by Lisa Ladew
Ivy! Ivy knew everything that was going on. And Ivy was smart. She scrolled through her contacts list and texted Ivy, pleased when Ivy invited her over almost right away.
She dragged a brush through her hair, grabbed a bagel off the counter and ran to her car. In fifteen minutes she was inside Ivy’s apartment, spilling all the details from the day before.
Ivy leaned forward, her eyes bright. “You kissed him! How was it?”
“He’s an amazing kisser. It just left me wanting more. And feeling guilty as hell.”
Ivy sucked in a breath and rocked back into her overstuffed couch. “I bet. I don’t envy you.”
“So then I told him I was unavailable.”
Ivy leaned forward again, her eyes eating up her face. “How did he take that?”
“Like I’d just killed his puppy.”
Ivy let out a startled laugh and brushed her bangs back out of her face. Her hair spilled over her ears, covering the shaved sides.
“Are you going to see him again?”
“I don’t know. I hope not really. He’s a super sweet guy and I don’t want to hurt him.”
Ivy eyed her skeptically. “He could still be working with his dad.”
Jen leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “I don’t think he is,” she said, her voice wooden. “Thanks for letting me come over. I just feel bad, you know? And lonely.” She looked around the apartment. “I was almost afraid Ryker would be here.”
Ivy dropped her eyes and her cheeks flushed red.
“Oh no, he was!”
“He was, but it’s not what you think. He comes over a lot.”
It was Jen’s turn to lean forward, pitching her voice low like they might get overheard. “Did he spend the night?”
Ivy bit her lip and looked down again.
“He did? Oh my God are you guys together?”
“No!” Ivy put her hands out. “Look Jen, you don’t understand. There’s nothing going on between me and Ryker.”
“But he likes you. It’s obvious.”
Ivy looked pleased. “Yeah,” she said quietly.
“Do you like him? Have you kissed him? Tell me everything.”
Ivy laughed. “I do like him. But I don’t want to pursue anything until we’re done with this assignment. I’d hate for something to not work out and then we still have to work so closely together. Plus we might get in trouble.” She looked at Jen from under her long, dark lashes. “And I’ve only kissed him once.”
“When? Where? How?” Jen gushed.
Ivy laughed. “Am I being interrogated?”
“Yes! Tell me! Was it last night?”
“No, he slept on the couch last night. He came over to watch movies and it got late. I told him to just stay. He kissed me at the pawn shop.”
“The pawn shop! Where was I? And what about the cameras?”
“We were outside. In the back. Against the building where the cameras can’t see. It was our fourth day. He helped me take some of the early prototypes of my machine to the trash. I told him thank you and he just … pulled me into him and kissed me.” Jen jumped up and down on the couch, a thousand questions showing in her eyes. Ivy held up a finger. “It was wonderful. And soft. But I told him I just wasn’t ready. He said he’d wait for me to be ready for a hundred years if that’s what it took. He said he thinks he’s falling in love with me.”
Jen threw herself backwards and fell off the couch onto the floor. Ivy laughed. Jen climbed to her knees. “That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I would have jumped his bones right there.” Ivy giggled and a hot blush climbed her cheeks again.
“But he hasn’t known you for very long. Do you really think he could be falling in love with you?”
“We went to high school together.”
“You what? Where?”
“Westwood Prep. He was a jock and I was a geeky smart girl who didn’t quite dare to be punk. He was always nice to me though. I helped him with his homework a few times. And he gave me a ride home once when some other boys fucked with me.”
“You guys could have your own Lifetime movie.”
Ivy whacked her on the shoulder. “Knock it off.”
Jen sighed. “I miss having a boyfriend. Someone to cuddle with. Tell all your secrets too. Kiss until you think you’re gonna die.”
Ivy watched her silently for a few moments. “You know who would be good for you?”
Jen turned to her, laughter in her eyes, anticipating a joke coming. Maybe she was going to suggest one of the coke heads that came into the shop. “Who?”
“Hunter. He’s always looking at you like you’re ice cream and he’s got a serious sweet tooth.”
Jen’s mouth dropped open. “Hunter?”
“You know, Sgt. Foley? He told me and Ryker to call him Hunter the other day.”
“He does not look at me like I’m— like I’m—”
“Ice cream. And yes he does. Me and Ryker talk about it all the time.”
Jen’s mind twirled and jumped and she forgot to breathe. Hunter? Her? Ice cream? No way. She’d never seen him look at her like that. Well, except the other day at her house, when that look that had made the little hairs on her arms stand up passed between them.
Jen fell backwards on the floor, hitting her back hard on Ivy’s coffee table. She never felt it. She was far away, thinking about gray-green eyes and tousled, dark hair. And ice cream.
Chapter 18
Coleton let his eyes pass over the new skyscrapers downtown. It seemed every time he returned to Westwood Harbor they’d torn down another landmark and put up another towering monster in its place. He used to love walking the shops down here with his mom. But it was all so different now.
He passed a purse boutique and eyed the garishly displayed purses. Too gaudy. Fifteen feet past that was a bath and body shop. No, too impersonal. Across the street he saw a clothing store. No, too fancy. He walked on and let his mind wander. Would she even want a gift from him? He’d asked if he could try to change her mind … about being unavailable. What did that mean exactly? Another man? Hot emotion burned across his eyeballs at the thought. Jealousy. He was jealous of an imaginary man. He laughed at himself, and tried to break up the tension across his upper back with a few shoulder rolls.
He wanted her. Plain and simple. And now he just had to figure out how to make her want him. She was fun, sweet, and beautiful. And he was single, lonely, and tired of being alone. Sure he could have companionship. Women propositioned him all the time. But he’d learned a long time ago that a brainless or conniving woman was not better than no woman. He thought of Megan, his last serious girlfriend. She’d been pre-med at Berkeley. And he’d loved her with everything he had. But when she’d left for medical school, she’d broken up with him. I’ll be too busy. We’ll grow apart. Look me up in 8 years.
His phone rang in his pocket. He pulled it out eagerly, hoping it was Jen. Nope. Mom.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Coleton, your father wants you to call him.”
Coleton almost laughed. “Yeah right, Ma, is this a joke?”
“No really. He just called me and told me he wanted you to call him.”
“Well I’m not going to.”
“He didn’t think you’d want to. So he gave me a message for you. He says your pinko girlfriend is a cop. And he wants to meet her.”
Coleton’s mind couldn’t put everything she’d said together for a moment. Pinko? Cop? And then realization and terror hit him in the same instant, making his muscles go leaden and dead in fear. He leaned against a building. “Pinko Mom? Did he say pink-haired?”
“Yes Cole, pink-haired, that was it. Who is she, baby? You didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend. Is her hair really pink? I don’t like that Coleton.”
“I’ll tell you later, Ma.” He reached out his two-ton hand and pushed the end-call button on the screen.
Jen was a cop. And that’s why she was unavailable. And she was on his dad’s radar. His dad
said he wanted to meet her. Did that mean she was as good as dead? Coleton held himself upright with effort. Think, dammit! Think! What in the hell are you going to do? He knew he didn’t have time to be pissed that Jen was a cop. All he cared about at this point was making sure she was safe. If that was possible.
Coleton pushed himself upright and started walking again, dragging each foot towards where his car was parked. He hadn’t talked to his dad in seven years. His dad was a criminal. The worst kind of criminal. Some sort of old-time mobster who thought he could kill whoever pissed him off. Who had no respect for human life. Who thought ordering a hit, or shooting someone, was like ordering dinner. Or eating dessert. But his dad had been quiet for years. When he’d told Jen his dad was retired he hadn’t been lying exactly. He thought maybe his dad was retired. Getting too old for the rigors of being a mob boss in California, where gangs were more wide-spread than mob families, and even more dangerous these days.
The horrible scene from when he was 12 years old flashed in front of his eyes, as it often did when he thought of his dad. Just before he’d run away for good. He’d lived with his mom then, and his mom and dad hadn’t ever been legally married, so he didn’t spend a ton of time with his dad. And the time he did spend was strange. It made no sense to Coleton. His dad would talk on the phone a lot, or play cards with his friends, and they’d laugh and brag about women and scores they’d made. Coleton had heard stories about his dad at school, whispered stories, but he didn’t think any of them were true. They were too crazy, too fanciful. He’d asked his mom what daddy did, and his mom had said he ran a trucking company. Coleton never saw any trucks or truckers, but his dad scared him from a young age. He was quick to yell and quicker to hit. And when Coleton had been 12, his dad had insisted he come over after school one day. He’d told Coleton that he was finally old enough to start learning the family business. Coleton had been excited at first, but when it became clear they weren’t going to leave the house, Coleton became apprehensive, realizing there was no trucking business.
His dad had told him to go out to the garage and open the trunk of his car and bring in what he found there. Coleton’s world had narrowed to a tiny pinprick of light, and he tried to see his way to the garage with that little bit of sight. Two of his uncles followed him, laughing softly. Coleton had turned the key in the lock and opened the truck slowly, ready to cut and run. He thought maybe his dad had put snakes or tarantulas in the trunk, and this was some sort of a test. So when he’d seen a man instead, he’d been surprised into dumb silence. He stood and stared as the man reached out a bloody hand to him and said something that sounded like “help me.” The man’s mouth had been mashed in, his lips looked like hamburger.
Coleton took a terrified step backwards and his uncles pulled the man out of the trunk, ordering him to walk. Coleton lagged behind, not wanting to see whatever was going to happen next. As he rounded the corner into his father’s den, he saw his father with a gun in his hand. A big gun. A heavy-looking gun. To 12-year-old Coleton it looked as big as a cannon. Coleton had turned and run then, to more laughter from his uncles. Run into his room. Slammed the door. Gone right out the window without stopping. But he still heard the gunshot from the foot of the driveway. He’d run and hitched a ride to the interstate and then just hitched. Not caring where he went. He’d spent a few hazy days sleeping under bridges and experiencing more horrors that he’d mostly blocked out, but eventually he’d been forced to call his mother. He hadn’t gone to the cops. He’d been taught from an early age that a cop would only kick you while you were down. That all cops were corrupt and a corrupt cop only cared about one thing. Himself. That cops were never to be trusted. That they would put you in jail on a whim. That your only hope of survival was to stay under the radar. To not get caught. And Coleton had been great at that. A sensitive, shy, intellectual child, he’d never done anything to get caught for.
When he finally called his mother and told her what happened, his mother had said that his dad had probably just wanted to talk to the guy. That she was sure it had all been a big joke, That Coleton shouldn’t have run away. Coleton responded by hanging up on her. But 12 hours later, starving and bruised from— from an incident that he didn’t quite remember— Coleton had called her again. Eventually, he had ended up at Aunt Edda’s house, and lived there until he was 17. The couple of times he’d seen his father show up in the driveway, he’d ran out the back door and not come back for days. And the one time his mom came down to get him and take him to Christmas dinner with the family, he’d jumped out of a moving car, somersaulted into the ditch, and run away again.
He knew his father could send his uncles to get him from school or out of his bed while he was asleep, but he took pains to stay alert and he barricaded himself into his room at night. Finally, it seemed like his father had given up. Until he turned 18. Then his father had started sending him gifts. Money. A car. Phones. Computers. And letters. Coleton had returned them all.
And he’d started to realize that what he’d been taught about cops was wrong. He’d thought many times about turning his father into the police. He’d even called in an anonymous tip from a pay phone once, about the guy he’d seen in the trunk. He didn’t know what had come of it, if anything. And Coleton knew how much he didn’t know. He didn’t know the man’s name and couldn’t remember what he looked like. And he hadn’t actually seen the man get shot. But still the man haunted his dreams occasionally. He had spent afternoons at the library during his teenage years, poring over old newspapers, trying to figure out just who his father really was. There wasn’t much about him on the Internet. His heyday had come and gone before Wikipedia existed apparently.
And now at 28, he had his own life that had nothing to do with his father. His father hadn’t sent him a gift in two or three years now. He frequently wished his father would just go away, leave him alone. Many times, he’d considered changing his name. Especially after he’d been harassed a few times by the police.
Since he’d been an adult though, he’d watched the way his mother and sisters and almost everyone related to the family participated in the criminal activities or benefited from in some way. He was the sole holdout. Well, maybe not the only one. Some cousin or nephew who had also escaped and joined the army. He forgot the cousin or nephew’s name, but he heard about him every once in a while. When a family member cornered him in public somewhere. There were underground rumors that a few distant family members were cops in town, but the rumors never agreed on if the cops were still loyal to the family or not.
You done with your trip down memory lane? Because Jen could have been shot 150 times by now. His mind rounded on him and again demanded he do something. But what? Text Jen? And tell her to get out of town for a bit? Would she listen? Would she even answer?
Parts of a plan formed in his mind. He wasn’t sure how it would all come together yet, but he decided to get started. He ran across one final street, ignoring the crosswalk and the blaring of car horns, pulled his car door open and climbed in. He pulled out his phone and dialed a number he had on speed dial.
“Keene.”
“Jackson, it’s Cole.”
“Coleton Savoy! It’s been too damn long!” Jackson Keene, his friend and a local private investigator sounded pleased to hear from him.
“Sorry man. I need help, and I need it quick.”
“Shoot.” He was all business that fast. Coleton was grateful. In his mind, Jen could be facing trouble already.
“I need to know if I’m being followed. And I need a woman’s address. And I need to know how easy it was for you to find that address.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in my car near the corner of 22nd and Ballard.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Nowhere in particular. Until you get an address for me.”
“Hold on.”
Jackson clicked off the line. He came back a few minutes later. “I’ve got someone heading out. A new guy. He�
�ll be in a red Firebird. He’ll honk as he drives past your car. Give him 10 minutes. Now give me the woman’s name.”
“Jen—” Coleton blanked for a moment. Did he know her last name? Shit. “I don’t know her last name.”
“License plate number? Place of business?”
Coleton's heart sank. Jackson was his friend. Jackson had done a lot of work for him a few years back when his father had really been putting on the pressure for him to return to the family, but would Jackson balk if he told him she was an undercover cop? Maybe. Then a light went off in his head. “Hold on.”
He flipped through the pictures on his phone till he found the ones he’d taken the day before at the park. There was a picture of the ocean, another of seagulls fighting over some crackers, Jen smiling at him - and her in front of her car! He zoomed in and read off the license plate number to Jackson, fighting the sick feeling in his gut that told him if his father knew she had pink hair, his father probably also had her license plate number.
“I’ll call you back when I’ve got something.” Jackson clicked off and Coleton was left staring at his phone, knowing he had one more phone call to make. Possibly the hardest one of his life.
Chapter 19
Coleton texted his mother, not wanting to talk to her on the phone again. Give me dad’s phone number.
When the number came through, he dialed it, dread making his fingers shake.
He heard a ringing in his ear and then silence. “Dad?”
“Coleton.” Pleasure rang through his father’s voice. With an undercurrent of shrewdness? Of course. And something more. Age. A weakening that hadn’t been there before. He did the math quickly. His father was 65 years old.
“Leave her alone, Dad.”
“Of course I will. Don’t even worry about it. It’s done.” Coleton waited, knowing there would be more. “And maybe dear son, you could come and do something for me.” Coleton shook his head. This had been a mistake. He shouldn’t have called. He should have just … what? Warned Jen and left town for good. But what if she got hurt? It would be all his fault. Because he’d thought she was pretty.
