Chapter 38 Jagg
JAGG
Streaks of dawn were just beginning to crest the mountains as I jogged up the station steps, ignoring the knot in my back, getting worse by the minute.
I inwardly laughed at myself—not in a funny way, in a you’re-so-damn-pathetic way.
During my door kicking days, I considered it a good night to sleep anywhere that didn’t involve scorpions the size of your fist. It’s amazing how quickly you can go soft… in more ways than one.
Damn Sunny Harper.
I hadn’t slept a wink since sharing a beer with Sunny.
Most men wouldn’t after a kiss like that.
It had taken every bit of restraint I had not to make a move.
Sunny shared the darkest moments of her life with me.
She’d opened up, which I knew was no easy feat.
And while I knew there were many more layers to strip, it was a start.
Something deep in me cared, felt proud. It meant something to me that she trusted me when I knew, in Sunny’s book, men were as valued as her kitchen.
It had been sexual restraint due to respect. Something, I can say with complete confidence, I’d never experienced before.
Me, on the other hand?
Uneasy—that’s the best word I can think to describe the way I was feeling.
While Sunny seemed to be making strides against her distrust in men, I was questioning my own sanity.
Every decision I was making, every instinct, every damn flutter in my stomach.
One month ago, I would have never kissed a woman involved in one of my cases, gorgeous or not.
Hell, I never kissed a woman without the end goal being the condom rolling off.
But I’d kissed Sunny—twice now—because something in me couldn’t hold back.
My thoughts, my actions, just seemed to be cloudy since I’d met the woman, and I couldn’t fight the feeling I was missing something.
Colson was questioning me, the town was questioning me, and I’ll be damned if I hadn’t started questioning myself. I never did that. Maybe the pain in my body was finally wearing me down, but I felt like I was slipping.
Something was just different.
After the tears and that kiss, Sunny and I stayed on the deck for another hour, sipping our drinks, watching the moon rise while listening to the waves crash against the lakeshore.
It was a comfortable silence, one that I’d never experienced with another woman.
Then, after demanding that I call Ryder and check on her dogs, Sunny made her way back to the bungalow.
I’d followed, as was becoming suit and certainly nothing I was proud of.
There’d been no argument about who got the bed. Sunny was exhausted.
I’d given her space to use the bathroom, and settled onto the deck and closed my eyes.
Through the open windows, I listened to the bed creak and groan as she climbed into it. I waited until I was sure she’d fallen asleep before sneaking back inside where I grabbed another beer, perched myself on the windowsill and watched her sleep.
This was a first for me. I’d never watched a woman sleep in my life.
Sometime after the third or fourth beer, the restraint I’d been practicing all night tripled, with me having to dig my toes into the floor to keep from crawling into bed with her.
I listened to the sounds of the night, the nocturnal creatures skittering about, the heat bugs screaming, the waves crashing outside.
The breeze rustling through the trees. No white noise of the local news running on loop in the background, no cell phone beeping at me, emails dinging, cars racing by, no buzz of an old window air conditioning unit. Nothing.
I realized how long it had been since I’d heard nothing.
My mind had drifted to thoughts of what it would be like to take a vacation with Sunny.
The beach, a tropical jungle, maybe even a trek through the desert.
I thought of all the places I wanted to take her, to watch her smile, relax, let that guard down.
To take away an ounce of that weight she carried on her shoulders.
I wondered what it would be like to date her, be her man.
And her to be mine.
Mine.
As I watched the steady rise and fall of her chest and the moonlight sparkle off her hair, something ignited inside me, so intense, so passionately, that I’d made a decision right then and there.
I’d take a bullet for Sunny Harper. She’d been through enough. I’d take a damn bullet for her.
With that unsettling realization, my thoughts shifted to the case, which carried me through the rest of the night spent laying on the floor next to her.
After the nocturnals had gone quiet and the birds began their early morning rounds, I’d gotten up, brushed my teeth using a bottle of water, changed clothes, and waited until I heard the hum of a truck making its way down the driveway.
At exactly five a.m.—because a Steele brother was never late—Phoenix delivered Sunny’s truck with four, gleaming new tires.
No news of Rees’s whereabouts—yet. I transferred her old tires to my Jeep, drove Phoenix back to his place, then made my way into town, leaving Sunny asleep in bed, with a note and an extra gun by her side.
The station was quiet that morning, people still sleeping off the energy they’d used from gossiping about my outburst at Donny’s the night before, and the break-in at the “witch’s” house.
I beelined it to the break room for a cup of coffee.
Three cups and one bag of beef jerky later, the sun had risen along with the noise in the station.
I’d just left another message for Briana Morgan, the elusive art investigator, when a pair of knuckles rapped at my door, followed by Colson stepping inside, phone to his ear. After barking a few orders, he clicked it off and slid it back into his pocket.
He sank into the seat, combing his fingers through his hair.
I nodded to the Styrofoam cup on my desk. “Coffee?”
“Baileys?”
“Not yet.”
He grinned. “No thanks. I’ve had a gallon already. Coffee, not Bailey’s.”
“Of course. Busy morning?”
“We’ve got every volunteer officer and firefighter on standby tonight.
The Moon Magic Festival is officially double what it was last year.
Hotels are sold out within a sixty mile radius.
The campgrounds,” he laughed a humorless laugh, “we’ve already responded to five calls between the four of them.
” He shook his head. “I gotta tell you, something’s in the air, man. ”
I couldn’t agree more.
“Listen…” He said. “About Donny’s last night—”
“I get it. I shouldn’t have gone off like that. I know. You don’t need to say it.”
Colson nodded. “Okay, good. That’s your second public outburst in two days, Frank’s, now Donny’s.
I’m gonna choose to believe it’s not gonna happen again, ’cause, Jagg, I’m not putting my neck out for you anymore, got it?
I’ve got too much to lose right now. A wife, a baby.
I need my job. I’ve got too much to lose. ”
“Clear.”
“Okay.” He waved his hand in the air to dismiss that topic. “So, I came by to tell you two things. One, the switchblade found at the Slaying in the Park belongs to Julian Griggs. His prints are all over it. No one else’s.”
“He had it pulled then, when he attacked her.”
Colson nodded. “Seems plausible.”
“What else?”
“Jessica just forwarded me the toxicology report on him. Seems like the ol’ pastor’s kid had been dancing with the devil, so to speak.”
“How so?”
“Kid was as high as a kite on coke.”
Cocaine.
My spine straightened. “You sure? Coke?”
“Feel free to question Jessica, but I wouldn’t. Woman did me a favor by pushing this through so quickly.”
My head started to spin. Julian Griggs had been high on coke when he attacked Sunny—and who was once known as the biggest coke dealer in the area?
Kenzo Rees. There was my connection. Loose, but it was there.
Rees got out f prison, immediately reconnected with this drug-dealing buddies, and somewhere along the line, Julian Griggs had crossed paths with Rees.
I just had to figure out a way to confirm this connection, and more importantly, why Griggs attacked Rees’s ex-girlfriend.
“What did the Pastor have to say about it?”
“Shocked. Fell to his knees and began praying.”
“So he was surprised? There were no signs of drug abuse or violent behavior before this?”
Colson shook his head. “Not that he was ready to admit, anyway.”
“You know The Collars are notorious coke dealers.” I opted to leave Kenzo Rees’s name out specifically to avoid another Sunny showdown with the Lieutenant.
Colson nodded. “Checking into them is on my to-do list today. The gang is notoriously tight lipped, though. Hell, the only reason I know what I know about them is because I arrested a new recruit a few years ago. Kid has just been released from prison, broke into someone’s house without realizing the house belonged to a retired colonel in the army.
Kid walked right into the barrel of a shotgun where he pissed himself and obediently waited until the cops showed up.
He had a new tattoo on his arm, still red around the edges. The symbol for The Collars.”
“What did you get out of him?”
“Not much. I was able to put together that new Collar members go through an initiation phase, kinda like a fraternity. Somehow, his B&E was related. But like I said, he didn’t divulge this information. I slapped him with a few charges, destruction of private property, public intox.”
I felt like I’d just taken a shot of espresso. I was practically buzzing with this new information. Had Sunny’s attack been Julian Griggs’ initiation to The Collars? Had Rees ordered him to do it? It made sense. It added up. I just had to figure out how to prove it.
“Anything back from ballistics? Either the casings from Seagrave’s scene or Sunny’s?”
“Not yet. I’ve got Darby following up. So…” Colson said, moving on from that conversation. “How are you doing? Heard about the break-in at Sunny’s.” His gaze sharpened.
“What did you hear exactly?”
“That the crime scene unit found jack shit.”
“Then you heard correctly.”
“Do you think it’s connected to her attack?”
“Among other things, yeah.”
“Could be a pissed-off church goer. One of Pastor Griggs’ most beloved followers.”
“I wouldn’t think ‘bitch, whore, slut, and cunt’ are part of his beloved followers’ vocabulary.”
“Givers on Sundays, sinners on Mondays. You know how it goes.”
I nodded, wrapped my hand around the back of my neck. When did my neck start hurting?
“I drove by her place on my way home last night hoping to catch you guys,” he continued. “See if you needed anything. You and Darby had already left… and Miss Harper wasn’t there either.”
I met his gaze, my eyes narrowing to slits.
He continued. “You don’t happen to know where she went off to, do you?”
We stared at each other for a minute, the tension in the room going from casual to heated in under two seconds flat.
“She went to a friend’s house,” I lied. “I advised her it wasn’t safe to stay in her cabin until we found who vandalized it.”
“A friend’s house? Come on!” He slapped his palm against my desk.
“This woman has got you under her spell, Jagger. You’re letting it happen.
You’re thinking with your dick instead of your brain, and I gotta tell ya, I’ve never seen you like this before.
You’ve lost your focus. You’ve got too many balls in the air.
You’re missing the obvious. I don’t like it.
I don’t like her. Maybe you should pay a bit more attention to the writing on her cabin walls. Because right now, witch—”
I surged to my feet. “You say another fucking word, Colson—”
He surged to his and cut me off. “Do you know the Chief’s got me hunting down those rednecks you roughed up at Frank’s last night?
Wants me to convince them to press charges.
To come in and give formal statements about your use of excessive force.
What the hell were you thinking? McCord aims to have your badge pulled by the end of the week.
People here are noticing. You’re becoming a joke, do you understand that?
A lovestruck puppy. Sunny Harper is going to make you lose the only thing you’ve got in your life. I hope she’s worth it.”
My desk phone buzzed.
I slammed down the button. “What?”
“There’s a Miss Harper here to see you, Detective.”
Colson barked a laugh and threw his hands in the air.
“Tell her I’ll be right out.” I clicked off. “This conversation is over, Colson. Get out of my office.”
“See you in the unemployment line, kid.”
He slammed the door so hard my coffee jumped.