Thicker than Water

by Danae Ayusso

  “Cokes?”

  “Yeah, Cokes. I don’t drink, you know that, and Mickey isn’t legal to drink, and in order for others to abide by the law, those who are sworn to uphold it need to be held to a higher standard. Mickey isn’t legal to drink so he didn’t. Plain and simple. You should commend him for thinking of the law over himself.”

  James rolled his eyes. “I’ll get him a shiny Jr. Deputy sticker later,” he mumbled. “The fact remains, Detective, that you disappeared from an active crime scene where you engaged eight men by yourself.”

  “I had Mitch as backup,” Colt pointed out.

  James wasn’t amused. “A trigger happy, Vietnam vet that’s got a higher body count then Pope?!”

  Colt shrugged. “When you put it like that, it sounds completely irresponsible of me.”

  James choked before slowly turning to look at the smiling detective next to him. “Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?”

  Colt snorted. “I’m still here, Jimmy. Just trying not to let everything get to me,” he said with a shrug. “Pope changed his M.O. and that doesn’t sit right with me. Then these idiots try to hold up the one place in Eureka that no one in their right mind would hold up. Could you image the body count if I hadn’t been here?”

  “True.”

  “Did you need me to do anything or can I head to Emma’s and shower before calling it a night? I can give you my report in the morning,” Colt said, trying to sound tired and indifferent, but he was struggling to keep from smiling, from bouncing up and down, from saying screw it and running back to the cabin and to Cat’s arms.

  However, she warned against it and told him he had a part to play so he better play it otherwise she would make him sleep on the couch.

  James cocked an eyebrow. “Usually you would have been the first here…which you were…and the last to leave, but now you want to be the first to leave. What gives?”

  Again, Colt shrugged and looked away from him to the scene and the officers trying to busy themselves in an attempt to think about anything but the officer who wasn’t here with them.

  “Jimmy, when everything you thought you knew suddenly changes,” Colt said, “and the world that you knew is sent spinning, you either focus on something else so you don’t have to think about it or you try to get some sleep so you can attack this change head on. Which do you think I should do?”

  James nodded. “You’ve changed, Colt. I don’t know if I like it or not.”

  “Maybe Pope changed because I did,” he countered. “I hope not because that wouldn’t be productive, but maybe he left something behind this time. How’d it go with the Chief?”

  “He’s pissed,” James said. “Expect company tomorrow. Hopefully the entire tribe doesn’t show up. The Senator already called, and he’s holding me personally responsible. We knew that was coming. The Feds are annoying me, more so than usual, and that mouthy New Yorker will be lucky if they don’t leave Montana in a body bag.”

  Colt’s eyes widened. “Mouthy New Yorker?” he demanded.

  “Yeah, Agent Salvati. You met him, remember? He thinks that there’s a bigger conspiracy going on here and that you have something to do with it.”

  Colt nodded. “You don’t say?”

  “I just did.”

  “Rhetorical,” Colt grumbled. “What else is he saying?”

  “Not sure, couldn’t understand him with that damn accent. I might have to brush up on my Law and Order or something to be able to understand these damn New York Italians.”

  “There’s more than one?” Colt asked, silently praying that James wasn’t talking about Cat.

  James looked from Colt back to the crime scene. “Head home. I’ll see you in the morning before we get briefed by the Feds on the latest body, and we’ll deal with these morons in the afternoon when Judge Hammers is back from hunting.”

  When Colt didn’t move, James looked at him.

  “Is there anything else, Detective?”

  Colt looked at him intently; there was something different about him. It could have been stress, especially since he just lost a deputy, and now he had to deal with a pissed off tribe, a Senator who was blaming him, undermining Feds, and now this. But Colt was sensing that it was more than that.

  “You okay, Jimmy?” Colt whispered.

  “Oh, now you ask?” he said in a clipped tone. “Don’t worry about me, Detective. It’s my responsibility to shoulder everything, just as I always have since before my parents died, so I don’t expect you to step up and help, just like when we were younger. It’s okay, I’ve got this,” he sneered before he turned and walked away.

  ****

  “You can do this,” Cat mumbled as she tugged on the front of Colt’s white undershirt she wore. “It shouldn’t be that hard to do. Just tell him that you have a bad habit of falling for those in law enforcement and that if you sleep with him you’ll have a perfect record of sleeping with your partners… Oh God, that isn’t at all embarrassing and the epitome of a donnaccia. Frankie, what do I do?” she asked the picture on the dresser.

  Cat knew exactly what Frankie would say, the same thing he said when she slept with him, slept with Agent Slone of the FBI when they teamed up on a case, the District Attorney that she dated for six months before she discovered that he wasn’t legally separated and was actually cheating on his wife with her.

  ‘Everyone needs to get laid, Rossi,’ Frankie would say. ‘Everyone has a preference. I like tits…not that yours aren’t amazing, but they’re smaller than I’m used to attempting to bludgeon myself to death with, but still, they’re nice tits. You like badges. If I were your therapist, I’d say you were only interested in the exact opposite of your old man, so why question it? Just make sure he isn’t married this time, the D.A. incident wasn’t pretty.’

  “You aren’t helpful in the least,” she groaned.

  ‘Hey, I’m dead. What do you expect?’

  “True,” she admitted, folding the bedding back. “But still, it’d be nice to have a little help here. The last time I was with a guy…yeah, we both know what happened then.”

  ‘That can’t happen this time and you know it. Technically, you don’t have to worry about that ever happening again, not that you wanted it then or now. You’re married to the job. Always have been and always will be. What else is there for an untouchable by the Cosa Nostra to do?’

  Cat shrugged. “Obviously I wasn’t untouchable because you’re dead.”

  She could hear Frankie groaning in frustration.

  ‘Rossi, you saved my ass more times than I can count. You know as well as I do that I’m the reason why I’m dead. I didn’t realize that it was Daniele out there. The bastard was completely in the shadow. I don’t even know how you knew it was him at first!’

  “His cologne,” she admitted.

  ‘But of course,’ he dryly agreed. ‘Rossi, this is entirely my fault, and you know as well as I do that Daniele wasn’t in that alley to make a marriage. He’s been gunning for you for years because you weren’t a meat eater and you turned your back on the family. You know this! It’s why you went to I.A…most likely he’s still pissed that you pinched his meat eaters. Stop blaming yourself. Please. Don’t make me smack you upside the head, Rossi.’

  She looked at the picture again and sighed. “That’s so much easier said than done,” she mumbled and rubbed her side.

  The soft knock at the door effectively stole Cat’s attention. She grabbed the Beretta off of the nightstand and her cell phone then cautiously headed towards the door. Colt has a key, knows the security codes and uses a secret knock to announce his arrival, so obviously it wasn’t Colt. She quickly flipped through the security feeds until she could clearly see the face of the man on the front porch; he kept looking over his shoulder.

  “Probie, what are you doing here?” Cat mumbled and unlocked the front door and cracked it, leaving it chained so it wasn’t open enough that he could see her since she wasn’t in her costume. “Yeah?”
/>
  “It’s me, Mickey.”

  “I know who it is. What do you want?” she asked in a clipped tone.

  “Oh, sorry,” he instantly apologized. “Detective Fury wanted me to relay that he will be longer than he thought…he and the Sheriff are arguing.”

  Cat groaned. “What are they arguing about?” she asked, but she already knew; the first on the scene took off and was missing for over an hour before he wandered back and most likely was trying to run off as soon as he got there.

  Mickey shrugged. “Detective Fury left an active crime scene, didn’t answer his phone when the Sheriff was trying to track him down to make sure he was okay… I don’t know what else, but it got pretty heated.”

  “Thanks for letting me know,” she said and started to close the door but he wedged the toe of his boot in the opening.

  “It could be a while, did you want company? You did invite me to breakfast,” he reminded her, his tone laced with panic and desperation.

  ‘I don’t like this, Rossi,’ Frankie’s voice said in her ear.

  Me neither, she silently agreed.

  “Mickey, it was a rough night. I’m going to have to give you a rain check on breakfast,” Cat said.

  “You want to be alone tonight?” he pressed.

  “Yeah, yeah I do. Move your foot,” she said in a cold, detached tone.

  “What do I tell Detective Fury?” he asked, sliding his foot from between the door and jamb.

  ‘That’s a good question,’ Frankie said. ‘How about that you love him and want to do naughty, naughty things to him?’

  Cat rolled her eyes. ‘Shut up, Frankie. God, I can’t believe you were able to get laid at all.’

  “Tell him that…” she wasn’t sure what to tell Colt, but what she did know was that she couldn’t be there any longer and that the walls were starting to fall in on her. “Tell him that I just needed some quiet time to sit amongst the angels.”

  Mickey scratched his head in confusion. “Oh, okay. I’ll let him know.”

  Cat slammed the door and locked it before she ran for the bedroom and grabbed her bag then hurried to the bathroom and quickly packed up her disguise kit. After a mad dash around the cabin, she packed the weapons she was preferential to, ones that she couldn’t easily replace, and the picture of she and Frankie, she checked the security feed on her cell phone. It was too dark to see anything past the perimeter lighting, but she couldn’t fight the feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  Cat went to the closet and pushed the hidden panel to the attic open, shoved her duffle bag through the small opening, then pulled herself up and replaced the cover. She had discovered the attic access when she rewired the cabin, and even went so far as to add an escape route out the roof through a faux dormer on the back of the roofline. It took less than forty-five seconds for Cat to scale across and the roof then disappear amongst the trees lining the Tobacco River along the back of the cabin, leaving the place she’s called home for the past six months behind.

  When Colt reached up to knock on the door to the cabin, a sense of dread flooded him. He’d spent the past three hours arguing with James, a first for them, and when he tried text-messaging Cat and it came back undeliverable, he feared the worse.

  Now, standing in front of the door he couldn’t wait to walk through again and into the arms of the woman who inadvertently found her way into his heart, he knew that Cat wasn’t inside waiting for him.

  “Way to go, Fury,” Colt mumbled and reluctantly unlocked the door and pushed it open without knocking.

  Inside the cabin was cold, dark, and eerily quiet. Out of habit, Colt pulled his sidearm then checked each room and darkened nook for trouble.

  He found none.

  In the bathroom he found none of Cat’s disguise; only the easily replaceable and non-Cat specific items were left: disposable combs and toothbrushes. In the bedroom, the picture of Cat and Frankie was missing, as was her bag. The bed was pulled back and made as if she was waiting for him, but the sheets were as cold as his heart.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and hugged her pillow; it still smelled of her. “Why does everyone I love leave me?” he wondered aloud. “First Dad then Vicks, and now Rossi... Obviously there’s something wrong with me if I can’t keep those I love from leaving me.”

  For over an hour he sat in the quiet cabin, waiting, praying, hoping in vain that Cat would walk through the door with a coffee in hand and a smile on her face.

  But she didn’t.

  “Damn it,” he hissed and headed towards the door with the pillow in hand; if nothing else, he’d hold onto her scent for a few more days. After one last look around the cabin from the doorway, he slammed the front door behind him before locking it out of habit and sulked to his truck.

  Colt didn’t remember actually driving to his dark, isolated hole in the mountain, but when he got out of the truck, it felt as if he was home. Since rejoining civilization, his isolated cabin hadn’t felt like home, but being with Cat did, and now that he was once again alone, he expected to feel empty inside. Instead, he felt strangely content.

  When he opened the front door and stepped inside, he stopped in mid-step when cold steel pressed against the side of his head.

  That I did not see coming, he mentally huffed.

  When the smell of gun oil, cotton, and beautiful flooded his nostrils, his heart began to race.

  “I’m sorry,” Colt whispered under his breath, and it was followed by a hard smack in the back of the head.

  “What in the hell, Fury?!” Cat hissed under her breath, slamming the door shut behind him. “You know the rule: knock first! What in the hell took you so long?” she demanded, putting a hand on her hip and shook a scolding finger at him with gun in hand. “I could have shot you!” she reminded him. “I should have shot you!”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered again, trying to keep the emotion from his voice and from pulling her into him and kissing the angry words from her lips.

  Cat huffed. “Fine, don’t let it happen again,” she mumbled then headed across the room and struck a match as she went and lit the candles on the table behind the couch.

  Never had Colt seen anything as beautiful as her at that moment. Cat was wearing one of his white undershirts, the oversized garment hung mid-way down her backside, and the v-neck cut down far enough that when she leaned over it presented a view of her firm breasts . The thin material did very little to guise the hardened sienna-colored buds on each breast, and her black cotton panties left very little to the imagination but teased him with each step she took. Her hair was hanging down her back in large, loose black curls that he wanted to knot his fingers in, and her skin looked slightly darker in the candlelight, making her appear to be the most exotic creature to ever grace his life.

  “Is everything okay at the bar?” Cat asked as she climbed up on the bed; her backside teasing him as she slowly crawled across the expansive mattress.

  “Don’t move!” Colt barked out and Cat froze in place. He locked the door and slid the iron bars he installed just for her into place, firmly securing the only door in the cabin.

  “What am I waiting for?” Cat whispered, her thumb cocking the hammer back on her Beretta.

  “Shh,” he snapped at her and took his time crossing the living space, shedding his jacket and boots as he went. “Don’t move a muscle,” he warned her.

  Cat waited, her brow knitted in concentration as she strained to hear what the perceived threat was.

  Colt unbuttoned his uniform shirt and slipped it off of his arms, letting it drop to the floor behind him, before he stopped next to the bed. Unable to deny the urge, he caressed the backs of his fingers up the backs of her thighs.

  “Fury, what are you doing?” Cat demanded in a choked whisper as her eyes fluttered.

  “You scared the hell out of me,” he whispered as his hands cupped her round backside then squeezed, softly kneading it as he fought the moan building in his chest.

  She swallowed hard, e
njoying the feel of his roughened hands on her delicate skin. “You don’t think I can take care of myself?” she demanded, trying to fight the urge to roll over and beckon him with her finger to take her. “That was nothing…it was a flesh wound.”

  “Uh huh,” he dryly agreed, not concerned about that or what happened at the bar in the least, and continued to caress her silken skin and to massage the pliable muscles in her round backside, something he’s longed to do since the first moment he watched it jog away from him.

  “If you think that...what do you think, Fury?” she asked, rolling to her back and looked down her body at him.

  The look on his face confused her.

  “What’s wrong?” she demanded, propping herself up on her elbows.

  Colt’s eyes slowly worked up her body until he met her eyes. “I thought you left me like everyone else,” he admitted.

  Her face dropped. “I didn’t think my message would have confused you that much,” she said and held her arms out to him.

  Colt didn’t wait to be told twice and slid up her body then rested his head on her chest and tapped out the rhythm of her heart with his finger as she held him tight. “What message?” he whispered, closing his eyes as her heat enveloped him.

  “That I needed some quiet time to sit amongst the angels,” she said.

  He nodded. “I would have gotten that right away since you love this bed so much, but I didn’t get the message.”

  “Probie didn’t give it to you?”

  Colt looked up at her. “Probie? When did you see him?”

  Cat cocked an eyebrow. “He came by before I took off, he said that you wanted me to know that you and Jimmy were still arguing at the bar and that you’d be a while... You never told him to stop by, did you?” she surmised, a knot instantly formed in her gut.

  “No, not at all. He took two of the perps from the bar to the station and processed them with the others. That was the last I saw of him. Never would I have sent him to deliver a message to you. Not when you were expecting me.”