26. twenty-four
twenty-four
. . .
ASPEN
Caught in that land between awake and asleep, I was only distantly aware of Crew getting out of bed—then returning in a rush sometime later.
I rose further from unconsciousness when he started speaking with someone on the phone.
I came fully awake when he shouted, “Lane, Aspen’s car is on fucking fire in my driveway! Get your ass out of bed and get here now .”
Fire.
Aspen.
Car.
As the word coalesced into a coherent thought, I bolted upright, barely registering I was still in Crew’s bed—and that we’d spent all night cuddling.
“My car is on fire?” I croaked.
Crew winced. “Yeah. I’m sorry.” His hand lifted to cup the back of his neck. “But hey, at least you weren’t in it?”
He phrased it as more of a question, and I choked on a laugh. I appreciated the dark humor, actually. If I didn’t laugh, I knew I’d cry, and I was done giving this crazy fucker my tears .
There was no other explanation, and while I knew it’d be difficult to confirm, I refused to believe the person who attacked me wasn’t also behind this.
“I want to see.”
“Aspen…”
“It’s my car, Crew. I deserve to see it.”
“Okay, but I’m warning you, it’s not pretty.”
Throwing the covers back, I crawled out of bed. I was on my feet before I remembered I wasn’t wearing pants, and even in the room only dimly lit by the light from the rising sun, I didn’t miss the way Crew’s eyes darkened.
“No pants?” he asked hoarsely.
“You’re just now realizing this?” I asked, awkwardly squeezing my thighs together and tugging on the hem of the oversized tee I favored for sleeping. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t plan on, you know…staying.”
“Never apologize for… this ,” he said, gesturing at me. “My only regret is that I don’t have time to explore what’s underneath.”
A shiver of excitement raced down my spine, morphing into desire that pooled in my core. We’d been dancing around this thing between us for weeks, neither of us ballsy enough to cross that line and say what we’d both been thinking.
Until now.
“One day,” I replied boldly, though my voice was barely above a whisper.
One side of Crew’s mouth twitched up in that sexy little smirk I was coming to crave from him. “One day,” he agreed. Then he dipped into his closet, returning a moment later with a pair of sweatpants and hoodie I’d likely drown in. Still, I slipped the pants on and pulled the string as tight as it would go, rolling them several times at the waist before cocooning myself in the hoodie .
Crew shot me a sexy, crooked grin as he helped me roll the sleeves up.
“You’re cute.”
“I look like I’m playing dress up in my dad’s clothes,” I murmured.
“I’m not your father, Aspen,” he said softly, then leaned closer, his lips brushing the shell of my ear, “but I can definitely be your daddy.”
Choking on a laugh, I shoved him away.
“Let’s go assess the damage to my poor baby, you freak.”
“Oh, honey, you have no idea,” he chuckled as he gestured me out ahead of him.
Right when we stepped outside, a sleek black SUV pulled to a stop on the outskirts of the drive, giving a wide berth to my smoldering Suburban. Not far behind came another vehicle, this one I recognized as Lane’s.
Trey got out of his and ambled toward us.
“Got the alert,” he said. “Came as fast as I could.”
Crew must’ve caught my confused expression because he said, “Trey owns a private security company and is responsible for all the systems on all of our homes. So when something goes wrong here, or at the ranch?—”
Trey wiggled his phone. “I get an alert too.”
“That’s…handy.”
Trey snorted. “They frequently call me Big Brother, which isn’t the insult they think it is since I am, quite literally, their big brother.”
“You are also, quite literally , a pain in my ass,” Crew muttered.
“Takes one to know one.”
“Fight nice, children,” Lane said as he joined the group.
“You’re younger than me,” Trey reminded him.
“And yet I’m the only one with a badge.”
“Not technically true,” Crew piped in.
Rubbing my temples, I blurted, “Can we not? ”
Though I’d spoken softly, I may as well have shouted for the way the three of them stopped dead like they’d been frozen in time.
They all opened their mouths to start speaking at once, but the blare of an emergency vehicle horn cut through the air, and a fire truck rounded the bend into the driveway.
Completely unnecessary, in my opinion, as the fire appeared to be out.
“Did you put that out?” I asked Crew.
He nodded. “I keep some equipment handy in the garage, but I’m going to have to replace my extinguisher now.”
“Thank you.”
“No thanks necessary, little phoenix.”
The fire truck pointed itself at the husk of my car, lights illuminating the area so they could work to ensure the fire was completely out. One firefighter pointed a hose at it, dousing the entire thing from end to end a few times, and we all stood in silence as it hissed and cooled.
When the smoke cleared, and my eyes caught on the scorched garage doors, my blood ran cold. Unbidden, my feet propelled me forward until I stood only a few feet away.
“Aspen!” someone hollered from behind me. “What the fuck are you doing?”
The gravel of the drive crunched beneath fast approaching footsteps, and I knew by the way my nerve endings charged like they’d been plugged into an electrical socket that Crew had joined me.
We stood in silence as we read the words painted across his garage door in a deep red.
YOU CAN RUN…
“Fucking hell,” the sheriff muttered when he joined me and Crew .
“Is that…blood?” I whispered.
Lane pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves and approached the words, swiping a finger through the Y and bringing it to his nose.
“Spray paint.”
“Was that there when you got home?” I asked.
Crew shook his head, jaw clenched tightly. “No. What time did you have your nightmare?”
“Eleven twenty-four.” Lane raised a brow. “I looked at my phone when I woke up.”
“I got home at midnight,” Crew said, the whirled on Lane. “This is your fault, you know.”
Lane snorted. “How do you figure?”
Crew stalked toward Lane, pushing right up into his personal space, wagging a finger in his face as he began shouting.
“It’s your job to find this fucker! Now my goddamn house is a crime scene, and Aspen is still in danger!”
Noticing his boss was caught in the middle of an altercation—though perhaps not understanding it was more a feud between brothers than anything else—a deputy stepped between them and shoved Crew back.
“Mind your manners, smoke eater,” the deputy said.
Like a train crashing into a school bus on the tracks, I was as unable to look away as I would’ve been to stop what happened next.
Crew grinned—a full on, terrifying bearing of his teeth—at the deputy.
Then he swung his fist right into the center of the deputy’s face.
“Crew!” I shouted at the same moment blood spurted like a faucet from the deputy’s nose.
“Trey!” Lane yelled as he grabbed the deputy a moment before he could lunge in retaliation.
Trey waded into the fray, hauling Crew backward with his arms hooked around Crew’s elbows, speaking to him too low for me to make out.
The deputy was belligerent, shouting about arresting Crew, pressing assault charges, and a bunch of other shit I had no doubt Lane would quash as soon as possible.
In the commotion, I hadn’t noticed the ambulance appear until a paramedic approached the deputy where Lane had sat him out of the way, on the top step of Crew’s porch.
“Sutt,” Lane said, surprised. “What’re you doing here?”
“Heard the call over the radio,” the woman said. “Thought I’d come check on everyone. Seems I arrived right in time.”
She turned and raised a brow at Lane, who snorted, giving me the first good look at her face.
Though my memories of that night were hazy at best, her features crystalized and sharpened the longer I stared at her until it finally clicked.
“You were there that night,” I blurted.
I didn’t need to explain which one, and the paramedic nodded.
“Sutton Rausch,” she said in introduction. “Good to see you on your feet, Miss McKay.”
“You can call me Aspen.”
“Well, Aspen, I’m happy to see you mobile.”
“Thank you for your help that night.”
“Just—”
“Doing your job,” I finished for her with an eye roll.
Sutton laughed. “You’ve heard that before, I take it?”
I hooked my thumb in Crew’s direction. “Seems to be his favorite mantra.”
She nodded. “I’ve worked alongside him since he moved home, and you won’t find a firefighter better at their job or a man more protective than him.”
Lane scoffed next to me. “What about me? ”
Sutton didn’t look up from where she mopped the blood off the deputy’s face. “It runs in the family, that’s for sure.”
The way she said it didn’t make it sound like a good thing where Lane was concerned.
After cooling down enough to be allowed near people once again, Crew approached and pulled Lane to the side. Wanting to be included, I followed them down the drive and out of earshot of the first responders milling around.
I joined the guys in time to see Lane smack Crew upside the head.
“You’re fucking lucky I’m the sheriff and can bury this, you dipshit. Otherwise I’d have to arrest your ass for assaulting an officer.”
“He had it coming.”
Lane sighed and wisely dropped it. We could both tell he wasn’t getting through to Crew, not right now, and not like this.
Clearly desperate for a subject change, Lane asked, “Notice anything weird when you were knocking it down?”
“Diesel.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“They’re fucking taunting her now,” Crew ground out, his jaw ticking as he looked at me. There was such… rage in his eyes. I knew it wasn’t directed at me, but it still had me yielding a step. Correctly interpreting my movement as fear, he blinked, replacing it with wariness and worry. Then he reached for me, and I let him take my hand, allowing the contact to soothe us both.
“That’s why I’d like to take her into protective custody.”
“Absolutely fucking not,” Crew spat at his brother.
“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice,” Lane said.
“The hell I don’t. She’s safest here with me .”
Lane raised a brow, glancing pointedly between us and the burned out husk of my Suburban. “You sure about that? ”
“She’s not going anywhere with you and your useless fucking deputies,” Crew snarled, getting in his brother’s face. “Definitely not with Johns involved.”
“I heard that, you stupid fuck!” the deputy—Johns, presumably—shouted.
Crew shot his brother a look as if to say, see what I mean ?
Before things could get out of hand, or before Crew could assault another cop tonight, I squeezed his fingers tightly. His attention turned to me instantly, menacing expression softening to concern.
“How about we let me decide what I want to do?”
Lane glanced at me, blinking slowly, as if remembering I stood right there while they’d been talking about me like I didn’t. “I suppose that would be the humane thing to do.”
I snorted. “You think?”
The sheriff pursed his lips and crossed his arms over his chest. “And I’m sure I can accurately assume you’re going to stay here.”
I nodded, tucking myself into Crew’s side. “It’s like he said: I’m safest with him.”
Lane tipped his face toward the sky, squeezed his eyes shut, and sighed heavily. Then he looked at Crew. “Would you at least let Trey run a check and make sure everything is working properly?”
Crew nodded. “That’s fine.”
“Did I hear my name?” the third Lawless brother asked, strolling up to our little pow wow.
Beyond the house, the sky had lightened considerably while we’d been out here, no longer that bruised purple right before dawn but a soft golden getting brighter by the minute.
Between this and the nightmare I’d had late last night, this had already been an especially long and emotionally draining day. I was ready to crawl back into bed .
The thought of my nightmare combined with the words on the garage triggered something else in my memory, and I blurted, “Did the firefighters find any sort of timing device?”
Their conversation about Crew’s security system died, and three pairs of eyes turned to me, two of them narrowed in confusion, the third wide in understanding.
“The weird noises you heard last night,” Crew said, thankfully remembering my off-handed comment from when he’d found me in his bed.
“What weird noises?” Lane asked.
I screwed my eyes shut, willing myself to recall those dark, quiet moments that had been interrupted. “Scuffling noises, I guess. I thought it might’ve been an animal of some sort, but there were also a couple bangs. Not loud. More like…muffled. Those happened right as I was on the edge of sleep, though, so I could’ve imagined them.”
Lane withdrew his little notebook from his pocket, quickly jotting down what I’d said. “Where in the house were you?”
“The guest room at first, and then after the second time I heard it, I went to Crew’s room.”
“Because it’s furthest from the doors,” Lane said with a nod, as though that explained everything.
Crew and I shared a secret smile, neither of us correcting him.
Whatever was happening between us wasn’t anyone’s business but our own, especially not while we were still figuring it all out.
Lane continued to scribble as Crew paced away, pulling one of the firefighters aside. After a moment, the firefighter walked back to my car, which was recognizable as nothing other than a melted and blackened frame. He got on his hands and knees, using the metal tool in his hand to sweep underneath, both along the undercarriage and the ground, brushing any debris out into the gathering light .
The second the little black square appeared, and Crew swore loud enough to be heard from thirty feet away, I knew.
I’d known before, of course, but now I had confirmation.
The fire had been set intentionally.
Another deputy produced an evidence bag, dropped the square inside, and handed it off to Crew, who walked it back to us.
“You ever seen anything like this?” he asked Trey.
Trey took it from him, pressing the plastic tight to the device to get a better look at it, running his fingers over the surface through the bag.
“It’s an incendiary device controlled by a remote,” he confirmed. “One this size would cover a relatively small area, but combined with the gas and oil in the car, we got— that .”
That being my totaled vehicle with a blast radius several feet wide around it.
Fuck, I was stranded here.
The thought made my skin prickle with anxiety, that desire to run taking over. My breaths came quicker, my sight going a little hazy around the edges.
“Aspen?”
My name barely registered, but then warm hands were on my upper arms, a handsome face ducking into my field of vision.
“Breathe, little phoenix.”
That nickname penetrated the roaring in my ears, bringing me back to the surface enough to gulp down air.
“Is she okay?” another one of the guys asked.
A female voice piped in. “She’s having a panic attack.”
“Jesus Christ,” someone else swore.
“Aspen,” the voice attached to that gorgeous face I was coming to adore so much said softly. “Breathe with me.”
I matched the cadence of his inhales and exhales, and gradually, my breathing returned to normal, heart rate lowering considerably .
In the aftermath, when the excess adrenaline vacated my system, I was shaky and drained. Crew’s arms wrapped around me, and I was too weak to protest as he swept me into his arms. I buried my face in his neck, keeping my eyes closed and letting his scent soothe me.
“I’m going to take her inside. You guys do what you need to do out here, and I’ll touch base with you later. I’m on shift today, so maybe swing by the station later.”
“I’ll need to get inside to check the system,” Trey said.
“You know the code,” Crew said. Then, quieter, added, “You set the damn thing.”
Even in my exhaustion, I chuckled softly into Crew’s shirt.
Once we were inside and the blissful quiet of the house converged around us, Crew brought us back to his room and once again settled us in the center of his bed. For a long while, we were content to sit in the silence, both of us working through the events of the morning in our own way.
“I need to get a new car,” I croaked eventually.
“Let’s not worry about that right now.”
“Why not?” I asked, peeling my face from the crook of his shoulder to peer up at him.
“Because you’re not going anywhere alone until we catch this fucker, so I don’t see any reason why you need a vehicle right now.”
Oh.
That’s how he wanted to play this.
I threw myself from his arms and was on my feet in a flash.
“That’s not how this works.”
“Not how what works?” he asked, rising to stand as well, though he wisely maintained several feet of space between us. “Me wanting to keep you safe? Me wanting to ensure some deranged killer doesn’t have the opportunity to finish what they started? ”
I sighed. “I know you mean well, Crew. But you can’t keep me locked up here like some damsel in distress. I’m a grown woman.”
“I know that. And I know you can take care of yourself. But please, just… please .”
I’d been prepared to stand my ground and press him on this until he relented, but his pleading tone took all the fight right out of me. I’d known from the very start the kind of man Crew was. One who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders in the form of wanting to protect everyone he held dear.
I knew he didn’t think me incapable of watching my own back. He knew I could. He simply wanted to look after me, and I was fucking honored to be someone he cared about so much.
“Okay,” I whispered at last.
He deflated, closing the distance between us to wrap me in an embrace. In his arms, cocooned in his warmth, was the safest place I could imagine.
“I know I’ve said it before, but I really couldn’t take it if something happened to you. Only until we catch this fucker, and then you can go wherever the wind blows you.”
The words were…almost resigned. Like he hadn’t even gotten me yet and was already bracing for the day I’d leave.
Because that’s exactly what would happen. We’d crack this case, put this sicko behind bars, and I’d be gone. Off on my next great adventure.
There’d be another small town. More families to save and more justice to serve.
But there’d never be another Crew Lawless.
This man…he was this town. His entire family was here, his roots ran deep into the ground beneath our feet. I knew there was nothing I could do or say to convince him there was a big world out there worth exploring.
A world he should explore with me .
We had to content ourselves with having an expiration date, so maybe there was something to be said for the fact that we hadn’t yet crossed any physical boundaries beyond hugs and handholding.
It’d make it that much harder to walk away when the time came.