“Well… yeah.”
“Why?” I kept snapping.
“Baby,” he said softly and gave me another baby and it was soft so I felt my heart skip, “you live in a book.”
I ignored my reaction to him calling me baby and replied, “I might do that but I still live and to live, walk, talk, breathe, eat, you have to have a backbone.”
“I think, pretty much, of all of that, you need it just to walk,” he returned, lips tipped up again. He was teasing me again, I liked it again but still, I felt myself glaring.
I was uncertain if I’d ever glared at anyone who wasn’t related to me.
But I was certain I was glaring at Chace Keaton right then.
“Are you making fun of me?” I asked sharply.
“No,” he answered, his lips still tipped up.
“Then why are you grinning?”
“’Cause you’re cute and you’re cuter when you get pissed though that’s debatable since you’re cute a lot.”
Now I was cute?
What was going on?
I felt my brows snap together and I asked, “Do you have multiple personalities?”
“Not that I know of,” he answered instantly.
“I suggest you get checked out,” I shot back then watched as he threw back his head and laughed.
I took an angry sip of coffee. Even delicious La-La Land coffee, and Chace looking and sounding gorgeous while laughing, didn’t make me any less peeved so I was glaring at him still when he stopped laughing.
I was also ready for him.
“Why are you here, bringing me coffee?”
He answered immediately, “At first it was ’cause I saw you sittin’ here in the cold so I got you a coffee and came to tell you that you didn’t have to sit here in the cold since I set up cameras.”
He lifted his coffee cup but his long, attractive index finger (yes, he even had an attractive index finger) was extended and pointing through my windshield. I followed it and screwed up my eyes to look and, indeed, there they were. In the upper corner of the library, three cameras pointed in different directions aimed around and at the return bin.
“Feeds go to a tape,” he continued and I looked back at him. “Interns at the Station can scroll through ‘em. They see the kid, they alert me or Frank. We got an image of him, it’s better than the sketch, we might be able to get a hit on missing persons or runaways in a national database. We get a direction coming or going, I can put up more cameras, different places, different angles, find out which direction he heads here from and if he goes back the same way.”
“Oh,” I whispered.
“That was why I’m here bringing you coffee until you told me your life is pretty crazy,” he went on. “Now I’m here to listen to why your life is pretty crazy.”
“It’s nothing,” I blew it off.
“It’s something if Dobie Gray sets you into the dark night putting yourself in danger in order to brood.”
“I wasn’t in danger,” I retorted.
“Faye,” he said softly, “I know you know not too long ago we had a serial killer who lived undetected amongst our own and did it for a good spell. I also know you know that recently, serious shit went down that rocked this town and I’m guessin’ you, like everyone, is waitin’ to see if more will come of that. And, honey, more might come of that so you have to have a mind to your safety.”
“More might come of that?” I asked quietly, adding onto my mental list of things to do when I got home. I needed to message Benji and Serenity and implore them to give up their long-distance sleuthing.
“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 f**kload 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.