He flipped the phone shut and threw it on the nightstand.

Groggy, still partly asleep and fighting it, I got up on a forearm too.

“What are you doin’ here?” I asked, though I kind of wondered what I was doing there too. I’d fallen asleep on the couch even though Dad tried to get me to go to bed. But I was spooked and regardless of the fact I was old enough to take care of myself and had been doing so with questionable success for a long time, I still didn’t want to be far from my Dad.

Colt turned to me and I noticed he looked wiped, his eyes shadowed and tired. I noticed this but I had bigger things on my fuzzy mind.

“Go back to sleep, baby,” he said softly.

“What are you doin’ here?” I asked again.

Wilson, realizing we were awake, decided it was breakfast time and we should be informed of that. He started up the bed toward me meowing.

“Feb, go back to sleep. I’ll get Jack to come in.”

Wilson made it to me and head butted my hand. I automatically started giving him scratches and the meowing mixed with loud purring.

But my mind was still on Colt who was still in bed with me.

“What are you doin’ in this bed?”

He gave me a look before he threw the covers back and got out.

“I got work,” he said, not answering my question. “I’ll feed the cat.”

He started to the door but I threw the covers back too and got quickly to my feet.

“You can’t crawl into bed with me,” I informed him.

He turned in the door. “February, we’re not fightin’ about this, not only do I not have the time, I also don’t have the energy or the inclination.”

I was a dog with a bone. “You carried me to bed and got in it with me!”

My voice was rising. Colt ignored it and walked out the door.

Wilson, feeling this was a healthy indication he’d be getting breakfast soon, jumped off the bed I left him in and pranced out after him.

For my part, I stomped.

“Colt!” I snapped when I hit the hall.

He didn’t reply.

By the time I hit the kitchen he was reaching into the dish drainer to get the kitty bowl I’d washed last night.

“We need to talk about that kiss yesterday,” I announced, not really wanting to talk about it but feeling, considering this morning’s circumstances, that we needed to get things straight.

“We will,” Colt agreed. “Not now,” Colt evaded.

“Now.”

He pulled open the top of the cat food tin but speared me with a glance. “Not now.”

“Now.”

He turned fully to me; Wilson noticed this delay and started meowing again.

“I got work,” he repeated.

“You already said that.”

“This conversation’s gonna take time. I’m tellin’ you I don’t have that.”

“Well, make it!”

He took one step to me and had his hand wrapped around the back of my neck so fast I didn’t even get a breath in while he was doing it. It was then I felt a little bit of Lore’s pain. I’d seen Colt move fast yesterday when he took Lore down, I’d even seen him do it before he kissed me but I still wasn’t prepared for it.

He yanked me close and I almost didn’t get my hands up to break my fall, but I did and they landed on his chest.

“I got home at dawn. I was in that bed with you for half an hour. I was in it because I’m not takin’ any fuckin’ chances. Someone who can get through a door can get through a window. They get through the window, they get me first. Now, do you get me?”

My mind blanked, my stomach curled sickeningly and I stared at him.

“You found something last night,” I whispered.

He let me go and turned back to the cat food.

“Colt.”

Colt forked the food into the bowl. “We found something. When he visited, he spent time there.”

“Oh my God.”

I didn’t know what this meant but the escalation in Colt’s protection said it was no good. This wasn’t about a madman invading my mind by stealing my thoughts written on a page. This was something that freaked him out and he was a cop, I didn’t suspect much freaked him out.

He moved to put the food down for Wilson and Wilson settled down belly to the floor on all fours and stuck his face in it.

“What’d you find?”

He straightened and looked at me. “I’ll know more this mornin’. They were still working when I left.”

“What’d you find?”

“I gotta shower.”

“Colt –” I started but he was moving away.

I stared at the hall he disappeared into long after he disappeared. Even after I heard the shower go on in the master bath.

After awhile it hit me that he was protecting me with more than him keeping close, close enough to sleep in his huge bed with me. He was protecting me by not sharing and I decided to wipe my mind clean.

Some folk, I suspected, would want to know.

I didn’t want to know.

I knew enough and it was tearing at my insides. I could use a break.

By the time he came back out, hair wet, slicked back but still curling around his neck, dressed in jeans, boots, shirt, badge clipped to his belt, shoulder holster on, gun clipped in place, blazer bunched in his hand, I’d made coffee and toast. I’d also poured him some coffee and it was keeping warm in a travel mug.

He hit the kitchen, shrugging on his blazer and I was turned to him, one hand wrapped around his mug, the other hand holding up a plate with four slices of buttered toast.

“I made toast and coffee,” I said.

He was looking at my hands but when I spoke his eyes came to my face. Something in them struck me funny, not in a bad way, in a good way. That look settled in beside his smile from yesterday, the one that was still lodged in that private place deep inside.

When I thought he’d stop moving toward me, he didn’t and I had to jerk my arms to the sides to give him space and he took it. His hand came up and around the back of my head, fingers in my hair, fisting and tugging down. I made a surprised noise that came from deep in my throat when I had no choice but to tilt my head back before his mouth came down on mine.

This kiss wasn’t hungry, wet and desperate. No tongues. It was hard, closed-mouthed and swift.

It still did a number on me and I felt a curl that I liked a lot between my legs.

He let me go, grabbed the mug and took the slice of toast off the top of the stack.

“We’ll talk about that kiss later too,” he said, turned and walked away. At the door he turned again and ordered, “Lock this after me. I’ll send Jack in. You’re not alone, Feb, ever. Not even in the storeroom at J&J’s. Not even to walk down to Meems’s. You move; you make sure you have a shadow. Yeah?”

I stood there still holding up the plate and nodded.

“Stay safe, baby,” he said, the cop authority gone from his voice, this statement was quiet and sweet and it strolled right into that private place inside me, took its seat and sat back, intending like the others to stay awhile.

“You too,” I replied and he left.

It took awhile for me to pull myself together. The only reason I did was because the door was unlocked and I hated it but that scared the shit out of me.

I put down the plate, walked into the living room and locked the door. On the way back to the kitchen, the phone rang.

I hit the kitchen and reached out to the phone. It was an old fashioned kitchen wall phone, yellow, boxy, with push buttons and a long, curly cord so you could wander the kitchen with it held in the crook of your neck while you were doing shit. I liked it mostly because I could imagine wandering Colt’s kitchen with it held in the crook of my neck.

I put it to my ear and said, “Hello?”

No one spoke.

I felt a curl again, it was north, in my belly, and it wasn’t pleasant.

“Hello?” I repeated, tentative this time.

“Um… hello, is Colt there?”

Oh shit, it was Melanie.

“Melanie?” I asked, though I didn’t want to.

“February?” she asked back and I knew she didn’t want to either.

Oh shit, shitshitshitshitshit.

“Uh… yeah. How’s it going?” Oh my God, I hated this.

“Um… it’s good. How’re you?” She hated it too.

All I could think about was Romeo and Juliet and Nancy and I was going to give Dee what for the next time I saw her for putting that crap in my head.

“Things aren’t great. You maybe didn’t hear but I found Angie –” I was going into explanation mode; I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.

“I heard,” Melanie cut me off then paused before she went on. “Poor Angie.”

“Yeah.”

“Is Colt there?” she repeated.

“No, he, um… left. You just missed him.”

“I’ll call his cell.”

“Melanie –”

“It’s not important anyway.”

“Mel –”

“You take care, Feb.”

“Mel –”

“See you.”

Then she hung up. I closed my eyes tight and put the phone back in the receiver. I heard the key scrape the side door and Dad walked in.

“’Mornin’ darlin’.”

It worked for me that Dad didn’t put the “good” in that greeting. It was not a good morning, it was just morning or to be precise, it was a shit morning.

“’Mornin’ Dad,” I replied.

* * *

My cell rang about five minutes after Morrie, Dad and I opened J&J’s. The display said “Colt calling.”

I flipped it open and put it to my ear, “Hello?”

“Hey.”

“Everything okay?”

“You know what I told you about last night?” he asked, “before I wiped the floor with your ass at pool.”

I was a good pool player. I’d worked in bars all my life, I had lots of practice. Still, Colt wasn’t lying when he said he wiped my ass. It pissed me off but he did. It was embarrassing.

“You didn’t wipe the floor with my ass,” I lied.

“Honey, I so wiped the floor with your ass.”

I rolled my eyes and said, “Whatever.”

I heard his soft laughter and it struck me he was laughing and these days there wasn’t much to laugh about.

“I remember about last night,” I said.

“We got him.”

I felt a weird sense of elation hit my gut and slither around in a happy way. It wasn’t me working the case, it wasn’t me going out and seeing dead bodies. But it was me hearing Colt’s relief mixed with a hint of triumph. He’d got the bad guy and he was pleased.

“Who was it?”

“Calvin Johnson.”

I could believe that though I was still surprised. I knew Cal Johnson, had known him forever. He was opinionated and shared those opinions often and loudly. He also had a short fuse. He was a nice guy and I could say this because he’d always been nice to me, considering I wasn’t a gang banger. But he had a definite sense of right and wrong and I didn’t think it would take much to tip him over the edge of making something right even if he went about it wrong.

“I can see that,” I told Colt.

“IMPD caught him last night. Fluke. Saw him loitering, older, white guy, rough, black neighborhood, he stood out. He was probably out hunting. They stopped for a chat, saw the gun on his belt, hauled him in. They found out he was from town and started questioning. He was uncooperative but he flipped for me.”

“You got him to confess?”

“Yeah, started as a rage. His brother lives in LA, his great-niece was picked up by a gang for an initiation and they did a number on her. So much anger, didn’t know what to do with it so he found a way to release it. But then he found he liked the way it felt, cleaning up the streets, so he kept doin’ it.”

Poor Cal. I’d heard about gang initiations. At his age, his great-niece must be in her early teens, if that. I was surprised I didn’t know about his niece though. News travelled fast, bad news faster. Cal had kept it to himself which wasn’t smart. Meant he needed to get it out someway and he picked the wrong way.

“Still,” Colt continued, “I think he was glad he was caught. He liked it and was starting to get off on it but he’s got enough good in him to know it was wrong and the dark path he was on was gettin’ darker. That’s probably why he dumped the bodies so they could be found.”

Catching Cal, Colt and the IMPD had saved the lives of some gang members which I supposed was a good thing. He also stopped bodies being dumped in the town limits which was definitely a good thing. He’d also stopped Cal turning his soul any blacker which was also a good thing. Colt had scored and it was huge.

Because of that I couldn’t stop myself from saying quietly, “Good job, babe.”