“I won’t forget again,” I promised.
“Yeah, Ace, don’t forget again,” he warned and it was definitely a warning.
I felt my back straighten as I stood in the grocery store aisle. I turned and stared at the shelves, feeling myself getting angry.
“Well, it’s not like your King Text,” I snapped.
“Come again?”
“You don’t reply,” I told him. “I text and you don’t reply. I mean –”
He interrupted me. “Deal wasn’t that I was texting you.”
“Yes, but –”
“I don’t text,” he informed me.
“But you expect me to?” I shot back.
“Yeah, Ace. Newsflash, I’m huntin’ a raping serial killer. I think you get that he’s tweaked me, that sick f**k takin’ out Tonia. My old lady is four states away, not close, not in my control. You get that?”
“Um…” I mumbled because I partly did and the part I got felt nice. I also partly didn’t because he referred to me as not in his control and I not only didn’t get that I wasn’t sure how to take it.
He kept talking. “And last time I left you on your own, you ended up with another guy.”
Oh no he didn’t. We’d talked about that. He didn’t get to throw that in my face.
“I’m hardly going to pick up a man in Indiana,” I snapped.
“Babe, you don’t pick ‘em up, those f**kin’ legs of yours, they pick you.”
“Tate –”
“Text.”
“Tate!”
“Askin’ you to give me peace of mind here,” he clipped, “text.”
“Oh all right,” I relented because we were talking about peace of mind. We’d talk about me being in his “control” later.
“We done?” he asked.
“You called me,” I reminded him.
“We’re done,” he muttered and then disconnected.
God, if he wasn’t so handsome, strong, sometimes sweet, didn’t have a Harley, that beard, a tendency to play with my hair, didn’t look so good in jeans and wasn’t so danged good in bed, he would seriously not be worth it.
Of course he was, or had, all those things. Therefore unfortunately he was worth it.
I barely settled my head on the pillow when my phone rang.
Quickly, hoping it didn’t wake up my mother, I touched the button under the screen that said “Captain Calling” and put it to my ear.
“Hey,” I whispered.
“Your Mom asleep?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Your Dad?”
“Color’s back, moving around, got more energy, it’s all good.”
“Good,” he said softly.
“You?” I asked.
I had learned over the last several nights’ conversations that due to Tate’s past as a police officer and his present as a bounty hunter, he had relationships on Chantelle’s Police Force. One of the FBI agents working the case was also, luckily for Tate, a huge football fan and the icing on the cake was he was an alumnus of Penn State and remembered Tate. Because of these two, unusually, they were letting Tate in on the investigation in a “consultative capacity”. In other words, they were sharing information just as he was sharing what he knew with them.
The problem was neither side had much. In fact, nothing at all.
“Wind,” Tate answered my question.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“He’s in the wind. We got nothin’. No leads, no ideas and he’s off script, could strike at any time.”
“Yes, but you said all the victims were like Tonia,” I reminded him and he did say that. He’d told me that all the women were Tonia’s age and reportedly dressed like her and acted like her prior to their deaths. Four, including Tonia and the woman just murdered, were waitresses in bars. Three were strippers. One was a prostitute.
“Yeah, they got people camped everywhere, got more people warnin’ folks. But he wants the kill, he’ll find it.”
“Right,” I whispered because this was creepy and scary and both in equal measure.
“What’re your plans?” he asked and I sighed.
I was at a crossroads with my plans. I’d talked to Krystal and she said I could take all the time I needed.
This would have been very kind except she ended our conversation with, “No skin off my nose, not payin’ you to be home.” Thus informing me I was on unpaid leave.
This was okay. I needed to be here, see to things, weed Mom’s garden, mow the yard (it took me a whole day to do the front yard, the side yard across the lane by the grape arbor and weed whack everything including around the pond – Tyler should take his boot camp out on a field trip to Indiana and force them to do that, it was killer), clean the house, ferry Mom around, visit with Dad.
But Dad was getting better which meant he was getting antsy. He wanted out. He wasn’t a staying confined type of person. In a day or two he’d be up the wall.
And I also felt the need to be home in Carnal. I’d started a life, I liked it and I missed it. Betty and Ned, the pool, Bubba’s, Jim-Billy, my visits to Sunny and Shambles, their treats, Wendy, Holly at the flower shop – I even missed Tyler’s boot camps.
Then there was Tate.
I wanted to go home.
Mom wanted me to go home too.
“Need to get on with life, hon,” Mom had said. “So do you.”
“I can stay for awhile,” I’d told her.
“I know you can but that isn’t my life and it isn’t yours,” she’d replied.
“But, you need –”
“To learn how to cope with what I got and what’s happening next. You can’t stay here forever.”
This was true. I couldn’t. I loved Mom and Dad, Caroline and Mack, Indiana and our farm and I’d spent ten years missing them and wishing I was back.
But my life was now in Carnal.
Mom had taken my hand and given it a squeeze. “We’ll be fine, hon and you can go home to Tate and bring him back when we can have a good visit. At Christmas. I can make Tate my chicken ‘n’ noodles and you all can go ice skating on the pond.”
I tried to imagine Tate on ice skates. This vision didn’t form in my brain likely because Tate’s badassness reached across four states and halted such activity.
“Mom thinks I should go home,” I told Tate.
“She’d be right, Ace,” Tate told me.