Chapter 25
Grayson
One week later. Astoria, OR.
Seven days.
I’d been with Carrie for seven days—snowed in with her in her blue house. The second round of storms was worst than expected, starting off with snow and turning into solid ice. All my life, I’d hated the thought of snow, but over the last week, I’d come to love it.
I seemed to love anything if Carrie was involved.
We spent the days together in a blissful haze unlike anything I’d never known. She cooked for me. I cooked for her. We took turns doing chores around the house. I fixed the door to the basement, which I learned Carrie never goes down into because she had “seen enough scary movies to know that avoiding basements is a smart idea.”
For the first time in a week, she was back at work. She told me about Sarah and the grumpy barista known as Margo. Then, of course, the old English man, Rossy, who owned the store. I let her ramble on about her bookstore adventures when her head was on my chest and we were cuddled up in her bed two nights ago. My sunshine was a talker, and I was more than happy to listen, even when she was telling me information I already knew.
I knew everything about her coworkers, from Rossy’s work visa that was about to expire, to Margo’s credit card debt. I knew everything about Sarah and Michael Humbly.
That was why I was sitting comfortably in Sheriff Humbly’s office, waiting on him to return from his lunch so we could have a discussion. After walking through town this morning after dropping Carrie off, Leo’s disappearance was already on people’s minds.
The door to Michael’s office flew open behind me, and I didn’t bother looking over my shoulder at him.
“What the fuck?” he whispered.
“Nice to see you too, Sheriff,” I drawled, folding my arms over my chest.
He came around to my front, glaring at me. “What the fuck?” he repeated.
“You’ve already said that,” I noted calmly before gesturing to his seat. “Sit. We have some things to discuss.”
“Look, Mr. Grayson, I don’t have the time for this. I have a missing person to find—”
“—then I suggest you take your fucking seat,” I bit off, baring my teeth as I glared up at him.
He blinked, realization dawning. As he walked around his desk, taking his seat, he asked, “Are you—are you here to help us?”
I stared at him, not giving a single fuck that I was about to shred every ounce of hope in his voice.
“Leo Samuels is dead,” I deadpanned.
Michael Humbly’s face transformed at the sound of my words, his jaw tightened as his spine snapped straight, but it was the flash in his brown eyes that caught my attention. I bit down on my jaw once, twice before leaning forward, forearms against my knees. “Do you understand why I’m here?” I asked.
“Whatever you’re about to say, I advise you not to,” he warned me, his words coming out slow and calculated.
Smart man.
He knew I was behind Leo’s death, and if he was searching my face for remorse, he wouldn’t find any.
“Nothing you do will keep me behind bars, Sheriff Humbly.”
“You say that like a man who has never paid for his fucking actions,” he spat, his lips thinning.
My lips curled into a cruel smile, a low chuckle coming from me. “I have my own version of justice.”
He said nothing, his eyes darting for the phone on his desk.
“Lift a fucking finger, and I won’t even give you a chance to scream before you join him,” I threatened, a growl in the back of my throat.
The sheriff’s eyes snapped back to me, his chest heaving as I rose from my seat and braced my hands on his desk, letting him see the gun strapped to my hip. “Carrie is mine.”
“What…” He trailed off, his eyes searching my face as he slowly connected the dots. I gave him time, waiting patiently. When it finally clicked, he jerked back. “You killed him because of her—because of his interest in her,” he seethed, leaning forward.
My head ticked to the side as I cracked a smile. “No, Sheriff, though that is enough motive for me to kill a man. His interest in my woman isn’t the reason he’s dead.”
His nostrils flared. “Be very careful what you say next.”
I leaned down further, my blood humming. “He was going to hurt her—he was hurting her.”
Suddenly, the dynamic between he and I shifted. He blinked, realization hitting him for a second time. “He was what ?” he whispered, devastation twisting his features.
“Found her bound to her headboard, delirious,” I growled, baring my teeth, the images of that night coming back. The terror in her eyes when she looked at me, tears running down her cheeks. “She invited him over for dinner, and he fucking drugged her with this.” I slapped her blood test results down in front of him.
Michael’s eyes dropped to the paper. I waited, watching as he discovered just how much of a monster his old friend was. He shook his head, leaning back and pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Christ,” he muttered, sadness in his voice.
I rose back to my full height, going to one of the bookcases on the wall that was curiously absent of books. Instead, it was filled with his achievements and photos of his wife and children. I remembered looking at it almost eight months ago.
“Is she alright?” he asked my back.
“She is now,” I said, not looking at him, focusing on the picture of him and Leo on the top shelf. They were young, probably early twenties, standing side by side on a dock, Leo’s fishing boat behind them. I'd missed seeing this photo last time I was here.
Humbly mumbled something under his breath. “Why didn’t you call this in?”
I looked over my shoulder to find him glaring at me. “I doubt you needed the paperwork, Sheriff,” I noted, looking down at his messy desk.
“So you just, what? Committed a murder and—”
I whirled on him, not liking his tone. “I did what any other red-blooded male would do if he saw his woman being attacked, Sheriff ,” I quipped sharply. His mouth snapped shut, his eyes hard. “I came here today to inform you that Leo Samuels is no longer breathing and to advise you to declare the case cold. You will never find him, and this will never be pinned on Carrie.”
His jaw worked, mulling over my words. “And you’ll never face jail time for it, right?” he shot back, shooting up from his seat.
I folded my arms over my chest. “I’m the last kind of man you want behind bars,” I assured darkly.
“And what about the townspeople?” He ran a hand through his hair. “They are going to ask questions.”
“And Carrie has her answers memorized if that happens,” I returned.
We glared at each other, more anger coming from him than me. “I don’t trust you,” he whispered.
I took a step forward. “I never asked you to trust me. You remember your place, and there won’t be any problems between us. You forget? I’ll have your badge and this town before you can even bat a fucking eye.”
I’d intended on leaving him with that, but when I got to the door, his words pinned me in place. “If she’s yours, then you better take care of those death threats too.”
I stiffened and slowly, I twisted my neck, meeting his eyes over my shoulder. “There’s more?” I asked, my voice like iron.
He shook his head, looking to the ceiling. “Judging by your reaction, you knew about them.” I turned to face him head on as he added, “She told me you didn’t know about them.”
“I knew about the first,” I clarified. “Carrie didn’t know I knew. I found it in her journal the night I was supposed to bring her in.”
“And why didn’t you?” he questioned, shooting up from his seat. “Why didn’t you take her back to St. Louis, Grayson?”
I gave it to him, no hesitation. “She begged me not to.”
He quirked a brow. “Pretty certain all your targets beg for the same thing.”
I took a step forward, my voice like granite as I said, “All my other targets aren’t her, Sheriff.”
Michael raised his chin, challenging me. “You cared for her even then, huh?”
“I loved her even then,” I clipped.
He blinked, his eyes wide as the air around us shifted.
I realized it the second I saw her bound to her bed. I’d loved her from the moment she didn’t back down from me. I’d loved her from the moment she looked at me with those gorgeous blue eyes, her curls wild and untamed. She had been a vision then, and she was my only focus now. If I didn’t have Carrie, nothing else mattered—not even Red Snake.
My head ticked to the side as I snarled, “You getting the picture now? Or do I have to spell it out for you again?”
Clearing his throat, he looked away and explained to me that he’d found a note on her door a week ago. She assumed it was one of her neighbors, and Michael went on to explain that he’d brought the man in questioning. Nothing ever came of it, and Carrie never brought Michael the notes.
“I’ll take care of it,” I told him, my body vibrating with anger, anger towards myself for dismissing them so quickly, but also anger towards Carrie.
She hadn’t told me.
And that was a goddamn problem that needed to be rectified—quickly.
“And you’ve ruled out Leo?” Jake pressed on the other end of the phone.
I was sitting in my SUV, parked next to Carrie’s little sedan, on a conference call with Dominic and Jake. Ash was still out of commission, sticking to office work for now, and Hayes was on a hunt. I looked over to her little, beat-up sedan and decided we needed to get her something better—safer. I added that to my list of shit to do for her as I stared up at the house, the setting sun behind it creating a halo of sorts.
“Leo wanted Carrie. He didn’t want to kill her,” I replied, staring down at her opened file, something I’d been carrying with me for the last seven, almost eight months.
“And you want me to re-open the background checks on Robert Hale?”
He was asking for clarification because, months ago, before I declared her mine, I didn’t want anything to do with her. I was trying to push her out of my mind. Now? She had been dealing with these threats in silence for months, thinking nothing of it.
My gut knew different.
“Yes. He was abusive to Carrie, and I need to make sure his past isn’t catching up with her.”
A tense, dark silence filled the line then.
“He abused her?” Jake growled.
“She told me everything shortly after you boys left.” I bit down to the point of pain, hating that she had no one—this entire time, my sunshine thought she was utterly alone in this world. I knew that if the Oasis boys knew how Robert had been treating her, he would’ve been dead a lot sooner. She didn’t think she belonged with them, though. So she suffered alone, just like she was now.
“Done. Anything else you need?” he asked, trying to focus on the task at hand, even though I knew this was eating at him. Jake’s father wasn’t a good man, having beat his mother and sister while Jake was forced to hide in a closet as a child.
“I also need Hayes to comb through everything on her father. St. Louis may have put him behind bars, but not every stone was turned over. Something’s off about him. We’re all missing something,” I explained, my voice still filled with anger.
Dominic, being Dominic, picked up on it immediately. “Check yourself on that anger, Gray,” he advised softly. “This isn’t your fault.”
“I pushed it aside,” I shot back, rubbing my forehead. My woman had been in danger—- this whole time. I’d hoped the notes had stopped, and when she didn’t bring them up, I assumed so. “She didn’t tell me.”
“Give her some grace,” Dominic ordered. “She has been through a lot.”
I ignored him, unable to contain the red in my vision. “Give me everything you have on Hale and her father in six hours.”
“On it,” Jake replied.
Dominic said nothing.
I ended the call and flipped to the info on Robert Hale. After everything, Carrie had told me, this wasn’t the golden boy these words painted him to be. He’d had a dark side, and despite her father being blamed for his death, I couldn’t help but wonder if Carrie’s ex-husband had any enemies.