“Yeah,” he agreed.
I blinked and tossed him a look over my shoulder. “Why?”
Everybody liked Jace.
“Because Jace made fun of his limping when he first got back on the SWAT team. Jace was hired momentarily to cover for Foster while he was recuperating. Foster hated him on principle alone seeing as he’d taken his spot,” Miller explained.
I frowned. “Recuperating from what?”
He paused in the middle of the hallway and lifted his pants leg, revealing a… prosthetic leg.
“Holy shit.” I dropped down onto my haunches to study it. “This is the newest model, right?”
Foster lifted it up farther and nodded. “Yeah, how’d you know?”
I grinned wide. “At the last police department I worked at, there was a cop there that I used to eat lunch with every day. I’m not sure why we did, but we did. At first he was delegated to desk duty because he still wasn’t one hundred percent yet. Anyway, so I started eating lunch with him, then we became friends, and when he got better we just stayed friends. I tried to convince him to move to Kilgore with me, actually.” I paused for breath then poked the new bionic knee. “Anyway, I found this company—this one.” I pointed at the prosthetic. “And I convinced him to give it a try. He loves his. Tell me you love yours?”
Foster was grinning ear to ear. “Yeah, it’s much easier to work with.”
I tucked his pants leg back down over his boot, then stood. “Davy actually used to live here. He was one of a bunch of guys that came here to recover after the war. He was pretty bad off, but a woman here was able to get him a job and get him back on track. Mandy’s… Minnie’s…”
“Mercy,” Miller said from behind me.
I snapped my fingers as I said, “Yes. Her!”
Miller was grinning ear to ear. “Was this man’s name David Crocket?”
I started laughing. “Yeah. Oh, man. He got so much shit for that name. Davy is the best, though. You know Mercy?”
“You could say that,” Foster muttered under his breath. “Intimately.”
My brows rose as I looked from one brother to the other. “Intimately?”
“Mercy is his wife,” Foster offered up. “You know.” He pumped his hips suggestively. “Intimately.”
I snorted and froze when I heard someone say from behind me, “If you could please not ever do that again, that would be great.”
I turned to find Luke Roberts standing there with his massive arms crossed across his chest.
I swallowed hard, still just as intimidated now as I was then.
“I got your background check back,” he said, making my heart start to pound. “Clean. You got your writing hand ready? I have a shit ton of papers for you to sign before we talk salary and how good of an insurance plan we have.”
I grinned wickedly. “That would be great… but just sayin’, I have to be out of here in about an hour. I want to go to the lawyer with Ace. He’s having a rough time of it lately.”
Luke nodded as if he understood my need to be with Ace.
And I felt my face flush.
“Sounds good. I don’t see it taking…”
“Uhh,” Marie said from behind us. “What’s going on?”
Luke looked over at her. “I was looking for you this morning. Do you happen to know if there were any applications for Codie Spears?” He gestured at me with a thumb. “She said she applied in person when she rolled into town, yet I never saw her paperwork on my desk.”
Marie’s eyes widened as she slowly shook her head.
“No, sir,” she said slowly, lying boldly to the man who was her boss, and could probably read her like an open book.
“Okay,” Luke said, drawing the word out like he didn’t believe her.
Marie scurried off to the desk that was in a small room that led to a larger room that I assumed was Luke’s office.
“When are you going to fire her?” Miller asked.
Luke sighed. “When I can find a way not to offend the ex-assistant-police chief.”
Thirty minutes later, I was the proud new owner of a KPD—Kilgore Police Department—issued ID badge, a shit ton of paperwork in a nifty folder that I was going to have to find a use for since it had handcuffs on the cover, and a ton of pens.
“Why do you have so many pens?” I asked curiously.
When I’d taken one and stuffed it into my purse—that was what the cup full of complimentary pens was for, correct?—he’d brought a box out from under his desk and ordered me to take more.
I had, and when three wasn’t enough, I took an entire handful.
“The new printing company in town?” he said.
At my nod, he continued. “My daughter started working last week to earn some cash so she didn’t have to borrow money from me that came with stipulations. They started using KDP as a guinea pig to help promo other companies. Now I have like ten boxes in the storage room and she brings me more every fuckin’ day. Yesterday it was bookmarks.”
“And today,” a young girl who was all of sixteen said. “It’s cell phone holders!”
I grinned at the look of exasperation on Luke’s face.
“Why the hell do you keep bringing me shit?” he grumbled, but nonetheless took the box she held out.
I pulled out one of the plastic wrapped thingies and looked at it quizzically.
“Your phone goes into this little notch right here,” she said. “Just pull it out into a V, place it on the counter, and set your phone right into it!”
I stuffed one of those into my purse, too.
The girl grinned.
“Hi, my name is Katy!” she chirped, looking adorable and very related to the big man at my side.
“Codie, this is my daughter, Katerina Roberts. Katy, this is our newest crime scene tech, Codie,” Luke introduced us.
I held out my hand, and the girl took it, shaking it before smiling wide.
“I like your top,” she said. “I hear those shirts are back in style. I almost got one just like it last week!”
I looked down at the top that I’d had for a good ten years and wondered when the top had gone out of style only to come back into style. I’d never stopped wearing it.
Luke laughed at the look of consternation on my face.
“Burns a little, doesn’t it? Realizing that you’re getting old.” He chuckled.
I rolled my eyes. “Thirty isn’t old. It’s the prime of life.”
“I’m half your age,” Katy said helpfully.
Luke ruffled her hair. “You have time for lunch, Katy-did?”
She nodded her head. “I’ll wait in your office.”
I smiled as I watched her go. “Cute kid.”
“Awful kid,” Luke corrected me as he led me out of the long hallway back toward the main room. “You’re okay to start on Monday?”
I nodded my head. “Yes. I’ll go get some new, more professional clothes tomorrow. That’ll give me time. Thank you again.”
Luke shrugged. “I didn’t give you the job out of the kindness of my heart. I gave you the job because you were highly skilled and more than qualified to do it. I’m sorry about Marie.”
I shrugged.
I hadn’t exactly told him anything about her, but somehow, he’d guessed over the course of the hour we were together about my and Marie’s differences.
Though, granted, Marie tossing me death glares across the room hadn’t exactly helped.
“I know,” I said. “And Marie is Marie. I’ve been dealing with her for a long time. I know how to continue to deal with her.”
Luke mumbled something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, ‘I wish you’d give me some tips.’
Then, louder, he said, “Luckily you won’t be working in this part of the building. Monday when you get in, you’ll be heading this way.” He pointed to a T in the hallways that we were crossing. One way led to the exit, and the other to a hallway I
’d yet to be in.
“What part is this?” I asked.
“Homicide,” he answered. “As well as crime scene techs. I’d have taken you down there today but nobody is in. They were working a murder this morning.”
I nodded my head, eager to get back on the job. I knew that Kilgore wasn’t going to be exactly the same as Dallas had been, but still, I was happy that I once again got to use my degree.
“I’m going to do great,” I promised him. “And, thankfully, I won’t be around her all that often.”
Luke’s grin was barely there as he continued to lead me back out to the busy police room then farther out to the front steps that led out to the parking lot.
“Have a good one, Codie. See you Monday,” he said.
I waved at him, then headed for my vehicle, excited to share the news with Ace.
Chapter 15
I wonder if life smokes after it fucks me.
-Ace’s secret thoughts
Ace
“In essence, you’re telling me that I have to go get another lawyer,” I said to the man who was in front of me.
The lawyer looked apologetic as he confirmed with a slight head nod. “Yes, but only because I can’t represent you and—” I held up my hand on the rest of his explanation.
“I know, you said you can’t represent the insurance company and me. I realize that they’re giving you more money, but why are they using you when they could be using anybody all over the world?” I asked with barely controlled anger.
“Because I’m local, and they need someone local that knows the laws,” he answered.
I sighed. “Which was why I was using you. You do realize that, yes?”
The lawyer sighed. “I’m sorry, but when I’m offered this kind of money to do this, I have to take it. I’m still paying off my school loans, and there’s no way in hell I’m not taking it.”
I could see that. I could also see that no matter what I said or did, he wasn’t going to change his mind. “Fine. You can also lose my brothers’ information, my sister’s, Nico’s, as well as anybody else I can convince. I hope that this one client was worth it.”
Codie stood up as well and offered my lawyer a glacial glare. “I’m not very happy with you, either. I realize that you replaced the one and only lawyer in town, but there are others outside of town.”
Jake Hooper shrugged.
Codie rolled her eyes and took my hand, practically pulling me out of the office and to my truck.
I was angry, so I allowed her to, worried that if I let myself think too hard about the information I’d just received, I would be going right back in there and planting my fist into Jake Hooper’s face.
“Sit, I’m driving,” she informed me.
I rolled my eyes and went to the passenger side, finding amusement despite the fact that I was still pissed. That amusement only heightened when I watched her move my seat up until she was practically sitting on top of the steering wheel.
She drove like an old lady, and moments after scooting my seat up, she pulled the seat back forward, too, forcing her body into a near ninety-degree upright position.
“You know,” I said as she straightened her mirrors. “I was okay to drive.”
“I know,” she said. “But I’m driving, and it’s easier to drive you where I want you to go than to give you directions seeing as it’s off the beaten path.”
“And where is it that we’re going?” I asked.
She shrugged, and I leaned back and allowed her to do with me what she would.
I wasn’t in the mood to drive anyway.
Honestly, I was in the mood for a beer and a goddamn nap, in that order.
“I need a beer,” I declared.
She whipped into a gas station. “I need a drink, too. Do you want a slushee?”
I shook my head. “No, thank you.”
She held her hand up in the ‘okay’ signal and bailed out of the truck, coming back five minutes later with two slushees in her hand.
She handed one to me, and then started sucking on the other one before I could say, “I told you I didn’t want one.”
“I didn’t get you one.” She shrugged.
It was then that I saw that the liquid inside wasn’t a slushee at all, but a… I brought it up to my nose, then grinned. “You poured beer in here?”
She nodded. “I went to the bathroom and poured the slushee out. I’m fairly sure the woman at the counter thinks I just downed the entire fifty-two ounces while I was in there… and driving.”
I snorted and gestured for hers. “What flavor did you get?”
“Strawberry, Dr. Pepper, and blue raspberry,” she answered.
I made a gagging noise in the back of my throat. “That sounds disgusting.”
She shrugged. “I usually only do it with the Coke slushees and the cherry. But they didn’t have those flavors here so I had to improvise.”
I just shook my head as she backed out of the parking spot she’d pulled into—badly, might I add.
“Now, you enjoy your beer while I take you somewhere,” she said as she drove five miles under the speed limit down the road.
I closed my eyes and sucked my beer out of a slushee straw, not saying a word.
Honestly, I quite liked this.
And when the road started bumping, and I felt the cadence of the tires change, I knew that we’d just turned onto a dirt road.
Still, I didn’t open my eyes.
I was too busy thinking about what I should do next.
I’d just literally talked to the landowner that I’d made a deal with this morning, telling him that I was close to having the money. Then I found out this morning that the insurance company was challenging our right to the money seeing as we’d never claimed it. They’d ‘released it to the state’ or some bullshit like that, and I now had to get a lawyer to fight the insurance company for my right to the money.
Honestly, all in all, I was not a happy camper. Especially since I learned that there was another person out there who was trying to buy the land that was rightfully ours right out from under me.
Needless to say, this morning hadn’t gone at all well.
That was until Codie arrived with a smile on her face explaining that she had indeed gotten the job.
That had been the only good part of my day, seeing her smile.
We hit a pothole the size of Texas, and I lifted my half empty slushee cup to be sure that none of it spilled.
“I love you, you know,” I said out of the blue. “I told myself after my dad did that to my mother that I wasn’t going to ever have that. That I wouldn’t chance it… but you made me fall in love with you anyway. You made me see that I was worth loving. That sometimes, though love is scary, it’s worth the heart palpitations.”
There were no words coming from the seat beside me, so I chose not to say a word.
“I can still smell the smoke in my nostrils,” I said softly. “The day that my dad tore our family apart, he ruined something inside of me.” I swallowed hard. “Fighting for this shit brings up such bad memories. My sister didn’t even want to pursue it.”
I took a hit off my slushee beer that tasted faintly of blue raspberry, and kept talking.
“That day, I was being punished,” I whispered. “I was sent to my room by my mother because I’d broken her favorite butter churn.” I swallowed the spit that was gathering in my mouth at an alarming rate. “I was the last one my father got ahold of out of the brothers.” I squeezed my eyes tighter shut as if that would ward off the bad memories that had been assaulting my head all morning. “Dad came in there and snatched me up by my hair, and I thought, ‘oh, fuck. He was really pissed about that butter churn.’ But then he dragged me out to the living room. My hair was really long, and the way he was dragging me, it was kind of hard to see because my hair kept falling into my eyes. But when I finally sat down and was able to sweep it to the side, my father was zip tying m
e to that chair, and I realized that my brothers were all there, too.”
I felt Codie’s cool hand slip into mine, and only then realized that we’d stopped halfway down a dirt driveway.
I thought for a second about not telling her what I was thinking but then decided to hell with it.
She needed to know.
She needed to realize what she was going to get into when it came to me—to the Valentine family.
“He shot each one of us,” I said softly. “Rain and Dell died. I can still see their lifeless bodies when I close my eyes. See the pool of blood on the floor. I can tell you each and every crack in the kitchen that it seeped between.”
Her hand squeezed shut. “They didn’t die at first, though. He shot all of us. Started with the youngest, then went up from there. Shot me in the stomach. I remember that it burned. But at first, I wasn’t sure what happened. Honestly, I just remembered them all screaming, and I was confused… then he set my mother on fire.”
I swallowed hard as those memories assaulted me. “I must’ve screamed at some point. Later, my throat was raw as hell as if I’d screamed… but I don’t remember doing it. He doused her in gasoline, then while she was still alive, lit a match and tossed it at her.” I licked my lips. “Georgia managed to get free, but still to this day I don’t remember it. One second I was sitting there, bleeding from my belly, and the next she was yanking me outside with Banks and Callum at our heels.”
“You don’t remember anything else?” she asked.
I knew what she was asking. My father killing himself. My siblings dying.
“No,” I admitted. “The therapist I saw for a couple of years after the incident? She thought maybe I was subconsciously suppressing those memories.”
She blew out a breath. “I can’t tell if that’s good or bad,” she admitted.
I shrugged. “It is what it is. The therapist thinks that I might remember it one day, but only when I feel ‘safe.’” I paused. “Her words, not mine.”
She smirked. “Do the rest of your siblings remember?”
I nodded. “Banks and Callum do. So does Georgia. Darby? He’s never really talked about it, and all of us are too fucked up to ask. So, we’re not sure. I’m sure he remembers something, though he was the youngest of the surviving siblings. There’s no telling.”
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