27. Char
CHAR
I counted the days in my head. I played everything over, from the first time I ever laid eyes on my boys up until I grabbed that Dr. Pepper from the back of the fridge.
Six weeks. Jesus, it had only been a month and a half since they came twisting and turning into my world like a goddamn vortex.
They scooped me up, twirled me around with them, and strapped me to their back.
Hauling me around like a piece of luggage for weeks.
And yet, I never felt more powerful in my entire life.
“I have to do something,” I whispered to myself.
I couldn’t just sit there and wait for someone to inform me of who was dead.
That wasn’t happening. If I was going to sit in an apartment that didn’t feel like mine any longer, then I was going to put myself to use.
I heaved my ass off the couch. I lumbered into my bedroom where my laptop stared me down.
I thought back to the last time I was at my place.
The way that bitch cornered me in my own kitchen.
I slipped into bed and shoved the memories off to the side as I yanked my laptop into my lap.
“All right,” I said as I opened the screen, “let’s see what we can get into today.”
I ignored the emails piling up for interviews. Some wanted to reschedule. Others waited to hear back from me before they scheduled anything. None of that mattered, though. Maybe at one point in time it did. But my men were in harm’s way, being hunted by a woman who thought she was above the law.
Funny, since she seemed to hate that fact about everyone else around her.
“Selfish brat,” I muttered.
I sat there, staring at the illuminated screen, and I wondered what the fuck came next. All right, I got myself into bed. But what the hell did I do next? I had no direction. I had no information. All I had was a past with a woman that?—.
My brain, unhelpfully, went somewhere else entirely.
It did that sometimes. Took me somewhere I didn’t mean to go and refused to bring me back until it had its fill.
I thought about the van.
About Deac’s mouth and what he said. When we get back, we finish this. The way he looked at me when he said it, like it was a promise and a warning wrapped up in the same breath. My stomach did something unhelpful at the memory.
And then my brain, being the absolute traitor that it was, kept going.
It put Dallas in the room.
Put all three of them in the room.
I’d stopped fighting it. That was the honest truth.
I’d been keeping that particular door shoved closed for weeks, and somewhere between the van and the interrogation room and the back of Deac’s motorcycle, I’d run out of the energy to keep pushing against it.
So I let it open. Just a crack. Just enough to see what was on the other side.
Deac first. He’d want control of the room before anything else, same way he wanted control of everything.
He’d stand at the foot of the bed and just look at me for long enough that I’d start to squirm.
Not cruel about it. Just thorough. Like he was taking inventory before he decided what order things happened in.
And then he’d tell me what to do in that low, final voice of his, the one that didn’t ask, and my body would comply before my brain caught up because that was just what happened when Deac used that voice.
Dallas would be at my back. His hands already moving, already knowing exactly where I needed them before I did, because Dallas always knew.
He’d drag his mouth up the side of my neck and say something in my ear that would make my whole face burn, something filthy and easy and delivered like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and I’d feel him grin against my skin when I shivered.
And Gauge.
God, Gauge.
Gauge would be watching. Steady and patient and warm, that big broad presence of his anchoring the whole room.
He’d be the one with his hand spread wide across my hip, not restraining, just grounding, keeping me from floating off somewhere I couldn’t come back from.
And he’d wait. He’d wait until I was so far gone that I reached for him, and only then would he move.
I thought about what it would feel like to have all three of them at once.
Deac’s hands in my hair tightening while Dallas’s mouth found my throat and Gauge’s voice came low and close in my ear telling me to breathe, angel, just breathe, and the weight of all of them together pressing me down into something that felt like it could hold me.
My hand had moved without my permission.
I registered it distantly — my fingers pressed to the inside of my own thigh through the thin fabric of my sleep shorts, that particular low ache that had been sitting at the base of my spine for weeks finally making itself impossible to ignore.
I lay there in the dark of my apartment, laptop screen glowing beside me, and for about five full seconds I didn’t stop myself.
I thought about the van. About Deac saying when we get back. About Dallas in the doorway of that bedroom with his arms crossed and that unhurried stare of his. About all three of them, in the same room, knowing.
My breath came out unsteady.
I pulled my hand back.
“Get it together, Char,” I whispered to the ceiling.
That was a problem for another day. A day when nobody was in danger and no federal agents were running around my town playing God with people’s lives. A day when I could actually have nice things without the universe immediately trying to take them back.
I looked back at the laptop screen.
“Bingo,” I hissed as my fingers started typing away.
When I finally found the homepage to my hometown’s police precinct, I had to pause.
The pictures on their front page ripped me back into a sea of memories I hadn’t indulged in a while.
They had a picture of Handy Dandy’s ice cream truck, and I smiled at the old peel-and-stick pictures of the mangled ice creams they had in the freezer of that damned thing.
I clicked through the reels, taking in the renovations on the drive-in movie theater they were finally doing.
Fixing up the speakers that always crackled with the men in the movies spoke.
Getting a new popcorn machine so the popcorn they made didn’t taste like old socks and regret.
Does everything always get better after I leave?
I shook the thought from my head and went in search of the front desk’s telephone number.
I knew the guys would kill me if they even thought I was thinking about what I was actually doing.
So I didn’t think. I led with my gut, refusing to second guess myself, and by the time I came up for air, I spoke to a very lovely front desk woman on my cell phone.
It held a not-so-surprising number of texts and missed calls from both DeShawn and M.J.
“Sorry, guys,” I murmured, “I’ll message here in a bit.”
“Rackivale Police Department, this is Lonna speaking.”
I put on my best smile. “Hi there, Lonna. How are you today?”
“Well, I’m just splendid. What can I help you with?”
I leaned back against my pillows and stared at the pictures of the new park they put in the heart of downtown. “I’m looking for an Officer Marcie Dickerson.”
“Sure thing, hold on a second.”
The woman put me on hold, and I took it as an opportunity to continue torturing myself as I scrolled through the pictures on the front page of the precinct’s website.
People smiled with their arms wrapped around one another.
There was a cute little picture of two kids, who couldn’t have been more than three or four, sharing a bowl of ice cream at a chili cookoff.
Since when did Rackivale do chili cookoffs?
“Ma’am?”
I cleared my throat. “Yes, hello.”
“I don’t believe we have anyone here employed by that name. Is there a maiden name it might be under?”
I shook my head. “Not to my knowledge.”
“A nickname, maybe?”
I sighed. “I was just wanting to ask her some questions. But maybe she doesn’t work there any longer?”
I heard her fingers clacking against a keyboard. “Oh! You’re right. She no longer works here. And by the looks of it, she hasn’t for years.”
“Oh great,” I said flatly.
“Is there anything else I can do for you today?”
I leaned forward. “Actually, yes. Do you know how to get in touch with her? A forwarding address, or something like that?”
More clacking sounded. “She didn’t leave anything like that, no. Not even a phone number.”
I paused as a question slammed against the forefront of my mind. “Is it because she was fired?”
“Ma’am, I’m not allowed to speak on?—.”
There it was. The piece I didn’t know I was looking for. “My name is Charlotte Lancaster.”
“Oh my goodness,” the woman said through her gasp.
“Lonna, this woman is harassing me, and I’m trying to figure out who her superior is so that I can file a complaint. Is there any way that you can help me with that?”
Silence fell heavily before she spoke. “I can’t give you that information. Legally, I can’t.”
“I’m not asking for the reason why she was fired. I’m simply asking for anything to help track where she is now so that I can?—.”
“Really, I wish that I could help. So if you want to come into the precinct to file a complaint, I can see about?—.”
My voice grew curt. “I don’t live there any longer, Miss Lonna.”
She paused. “What?”
“I live in California now, and she’s harassing me out here. That’s why I’m calling. I’m desperate for help at this point.”
When the woman went silent again, an uneasy feeling filled my gut. Another hole. Another lie. Maybe that’s why Captain Murphy had to help her get the job at Internal Affairs, because she was fired from the precinct. But why? Why would she have gotten fired?
What could’ve been so bad that she needed someone like Murphy to vouch for her?
“Please,” I said, “my life is falling apart because of this woman, and no one is helping me. No one is touching her with a ten-foot pole, and I don’t know why. She’s going to chase me out of the only home I’ve built for myself since…”
She didn’t respond, though. I actually had to check my phone to make sure she hadn’t hung up on me.
Then, she spoke. “Does your local precinct?—?”
I scoffed as I tossed my laptop off to the side. “The local precinct, Miss Lonna, is so small here that, at any given moment, there’s only three of them staffing an entire office.”
“Oh.”
“I came here for peace. I know you know why. And now, this woman who helped arrest my father won’t stop following me around and showing up in my apartment unannounced and tracking me down everywhere.
She won’t stop asking me questions about people I don’t even know!
I don’t know who else to call for help.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” the woman said as she lowered her voice to a whisper, “just take a deep breath. My headphones aren’t the best, and I don’t know if someone can hear you through them.”
I sniffled. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“No, no, no, you don’t have anything to apologize for.”
I tried my best not to grin to myself. “Thank you. Really.”
I heard her clicking around. “Again, I can’t tell you much. I only just got this job a few months ago and I really need it.”
“But?”
“But,” she said as she started whispering again, “I can tell you that she was fired because she got too many complaints and her union rep thought it was best if she moved somewhere else for a fresh start.”
I blinked. “What kind of complaints? Like, brute force complaints? Is this a trend with her that I should know about?”
“I can’t tell you anymore, I have to go.”
“Wait, wait, wait!” I said as I stood to my feet. “Just a yes or a no is fine! I can ask questions, and you just say yes or no. Y or N, if you’d rather use letters.”
“I wish you the best of luck,” she said quickly.
“Don’t you get it?” I asked as I practically screamed into the phone. “She’s harassing me! Surely something can be done about that!”
“Your local precinct can help you, I’m so sorry, Miss Lancaster,” she said quickly.
She did, in fact, hang up the phone call.
“God fucking damn it!” I shrieked as I threw my cell phone against the mattress.
I watched it bounce before it knocked against my laptop.
Knock knock knock knock knock.
I froze at the sound as it ricocheted through my apartment.
Knock knock knock knock knock.
I slowly turned toward my front door as the sound kept happening.
Knock knock knock knock knock.
And as I eased away from my bed, I managed to pick up a shadeless lamp from my abandoned desk.
I crept closer to my front door.
Knock knock knock knock knock.