Breathe (12 page)

“You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

At his words, I felt my eyes get wide and I breathed, “What?”

“Crazy life,” he stated as his explanation and I got it.

I decided I might as well tell him. It was becoming clear that along with multiple personalities, Chace Keaton cursed with alarming frequency and was bossy and annoying in the morning. He also was obstinate, but not just in the morning.

“There are rumors that due to budget constraints, there are going to be cuts and one of those cuts is Carnal Library. They’re thinking of closing it down entirely.”

I watched his eyes flashed right before he noted softly, “You’ll lose your job.”

“And the town will lose its library,” I replied.

“Shit, Faye,” he whispered.

“So, yeah, crazy stuff. Now, you show me yours.”

He shook his head and asked, “Is there something we can do?”

“Who can do?”

“You, me, the town,” he answered.

I shook my head but said, “I’m asking. We can conceivably fundraise, go for grants and it doesn’t cost a mint to keep a library running but it isn’t a drop in the bucket either. There are things we’ve needed to do awhile and haven’t had the money, such as upgrade our computers which are five years old and see a lot of use. Carnal has some money in it, a few private donors who, if feeling generous, might help out but if they don’t, local fundraising might not be enough.”

“Petitions?” he asked and I shrugged.

“No idea.”

“Wouldn’t hurt,” he told me. “Get one made up, I’ll take one to the Station. You can give Lexie one, she’ll get signatures at the salon. Stella, the garage. Krystal, Bubba’s. Maybe they see the community backing the library, they’ll look elsewhere.”

“That’s nice, Chace, but the elsewhere they’ll be looking to cut is at the schools or the Police Station. If people know that, the library is screwed.”

“Honey, they’ve had consultants in and deemed Carnal Police was overstaffed. They’re keeping us at two detectives, twelve officers, the Cap and no Chief. Admin pool is cut back from four to two and they’ve dumped the position of receptionist, putting a uniform on desk duty. The City Council is taking over as Chief and the Cap will report directly to him. That’s a loss of ten personnel. Just Fuller’s salary was over six figures, his inner sanctum also were overpaid. They’re saving a fuckload on that.”

“Is your job safe?” I asked quickly and I watched his mouth get soft.

But his tone was strange, it sounded slightly self-deprecating when he answered, “Yeah, no way they’re gonna get rid of the savior of CPD.”

“Chace,” I whispered but said no more because I didn’t entirely get what he said or, more to the point, how he said it because he
was
the savior of the CPD. People were dying, his wife being that people, and others were getting framed and doing time for crimes they didn’t commit. Chace and Frank Dolinski had taken grave risks working undercover locally for Internal Affairs in order to witness, document and uncover the corruption that had infested CPD and kept the entire town of Carnal under the thumb of a small-minded, bigoted, self-important tyrant for over a decade. Everyone knew that.

“I’ll look into this library shit,” Chace offered, taking me from my thoughts.

“What can you do?” I queried.

“Ask around. Find out why CPD cut back spending by hundreds of thousands of dollars and, on the heels of that, we’re gonna lose our library.”

“You don’t really have to do that,” I told him.

“You’re right. I really don’t. But I’m gonna.”

I drew in breath.

This was nice too.

Then I whispered, “Okay,” and after that, I took a sip of coffee.

He took a sip of his and aimed his eyes out the windshield.

“Now,” I started carefully, “you were going to show me –”

“Fuck,” he muttered and I saw his eyes were focused on something.

“What?” I asked, turning my head and whispering, “Holy frak,” at what I saw.

The boy was by the return bin. He was crouched, looking through the bags I left him.

I held my breath and I didn’t even notice my hand shooting out and blindly finding Chace’s. Not even when his fingers closed around mine.

We sat, still, silent, watching and holding hands as the boy found my note, read it quickly and shoved it in the bag. Then he shoved some books into the return bin and snatched up all the handles on the bags. Darting a glance left and right but not behind him where we were, he crept around the front of the library and disappeared.

“I’m gonna follow him,” Chace muttered and I heard his door open.

My hand clenched his and he stopped folding out of the truck to look back at me.

“Don’t scare him,” I whispered.

“I won’t, baby,” he whispered back, squeezed my hand, let it go then angled out of my SUV.

He closed the door and I watched him jog to the library and around it until he disappeared.

My eyes shifted to the dash and I saw he’d left his coffee cup there.

I looked to mine, the one he bought me.

I felt the heat pumping in my car, making it warm and cozy.

My eyes went back to his coffee cup and my mind decided I really should get that bronzed. And mine (when I was done). And maybe my passenger seat. And possibly my hand that he squeezed.

Then it hit me all that just happened, Chace showing up with coffee, us talking and it seeming normal if you didn’t count him calling my ass “sweet”, me a “pretty woman”, telling me I was cute and teasing me, that was.

It was like we were friends.

Friends that danced at midnight.

Jeez, I needed to stop hiding and have the girls over for dinner and margaritas as soon as fraking possible.

That was, after I figured out if I should call Chace in an hour or two and find out what he found out about the boy.

* * * * *

Chace

Chace walked up the street, eyes on the library.

He’d never really noticed it, even knowing Faye worked there.

Now, knowing she might lose her job and the town might lose its library, he did.

An attractive building. Red brick. There was a concrete plaque over the door that stated it was built in 1902. Six steps leading up to the double front doors. Four, large, paned windows on either side. The shrubs and grass in front of it now covered in snow and large tufts of snow covered the four, large urns, two at the top of the steps, two at the bottom that he had vaguely noticed were filled with healthy flowers in the summer months.

Eyes on the urns, he wondered if, in the previous summers, Faye planted them.

As he was wondering, her pretty, cute, bossy voice filled his head.

Don’t start, I know I shouldn’t have added the chocolate but he’s a kid. He should have a treat.

Chace grinned to himself.

She’d kitted out that kid with the amount of food and clothes a lot of underprivileged kids would kill for, runaways definitely would. And books. She hadn’t bought him a coat, some bologna, bread and pop and was done with it. She’d gone all out. She then staked out the return bin, still looking out for him.

Chace’s grin got bigger.

He was being fucking stupid, he knew it. He should steer well clear. He knew that too.

But he didn’t give a fuck.

The minute he saw the anguish in her eyes under the streetlamps and knew she’d been crying, he stopped fighting it. He’d chewed on it over the weekend. He was distracted during his dinner with his Mom in a way she noticed and asked about it, but he carefully skirted the issue and didn’t tell her.

But he knew, even before he drove by the library that morning and saw her in her Cherokee, something that provided him a golden opportunity to get in there, that he was no longer going to try to fight her pull.

So he stopped trying.

He should take better care of her. He should leave her to find a good man who could focus on her, their lives, the family they’d build. A man who didn’t have so much baggage sometimes it was hard to haul his ass out of bed in the morning, it was so fucking heavy. Who wasn’t caked in the filth he swam in for a decade. Who didn’t come from a dysfunctional home that added more baggage to an already crippling load. Who didn’t detest his father. Who didn’t have to put energy into protecting his delicate, oversensitive mother. Who didn’t have a dead wife who he didn’t love but he also didn’t protect and therefore her last experience on this earth was having her mouth raped.

But he wasn’t going to do that.

Right now, Faye was worried about this kid. Right now, she had shit on her mind that sent her into the dark night. Shit he now knew meant she might lose her job which meant, for a librarian in a small town, she was fucked. To get a job in her profession, she’d have to move. A move that would take her away from her family and hometown. Or she’d have to find a different occupation. Right now, she had no man to take her back. She had a few friends and a good family but that wasn’t the same as having a man take your back.

This meant, Chace decided, he was going to be the man who took her back.

It was a weak decision and it was wrong. It was an excuse and a lame one. And it was highly likely once she found out everything about him it wouldn’t end well.

But in his mind’s eye he saw her face get adorably angry and heard her musical but irate voice ask,
Do you have multiple personalities?

Seeing it, hearing her voice, he also decided he didn’t give a fuck that he was weak and what he was doing was wrong.

He was still going to do it.

And in doing it, he was heading back to the library and not his truck so he could tell her what had happened with the boy, instead of doing what he should do and go to work.

But as he was jogging across the street to the opposite corner where the library was, his head turned so he could look to her old, beat up Cherokee in the side parking lot and his peripheral vision caught on something. So his head turned further and he saw his burgundy GMC Yukon still where he parked it on the street. He also saw a man he knew, a man he detested only slightly less than his father, leaning against the grill, arms crossed on his chest.

Shit. Fuck. Jesus.

This was something he wanted to ignore but couldn’t. It was time to have words, state where he was with this shit in a way that couldn’t be misinterpreted and hopefully, but doubtfully, move on.

He stopped jogging and started walking, eyes trained to the man, feeling his jaw get hard.

Clinton Bonar, his father’s associate which meant lackey, kept his eyes trained to Chace as he approached. He was wearing shades but Chace still felt the man’s eyes mostly through the nasty prickle on the back of his neck he always felt when he was around his father, his father’s cronies or their minions.

He stopped a foot away and looked down the two inches he had on the man.

Clinton didn’t speak, didn’t even tip up his chin in greeting.

Chace didn’t tip up his chin but he did speak.

“Dad back from his sick fuck fest?”

Clinton didn’t move but asked, “Isn’t it time you got over that, Chace? It’s far from unusual for a man or a woman to have certain penchants.”

“Wrong, Bonar, I know Dad’s penchants and they are very unusual.”

“He’s a virile man with a great deal of energy even at his age.”

“He’s a married man at his current age and was six years ago and for the last thirty-seven years.”

“A man needs what he needs and if he can’t get it at home, he’ll find a way to get it.”

Chace jerked up his chin. “Dad certainly does that.”

Clinton shook his head. “I’m uncertain why we’re talking about this.”

“Then I’ll do you a favor and fill you in. That would be because I’m remindin’ you that whatever the fuck he sent you here to do, I am not gonna do.”

“We’ve been getting that impression considering you aren’t answering or returning our calls.”

“Then you’re getting the right impression. I don’t want to hear from you and I don’t wanna speak to you.
Any
of you.”

Clinton pushed away from Chace’s vehicle so he was standing, not leaning, and said quietly, “There’s unfinished business.”

“Yeah, you’ve told me more than once,” Chace replied. “And I’ve told you, it’s not my unfinished business. It’s yours.”

“You know that isn’t true.”

“You’re not catchin’ this, man, but with me not talkin’ to you or any of your buddies, it
is
true.”

Chace watched him take a calming breath in through his nose before he continued, “We are aware that Darren Newcomb gave a copy of your father’s tape to Tyrell Walker and Mr. Walker made copies and gave them to a variety of residents of Carnal. We wish for those tapes to be collected.”

“Good luck with that.”

Clinton ignored him and kept going. “Newcomb’s also in possession of a variety of items we need returned.”