For You by Kristen Ashley
“Never easy livin’ with the knowledge that you could have done more, February.”
“Nope, you’re right,” Feb replied. “So you’ll have to live with the fact that you did what she asked, kept her secret, and, in a time when she was scared as hell, you gave her a little bit of feelin’ safe.”
Doc moved out of Feb’s arms and lifted a hand to pat her shoulder but his mind was active behind his eyes, sifting through memories, trying to figure out what he missed, where he’d gone wrong and what more he could have done.
Colt decided to put a stop to it. “Denny Lowe started to wage war awhile ago, Doc, with a lot of casualties along the way.” Doc looked at him and Colt continued. “None of us even knew he was doin’ it and comin’ out victorious. Don’t give him another victory, not standing yards from the grave of one he brought low. Amy wouldn’t want that for the rest of us left standin’. In fact, she died so that we could all let it go.”
Doc looked at him for a long time and he looked at him hard.
Then he said, “You were always a smart lil’ bugger.”
“Yeah, I think you mentioned that when I was about five and a fair few times since,” Colt told him.
Doc kept looking at him then he turned to Feb. “How’re you sleepin’, February?”
Feb moved into Colt, slid her arm around his waist and put her head to his shoulder before she whispered, “Sleepin’ good, Doc.”
Doc took them both in and said, “Two weeks ago, you asked me, I’da said I never thought I’d see this end for you two.”
“Drink it in,” Colt suggested, as he lifted his arm and curled it around Feb’s shoulders.
The pall on the day was lifting because the funeral was over, he was taking Feb to a home she was moving her shit into and he thought it was highly likely he had something to do with her sleeping well. All was not well with the world, but at least it was better.
Feb leaned forward and whispered again, this time loudly, “He’s very full of himself, Doc.”
“A good woman gives him her love, that’ll do that to a man, February,” Doc whispered back, also loudly.
Feb’s chin gave a startled jerk but Doc didn’t give her time to let his compliment sink in. He lifted his hand and then let it fall before he turned and walked away.
Colt watched him and saw his shoulders were drooped, his gait was slow and Colt knew his thoughts were heavy. He’d always liked and admired the man but this feeling grew watching Doc shoulder a dead burden that wasn’t really his. But, Colt thought, no good shepherd would let a member of his flock wander into danger without blaming himself for neglect, no matter if that flock was large and the lamb who wandered was acting out of his control.
Feb was watching him too as he got in his car, started it up and drove away.
She turned and looked up at him. “Do you think he’ll be all right?”
Colt reckoned Doc, being Doc, carried more burdens than anyone Colt knew because Doc collected them. Death for Doc would be a gift because, after, a man like him would be sitting right next to God.
“Yeah, he’ll be okay,” he answered Feb, tore his gaze from the road and looked down at his woman. “You need me to lift you into the truck again?”
She glanced around and then nodded. “But wait, like at the funeral home. I don’t want anyone to see you doing it.”
He wanted to hang out at a cemetery a lot less than he wanted to hang out and wait for all the cars to leave the funeral home, which was to say he didn’t want to hang out at all.
Therefore he picked her up, she gave a small, muted scream, grabbed onto his shoulders, he opened the passenger side door and deposited her in the seat.
“Colt!” she hissed, her eyes darting around.
He put his hand to her knee, gave her a firm squeeze and her eyes shot to his.
“Baby, let’s just get home.”
The anger budding in her eyes died away before she whispered, “Okay.”
Colt stepped back, slammed her door and headed to the driver’s side.
* * * * *
Feb went directly to the stereo while Colt went directly to the alarm panel to stop the beeping.
“Can I put on a CD?” she asked as she hit the overflowing CD cabinets around the stereo, cabinets that had been overflowing before but now he saw CDs stacked on top and at the sides and he made a note to buy more cabinets when this shit was over.
“You can make that the last time you ask if you can do somethin’ in this house,” Colt replied when he successfully stopped the beeping.
She turned and stared at him before asking, “What if you aren’t in a music mood?”
Colt started to the kitchen, shrugging off his jacket along the way, saying, “Feb, my ass is in a recliner, a game on or I’m watchin’ a show, the stereo is off. Other than that, you got free rein with music.”
She liked music, always did. When she was a teenager she drove Jack and Jackie up the wall, playing her music as loud as she did and as often as she did it. When she was in a car, you could always hear her coming. Even now, when she was forty-two, Colt heard her rock blaring from her car stereo speakers, she was known for it. And he’d seen her move her ass behind the bar when a song came on the jukebox that she liked. Hell, if he was honest, in the last two years he couldn’t count the times he fought the urge to hit the box and select Mellencamp’s “R.O.C.K. in the USA” or the Doobie Brothers’ “Jesus Is Just Alright”, two of a dozen songs he’d noticed she particularly liked, just so he could watch her move.
He swung his jacket over the back of a dining table chair when she announced, “There’s somethin’ you should know about me.”
He turned his head to see she was still standing by the stereo watching him.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve taken to listening to Gregorian chants. I find it soothing.”
Colt burst out laughing and went into the kitchen. She was so full of shit.
“I’m serious,” she called.
The girl he took to a Springsteen concert over twenty years ago, who screamed out every word to “Born to Run” and “Born in the USA” and the woman he’d seen not a month ago in her car with Jessie, both of their lips moving to Nickelback’s “Something in Your Mouth” while the car windows shook with the sound did not listen to Gregorian chants.
“You feel like somethin’ soothin’, baby, go for it,” he called back and stared at her mail.
He had to check in at the Station and it was likely she’d want to get to the bar but they needed to get her mail out of the way before they did it.
He heard Fleetwood Mac’s “Monday Morning” fill the room and he smiled. Gregorian chants his ass.
He’d pulled loose his tie so it was hanging around his neck, undone the top three buttons of was shirt and was sorting through what appeared to be mostly a big pile of junk mail when he heard her heels clicking on the tiles of the kitchen floor.
She had her hands to one of her ears and her eyes on the mail when she stopped beside him.
“Not feelin’ in the mood to be soothed?” he teased.
“‘Dreams’ comes on after this song, then ‘Rhiannon’,” Feb offered as explanation, setting her earring beside the mound of jewelry she left in the kitchen last night and she went for the other one.
“‘The Very Best of’?” Colt asked, watching her put the back on the earring and drop it next to the other.
“Yeah,” she answered, picking up a flier for something, flipping it back to front without reading it, then setting it aside.
“Stevie Nicks, I reckon, is more soothing then Gregorian monks,” Colt told her.
Her eyes came to his. “You called my bluff, babe. Now be a good sport.”
He returned his attention to the mail but he did it smiling.
She reached into the pile and pulled out a small package, a bubble wrap envelope. Colt watched it slide across the counter before she lifted it up. In that time he saw the postal stamp and he dropped the catalogue he was set
“Colt –”
He looked at the stamp, shut his eyes and bit his lip.
“Colt.”
That time she said his name quieter and a tremor slid through it.
He opened his eyes and looked at her.
“Stamped Colorado,” he told her and she looked down at the package. “You want me to open it?”
Her arms crossed her front and she grabbed her biceps, like Cheryl, protective. She did this never tearing her gaze from the package.
“Feb –”
“Open it,” she whispered.
He did and he slid out of the bubble envelope something wrapped and taped carefully in layers of tissue. He tore it away, cautious to keep tissue around his fingers and he looked at a frame which held a picture of Feb with a man he’d only seen dead in crime scene photos, tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed, good-looking. They were standing behind a bar and she had her arms around his middle, her front pressed to his side. He had his arm around her shoulders, tight, keeping her close. She had her head tipped back, her long hair splayed along his arm and running down her back and her lips were pressed to the underside of his jaw but, even so, she was smiling. He was smiling too, big and broad, straight at the camera, a man who, by the expression on his face, had everything he’d ever need held tight in the curve of his arm.
Across the glass written in black marker were the words, For you.
Colt felt his stomach roil and his blood heat as he turned it upside down and put it on the counter.
When he looked at her, Feb was staring at it.
“You don’t need to see that, baby,” he said softly.
She shook her head but said, “I know what it is, Butch kept that frame on his nightstand. It was there before I moved in and I left it there when I hauled ass.”
“February –”
Her eyes never moved when she cut him off, whispering, “He kept it.”
“Feb –”
“He kept it,” she repeated.
Colt slid his hand under her hair and wrapped it around the back of her neck, giving her a squeeze and her eyes lifted to his. Her face was bleak with pain and confusion.
“Baby,” he muttered.
“Why’d he cheat on me if he’d keep it?”
“I don’t know.” And Colt didn’t. The man in that photo was holding Feb like he’d fight to the death before he let her go. Some men were weak, like Cory, Colt knew it, he’d seen it time and again. They loved their wives, their partners, but they still played around. Maybe they wondered if the grass was greener. Maybe they preferred the thrill of the chase or liked the excitement when a fuck was fresh and new. Maybe they wanted something their partner refused to give. Maybe they were just assholes. Though, the likes of Cory’s wife Bethany were no Feb, still, maybe Butch was one of those but Colt sure as fuck wasn’t going to point that out to Feb.
She closed her eyes and turned her face away.
“This needs to go to the Station, get processed,” he told her.
She didn’t open her eyes or turn to him when she said, “Okay.”
He gave her neck a squeeze but she still didn’t give him her attention.
“You want, baby, once it’s processed, I’ll get a copy made for you before it goes into evidence.”
Her eyes came to him, her lips were parted and she just stared.
“You loved him,” Colt said, it took a fuckuva lot out of him but he said it.
“Yes,” she whispered and he knew that word took a fuckuva lot out of her too.
“You have that photo?” he asked.
“No.”
“You want it?”
“Colt –”
He squeezed her neck again and repeated, “Do you want it?”
Those dents formed above her nose, by her brows, before she asked, “You don’t mind?”
“Baby, he’s a dead man.” Her eyes closed again but she opened them when he used his hand at her neck to pull her closer. “I’m sorry, honey, that was harsh. The point is, he was dead to you long before Denny killed him. He’s no threat to me but he meant somethin’ to you. You want the memory in that photo, you should have it.”
Feb stared at him for what seemed a long time before she whispered, “I want it.”
“Then you’ll have it.”
She nodded and swallowed, her eyes flicking down to the counter before coming back to his.
“Can you…” she started and stopped, sucked in breath and said, “will you go through the rest of my mail? Open anything you want. I need to get out of these clothes and my feet are killin’ me.”
“You got it.”
She pulled in another breath then fell forward, the top of her head hitting his chest and her hands coming to his waist. He felt her bunch his shirt there and listened to her take in more breaths, each one deeper than the last. He kept his hand at her neck while she fought for control. Then she pushed away and tipped her head back to look at him again.
“See, ‘Dreams’,” she whispered the name of the song playing. “Soothing,” she finished and then tilted her head back further, got close and kissed the underside of his jaw, like he saw her do to the man in the photo except without the smile.
She pushed away, walked away and Colt watched, doing a scan of his feelings after she kissed him like that, put her mouth on him the same way she’d done to another man.
He found he didn’t feel jealous, resentful or angry.
He felt lucky.
* * * * *
“The picture came up clean,” Sully said to Colt, sliding into his chair at his desk across from Colt’s.
“No prints?”
“Wiped clean, nothin’.”
Colt sat back in his chair and gave Sully his full attention.
“This shit gonna end soon, Sul?”
“It’s all wrappin’ up in neat package tied with a bow, all we gotta do his catch this fucker,” Sully told Colt. “You were right. Got the bank records and Marie made some withdrawals from her trust fund in Chicago. Total, twenty Gs since last February when Denny took on Cheryl. Talked to Carly, the neighbor, she said Marie told her Denny was askin’ for money, Carly didn’t know why because Marie didn’t know why. Likely, this was part of Marie gettin’ fed up and psyching herself up for the confrontation.”
Colt nodded and Sully continued.
“Money adds up to what Ryan and Cheryl said he gave them, includin’ equipment, gifts, shit like that. Incidental withdrawals from their joint account increased along the way. Nothin’ big, a few hundred dollars here and there but he was yanking money more often, ‘specially the last six months.”
“He pay Ryan and Cheryl in cash?”
“Always.”
“The fifteen K?” Colt asked.
“Gave Cheryl five of it before he left to cover her Fed Ex deliveries and emergency expenses, Cheryl said.”
“Five large is a lot for Fed Ex deliveries,” Colt remarked.
“Big spender,” Sully replied. “Cheryl said he was always generous.”
Colt figured Cheryl wouldn’t miss Denny but, the life she led, she couldn’t help but miss his money.
“He couldn’t have been plannin’ a spree when he withdrew that money,” Colt noted.
“No tellin’ what he was plannin’.”
This made Colt’s blood run cold but he ignored it and carried on.
“He’s in New Mexico, got a package there. Anything?”
“Zip. Guy’s a ghost.”
“We got the car he’s drivin’, photos of him out on the wire, we know where he is and who he’s after. How the fuck can he be a ghost?”
“Colt –”
“Jesus, Sully, this shit’s relentless. We got a boatload of evidence to nail this guy and we fuckin’ know where he is and he’s in the wind?”
“We have more on him, if you’re interested.” Colt didn’t speak so Sully continued. “You asked me to activate the Lorraine gossip tree and we’ll have to make a note to
“Emily Hope?”
“Yeah, she was Amy’s best friend back in the day. She lives in Carmel now. She heard about Amy’s death from the Lorraine gossip tree and she heard a helluva lot more from it too. She came in this mornin’ before she went to the funeral.”
Emily Hope. Hearing her name and associating it with Amy’s friend, Colt remembered the name and the girl. He scanned his recent memories of the funeral and he tried to place the girl Amy used to spend time with there. He didn’t know her back then but he had a thing for faces and he didn’t recognize hers at the funeral.
“She’s who I think she is, she wasn’t at the funeral,” Colt told Sully.
“Was she big as a house back in the day?”
Colt called her up and remembered her as being passably pretty and nowhere near fat. In fact, she was flat-chested, slim-hipped and almost had the body of a boy. A skinny boy.
“Nope.”
“Bitch is huge now, Colt. Huge.”
“Sully.”
“No, seriously, couldn’t sit in a chair with arms. We had to bring her in one special. Enormous.”
“All right, she’s gained weight, what’d she say?”
“She said she always knew Denny was bad news, he always gave her a crap feelin’. She said she knew Denny raped Amy, told us without us askin’. Apparently, Emily was the only one she told and Amy swore her to secrecy. She said she hates Denny mainly because he raped Amy, obviously, but also because Amy, ‘faded away’, her words, after the incident. They lost touch when Emily moved to Carmel, Amy doin’ it, not returnin’ calls or, if they made plans to meet up, Amy would cancel. Emily eventually quit tryin’ and feels like shit now. She says she remembers the night Amy was drugged ‘like it was yesterday’, her words again and she’s the one who brought it up, I didn’t feed her nothin’. She remembers it because she just knew Denny slipped Amy somethin’. She’s willin’ to testify to the rape or anything we want her to testify to, hell, she’d try to convince a jury she was there when he hacked away at Marie, she’s so ready to testify. She’s pretty pissed Amy’s dead, probably feels some guilt. According to her, she has it figured out and her finger is pointed firmly in Denny’s direction.”