Thicker than Water

by Danae Ayusso

  She hurried towards the cabin, pulling her keys out, mumbling under her breath as she went, berating herself.

  Just as she got the last lock released, and she opened the door, a large hand wrapped around her gloved hand and pulled the door shut.

  “What did that mean?” Colt demanded before she could object.

  “It means shit, okay?” she snapped at him. “Let go of me.”

  “I know what merda means,” he clarified. “What did ‘it was fun while it lasted’ mean?”

  Cat pulled her hand away from his and smacked him in the chest. “Why did you have to be a damn detective?” she demanded, smacking him again. “All you had to do was stop asking questions, stop engaging me, and stop trying to solve me!” she yelled in his face.

  So she knew I was trying to solve her and yet that didn’t stop her? he wondered in disbelief.

  “Why did you have to do that?” she demanded. “Now I have to go back to…the Midwest,” she said, making a face.

  That, Colt couldn’t let happen.

  “No, you don’t,” he said.

  Cat shook her head, “Yeah, I do.”

  “No, you don’t,” he said more adamantly.

  “You don’t…actually, you probably do understand since you’re so damn annoying and observant, but still.”

  Colt smirked; that was a compliment in his mind. “John Cicero,” he said.

  Cat cocked an eyebrow. “What does Jonny ‘Shiv’ Cicero have to do with anything?” she asked then groaned when he chuckled at her very obvious slip.

  “Seven years ago he was in witness protection and I was part of the Marshall detail,” he explained. “We were set up in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, not too far from here. I’d never worked with the U.S. Marshalls before and they wanted someone that was familiar with the area and locals.”

  Cat leaned against the door and looked at him curiously. “So you were part of the detail that kept that bottom-feeder alive until he testified against the Pantoliano family?”

  He nodded.

  “Huh, interesting, but not entirely helpful at the moment. Shiv was iced three years ago at his mother’s funeral,” she said with a shrug. “You can take the nark out of the family but you can’t take the ice pick out of his neck...and expect him to live.”

  Colt stood there with a smile on his face. For some reason, he loved listening to her talk, especially when her accent flared and she started speaking with her hands in overly exaggerated gestures like the pureblooded Italians you see on the television.

  “Hey!” she snapped at him, and smacked him in the chest. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  He shook his head. “You’re so Italian, you just don’t look it.”

  She huffed. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” she grumbled.

  “Don’t go,” Colt said, cutting off whatever colorful comeback she had. “Don’t call your Handler for relocation. No one knows you’re here, and they won’t. I promise.”

  Cat stiffened. “What’s in it for you?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I don’t want anything from you, or from whoever you’re hiding from. I just…”

  “You really are going to be the death of me, aren’t you?” she rhetorically asked and opened the door.

  “No, I won’t,” he assured her in a clipped tone.

  “Might as well come in since Cat’s out of the bag,” she said before laughing and locked the door behind them.

  Cat left Colt in the living room while she went to shower. The stench from the bar was getting on her nerves, her contacts were drying out and irritating her eyes, the bondo on her face made her feel as if she was suffocating, and the wig was starting to itch.

  Yes, it was a risk to shed her costume in public, in front of someone, in Eureka in general, but she knew that Colt Fury was a good guy. She’d looked him up when she got back from the dumpsite.

  Detective Colt Fury was highly decorated, worked with the U.S. Marshalls as well as the FBI. He was in the Army Reserves for four years, never going to war but helped in many investigations on various bases before he was honorably discharged. There were no complaints against him, everyone apparently liked the man who quickly worked his way up the ranks in the small town sheriff’s department, but something happened and he just disappeared, completely falling off the grid.

  There was no mention of Colt Fury even having a damn parking ticket so Cat deduced that he wasn’t driving in the crash that presumably killed his fiancée, but she couldn’t find a name or anything to cross reference, not that she had time to do a deep, extremely impersonal, dive into Colt Fury’s background.

  Cat learned many things about the man, but nothing about the man at the same time, while they played video games. But the one thing she did know stood out above all else; he was scared.

  “Hopefully he doesn’t run for the hills when he finds out I’m not a blonde,” Cat huffed, turning off the shower.

  ***

  Colt aimlessly wandered around the small living room of the cabin that he, himself, once lived in. It looked the same for the most part, only now there were piles of crime thrillers and detective novels covering the built in shelves that he used for displaying pictures and awards. A pile of logs were neatly stacked off to the side of the fireplace so he immediately went to work making a fire when Cat informed him that she stunk like the ass end of a passeggiatrice so she was going to shower, and warned him to keep his detective in check.

  In Colt’s defense, he was trying to keep the detective in check but it was proving to be near impossible. Everything he learned about the strange woman made him want to know more. A thousand questions were biting at his tongue, but he knew that it’d be near impossible to get a straightforward answer from her.

  The woman was as evasive as they came.

  The moments when she did let a non-open ended answer slip from her lips, it made him ask another question. There was a sense of defiance in her that irritated him but a strength that made him feel as if he was with an equal, something that no other woman had ever been. Her sense of humor was crude and vulgar, he’d blushed more than once that night, but there was a sense of refinement about her that somehow balanced the two out.

  But there was something missing, a major element missing, and that he was grateful for.

  Colt Fury doesn’t like blondes, regardless of how enigmatic the blonde is, he silently reminded himself.

  “Did you want me to put some coffee on or would you rather have some wine?” Cat called out from the bathroom. “I have bottles of red and white in the fridge.”

  Colt shook his head. “I have to work in a few hours,” he said over his shoulder, peeking in the door to what used to be his bedroom.

  “So you’re saying you want to take a nap?” she teased, exiting the bathroom and he turned to regard her; his mouth fell open and eyes widened.

  Cat crossed the room while she ran her fingers through her long, wet, jet black hair, her long legs looked even longer in the skimpy gray running shorts she wore, and they cut up more than they should have, pulling his attention to her firm, round backside. Her slender bare feet padded across the cold hardwood floors as she hurried to the kitchenette in the opposite corner. An oversized gray sweatshirt hung off of one medium olive toned shoulder; it had a faded navy blue NYC Lacrosse logo silkscreened on the front of it which made Colt smile: she obviously wasn’t hiding from him now. Her chalky ivory complexion was gone and it was replaced by one that more than suited her exotic features: smooth medium olive that made her vivid, light blue eyes standout even more.

  This is not going to end well.

  “Merda!” she gasped. “These floors are always like ice in the morning.”

  Absently Colt nodded. “You let the fire go out.”

  “Obviously I wasn’t expecting to be gone all night,” she retorted, making a face. She popped a coffee pod in the polished chrome Nivola Espresso machine on the counter and hit the button before situating two white porcela
in cups under the espresso spout. “Usually I turn in early and read before going to bed...usually before the evening news. Since the sun disappears so damn early in the winter, it wasn’t that hard, but when summer comes I’ll get cabin fever in a sense because I can’t fathom the thought of going to bed before the sun goes down.”

  Colt stood there looking at her from behind, his head tilting to the side. Why he thought she was really a blonde was beyond him, there was nothing blonde or ‘white’ about her. Cat’s legs were long and toned, flared nicely at her hips, and her rounded backside looked firm and offered a more than acceptable handhold…

  What is wrong with me? I shouldn’t be here, especially with her! Pope is back and now I have the chance to avenge Vicks, the woman I loved, instead my dick’s getting hard from imagining what it’d feel like to knot my hands in Cat’s thick, black hair.

  “Cream or sugar?” Cat asked, looking over her shoulder at him.

  Absently he shook his head.

  “Good answer,” she said with a chuckle.

  “I should get going,” Colt said, struggling to get the words out.

  Cat nodded. “If you want, but you’ve got to try this first. Mrs. Paterson made it for me…well, she offered to make it after I nearly caught her kitchen on fire. That damn oven is powered from the deepest bowels of Hell and nearly as hot. It’s pane dolce with chocolate chips…sweet Italian bread,” she explained, motioning towards the loaf she was cutting into thick slices. “Madre used to make it for me when I was upset or sick. With the weather still sucking, I figured that it might cheer me up.”

  Colt took the plate she was offering him with the warmed loaf of bread and motioned him towards the living room. Cat followed with two cups of coffee in hand, and plopped down on one end of the couch and sat the cups on the coffee table.

  “You look uncomfortable,” she commented, taking one of the thick slices of bread before making herself comfortable.

  Colt shook his head, trying his damnedest to look at anything but her. “It’s been a long time since I was here.”

  “In civilization?” she teased, motioning for him to sit so he obediently did.

  “No, in this cabin,” he admitted, looking intently at the deep, dark surface of the robust coffee in the white porcelain cup on the table in front of him. “I lived in the house for years but when I got older, the temptation was much too great, and I had never actually lived alone before, so I thought I’d give it a try. It was anticlimactic, to say the least.”

  Cat chuckled and softly kicked him with her foot, causing him to chuckle and finally look over at her. “So you and Jimmy did have a hot, torrid affair,” she mused before taking a sip of coffee.

  “No, not Jimmy,” he assured her. “I like what you’ve done with the place,” he commented, changing the subject.

  Cat wanted to press it, but she knew that it was much too early in the morning for either of them to speak of anything other than frivolities without causing irrevocable damage to both of them. “I didn’t do much. It was already furnished...the bed is amazing. I’ve seen some amazing pieces of furniture before but that bed is...I wouldn’t even be able to find something like it in the Flatiron District.”

  Colt hid his smile behind his cup of coffee.

  “I fixed a loose board here,” she continued, “repaired the chimney there, installed a solid wood door with a steel reinforced frame, added a little security system with motion sensors, poisonous gas, sharks with lasers, ninja midgets with big sticks,” she said indifferently and he turned around at the other end of the couch to face her. “What?” she asked innocently with a mischievous smirk.

  Without the muddy brown contacts in, her beautiful blue eyes danced with mischievousness and fire, and he fought the urge to tell her that. Her lips were an enticing shade of mauve that was natural and looked at home on her face and against her olive skin tone. Whatever theatrical means she put herself through daily in order to stay hidden, expertly guised her true, natural beauty, and if she hadn’t, Cat would have stood out in Eureka like a sore thumb, inviting everything with a pulse to flock to her natural beauty.

  “I…” Colt started to say, but found the words near impossible to get out. “I shouldn’t be here, but, at the moment, there’s no place else that I rather be.”

  Instantly her face dropped.

  Cat grabbed a couple of blankets from the floor under the coffee table and tossed one to him before covering herself up with the other. Once comfortable and warm, her ridiculous attempt at flirting and possibly ending the night on a questionably sexual high note completely covered by the thick quilt, she smiled reassuringly at him.

  “It’s been a long time since you’ve just talked to someone, huh?” she surmised.

  He chuckled once, humorlessly. “Five years. I haven’t said anything in nearly five years.”

  Cat’s eyes widened.

  “I think that was Pope’s intention all along. Since I wasn’t playing his game, wasn’t looking for him, wasn’t burying my nose in the cold case files, and wasn’t simply living because of a thirst for atonement... It kind of backfired on him,” he said, kicking his long legs out and Cat bit her bottom lip as she stretched her legs out and rested her feet on his strong thighs. “Comfortable?” he asked with a small smile.

  “As comfortable as the current discussion will permit,” she answered honestly and he cocked an eyebrow. “Continue. Talking through stuff always helped me.”

  “It helped me, too,” he admitted. “The FBI and all of the specialists who came out for the case, they all walked on eggshells around me, spoke in whispers as if I couldn’t hear them, they acted as if I didn’t see them and the looks they were giving me, but I did. I worked the case, I followed up on leads, but I just didn’t have it in me. People don’t understand that revenge and anger can only carry you so far, eventually it burns out and you’re stuck looking at the world from the shell of the man…the person you once were.”

  Cat chewed on her bottom lip, and then set her cup down on the coffee table. “Fury, why did it affect you so much? It was just another case, right?” she whispered.

  Colt forced a smile that fell even before it began and tears flooded his dark brown eyes. “The first victim was my fiancée,” he whispered.

  “Affanculo!” she gasped, covering her mouth with her hands.

  Colt nodded. “To say the least,” he agreed.

  Colt took a deep, cleansing breath but it did very little to help him. The bitter air felt as if it was raking across his skin, peeling away, layer by layer, all of his strength and professionalism. It felt as if the blood was freezing in his veins in mid-circulation, and it was becoming progressively more difficult to breathe.

  He looked around the snow-covered crime scene, trying to focus on something, anything but the body in the middle of the marked off area. The yellow police tape flapped in the wind, an irritating accompaniment to his pounding heart. Each breath he took felt as if it was being ripped from him. The beads of sweat dotting his hairline and rolling down his neck felt as if they were freezing in mid-roll and solidifying into icy fingers that wrapped around his throat, strangling him as he desperately struggled to break away from them.

  Around the area, uniformed officers stood—colleagues and people he considered friends and brothers of the law—and watched him. Some shook their heads before turning from him, others whispered under their breaths with accusatory looks on their faces.

  Colt ducked under the police tape and headed towards the pale body in the center of the field. Her skin was nearly as pale as the snow she was bedded upon, her long, flowing hair appearing like curling tendrils of black silk that caused his hands to shake with longing; full, pale mauve lips silently called out to him; the slope of her nose begged for him to pull his fingers down it; her skin looked like soft, white velvet, only blemished by the dark crimson congealed in mid-roll down the sides of her face.

  “Vicks,” he choked, dropping to his knees beside her.

  The
head snapped to the side and Cat glared at him. “You did this to me!” she snarled.

  Colt’s eyes snapped open and he choked, struggling to catch his breath.

  “Shhh,” a thick with sleep voice murmured from above him as long, slender fingers pulled through his hair.

  Colt rubbed his eyes and tried to sit up, but he couldn’t pull himself away from her calming touch. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he mumbled quietly.

  “You didn’t,” Cat assured him, coaxing his head back to her lap.

  Colt rolled to his back and looked up at her, and Cat looked down at him and smiled. “You look tired,” he whispered, reaching up with a shaking hand and tenderly caressed the gray circles under her eyes.

  “If that’s a compliment, I think you need to work on your delivery,” she said.

  “What time is it?” he asked, lowering his hand but was still unable to pull away from her calming caress.

  “Almost seven,” Cat said, looking at Colt’s watch. “You were restless. Did you have a nightmare?”

  He looked away from her.

  She nodded. “It’s okay. I have those as well. No matter what we did, and the reality of the situation...meaning that it wasn’t our fault in the least, our subconscious feels the need to torture us with nightmares that rape us of our rest. Did you want to talk about it?”

  The burst of amusement that broke past his lips echoed throughout the small cabin. “Honestly, we just did, and it was more than...thank you.”

  Cat shook her head with a smile. “Obviously I’m better than I thought,” she said. “I should charge by the hour.”

  He chuckled. “Sorry I fell asleep on you-”

  “I’m not,” she said, interrupting him. “Fury, there’s nothing wrong with letting your guard down and passing out face down in a hot Sicilian’s lap.”

  His eyes widened and his cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered. “If I had a problem with it, I would have shoved your snoring ass to the floor.”