35. thirty-three
thirty-three
. . .
CREW
“So…” Aspen began as we curled up in bed, both fully sated after the most transcendent sexual experience of my life. Watching Aspen come apart under my touch over and over, seeing her bound in my rope, that fact that she’d let me explore that with her?
I was a goner.
Completely fucking ass over boots for this woman.
I loved her.
But I didn’t think I could tell her, not yet, not if I wanted any chance at keeping her.
“When you got home, we got…distracted before you could really fill me in on the call at the Lees.”
Home .
I loved the way she said it, like this place was hers as much as it was mine. Like we were building something here together. And goddamnit, I hoped we were. I wanted that more than my next breath.
I snuggled her closer. After driving her to her third orgasm—though I’d teased her long enough that the force of them probably made her body feel like she’d climaxed three hundred times— we cleaned up and tugged on comfy clothes before crawling back into bed. I had yet to sleep, but we did need to talk about the fire first.
“Have you told anyone besides me who contacted you?” I asked.
She shook her head, her hair scratching against the stubble on my chin. “Not that I can think of. I’ve spoken to Ginny a decent amount about the victims, but nothing in detail. When Lane asked, I told him it was privileged information. Do you think…”
Her body stiffened, and she jolted upright.
“What is it?”
“Do you think the killer has my phone tapped or something?”
My breath stalled in my chest, and I rolled my lips between my teeth as I considered that.
“Where’s your phone?” I whispered.
“The living room,” she replied at a normal volume, and I relaxed.
The last thing I wanted was some creepy fucker listening in on Aspen and I having sex. But…this was only one of many times, and her phone hadn’t always been in another room.
A shiver wracked my body, a matching one racing through hers as she came to the same conclusion. Fuck, what a disgusting invasion of privacy.
“I’m going to call Trey,” I said. “Have him come check it out.”
Aspen nodded, seeming a million miles away as I got off the bed and sifted through the abandoned clothing on the floor in search of the pants I had on earlier. I found them, and thus my phone, and dialed my brother.
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” Trey asked.
“I needed to unwind after a long night first.”
My brother snorted. “ Right ,” he said knowingly .
I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of confirming his suspicion, not when I was still irritated with him for making a pass at Aspen. But I needed his help, so I bit the bullet and plowed ahead.
“Can you do me a favor and come over? There was a fire at the Lees’ place last night, and, well…it’s a lot to explain. I’ll fill you in when you get here, but we need your tech skills.”
“Sure. Give me thirty.”
When I turned back to the bed, I blinked slowly in confusion to find Aspen wasn’t there. Instead, she paced back and forth at its side, gnawing on the skin around her thumb.
A habit she reverted back to when she was extremely stressed, and I only knew because she’d told me so, not because I’d ever witnessed it firsthand. Things had never been this bad, not since I’d pulled her out of the fire. Her car was replaceable, the dumpster an obvious taunt, but burning down the Lees’ family home was on a whole new level.
This fucker was escalating, wearing both of us down, my girl most of all.
Crossing the room to her, I placed my hands on her shoulders to stop her.
“Hey, hey, what’s going on?”
“I wish I could remember that lost day,” she growled out in frustration. “If I could remember… something , we might have already caught this guy.”
“Baby, it’s not on you to find who is doing this.”
“Maybe not,” she conceded, looking up at me. “But I want to help. I’m the only living victim, Crew. I owe justice to the ones who didn’t get to live.”
“Have you talked to Lane about it? Maybe there’s some sort of interview technique he’s got in that cop repertoire of his that he can try.”
Aspen snorted. “Lane never wanted me here in the first place.” Her gaze dropped again, hair falling in her face as she said, “Maybe he was right. Maybe it’s time for me to go.”
“No.”
Final answer.
“Crew,” she sighed. “Me being here has dredged up all this shit for you, your family, and the residents of Dusk Valley. The Lees just lost their house! The place where Vicky had grown up.” Her voice cut off as she choked on a sob, tears instantly pouring from her eyes like someone had turned on a faucet. “A teenage boy nearly got arrested. You’ve been forced to confront your demons, and this entire town is on edge. That’s on me.” She swiped angrily at her cheeks. “Everything that’s happened the last few months is my fault.”
“No it’s not. You can’t shoulder the blame for any of it, and you can’t give up. We’re so close to catching this fucker. We wouldn’t be this close without you.”
“Yeah, but as long as I stay around, he’ll never leave me be. Maybe if I left, things would go back to normal.”
I shook my head. “What is normal anyway? All of us constantly looking over our shoulders, wondering if our daughter or sister is going to be next? No, little phoenix. You blowing into town and disrupting this guy’s MO is exactly what we needed, don’t you see that? He’s getting careless now. Taking chances he hadn’t been before.”
“I think things would be better for everyone if I left.”
“I refuse to accept that.”
She offered me a sad smile. “I’m afraid you don’t have a choice in the matter.”
“The hell I don’t.”
The look she gave me was pure venom, and I could practically see those walls going back up in her eyes as her spine straightened. “Just because you’re fucking me doesn’t give you the right to make decisions about my life.”
Oh, little phoenix . My girl was lashing out because she was hurting, not because she actually believed the shit coming out of her mouth.
“We’re doing a lot more than fucking ,” I growled.
“Doesn’t seem like it to me.”
“Then how about because I love you?” I said softly, with a calm I didn’t feel. “Does that give me the right to weigh in on your choices?”
Aspen stilled, and all the air around us seemed to evacuate.
Fuck, what had I done? I meant it, and I wouldn’t take it back, but the middle of an argument was absolutely not the time to say it.
“You don’t get to love me,” she whispered.
Oh god . Did that mean she didn’t feel the same?
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I’m not staying!” she exploded, pacing across the room, away from me. “Whether I leave tomorrow or whenever— if ever—we catch this guy tormenting me, this was always going to be temporary. This thing between us was nothing more than the result of me almost dying and you saving me from that fate. We got swept up in the investigation and heightened emotions because I nearly died. You’ll always be special to me because you brought me back to myself. But that’s all this is.”
No, that wasn’t how she felt at all. I knew it in the way she curled in on herself, in the way she refused to look at me. Aspen was lying to herself—and me.
She was crying again, and I understood why. She was trying to cut ties and run before things got too deep.
Well, newsflash, baby . I was already in as deep as it got, and I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“Is that really how you feel?” I pressed, taking a tentative step toward her. When she didn’t move, I took several more until I was right in front of her, my hands cupping her cheeks. I brushed the moisture leaking from her eyes away with my thumbs.
So fucking stubborn, my girl .
“Answer me, Aspen,” I demanded when she remained quiet. “Is that really how you feel? Do you really think this is just a fling?”
“No,” she squeaked out at last, crying in earnest now. “But I can’t see how this will work. I don’t…” She trailed off, as though unsure how to finish that.
“You can run your business from anywhere.”
“Yes, but?—”
I pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her. “So don’t use that as an excuse. Don’t make that the reason you leave. Please, baby. Let me be the reason you stay. Let us be the reason you stay.”
“I don’t know if I can,” she said, though she sagged against me, letting me wrap my arms tightly around her.
“You can,” I assured her. “Be brave for us, Aspen.”
“I want to be,” she murmured into my chest.
“Now is a good time to start.”
Her shoulders rose and fell with a deep inhale and exhale, and then she said, so quiet I almost didn’t hear her, “I love you too.”
Wrapping my arms tighter around her, I pressed my lips to her hair. “I know, baby.”
“I don’t know how this works or where we go from here.”
She lifted her head to look up at me, and I bent to kiss her. Her mouth was salty and sweet, the kiss soft but claiming. When I pulled away, I said, “One day at a time, okay? That was the agreement.”
Aspen nodded, then backed out of my arms. “I’m going to shower and freshen up before Trey gets here. I’ll be out in a bit.”
With a final kiss and a pat on her ass, I let her go. “I’m going to get Lane over here too.”
She murmured her agreement, and the moment the bathroom door closed behind her, I sent Lane a text, then hightailed it to the guest room.
Aspen spent every night in my bed—even the ones when I wasn’t here. Now that I knew she loved me, that meant my room was now officially our room.
My girl liked to take long showers, and after the morning we’d had, I knew she’d been in there for a while, allowing the hot water to soak into her limbs and ease any lingering tension, so I had plenty of time to complete my task.
Surprisingly, Aspen had taken the time to unpack her things, even going so far as to hang clothes up in the small closet. That made it easy to lift them all right off the rod and move them into the walk-in attached to my bedroom. Her tees and jeans looked perfect next to my work pants and shirts. Next I cleaned out the drawers of the hutch I used as a guest dresser, unceremoniously taking piles of my own clothes out of my dresser to replace with hers.
Lastly, I went to the bedside table, knowing from my previous foray into the drawer to get her vibrator that there were a few more personal things she’d stuffed in there. Medication she liked to have close by, lotion and lip balm, a dog-eared paperback by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. A spiral bound notebook.
I took it all out and laid it in a pile in the center of the bed, then stood hands on hips to survey the room, making sure I hadn’t forgotten anything.
Not that it mattered. She was only moving down the hall, not across the country. If there was something I’d missed, she could come grab it.
Satisfied with a job well done, I turned back to the bed to gather her things. The notebook I’d taken from the drawer had flopped to the side off the stack, its pages spread open.
I tried like hell not to look, but ultimately curiosity got the better of me, and before I could stop myself, I was lifting it to read what Aspen had written.
At first, I thought it was a diary of sorts, but as my eyes scanned the pages, it read like more of a logbook, detailing the ins and outs of Aspen’s work on the Prom Night Arsonist case .
I ate up her words like they were my new favorite story, but the more I read, the angrier I got. She’d poured so much onto those pages that my eyes swam with the words, barely making sense of it all, but still, some managed to permeate my brain.
Threatening email.
Note on my car.
Someone was watching me.
I saw red, and before I could fully think through my actions, I was storming down the hall and into my bathroom. Aspen was getting out of the shower, her lithe, naked body on display, but my cock didn’t so much as twitch. I was too pissed off.
Not at her, never at her. But at the fact that she’d been shouldering all of this alone. That she felt like she couldn’t share it with me.
Aspen grinned when she saw me, but it quickly fell as her gaze darted between me and the notebook I brandished.
“Where did you get that?” she snapped.
“Figured it was time you officially moved into my room, so I was getting your things and clearing out the guest room. Want to tell me what the fuck this is?”
“I think you know.”
“You’re right,” I nodded. We were past the point of explanations. “Then let me try again: want to tell me why the fuck you didn’t tell me about all this shit going on?”
Aspen’s movements were jerky as she lifted one of the plush white bath sheets off the shelf in the linen closet and wrapped it around her body. Instead of answering me, she stomped right past me into the bedroom, beelining for the closet.
At least she was taking the whole me moving her shit into my room thing in stride.
Like a little puppy dog, I followed her, leaning against the doorframe with crossed arms as she got dressed in black leggings, a sports bra, and one of my tees, which hung to her knees. Logically, I knew Aspen was her own person and not my property, but I’d be damned if that feral beast in my chest didn’t growl mine at the sight of her in my clothes. The need to claim her was almost unbearable, so I clenched my fists against the onslaught of desire and waited her out.
Finally, she faced me and mirrored my body language, though she lifted her hand and crooked her fingers at me. “Let’s hear it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it wasn’t your business.”
“It damn well is my business!” I shouted. “You’re being stalked Aspen. How is that not my business? At the very least, Lane deserves to know.”
Aspen snorted. “Fuck your brother.”
“I don’t disagree, but he is a cop.”
The fight left her in an instant, like a switch flipped, and she deflated. I crossed the distance between us and pulled her into my arms, where she sagged against me. “I’m tired, Crew.”
“I know,” I murmured, rubbing circles across her back.
I was tired too. Tired of this fucker lurking in the shadows, tormenting my town. Dragging innocent people—kids—into this mess they’d created. Hurting families that had already suffered enough pain to last several lifetimes.
And mostly, I was tired of the defeat lining Aspen’s beautiful face.
Before either of us could say anything else, a heavy knock came at the front door, followed by Trey shouting for me as he pushed inside.
Aspen made an irritated noise and pulled away from me. I chuckled, echoing the sentiment as I laced our fingers together and led us into the living room, where Trey waited on the couch.
“Make yourself at home,” I said with an eye roll.
I had a feeling I wouldn’t be getting sleep anytime soon, so I went into the kitchen to put coffee on.
“What’s yours is mine, little brother. ”
“No it’s not.”
Cutting to the chase, Trey asked, “Why am I here?”
Aspen lifted her phone off the coffee table, where it had been abandoned a few hours before when I’d gotten home from work, wisely powered it off, and handed it to Trey.
“We think my phone may be bugged,” she said.
Trey lifted a brow, eyes darting between us. “What makes you say that?”
Aspen and I shared a look, but before we could respond, the front door pushed open again, and Lane stepped inside.
“What’s going on?”
“They were about to tell me why they think Aspen’s phone has been bugged,” Trey told him.
Lane’s expression shifted from brotherly concern to cop mode in an instant.
I looked to Aspen. “You want to show him, or should I?”
“Show me what?”
She ignored him and said, “I will,” then disappeared down the hall. A moment later, she reappeared with the notebook and reluctantly handed it over to Lane.
“During the course of every investigation, I keep a notebook. Thoughts, random tidbits of information that don’t mean anything at the time but could pop off later, weird things that happen. That”—she nodded at the one in his hand—“is the one for this case.”
“And this matters to me, why?”
“The day I picked my car up from impound, I found a note under my windshield wiper. It’s tucked in the back there, but I also wrote down what it said in case it ever got lost. I’ve also been getting creepy emails.”
“What does this have to do with me?” Trey asked, almost bored.
“The fire at the Lees’ house wasn’t an accident,” Aspen said .
“No shit,” Lane muttered, and I cut him a glare that told him to shut the fuck up or he’d find my fist in his face.
“You asked me in our very first conversation how I knew about the case,” she told Lane.
“And you said a concerned citizen, who I now know was Leigh Lee.”
“Still wondering what this has to do with me.”
Aspen glared at Trey, then kicked out, knocking his booted foot off my coffee table with her bare one. Lane and I choked on our laughter.
“No one but Crew knew I’d spoken to the Lee family,” she finally told him. “But somehow, I don’t think the killer lighting their home on fire was a coincidence.”
Lane flipped through the notebook, pausing every so often to read a passage before moving on. Trey’s attention was fixed on the device in his hand.
“Can you run diagnostics on it or something and see if it’s been tapped?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “Though I’m not sure how they would’ve…”
He trailed off, mumbling things to himself that made no sense to me.
“Do you mind if I take photos of this?” Lane asked Aspen.
“Take the whole thing.”
“I’m going to need to see those emails too.”
“Sure,” she said, retreating to the office to print them.
“I can see the wheels spinning in both of your heads,” I said to my brothers. “Tell me what you think we’re dealing with here.”
“I think it’s likely this fucker has been keeping tabs on her,” Trey said.
“It’s an obsession,” Lane agreed.
“But why ?”
Though as soon as I asked, the reason occurred to me .
“She’s the one that got away,” Lane said, taking the words right out of my head. “This guy never had a vic survive until her. So it’s become a fixation. He’s taunting her, and taunting us because we still can’t nail him down, even with a survivor.”
“The fire at the Lees’ is an escalation though, right?”
Trey nodded. “He’s getting bolder. The spiral out of control is coming, and when it does, we have to be ready.”
“She doesn’t leave my sight when I’m off shift,” I said. “But…I’m gonna need help when I’m working. Or maybe I can take some furlough. Chief Madden will understand…”
I trailed off, mind whirring with a to-do list to square the firehouse away for me to take some time off, but Lane held up his hand.
“Not happening, baby brother.”
“Why not? She needs protection.”
“And I’m not disputing that. But you can’t take time off. We need to act like it’s business as usual or this guy will spook and we’ll never catch him.”
“Okay, fair enough. So what do you propose?”
My brothers shared a look, something unspoken passing between them, and when Trey turned to me with a shit-eating grin, I’d already opened my mouth to protest.
“She can stay at the ranch.”
I blinked in surprise. “Oh. That wasn’t what I thought you were going to say.”
Trey scoffed. “You thought I was going to suggest she bunk with me? Fuck no.” He held his hands up in surrender. “Learned my lesson, brother. She’s all yours.”
“You’re damn right.”
We all whirled on Aspen, who stood at the mouth of the hall, a sheaf of papers in her hand.
“My girl,” I grinned.
“I’m not opposed to staying at the ranch though,” she said, looking at me, and I breathed a sigh of relief that this wasn’t going to be a fight. “So long as you come with me.”
I groaned, and my brothers laughed, Lane slapping a hand down on my shoulder.
“Have fun with that,” he said, then accepted the stack of emails from Aspen, shuffling through them. There were more than I expected. “God, this fucker is sick.”
“Do I want to know?”
Aspen shook her head. “There’s one in there that came from a different email address than the rest. Could be from someone other than the killer.”
Lane’s brows pinched. “What do you mean?”
She moved to his side and took the papers, flipping through until she came to the one she wanted and pulled it from the stack, holding it out to him.
I joined Lane, and Trey stood to read over his shoulder.
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Can you help her?
The first is the key
Crowned the prom queen
Face forever locked in a scream
But who could the killer be?
“I’m so confused,” Trey said.
“Me too,” I agreed.
“Don’t you see?” Aspen asked. “‘ The first is key, crowned the prom queen ’? They’re obviously talking about Vicky Lee. She was the first victim, and was crowned prom queen the night she died. ”
“So we find out why Vicky was killed, and we catch our killer?” Lane asked.
Aspen hitched a shoulder up in a shrug. “You tell me, Sheriff.”
I grinned. Damn she was sexy talking about murder investigations. I’d already have her over my shoulder on the way to bed if my brothers weren’t here. The look Aspen gave me told me she had the exact same idea.
“Where are we at on Missy Plano?” I asked Lane, mostly to distract myself.
“I’ve been unable to make contact. General consensus is that she’s out of town. Left with some high rolling tourist a few weeks ago and hasn’t come back yet.”
Fuck . We really needed to interview her. I had this gut feeling she had information that could change things for ths investigation. That feeling grew even stronger now that we knew Vicky Lee was likely the key to unraveling this entire thing.
“Can I borrow your computer?” Trey asked Aspen. “I want to run diagnostics on that too. Maybe it’s not your phone that’s been compromised, but your computer. I have no idea how they would’ve accomplished it, but we need to exhaust all possibilities.”
Aspen cursed. “I didn’t even consider that.”
Trey smiled. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
I rolled my eyes as Aspen once again disappeared. “You own your own company.”
“And my clients pay me the big bucks for shit I’m doing for you guys for free.”
Fair enough.
Lane slapped our older brother on the back. “And we appreciate you for it. Take that shit home and run your little tests. I’m going back to the station.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“Dust this note for fingerprints,” he said, flipping to the back of Aspen’s notebook where the scrap of paper with that first message rested. “Then give an FBI friend of mine a call. We were in the academy together, and now she works out of Boise, so this is all well within her jurisdiction anyway. It’s about time I loop her in on these new developments.”
I nodded, grateful. Having more eyes on this meant higher chances of catching the sicko responsible, which put us one step closer to putting this entire mess behind us. I craved those days, when Aspen and I could start our life together without this shit hanging over our heads.
After Aspen returned and handed off her laptop to Trey, and I gathered her in another hug, uncaring that my brothers were in the room.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“Lighter,” she said. “If that makes sense.”
I hummed in agreement as she tipped her head back, mouth waiting. I captured it and murmured against her lips, “Asking for help ain’t all bad.”
“No, baby. It’s definitely not.”