Breathe

by Kristen Ashley

  At this point he was seeing his error at giving them privacy. Top to toe, she was an itch he’d wanted to scratch for a long time. Faye Goodknight talking and reacting two feet away, her voice coming at him, her face expressive, her scent filling the room, she wasn’t an itch.

  She was a craving.

  Chace buried it and asked, “He keeps coming around?”

  She blinked and asked back, “What?”

  “This kid, you said you’ve tried to approach, the times you didn’t chase him down the street, he kept coming back?”

  He saw her bubblegum lips twitch but she nodded and added her, “Yeah.”

  “Right,” he muttered, reaching into his jacket pocket to pull out his phone. “He comes back, you don’t approach. You call me.”

  “Call you?”

  “Yeah,” he bent his head to his phone and activated it, saying, “I wanna get a look at him. See if I know him or who his kin might be. Maybe find a way to make my own approach.”

  “He doesn’t look familiar.”

  Chace lifted his head and looked at her. “You lived here your whole life, Faye, but still, it’s likely I’ve met more folk around here than you have.”

  “This is true,” she said softly.

  Christ.

  Cute.

  “Give me your number,” he ordered.

  She blinked.

  Then she whispered, “What?”

  “Your phone number. Give it to me. I’ll call you, you’ll have mine you can store in your cell.”

  “Can’t you just give me yours and I’ll program it in my cell?” she suggested.

  “I could. But, darlin’, things the way they’ve been…” he trailed off, shook his head and let that speak for itself. She might live in her books but the shit that’s gone down, he knew from the limited conversations they’d had, had not escaped her notice. “I’m not big on surprises. You need to call me, when my phone rings, I like to know what I’m dealin’ with before I answer it. I got your number, it’ll come up on caller ID.”

  She nodded and pressed her lips together before she said quietly, “That makes sense.”

  Then she stood there staring at him.

  “Faye, your number?” he prompted and her body gave a slight start.

  “Oh,” she whispered. “Right.” Then she gave him her number.

  Chace punched it in and hit go. Her purse rang and he heard her making the moves to pull her phone out but he disconnected the call before she answered it. Then he hit buttons and programmed her into his phone while he heard her hitting buttons programming him in hers.

  This meant access to Faye Goodknight’s voice whenever he wanted it.

  Fuck.

  He buried that as he shoved his phone back in his pocket and looked again at her.

  “I also need you to bag a book he’s stolen and bring it to me,” he told her.

  Her head cocked slightly to the side and she asked, “Why?”

  “’Cause he might have hit the system. We can lift prints, we might find out who he is which might lead us to where he is.”

  “Oh,” she again whispered, then another, “Right. Okay. I’ll do that.”

  “Try not to handle it too much.”

  “Uh… Chace, our books, at least some of them, are handled a lot.”

  “We’ll sort out what we find, don’t worry about that.”

  She nodded again.

  “I need a physical description of the kid too. I’ll give it to the boys. They can keep their eyes peeled.”

  More nodding then she described the kid and his behavior. Nothing she said struck him as familiar to any kid he’d seen. Seeing as everything she said was not good, if he’d seen him he would have noted him.

  When she was done speaking, he started.

  “I’ll talk to the boys, see if they’ve seen anything or heard anything. I’ll also do some digging to see if any reports were made. Way things were, they could have been ignored or buried. I’ll do what I can to uncover it if they have. Tomorrow, I’ll call Child Protection Services to see if they’ve had any reports we haven’t acted on or any at all. I’ll also swing by the school to talk to the principal and ask him to talk to his teachers to see if any of them have concerns, either reported or unreported. In the meantime, you bag a book he stole and call me. Tell me when you can bring it in. When you do, I’ll have an artist here who can take your description and give us a picture we can go on. That all good with you?”

  “A police artist?” she asked, again looking at him with that expression of adorable, effective wonder.

  “A police artist, yeah,” he answered, expending not a small amount of effort to ignore her look. “You might not think you’re good at describing someone but they’re trained to pull it out of you and they’re good at what they do.”

  “A police artist,” she whispered.

  “Yeah,” Chace replied.

  “And fingerprints.” She was still whispering.

  “Yeah, Faye, got no clue who this kid is. Gotta do something to find him, find out what’s happening to him and put a stop to it. We don’t have a name. We don’t have an address. So we have to work with what we’ve got.”

  She was still whispering when she repeated, “Put a stop to it.”

  Now, Chace was confused. She seemed stunned. Not in a bad way, that wonder was still clear in her expression. But stunned all the same.

  “Uh, yeah, Faye. That’s why you came here and reported this, isn’t it? To put a stop to bad shit happening to a kid. So, let’s set about doin’ that, yeah?”

  He stopped speaking and she said nothing, just stared up at him, those blue eyes big and locked on him.

  But Chace was done. Done with this conversation. Done with gathering info and giving detail on what they were going to do. And especially done with being in a private room with the town’s pretty librarian looking at him like he parted the Colorado River so she could get to the other side without the unnecessary hassle of getting wet. Something only her own personal miracle worker could offer her.

  But Faye Goodknight was not done.

  He’d know this when suddenly she was not two feet away but in his space. So far in his space, her soft body was pressed the length of his, her arms were around his shoulders, one hand curled around the back of his neck, fingers in his hair, putting pressure on to bend his head. And last, her mouth was pressed hard to his.

  What the fuck?

  He put his hands to her hips to push her away, his mind filled with how he could do that as gently as possible when her tongue came out and the tip touched his lips.

  And at that, Chace’s body and mouth made another decision before his mind could catch up. This being his arms closing around her tight, his mouth opening over hers, his tongue spiking out, pushing hers back into her mouth and then he kissed her, very hard, very wet and very, very deep.

  She didn’t taste like bubblegum.

  She tasted like bubblemint. Sweet and fresh and fucking fantastic.

  He kept one of his arms locked tight around her waist while he slid the other hand up her spine, her neck and into her hair.

  Fucking hell, silk.

  Better than he imagined.

  Better than he could even dream.

  He bent forward slightly, arching her over his arm, forcing her body deeper into his and she moaned a sweet, soft moan against his tongue.

  It was the best thing he’d ever tasted in his life.

  In some faraway, vague recess of his mind that wasn’t intent on her body pressed against his, the feel of her hair in his hand, the taste of her on his tongue and what all that was doing to his body, he realized she had no clue what she was doing. She was along for his ride. A willing, eager participant, giving, opening herself to him and doing nothing more but letting him take what he wanted.

  It was, by far, the best kiss he’d ever had.

  And on that thought, his brain caught up to his mouth and body and he tore his mouth from hers as he curled his fingers into
her waist and shoved her back roughly.

  She retreated three steps, her body not in control with the force of his shove, before she righted herself.

  But she wasn’t feeling his shove. She hadn’t even processed the fact she was no longer in his arms.

  She was staring at him, rose in her cheeks, mouth soft and swollen, lips parted, eyes hooded, visibly affected by his kiss which meant she wore the fact that she was supremely turned on all over her face.

  Just from one kiss.

  It was a fucking good look.

  It was the kind of look a man would get once and then fight and die to have aimed his way on a regular basis.

  Fuck him.

  Fuck him.

  “What the fuck was that?” he clipped and she blinked but that look didn’t leave her face.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “What… the fuck… was that?” he ground out.

  “I –” she started, blinking again, but he didn’t let her continue.

  “Don’t do that shit again, Faye,” he growled, took a step toward her and pointed in her face. “Do not do that shit again.” He dropped his hand but put his face where his hand had been and kept growling. “I don’t know what bullshit game you’re playin’, following me around, suddenly everywhere I am. But straight up, I’m not playin’ it. You got some romantic idea I’m a wounded soul you can heal with…” he shook his head and flipped out a hand, “your limited charms, think again. I already told you, I do not want your concern. I do not want your company. And I do not want your inexperienced bullshit fumbling. Trust me, I had in my bed the master at that shit and she got nowhere. And you, just now, got as much as you’ll ever get. Get this in your head, Faye, all I want from you is for you to leave me the fuck alone.”

  He didn’t allow the look on her face to register. He didn’t know what was happening with her. What he did know was, for her sake, he had to make his point clear. And if that meant being a dick, he had to be a dick.

  So he was a dick.

  He turned around and prowled to the door.

  But at it, he braced, turned back and looked at her. He ignored the pain back in her features and the fact that it was magnified to such an extreme, if he wasn’t set on ignoring it, honest to Christ, it would have brought him to his knees.

  “You get a book, you call Frank Dolinski. I’ll brief him, he’ll be your point of contact from now on,” he informed her, turned, yanked open and strode through the door, through the Station and straight outside where he walked to his truck.

  And while he did this, he didn’t give one fuck that Jon’s eyes followed him the whole way nor did he care what that would mean tomorrow would bring.

  Chapter Three

  Drift Away

  You’re giving up?!?!?

  I stared at the message box on my computer and sighed.

  Yes, I was giving up. A week ago, Chace had laid it out. I didn’t get it. I wasn’t experienced enough to know. It felt for a good while there, when his arms were around me tight, his lips locked to mine, his hand in my hair, that he was into kissing me…

  Kissing me.

  And oh, my, fraking Lord, what a kiss.

  And to be that good, it seemed he had to be into it. Into me. Like Lexie said. Way into me in a hungry heart, longing, soul destroying if you can’t have it, put your life on the line to get it kind of into me, well, into me.

  Then I suddenly wasn’t in his arms and he was making it perfectly clear he was not into me.

  Not at all.

  Not even a teeny, tiny bit.

  And I had a wise father who liberally shared his wisdom, a wise mother who shared her wisdom through deed rather than action and I also had a Master’s in Library Science.

  I was no dummy.

  I got it.

  So I was giving up.

  I lifted my hands to the keyboard and typed to my on-line friend Benji, We weren’t getting anywhere anyway.

  We were! He typed back. It has to be someone in The Elite who hired the hit. And we’ve already discovered some of the players! The money behind the corruption. The money that paid for a clean hit. We have to keep digging.

  I’d met Benji on a forum celebrating everything that was the new Battlestar Gallactica, or, as Benji called it, “The best television show fraking ever.”

  I disagreed. I loved Battlestar Gallactica but Firefly was by far and away the best television show ever which made its mid-season cancellation an act (I thought) of sacrilege. Fortunately, they made a movie about it. And also fortunately, Nathan Fillion moved onto another awesome show, Castle.

  But nothing topped Firefly.

  Nothing.

  Years ago, Benji and my relationship had gone off-forum and grown so I’d introduced him to my other on-line friend SerenityWash. I’d met her on a Firefly forum and that was her screen name. Me thinking she was a “her” was the fact that she could perv on Nathan Fillion for hours in a way that I wasn’t sure but I thought could not be gay-love. Serenity and I were friends, close. We’d “known” each other years and we messaged each other all the time, talking about life, jobs, family, thoughts, feelings, emotions but I didn’t know her real name, her gender, where she lived or anything tangible about her. All of this she gave hints at but at the same time guarded like it was a State secret. So I never knew if the hints were real or if she was trying to throw me off-track.

  SerenityWash was her screen name, the name of the spaceship in Firefly, “Serenity”, plus her favorite character from the show, “Wash”.

  Benji’s screen name, by the way, was “AdmiralAdamaforPresident”. Seeing as this was a pain in the behind to type out, I’d made him give me his real name. And I knew he was a man since he perved on Number Six from that show in a way no woman could.

  He’d also told me his full name was Benjamin and I didn’t know any girls named Benjamin so I was thinking his gender was not in question.

  Over the years, I’d kept them up-to-date on the goings-on in Carnal. I’d also shared my long-distance, unrequited love for Detective Chace Keaton. They’d gotten interested, especially when things heated up and finally exploded. That included the news that Misty Keaton was dead and her husband was free to be, they hoped, with me.

  They’d stayed interested, maybe unhealthily, and talked me into doing the same. And the unhealthy part about this was that they were both good at computers. They lived on the fringe of society, devoted themselves to on-line communities and geek television. They were always gearing up for then rabidly attending any geek convention that came their way. They also indulged in such other pursuits as, say, hacking and amateur sleuthing.

  This also led me to my middle of the night trip, one of many, to the scene of the crime. I, of course, had no clue what I was looking for. Serenity, of course, watched Bones and told me you could catch a murderer by examining dirt. I didn’t have three doctorates in entomology, botany and mineralogy like the fictional Jack Hodgins did on that show, nor did I have a space age lab to take a sample to be tested, so I had no idea what they expected me to do with the dirt at Harker’s Wood. I did, however, live in Carnal and, head in a book, fingers on a keyboard with on-line friends, eyes trained to geek TV or not, I still knew a lot of the bad guys seeing as they were police and made their presence smotheringly known. So this also meant I knew most of them were idiots. And idiots couldn’t commit murder and get away with it.

  So up to Harker’s Wood I went when no one could see me. I looked around, combed that wood so thoroughly that by now I knew it like the back of my hand.

  But I never found anything.

  I also, like Benji and Serenity, never gave up.

  Until now.

  I hadn’t shared the recent events because both of them were openly hoping that our activities would reach a desirable conclusion, make Chace take notice of me and then, promptly, fall head over heels in love with me.

  Obviously, this wasn’t going to happen.

  So now it was time for us to stop trying t
o do what we were never going to do anyway. Even if Benji had hacked into the Carnal Police Department’s computer server and Serenity had somehow managed to hack into and follow along with conversations and text messages on more than a dozen cell phones.

  And what we were trying to do that we’d never do was find Misty Keaton’s murderer.

  Furthermore, even before the recent unpleasant and confusing (but unfortunately, for several beautiful moments, also excruciatingly exciting) Chace Encounters, I was getting worried.

  This was because Serenity was turning up names that my own lame, internet searches showed were wealthy, powerful people. Big money. Old money. Judges. Businessmen. Politicians. Powerbrokers.

  Serenity was convinced that the now dead ringleader of a dirty band of dirty cops, Arnold Fuller, had these guys in his pocket. And Serenity was convinced that even though Fuller was very dead, a man like him couldn’t yank the chains of men like that unless he had the goods on them. And last, Serenity was convinced that these goods did not die with Fuller.

  They were out there.

  She also thought that if we found Misty’s murderer, we’d find this. In the brouhaha that followed Ty Walker’s exoneration and the exposure of corruption in Carnal, none of this came out.

  So Serenity was convinced there was another shoe that would drop and the best way for a shoe to drop without causing any damage was to aim it yourself.

  As you could imagine, this did not fill me with glee. It didn’t even fill me with trepidation. It filled me with the desire to run screaming from this pet project and never look back.

  Alas, Benji and Serenity were dug in. Fortunately, Serenity’s real identity was hidden so far behind a wall of her computer cunning that it was likely no one could hack it. And Benji lived in England so, hopefully, the long reach of Colorado money and power wouldn’t extend that far.

  But I was done. Chace had called my charms “limited” and my kiss “bullshit fumbling” so I wasn’t actually done. I was done. I didn’t want any reminders of him. Luckily, I worked in the library, a building, to my knowledge, he’d never stepped foot inside of in thirteen years. And since I was the only paid employee at the library, I figured it was safe to say he never had and therefore never would. And I wasn’t going back to the diner. I was also giving up La-La Land coffee. This stunk. Shambles and Sunny’s coffee was awesome and Shambles’s baked goods were to die for.