Then again, when this shit was over, he also intended to have a talk with Feb. A lot of the way she lived her life was going to change. Her living in a studio void of personality was one of them. Her spending a lot of time in his kitchen cooking him breakfast was another.

“Deluxe,” he told Chip and he knew by Chip’s response that Chip read his face while he was thinking.

“Good call, Colt,” Chip said. “I’ll give equipment to you wholesale and discount the labor.”

Colt shook his head and said, “No need.”

Chip gave him a look then he laughed, loud and long and Colt could do nothing but watch because he thought his friend might have a screw loose.

“What?” he asked when Chip stopped laughing.

“Colt, my man, you called me at two in the mornin’. You think you didn’t wake Josie with that shit?”

Oh fuck.

Chip’s wife, Josie Judd, had been a friend of Feb, Jessie and Mimi’s back in the day. She still was. Josie Judd was everyone’s friend, sliding in and out of cliques like she was greased with shortening. Josie was a pleaser but it wasn’t that. The woman was pathologically social.

Chip kept talking. “She heard me say Feb’s name and pestered me the minute I hung up the phone. She and her sister have been peckin’ over you and Feb for donkey’s years. Swear to God, they been drinkin’ so much coffee and dreamin’ up so many scenarios the last week, you’d think their brains would frazzle. They reckon this is a romance novel come alive. This bein’ about you and Feb, I don’t give you deluxe and discount it, she finds out I charged you regular, she’d have my balls.”

Josie might be social and a people pleaser but she was also a ball buster, known throughout the town for all of the above. Colt reckoned the men in that town had a case to make Chip a saint the way he put up with Josie’s energy, the endless round of parties she gave and dragged him to, all the times she said “yes” when Chip would end up doing all the work and the whip she used liberally on him.

Then again, the woman wasn’t hard to look at, got her figure back within months after each of their three kids and Chip let it slip regularly that she gave world class head, liked doing it and did it often. He could have been full of shit, telling his tale so as not to appear weak but Colt didn’t see it that way. Chip smiled a lot and was one of the most mellow, adjusted people Colt had ever met. Getting great head from a woman who looked like Josie who was talented with her mouth could do that for a man. Colt figured, his own life wasn’t totally fucked, he’d be about as mellow and adjusted as Chip right now and he was looking forward to that time.

But now he didn’t have time to argue about what he’d pay and he wanted the system in without delay.

“All right, Chip, you do it discount, I’ll get Feb to make you a frittata,” Colt told him.

Chip whistled through his teeth. “Heard about her frittatas, big man.” His brows went up. “You tellin’ me you already earned one?”

Colt didn’t respond and didn’t have to, Chip grinned.

“Legend,” Chip muttered before he said, “Got the keys to the bar? I’ll swing by there, give it a look. It’s been around awhile, Dad put it in and I wasn’t on that job, probably could use some updating. Then I’ll round up the boys and come back here.”

Colt went to his keyring, slid off the keys, gave them to Chip and told him the alarm code.

He opened the door and Chip hesitated in it. “Know I don’t have to tell you this but keep her safe. Would suck, you two finally bein’ back together only for one of you to end up hacked up with a hatchet.”

“Yeah,” was the only response Colt could come up with for that understatement.

Chip looked over his shoulder, his gaze hitting Feb’s purse on the coffee table, before he again caught Colt’s eye and he said low, “Pleased for you, Colt.”

Then he took off.

Colt locked up after him and headed back to his room. It was likely the Feds found and raided Denny’s spying on Feb lair and he wanted to get to the Station to see what came of it.

He hit the room and saw Feb still asleep. He fell asleep before her so he didn’t know when she finally dozed off. Still, he went to the bed, sat on the edge and pulled her hair off her neck before he put his hand to her hip, gave her a squeeze and bent to kiss her exposed neck. Then he touched his tongue to the chains tangled there.

She moved, he lifted his head and saw her open her eyes.

“You can go back to sleep, baby, just wanted you to know I’m gonna get a shower and head into the Station. Your Dad’s here.”

“Dad asleep?”

Colt reckoned he was and nodded.

“Mm,” she murmured and lifted up to a hand.

“Feb, honey, go back to sleep.”

“In a minute,” she whispered, her hands coming to him, one arm wrapping around his back, the other hand sliding down his crotch over his jeans.

Her intention clear, it killed him when he had to say, “Baby, gotta get to the Station.”

Her face disappeared into his neck, her lips sliding up it and at his ear, her hand cupping his crotch, she said, “Lay back, Alec.”

“Baby.”

He felt her tongue touch his earlobe then he felt his cock start to grow hard and then he heard her whisper in his ear, “I want you in my mouth, Colt.”

Colt figured he had a lot of work to do to erase the loneliness Feb had felt the last two decades of her life.

He might as well start now.

* * *

Colt was feeling unsurprisingly mellow and adjusted when he hit the bullpen at the Station.

However considering the state of things, unfortunately for him this feeling wouldn’t last long.

He saw Jo from dispatch heading toward the front stairs.

“Colt,” she called when she’d stopped and turned to him, “just put a message on your desk. They got a boy in interrogation room two. The Feds just started workin’ him. Sully’s watchin’ and wants you with him, minute you get in.”

“What boy?” Colt asked.

“Denny Lowe’s eyes on the prize boy,” Jo answered.

Colt nodded, uncertain if he felt elation or dread and headed straight to the soundproof room next to interrogation two. He entered and saw Sully, Chris and Rodman watching through the one-way mirror as the profiler Nowakowski and Warren worked a young, skinny, mop-haired, pimple-faced, terrified-looking kid.

They all glanced at Colt when he entered but only Sully kept his eyes on him.

“Got him, Colt. Denny’s officially fucked,” Sully told him.

“Write down the email address you send the files to, Ryan, right here,” Nowakowski’s voice came through the speaker.

Colt closed the door and walked in, watching Nowakowski sliding a pad toward the boy, putting a pen on top.

Colt stopped beside Sully and saw Nowakowski was seated not across from the kid, beside him. The kid was at the middle of the table, Nowakowski at the side. Friendly, approachable, non-threatening. Warren was standing, shoulders against the wall by the door, head up, eyes looking down his nose at the boy, arms crossed on his chest. Unfriendly, official, a threat.

“I swear I didn’t know,” the kid said, his voice hitching, about to unman himself and trying like hell to stop it. “He said he was a cop. Had a badge and everything.”

“We understand,” Nowakowski told him though Colt knew he didn’t. He thought the kid was a dumb fuck which he probably was. Though for the life of him, Colt couldn’t read that in anything Nowakowski was sending the kid. The guy was good.

“He said I was deputized, an official part of the operation,” the kid said, his eyes on Nowakowski, disbelief at being duped on his face. “Said we needed to keep an eye on her all the time so we could keep her safe. She was under threat.”

Yep, a dumb fuck, Colt thought as he watched Nowakowski nod with understanding and the kid picked up the pen and bent over the pad.

“Um, bad news, man,” Sully mumbled to him, leaning close, “Lowe had eyes in Feb’s apartment. We didn’t find ‘em. Feds did about an hour ago after we saw what all the monitors were picking up. Those were put in professional by Ryan here. Whiz kid, works at an electronic shop, does this shit as a hobby but also part side-business. Nanny cams. Shit like that. He’s good, idiot savant. Chris did the sweep and he didn’t pick them up. Feds said they’d have trouble findin’ ‘em if they didn’t have the angles and a shitload more equipment and experience than a small town PD.”

Rodman’s eyes came to him and Colt kept his reaction to the news that Lowe and his lackey watched Feb in her apartment under control. It cost him but he didn’t even bite his lip.

“He got cameras in my house I didn’t find?” Colt asked.

“Nope. Just on the street.”

“Where else?”

“Meems’s. Boys are there now, yankin’ ‘em out.”

Mimi was going to flip. Al was going to flip a fair bit harder.

“Someone sent to contain Al?”

“Did that myself before comin’ in,” Sully hesitated, his meaning clear before he said, “he’s okay.”

Which meant he wasn’t at first until Sully talked him into being that way. Sully could work for the United Nations he was that good of a diplomat which was the reason why Colt didn’t do bodily harm to Craig Lansdon the day before.

“How’s he gettin’ around the security systems?” Colt asked.

Sully jerked his head toward the mirror. “Ryan here, dab hand at a lotta things, the little fuck. Unfortunately, he taught Lowe along the way.”

“Why the fuck did he do that?” Colt asked.

“Lowe told him he was you. Had a badge and looked official. Lowe told him he’d be helpin’ out the law if Ryan gave him some tutorin’.”

“He half-idiot or something?”

“My experience, the smarter they are at one thing, the dumber they are with everything else. Ryan’s the example that proves the rule.”

“Will I get into trouble for this?” Ryan asked, calling their attention back to him and shoving the pad away, the email written on it, his eyes on the pad like it would come alive, jump up and take a bite out of him.

“Cooperate, Ryan, and we’ll see what we can do,” Nowakowski said and Colt’s eyes shifted to the video equipment recording the interview, assessing if it was turned on and recording. Likely it was if the Feds, Sully or Chris set it up. Likely it wasn’t if Marty had been there and done it. Colt figured Sully wouldn’t let Marty anywhere near the equipment. They had learned that lesson the hard way.

“So,” Nowakowski said, “just wanna go over what you said, make sure I got this right. Mr. Lowe hired you to disarm the alarms, assist in setting up the cameras and the feed. And he paid you to monitor them and email him recorded files.”

“Yeah,” Ryan replied. “He told me what he wanted and I set up face recognition software to get some of it. Most of the other stuff, I had to scan fast forward to get it.”

“What’d he want?”

Ryan shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

Nowakowski read his discomfort and broke it down for him. “Let’s start with the face recognition. Who was he watching?”

“The bar. The blonde and that guy when they were there together. The big guy. The other cop. He came in all the time. Sometimes to the coffee shop. Lieutenant Colt… I mean your guy, Mr. Lowe, said he was dirty.”

Colt bit his lip then, he didn’t give a fuck if Rodman saw it. Not only was Lowe impersonating him, he was also telling folks he was a dirty cop. That happened to him, fucking Rodman would bite his lip too. At least.

“Tall, dark hair, athletic build?” Nowakowski asked and Warren’s head turned toward the mirror. He knew Colt was watching.

“Yeah, him.” Ryan nodded. “I didn’t get it. What your guy wanted. They knew each other, the blonde and the big guy. You could see they knew each other. And he watched her ass but fuck, anyone’d watch her ass. I watched her ass. She has a nice ass. Other than that, nothin’. Until recently.”

“Recently?” Nowakowski asked.

“They’d disappear together in the office. We didn’t put cameras there. Then they seemed unfriendly. Then real friendly. You know what I mean?” Ryan answered.

“You were watching February Owens and Lieutenant Alexander Colton, the real one, Ryan. He is a cop but he isn’t dirty,” Warren put in. “You were surveilling a clean cop and his girlfriend.”

Ryan wasn’t such a dumb fuck as to be sitting in a room with two cops and find out he’d been watching another one and not know he was fucked. His face got even paler, the pimples coming out in bold relief and his hands clenched and unclenched on the table in front of him.