days, but he probably assumed there were areas he shouldn’t tease her about. Right at that moment, he was right. She remembered the expression on Scott’s face as he’d stared at her tampon box of stolen goods. Shock and dismay and confusion—the exact way you’d look at a circus freak or ten-legged spider.

  “So,” she blustered on, “I’m staying at my parents’ for a few days in case aforementioned unwelcome visitors choose to return.”

  Boyd’s eyebrows lowered. “You think they’ll return?”

  “Maybe.” For some reason, she didn’t bring up the note. Maybe because she didn’t want to think about it.

  The bell above the door chimed, and they both glanced up to see Savannah Davidson, Boyd’s girlfriend, come through the door.

  “Hey, you,” she sang as she walked to the counter.

  “Hey, you,” Boyd replied.

  If there was anything Boyd loved more than owning his own place, it was this woman. Tall and slim, Savannah had flawless skin and long, shiny brown hair that fell down her back. She had a natural beauty, enhanced only by the touch of lip gloss on her mouth. She leaned over the counter and gave her boyfriend a peck on the lips.

  “How was the shampoo commercial?” Kim said by way of greeting.

  “What?” Savannah said, confused but still smiling at her, because that was totally the type of person she was.

  “Your shampoo commercial. That’s not where you came from? Because it looks like that’s the set you walked off of.” She opened up the pastry cupboard, added a few bagels, and grabbed a pink cake pop. “Or, wait, car ad?”

  Savannah laughed and turned to Boyd. “I like her. You should keep her.”

  Boyd shot Kim a look and winked. “I’m hoping to.”

  Kim smiled, because it was really the other way around—it was she who hoped he kept her. To ease the tension she felt, and that earlier comment he hadn’t said, she waved the cake pop and added, “I’m eating this. It’s not stealing if you tell your boss first.”

  “Whatever. If it’s pink, it’s yours.”

  Kim had just bitten into the sugary frosting when she spotted a ghost through the front windows of Hot Haven. Or, more correctly, a demon.

  The man outside in the parking lot was dressed in dark jeans, biker boots, and a scowl. His hair was buzzed close to his head, and he was looking at her through the glass.

  It was Hutch. Her ex.

  “Wow, this day keeps getting better and better,” she said.

  Savannah looked behind her at Hutch. “Someone you know?”

  “Someone I knew.” She whipped off her apron and moved towards the exit. “Boyd, I’m going to need a ten-minute break. If I’m not back in ten minutes, call an exorcist.”

  Chapter Eight

  Scott

  “It’s my knees. They think I need new ones,” Bette said on the phone.

  To hear her over the din of the bullpen, Scott drifted into the break room at the police station, his cell tucked under his chin and his left hand holding his coffee. He needed to down it, fast. And then have two more.

  “Shit.”

  “That’s what I said,” Bette responded. “But, you know, doctors.”

  Scott could almost hear her shrug. He knew what this would mean, why she’d called him right away. Bette was family, but she was also Lily’s caretaker when he was at work.

  “They said I’ve been putting too much strain on them,” she continued. “So I need some physical therapy and to take these shots. And probably surgery eventually. ‘Shit’ about covers it.”

  “I’m sorry, Bette.” He exhaled. “You seem like you’ve been getting around pretty well…considering.”

  Bette chuckled. “They let you on the force with that eyesight?”

  Scott laughed in response. “Just being polite. You do, though. Get around pretty well, all things considered.”

  “You haven’t seen me do steps lately.” She paused. “Listen, it’ll only be a few appointments here and there. Maybe some bad days after the shots. But you remember my neighbor, Ginny? She says she can watch Lily if I’ve got therapy or need to take it easy. She knows the girl. Sometimes we go over there and play checkers.”

  “Ginny? Is she the one who always smells like molasses? The one who’s blind in one eye?”

  Bette said, “As long as she keeps the one good eye on Lily.”

  Scott puffed out his cheeks and set his cup down on the break table, some of the coffee sloshing out. Detective Carter Morales passed him, raising her eyebrows. A transplant from the south, she was new to the area like Scott, and they’d bonded over it. She was the person whom Scott wanted to consult about the handwriting on the note in Kim’s apartment.

  But right now… Scott exhaled and pinched the bridge of his nose. Lily was in preschool on weekday mornings, and though he was usually around to pick her up, Bette often gave her dinner, put her to bed, and stayed in the house until Scott got home late at night. Police work could be erratic. Currently he was working the swing shift, but that could change. He relied on Bette, probably more than he should have. Though he liked the contact with people on the street, he’d also considered moving up to detective. This put a major halt to those plans.

  “Know any girls in the neighborhood? Any mother’s helpers?” Bette asked. “If they still call them that. I used to have one for Alexa to help me out while I did chores and the shopping and such. Of course, that one wore too much makeup and always talked about boys, so she probably wasn’t the best influence for Alexa.” Her voice hit that perfect intersection of bitterness and amusement she’d trademarked, and Scott shook his head. His former girlfriend’s wild ways was not something he wanted to remember right then, not when he was trying to figure out how to tend to their daughter the next few weeks. He knew Alexa’s lack of even an iota of maternal instinct meant asking her to come help wasn’t an option.

  He imagined how such a call would go down.

  “Hey, Alexa,” he’d say as she picked up her cell in Barcelona or Tokyo or wherever she was performing nowadays. He’d probably have to then say it was Scott, and maybe even Scott Culpepper, because he rarely called and Alexa had a lot of people calling her about travel stories to write or spontaneous getaway weekends full of liquor and adventures like she lived in some Hemingway story. It was what had attracted him to her initially, that crazy adventurous spirit. He’d grown up too fast as the only son of aging parents, a kid who’d needed to work young and hard to support himself. Alexa made him feel young in a way he never had. They’d had a whirlwind thing for a few weeks and had been careless. When Alexa wound up pregnant, she’d gotten caught up in the novelty of the stableness that he represented and tried to settle down. But by the time Lily was four months, they both admitted it wasn’t going to work, and Alexa left the country with a gleam in her eye that her baby girl had never given her.

  It’d been a mistake to be with a woman like her, but a beautiful one. He had Lily, and sometimes when he watched her, his heart cracked and shifted in ways he hadn’t known possible. But he’d learned his lesson, and he knew he wouldn’t be with a woman like that again.

  No, Alexa wouldn’t come, not for a few weeks, not even when it was because her own mother needed new knees. She didn’t do that sort of thing, and in all honesty, Scott would’ve been relieved. She had her thing, and they had theirs.

  She sent a postcard every Christmas from somewhere exotic, and even that had a lot of white space on it. A couple sentences, like she was a celebrity Lily had wri
tten fan mail to, not half her genetic makeup.

  “What about that girl that visits her parents a few doors down?” Bette said, interrupting his bitter reflection. “The lawyers?”

  Scott tensed. “The Xaviers? You mean Kim? Or Laurel?”

  “Who’s the one you’re always staring at?”

  “I’m not—I don’t—”

  “Lily seems to like her.”

  He sighed and rubbed his face with his free hand. “That’d be Kim.” Lily had taken a shine to Kim when she’d met her last fall, and Scott had to admit she was good with her. Playful and attentive, like she actually liked being around kids. Despite being shy with adults, Lily yelled Kim’s name and waved at her when they saw her come to her parents’ weekly dinner across the street, and Scott just—well, apparently he stared. Enough that his would-have-been mother-in-law noticed.

  “Oh, you could ask Sophie and Sierra’s mom,” Bette said. Lily was friends with two twin sisters, and their mom was home with them. Unfortunately Taylor Stiles creeped him out, between her insistence on her girls always wearing matching accessories and the obscene amount of time she spent crafting baked goods to impress the other parents.

  “There’s got to be someone else,” he mumbled. Taylor Stiles was a no. And he was trying to get Kim’s intruder caught so he could get her out of his neighborhood. The idea of inviting her into his home to watch his daughter—well, it’d be working at cross purposes. If this morning was any indication, even being in the same room as Kim Xavier was asking for trouble.

  “Let me give it some thought,” Scott said. They ended the call, and he walked back to Carter’s desk.

  “Hey, do you remember the case from last fall,” he said. “The grad assistant who kept getting the threatening notes?”

  Carter leaned back in her chair, pursing her lips. She was about his age, with long, dark curly hair, brown skin, and a slow southern drawl. “The ones on the car? Yeah, I remember. We never caught the guy.”

  Scott nodded. “We thought it was probably an ex, but none of them seemed to fit the profile. I was the responding officer, the first note she got.”

  Carter studied him. “Why do you bring it up?”

  He sat down in a chair across from her. “I found a note. Different victim and scene, but the handwriting matches.”

  “Interesting,” Carter said. “Can I see the report?”

  Scott put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. A trio of officers were in the break room, laughing and sharing jokes, and he doubted they’d overhear. But he still didn’t want to make Kim’s situation public, especially after Jimmy’s reaction. “There is no report. This is someone who didn’t want to file a police report. For personal reasons. I was wondering if you could pull one of those notes out of the evidence room. To confirm that the handwriting matches.” He extracted the bag with the note from his pocket.

  Detective Morales bit her lip, considering, but in the end she took the evidence from him, like he’d guessed she would. She was curious and determined, and she wanted to catch any man who terrorized women.

  He’d check back with her at his next shift and convince her they needed to talk to that woman who’d found the notes again. Ten to one, there was a connection between her and Kim Xavier.

  Chapter Nine

  Hutch

  Hutch leaned against his car as Kim approached, his arms crossed over his chest. His boots were scuffed, and you would’ve guessed he worked in construction if you didn’t know better.

  Hutch didn’t work in construction.

  Kim wore tan pants, a tight black shirt he appreciated, and a frown he didn’t. She was holding some kind of pink thing on a stick.

  She stopped a full three feet before she reached him. “Why are you here?”

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi. Why are you here?”

  “As a friend.”

  “That’s more how than why,” Kim said.

  He snorted and crossed his ankles. “Thanks for the semantics lesson.”

  Hot Haven was on a busy street in Hamden, and behind him the whir of traffic kept up a steady background noise. But Kim was enunciating so clearly in her obvious annoyance, he had no problem hearing her above the cars.

  “What’s up?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  That damn pink thing was distracting him. “What’s that?” He uncrossed his arms and pointed. It smelled like a solid pound of sugar—or maybe that was her. It’d been a while.

  “It’s a cake pop.”

  “Can I have a bite?”

  “No.” In demonstration, she took a large bite of the cake, adding a little hum of satisfaction as the treat filled her mouth. He and Kim didn’t quite have that spark anymore, but apparently torturing your exes never got old.

  He exhaled. This is what he got for trying to do her a favor. He straightened up. “Yeah, so, someone’s after you.”

  Kim’s eyes met his, and she began to chew slowly, carefully.

  “Someone’s been asking around for you through certain channels,” he continued. “Saying you took something you shouldn’t have.”

  When she finally swallowed the mouthful of cake, she said, “I know. Bastard broke into my apartment. Left a note calling me a bitch and telling me to leave what I stole in my mailbox. Problem is I don’t know what it is.”

  Hutch said, “Well, shit.”

  “What channels?” she asked, tossing the cake pop stick into a nearby trashcan and brushing off her hands.

  “What?”

  “You said someone’s been asking through certain channels. Which ones?”

  He studied her, considering. A drug dealer by trade, he sold a lot of pot and occasionally exotic stuff, drugs and goods that came from foreign countries and were hard to find. Kim probably assumed the asshole after her was one of his less well-heeled clients, so he wasn’t surprised by her startled expression when he said, “The Yalies.”

  “Really?” She exhaled hard. “Who?”

  His clientele was very niche. In a town that schooled sons and daughters of fortune, many of whom sought out stranger pleasures when the sun set, discretion was key.

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. This is just what I heard.”

  Kim stole a glance over her shoulder. He followed her gaze and saw two people at the coffee shop counter staring at them, a shorter guy with brown hair behind it and a woman in front with long dark hair and what looked like, from the distance, a fantastic body. They quickly turned back around, pretending they hadn’t been watching.

  “Who’s that?” He squinted at the pretty brunette.

  “My boss.”

  “The girl?”

  “The woman. And no, the guy is my boss. She’s his girlfriend.”

  “Really?” Maybe he was funny. Sometimes funny guys got chicks.

  “Yeah.”

  “She looks like she should be on a car commercial.”

  “Shampoo.”

  He looked back at Kim.

  She sighed. “Nevermind.” She paused. “Hey, can you do me a favor?”

  “Maybe.” That was a question he learned to never say yes to.

  Kim’s voice hardened. “Don’t show up at my work again. Or, if you do, don’t show up looking like you’re a mobster or my drug dealer or something.”

  “How’d I do that?”

  “Standing out here staring. Scowling. Those boots. Need I go on?”

  “I thought I was doing you a favor.”

  “You’re not exactly a people person.”

  He gestured with his chin to the brunette. “I think I could be a people person with her.” He let a dirty smirk grace his lips.

  Kim rolled her eyes. “I do not think that phrase means what you think it means.”

  He chuckled, put his hands behind his head, and stretched his head back to gaze up at the sky. It was the kind of spring day that was a gift, baby blue with white clouds floating past like a fucking page in a calendar. It wasn’t the day to get kicked in the teeth by your e
x-girlfriend. Now he remembered why they’d broken up. That mouth.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m outta here.” He fished his keys out of his pocket, and, not looking at her, made to open his car door. But before he did, he threw her one final bone.

  “He might be there, at this Yalie party on Wednesday night. Where I used to take you?”

  Back when she was off the wagon, they’d had some good times. Of course, sometimes he’d had to search her pockets at the end of the night for souvenirs.

  She was trying to move beyond that; he got it. So he wasn’t surprised when she replied in an incredulous tone, “I remember the place. And the answer is no.”

  “Okay.” He opened the car door. “Like I said, I’m just trying to do you a favor.”

  Chapter Ten

  Kim

  As Kim walked away from Hutch, she barely resisted the urge to cross herself like a devout Catholic. Instead she kept shaking her head as she went back into Hot Haven, tied her apron on, ignored the inquiring glances from Boyd and Savannah, and got back to work.

  She hadn’t seen him in months, and she’d been the better for it. That way lay danger. Her gravelly-voiced ex meant late nights and dimly-lit basements and fifth drinks and a round of lowered impulse control for everyone. Underground Yalie party? Forget it. She might as well stick a hot poker in her recovery.

  Hutch dealt drugs, and he didn’t look like he wanted to hang up that hat any time soon. Though she hadn’t exactly taken him home to meet the parents the six months they’d been off and on, her family associated him with her trouble and scorned him.

  She wondered what Hutch would do when recreational use of marijuana became legal. Get a kiosk at the mall, maybe.

  Her stomach twisted with the knowledge that Hutch had confirmed there was someone out there asking for her, but there had to be some other way of finding out who. Scott had mentioned as they’d left her apartment that morning that he had a lead he was going to check out. She had to let that pan out before she started doing things that’d make her sister get that slight wrinkle between her eyebrows or her mother ask Scott Culpepper to put her under arrest.