by Kit Frazier
A tear slid down Faith’s cheek, and Marlowe edged over the console and put his head in her lap. She began to sob then deep, wracking sobs that shook her body. Marlowe bumped her elbow with his white, pointy nose, and she began to stroke his velvety husky ears. As she stroked, her tears subsided.
“They’re here for you, too, now,” I said.
Faith sat quietly, petting Marlowe’s ears. I didn’t know what else to say, so I didn’t say anything.
We pulled into the rutted, red dirt drive and bumped up to her house, which was actually a Jurassic mobile home that listed to the left, propped upright by a dozen cinder blocks and a prayer.
Marlowe and I walked her up the four wobbly aluminum steps, and Faith let us in the bent metal door.
The trailer floor creaked as I stepped inside behind her, and my heart did a quick thump. I wondered if ghosts haunted trailers or if they went for better real estate.
Somewhere in the darkness, I heard screech! and something small and sharp dug into the top of my head. It felt like I had been smacked on the scalp by a metal hairbrush. Marlowe went wild, leaping and growling.
Faith screamed and then something else screamed, and then I joined in.
Faith scrambled for the lights.
She flipped the switch, bringing garish yellow light into the room.
The flying hairbrush hit me again, and Faith said, “Keates! Stop it!”
She shut the window the bird had flown in through, then held out her forefinger. A little yellow bird circled the ceiling fan, then landed on her finger, chittering at me angrily. Faith took the bird to a huge wrought-iron cage that took up most of the living room. The door was open, and Faith said, “Home.”
The bird chided me again, then flitted into the cage.
“Aren’t you going to close the cage door?” I said to Faith, touching my head. I looked at my fingers and realized I was bleeding not a lot, but still…
Faith looked at me like I’d suggested we pluck the little darling and have it for dinner.
“He doesn’t like the door closed,” Faith said, and made a kissy noise at the bird.
My eyes widened, adjusting to the dim yellow light. Inside, the little trailer looked like decor by Disney: all pink and white and frothy frills. A row of beautiful, aging porcelain dolls lined a shelf along the ceiling. I half expected a host of fuzzy animal friends to burst from the hall closet and form a chorus line.
Pierced and tattooed, Faith trudged through the fairytale finery looking like a demon caught in Cinderella’s castle.
“Does all this stuff belong to you?” I said, and Faith looked around like she was seeing her home for the first time.
“Yeah,” she said. “My grandma left me her dolls. Some of them belonged to her grandmother.”
I nodded but couldn’t calm the feeling of dread that slipped up my spine. Marlowe and I checked under beds, behind curtains, and in the closets for latent signs of predators which is to say that I checked while Marlowe sniffed out peanut butter cookies, stray Skittles, and anything else that seemed remotely edible.
“Is that it?” I asked Faith, and she shrugged.
“Well, there is a crawl space.”
Of course there was a crawl space. Why did I have to open my big mouth?
Faith lifted a wooden door in the floor between the washer and dryer, and I wished then that I hadn’t asked.
“What’s down there?” I said.
“It’s a tornado shelter, so there’s canned goods, bottled water, and a year’s supply of duct tape. I think there also might be a rat.”
My breath caught, and I slammed the trap door.
“Well, I think we’re done,” I said. Faith looked relieved and very tired.
I knew the feeling.
I found no creepy earless guys and Marlowe found not one crumb of peanut butter cookie, so I watched as Faith slipped into a pair of pink Barbie pajamas and crawled into bed, then told her I’d call her in the morning and gave her my card in case she needed to get ahold of me before then.
Before pulling out of her driveway, I called the Dawes County Sheriff “s Department and asked that they put a patrol on Faith’s house, and then I headed home to my own little bungalow, tired all the way down to my bones.
At home, I gave half of Mama’s barbecue to the freckle-faced rookie parked under the streetlight, tossed the rest of it in the fridge, and then checked my own house for rats, dead birds, and homicidal, nasty note writers.
Frankly, it would be pointless for Obregon or the masked bandit or anyone else, for that matter, to jump me now. They’d have to wake me up if they wanted to inflict any real kind of pain, and the chances of that were about even with the Democrats sweeping the state Senate.
I stripped, climbed into the shower, and nearly fell asleep as the water poured down on me. It wasn’t until then that I noticed I was covered with bruises. My muscles were sore, and I felt like I’d been stricken with polio.
I had to get back to the gym.
I toweled off and fell into bed half wet and swathed in my bathrobe. I was too tired for a turf battle with the dog and cat, so I took the corner at the foot of the bed, determined to sleep for the next forty-eight hours or until I got hungry, whichever came first. I would, of course, have to get up in a few hours, head to work, and write Puck’s obituary for the second time. The first obit was in the unrecoverable Dead Copy file. I felt sick all over again.
My brain was spinning, and I tried like hell to shut it off. Marlowe sprawled out on the pillow, taking up more than his half of the bed. He snored peacefully, probably just to piss me off.
Puck’s second obituary would be different, but how? Puck’s passing probably wouldn’t be noticed by many, but for Faith and Logan and maybe even Puck’s mother, I knew this bit of writing would mean a lot. What could I say about Puck that could soothe his sister and Logan? Who else had cared about him? Was there someone out there, other than Faith, whose life would be lessened because of his absence?
Marlowe grumbled in his sleep, and I reached up toward the pillow and scratched beneath his chin. Muse yawned and stretched and butted me with her little calico head so that I would lift the quilt and let her snuggle up under my chin.
I stroked her soft fur, and as she purred the tears came, quiet and steady. I would think about all that later. In the words of Margaret Mitchell, tomorrow was another day. The stars winked through my bedroom window, and as I drifted off to sleep, I wondered if Logan was somewhere watching those very same stars.
And then I said a little prayer for him and for Faith and for the soul of Wylie Ray Puckett.
The moon was shining through the window when I woke with a start.
Beside me, Marlowe growled low in his throat.
“What is it, boy?” I whispered, straining to listen. A floorboard creaked. One of the rafters settled. My breath lodged in my throat.
And then I heard it. Gravel crunching in the driveway. Marlowe leapt from the bed and was at the front door, leaping and jumping. I slid past the kitchen counter, slowing only enough to grab the cast-iron frying pan. I was using the frying pan twice in one week. Rachael Ray, eat your heart out.
Frying pan in hand, I scrambled past the front hall and into the foyer just as a knock sounded at the door. I peeked out the window, looking for the cop, and saw nothing. I took a deep breath and muttered, “If that’s you, Selena Obregon, you should know that paybacks are hell.”
I glanced back at the clock on the DVD player. Three a.m. Who in the hell would be knocking on my door at three am? Marlowe yipped and bounced and warbled at the door. No growling, no bristling, so it was someone we knew. That pissed me off even more.
Clutching my robe more tightly, I stormed to the door and flung it open, frying pan raised, swearing like a sailor.
“Somebody better be dead,” I yelled, then immediately pulled back. “Logan?”
He stood there looking tall and dark in the night. He was also dirty and tired, with a big rip in his shirt, a
nd he was holding a very large, very ugly, hissing, writhing orange demon of a cat. The cat was quite possibly the poorest excuse for an animal I’d ever seen. He left eye was sealed shut, one ear was missing, and one fang protruded from his thin, black lips.
“What on earth?” I sputtered, swinging the door wider. “Come in and put that thing down.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” he said, with one of his sheepish Harrison Ford grins. He winced as the cat scrabbled at the bandages on his right shoulder.
As Logan stepped inside, he bumped the door closed and admonished Marlowe to leave the cat alone. I raced down the hall and slammed the bedroom door right in Muse’s little tennis ball-shaped face.
Logan released the beast. The yellow demon bounced onto the hardwood, ricocheted off the chair, and began racing around the living room, yowling like a wounded banshee.
Brows raised, I stared at Logan.
“Puck’s cat,” he said. “It was Puck’s trailer that caught fire. The cat was trapped in a burning shed near the trailer. It’s the only thing that made it out of the fire.”
“You went into a fire after Puck’s cat?” I said, and my heart opened a little bit wider.
“Name is Tarrantino. I was, uh, hoping you could keep him a couple of days.”
“As in Quentin Tarrantino?” I asked,
“You said it yourself: everyone’s a producer.”
“Any word on Obregon?” I said, and Logan said, “I’ll find her,” and Ibknew all the way to my heart that he would.
I looked over at Marlowe, who was watching the yowling cat with keen interest, ears pricked, the tip of his tongue sticking out of his mouth.
“You know,” I said, nodding at the dog. “I’m kind of in the middle of the last favor you asked of me.”
“Joint custody,” Logan said, and grinned.
“I’m going by Faith’s tomorrow to check on her. If she doesn’t want the cat, I’ll talk to Burt Buggess, the guy at the pet store. If anybody can love that cat, it’ll be the Bug.”
“Yeah, about that,” Logan said. “If the sister doesn’t want him, I’ll take him.”
I stared at him. “You’ll take the cat?”
The cat had apparently finished racing around the room and settled down to extend his claws and make confetti out of my couch.
“Logan,” I said. “Have you ever had a cat before?”
“Well, no.”
I stared at the cat, who was growling and chewing his tail. “This isn’t exactly a starter cat.”
Logan rubbed the back of his neck, looking like the words coming out of his mouth were a surprise, even to him.
“Yeah, I just…” He blew out a breath and stared at the ceiling.
And in that moment, I knew. Silently, I thought, This, Mama. This is why you put up with it.
“Yeah.” I went up on tiptoe to kiss Logan on his cheek. “I know.
Logan was gone. Muse was on a shelf in my bedroom closet plotting her revenge and Marlowe was sitting in the hallway, watching Quentin the Cat from Hell systematically destroy my living room. I was at the end of my rope.
“Quentin, no!” I shouted. The one-eared cat ripped a hole in the sofa and was yanking stuffing out of it like it was a box of Kleenex. I ducked into the kitchen and reached for the water pistol Mia had given me to stop Muse from peeing in the ficus. The gift that keeps on giving.
“No!” I yelled at Quentin, aiming straight for the demon cat’s nose. A small stream of water caught the cat by surprise, and he stopped and stared at me. Then he yowled, jumped straight into the air, did a one-eighty and scuttled under the sofa, muttering little cat swears from behind the Queen Anne legs.
“Wow,” I said. “Muse usually just gives me a dirty look.”
The beast growled an unholy growl, and a big yellow paw stretched out and began shredding the Turkish rug.
The phone rang and I bobbled it and the squirt gun, yelling at the cat. “Knock it off or I’ll shoot you again!”
“Did I leave too early?” Logan’s voice came over the receiver.
“You always leave too early,” I said, sounding as grumpy as the latest addition to my menagerie.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” he said, and God help me, I believed him. “I just wanted to tell you you did good today.”
Despite the cat, a smile curled my lips and spread all the way through my body. “Back at ya, Brown Eyes,” I said in what I thought was a pretty good Bogart.
The cat seemed to calm down and I set the squirt gun on the counter, filling a small bowl of water to set it under the sofa in case the little beast was thirsty.
Logan said, “I mean it. It got ugly out there today, and you stood your ground. You’re a helluva reporter, kid.”
“Calling me a reporter is generous on your part.” I sighed. “And I don’t know how great a reporter I am. I have this terrible conflict of interest.”
“Am I the interest?”
I grinned. “And the conflict.”
“You’ll figure it out,” he said.
“I have a confession,” I said into the phone, my heart kicking up a beat. “I think I have a terrible crush on you.” My face flushed with heat, even as I said the words.
He chuckled at that and I said, “No, really, Logan, I feel like an eighth grader at a school dance or something. I get awkward whenever I’m within fifteen feet of you, and I’m telling you this now because it’s killing me and I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”
“Well, kid, I may have something like a crush on you, too.”
My smile widened. “Every time I talk to you my heart pounds and my tongue gets tied and I don’t know what to say.”
There was a long silence, and then he said, “Would you know what to do?”
“You mean like kiss you until neither one of us remembers our own names?” I said, my cheeks going hotter at my own boldness.
“We could start there,” he said, and lights flashed in my drivewaynjust before a knock sounded at the door.
“Hold on,” I said, frustration prickling my voice. “Someone’s at the door, and the way my luck’s been running he’s probably earless and carting a dead canary.”
“I doubt it,” he said, and as I swung open the door, I found Logan, there in the moonlight, tall and dark and dangerous, even with his bandaged arm. His white shirt was open at the neck, his dark hair mussed, and I took a step back.
My breath caught and my heart pounded in my throat. “I thought you had to leave.”
“Got someone else to cover the call.”
In one long stride he was in the door.
He swept me into his arms and said, “What’s this I hear about kissing me all over?”
My stomach swooped like I was on a roller coaster, and I reached around him and bumped his bandaged arm.
“Logan, your arm,” I said.
He grinned a dangerous grin. “Totally worth it,” he said, and he kissed me and the earth swayed beneath my feet.
Logan broke the kiss and looked at me, hungry, and heat rushed to my cheeks. I met his gaze, my breath coming hard, and every cell in my body pulsed. He leaned down, brushing his lips to the corner of my mouth, and a moan rose from somewhere deep inside me.
Without breaking his embrace, he kicked the door shut behind him and took the phone from my hand to toss it on the sofa.
“I want you, Cauley,” he said against my cheek, and his voice was hard and fast and low. “I want all of you. I wanted you from the moment I saw you breech the police line at the Barnes ranch. I want you right here. Right now.”
Well. When he put it that way.
I pressed into him with my whole body and kissed him back, and I felt the floor rush away when he scooped me up into his arms and carried me down the hallway, my heart hammering so hard I was sure he could feel it through the soft knit of my jersey.
He kissed me again, his eyes hard, and my breath went away. I don’t know how he got the door open or how he got past Muse, but in the
next moment I was on my bed, face flushed, lips tingling, my blood fizzing inside me like warm champagne.
He was over me then, shifting so that his cell phone didn’t dig into my hip, and then his lips were on mine, kissing, harder, hotter, and I arched beneath him wanting more, wanting his whole body with my whole body.
“Logan,” I whispered and he groaned, reaching beneath my jersey, his large hand, warm, cupping my breast. He smelled like soap and leather and fire and something that was pure Logan, and he moaned then and I moaned too, and my head said “Wait a minute!” but my body said “Yes, now, now, now!”
He kissed me again, softer this time, and then he rose, his arms caging me so that our faces were inches apart. He looked down at me with dark eyes the color of melted sin, and I felt myself fall a little more.
“This isn’t just an adrenaline drop from the fire. I want you, Cauley,” he whispered, his voice husky, and I whispered back, “Yes.”
My breath came in small gasps and I leaned up and kissed him, hard, as he slid the soft fabric of my jersey up, over my breasts, off my shoulders, and over my head.
As he looked at me, he exhaled like the breath had been crushed from his body, and a low, gutteral noise came from somewhere deep inside him.
He rolled to his side then, his gaze raking my body as though he was going to eat me alive and I’d be the better for it. Heat flooded my cheeks and I went for the sheet, but his hand gripped my wrist.
“No,” he said. “I want to see you.”
He kissed me again, and I wanted him with everything inside me. “I want you,” I whispered, and he said, “I know.”
I went for the buttons on his shirt, needing to feel his warm skin, and his hand closed over mine.
“Patience is a virtue,” he said.
“Virtue is overrated.”
“Yeah,” Logan grinned, “I like that about you.”
And then he kissed me, hard, and his lips moved down, feathering over the pulse in my throat. I groaned and moved against him, feeling his hard heat, and he nipped my neck, gently, and moved lower, lower, to my breast, his lips warm as he grazed his teeth along my nipple.
I wanted to scream, but I held his head, his hair soft under my fingers, and he drew me into his mouth. My head fell back and I wondered if this was what it felt like to die happy. His lips trailed kisses down, down, raising chills along my skin, and he flicked his tongue against the soft silk edge of my panties. He looked up at me, his eyes hot with desire.
