The Time in Between by Kristen Ashley
“Okay,” I said again.
“You hear something, get tweaked, I don’t care, Cady, you call 911. Okay?”
Call 911.
Not him.
More official and possibly a faster response time.
Still, my stomach sunk deeper.
But I nodded.
“We got a BOLO on him. Every law enforcement agency in this county and the surrounding ones know we’re lookin’ for him and have his picture and what we know about the vehicle he may be driving. He’s targeting a cop, they’re motivated. You understand?”
“Yes. I understand.”
“Good,” he muttered. “Be alert and you can’t be too cautious. You tell the guys workin’ for you about this so they can keep an eye out too. I’ll have a deputy come out and put a picture of Lars in your mailbox so you can show that around. It might freak ’em but better they’re freaked and got their eyes peeled than they just think Lars is some other tourist who wants to take pictures of a Maine lighthouse. Yeah?”
“Yes, Coert.”
“Right,” he muttered. “Gotta go.”
And he did indeed have to go because after he gave Midnight some neck scratches, he grabbed his stuff and moved to the door.
I trailed him. “I really must thank you. You didn’t have to—”
He stopped at the door, turned to me and cut me off.
“I did have to. You were right. I kept you in when you wanted out. Now, all these years, you’re still in. This is my responsibility.”
This mention of what happened didn’t feel like a support group in the slightest.
And his taking that responsibility made me feel awful because I’d made him think he held it.
However, there was something deeper in this admission. I could feel it, sense it, actually see it in the set of his face.
It was just that we weren’t anywhere near a place I could explore it.
But it was so present I felt I needed to try.
“Coert—” I began.
“It is and I’ll keep you as safe as I can keep you. You help with that, this gets done and then that’s it. It’s finally over. For the both of us.”
That’s it.
It’s over.
For both of us.
No Coert using his gentle voice. No Coert understanding how something that happened so long ago could reverberate through our lives to this day. No Coert with his fingers wrapped around mine looking down at me like he still belonged at my side, holding my hand.
That would just be . . .
It.
“Thank you anyway,” I said quietly.
“My job,” he muttered, looked down to Midnight, gave her another head scratch and then turned to the door. “Later, Cady.”
“Goodbye, Coert.”
His eyes moved through mine.
And then he and his saw and his toolbox disappeared through the door.
Tony sat up as I moved on him, both his hands racing up the sides of my spine, into my hair, but I didn’t need the invitation.
I’d already bent my neck, was grasping his thick hair at the sides of his head and my mouth was on his, open, my tongue plundering.
I couldn’t get enough of the taste of him. Never could. No matter how often we kissed and we kissed often.
I couldn’t get enough of the feel of his hard cock deep inside me either. I wanted to grind into it but I needed to move, feel the friction, slam my clit into the base.
He tore his mouth from mine.
“Cady,” he growled, his fists in my hair tugging back, the pain at my scalp searing down my spine, over my bottom, between my legs, buzzing my clit.
My back arched, his mouth closed over a nipple . . .
“Tony,” I moaned.
In the memory.
“Coert,” I moaned in my bed with my vibrator held to my clit, my back off the bed, my heels digging into it.
The orgasm flowed through me so deeply, I had to snatch the toy from my flesh because it was too much, too beautiful, too perfect.
I whimpered and panted and let it happen then I breathed deeply and opened my eyes to the dark of my bedroom. Total dark with the blackout blinds over the windows closing out the rotating beam of my lighthouse.
As if she knew it was over, Midnight moved from the floor to the bed and settled beside me as I stared into the dark, setting aside my toy and pulling an arm outside the covers to dive my fingers into her fur.
She adjusted her head so it was on my hip.
I kept staring into the dark, feeling the wet hit my eyes as the memory of one of the many times Coert and I had connected overwhelmed me in a different way.
Since him, I’d only ever fantasized about him, mostly using memories, like that one.
Since him, I’d never climaxed again with a man, though there were very few men I’d allowed myself to share that intimacy with.
And before him, I never even got close.
So really, it had only ever been him.
Tony.
Coert.
Him.
Midnight whined and burrowed closer.
In the few days I’d had her, I’d begun to learn she was not only a one-person dog, she was an exceptionally sensitive one.
“I’m okay, baby,” I whispered, stroking her fur.
I was not.
I was in love with Coert Yeager in a way that it just simply would never die.
Never.
I’d denied it long enough. Hid from it. Buried it.
But the fact was, I was out there not (just) for Patrick.
I was out there for me.
I was out there for Coert.
I was out there to get him back.
And I’d been out there for months.
But I hadn’t even tried.
It was risky for more than one reason, but risks had to be taken, especially when something this important was at stake.
And opportunities could no longer be missed.
I’d had opportunities since I got to Maine, small ones, huge ones, opportunities so colossal, they shouted at me in my own living room.
But I’d allowed emotion and history to guide me to squandering them.
Not anymore.
Eighteen years ago Coert and I fell together against all odds.
Then it ended.
And neither of us got over it.
No more missed opportunities.
It was time to risk everything.
Since Coert had shared that Lars was a threat lurking out there possibly intent on killing one or both of us, he’d set me up with my dog, my speakeasy, and he’d held true on getting me a gun and getting me somewhere where someone could show me how to use it.
But outside a woman from the sheriff station who identified herself as “Monica, Sheriff Yeager’s assistant,” phoning with some frequency to share (not always the same words but always the same message), “The sheriff is still devoting all the resources he can to the matter of finding Lars Pedersen. However he wishes you to know that you still need to be cautious, stay alert and report anything troubling because Mr. Pedersen is still at large,” there had been nothing from Coert.
So he wasn’t giving me any opportunities.
Thus I had to make one.
And the one I decided to make was, considering he was the sheriff and there’d been a fire in town and the town website provided the news they’d be discussing a referendum about whether or not to devote more resources to Magdalene’s fire department, I thought it highly likely Coert would attend the town council meeting.
He probably attended them all.
So I would attend as well.
I had cover.
I mean, there was a man out there who might want me dead.
The problem was, I had to go and there was a man out there who might want me dead.
Since I’d learned this news, Midnight and I might go out during the day, but we stayed in at night.
As Coert had instructed, I’d told Walt what was happening.
As I had suspected, Walt lost his mind and tried to get me (and Midnight) to move in with him and Amanda (and it should be noted, their three young children).
I had gently refused (I didn’t need Walt, Amanda and three young children in the path of a man bent on vengeance).
However, I did not gently refuse him planting one of his guys in my studio. It was, Walt told me in an effort to convince me to say yes, a win-win since his guy was on the outs with his girl and she’d demanded he leave the home they shared so he was sleeping on a buddy’s couch.
I didn’t really need him to convince me.
So Elijah moved into the studio, but Walt really only lost his bad mood about all of this when he saw the alarm company install my alarm.
I had met Elijah in passing. He was large. He seemed friendly.
I found later he loved dogs and he also could put away a great deal of food, and I knew this because I cooked for him every night (it was nice to have company, and anyway, I liked Elijah a lot). And Midnight, he and I watched TV in my second floor family room every night as well, after he helped me clean up, and while watching, Elijah snacked unreservedly (yes, even after a large dinner).
So like everything in my life, bad (even very bad) turned to good, because I got Midnight out of it. I got Elijah out of it. And Midnight might be (somewhat) lame and really did not like strangers (thus would be a little scary if I didn’t know she was a cuddle monster), and Elijah might be twenty-six and from our conversations entirely clueless about women.
But they were now mine.
And I was keeping them.
Even with all that, the town council meeting was at night and I couldn’t exactly bring Elijah with me (though he’d come if I’d asked because he was clueless about women but still very sweet and protective) when I was planning to attempt to make inroads with Coert.
And although I’d learned to load and shoot a .22 caliber pistol, I wasn’t really feeling comfortable carrying it in my purse.
So my line of defense was going to be Midnight (when we loaded up, though, I put the gun in the glove compartment as one couldn’t be too careful when someone might want them dead).
And as beautiful as she was, I couldn’t take Midnight into the council meeting.
Therefore I decided to hang outside with Midnight in the car in hopes of catching Coert outside, and when I did, I’d make my move.
I was right. Coert showed at the town council meeting.
But he showed and walked right in.
Which was not helpful.
Fortune bloomed when some time after (and it was so long, both Midnight and I were having second thoughts, her because this was boring, me because quite some time meant plenty of it to lose courage), Coert walked out alone with his phone to his ear.
I watched as he walked to the side of his sheriff’s truck but stopped there between his truck and another car and kept talking.
I ignored my head screaming, No! He hates you! Just go to your lighthouse, light a fire and plan a cross country road trip with Midnight for a long visit back to Denver, one that’ll last until everyone comes out for Christmas, meaning Coert will have Lars again behind bars and you can go back to avoiding one another.
Instead, I took hold of Midnight’s lead, opened my door, climbed out, she climbed out with me, and we started across the street, moving toward Coert.
I saw what appeared to be a family walking down the sidewalk but I paid no mind to them as I heard Coert saying curtly in his phone, “Trouble follow you from Denver?” And without giving who he was talking to even a second to reply, he demanded, “Answer me!”
I bit my lip and wondered if approaching him in this mood was a good idea.
However, Midnight had clearly caught our direction and she hadn’t forgotten Coert this time, so she had another idea. This being she started straining to get to him.
I knew immediately when Coert noted our approach, feeling the heat of his eyes as they cut to me.
But when Midnight made it to him, dragging me right along with her, Coert showed he was not a man to take a bad mood out on a dog. He did this by bending to her and giving her some scratches at the same time getting some puppy kisses.
And talking.
“Your notes are thorough, but your intuition and ethics are shit. You led him right to her . . . and me.”
Uh-oh.
I stopped.
In the streetlights I saw Coert’s eyes skewer mine before they dropped to my dog.
“Sit,” he ordered.
Midnight sat and I considered doing the same thing.
“My dog,” he said into the phone.
His dog?
“If Moreland was alive, he’d wring your neck,” he snarled.
Uh-oh.
I felt dread fill my veins.
Coert just kept speaking.
“Since I’m still alive, here’s a warning and you should listen to it. Don’t get close to my town again.” He paused then he said, “I know that. But the fact remains, you not only made it easy, you had an opportunity to stop it altogether.”
With that, he took the phone from his ear, beeped it off and scowled at me.
“You got great timing,” he declared.
“What?” I whispered.
“We closed in on Lars this morning.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” I asked hesitantly, because it not only seemed good, it seemed fantastic, but he didn’t seem to think the same.
“It would have been, if he hadn’t cleared out before we got there. By the state of the place where he was crashing, right before we got there. Didn’t get the chance to take anything with him. Left clothes behind. Even ammo. And lots of other shit I spent the afternoon combing through that was interesting.”
I didn’t like the idea of Lars having ammo, even if he left it behind.
“Why do I get the feeling that you’re using the word interesting but you mean annoying?” I queried.
“Because I just got a return call from your husband’s investigator and he admitted that, on Moreland’s orders, he started tailing Lars the second he was released from prison. He also stated he thought Lars made him but he couldn’t be sure. But he backed off. Lars then vanished. My buddy Malc in Denver has a son, who’s a PI, who Malc’s got lookin’ into shit. Part of that is Malc’s boy Lee helping himself to this investigator’s notes and reports. And what Lee found was this guy never picked up Lars’s trail again, definite indication that Lars made him and this guy knew it. Problem was, this was a screw up of massive proportions and this guy knew that too. So in his reports to your husband, he made up shit about keeping tabs on Lars when what we found in Lars’s hideout was that Lars followed that jackass, that jackass clearly never made him and so that jackass led him to every member of his old crew.” A weighty pause and then he finished, “And us.”
“Oh no,” I whispered.
“Oh yeah,” Coert returned. “So he’s been unwittingly aiding and abetting an arson and murder spree, and on top of that, for two years, your husband didn’t know the man he’d hired to keep tabs on people who could make you unsafe made you fuckin’ unsafe.”
“And you,” I said, my voice shaky.
“What?” Coert asked.
“And he made you unsafe.”
“You lived in a mansion, Cady. I’m the sheriff for Derby County. He’d find me, no sweat. You with a husband who goes to those lengths to keep informed on anything that might harm you, nothing would harm you. This investigator should have been the first to catch on to what was happening. Not go to lengths to hide his screw up at the same time not link together that he’d lost Lars and his old crew was dropping like flies.”
I pressed my lips together because I had nothing to say since it would be useless to confirm to Coert something he knew was true.
Midnight shifted to the side so she was leaning on my legs.
Coert looked into the night then looked at me.
“What are you doin’ here?”
&nb
“Isn’t Monica calling you?” he asked.
“Well, yes.”
“And don’t you have my number?”
I didn’t and I did. I’d erased it from my contacts but I could easily resurrect it from his texts.
“I erased it,” I admitted.
He seemed to grow in size, this making Midnight go to all fours, as he asked irately, “Why would you do a fool thing like that?”
“I was drunk at the time.”
His brows snapped together. “What are you talking about?”
“It was the night of the fire when you were accusing me of having something to do with the fire when I actually did but I didn’t know I did at the time.”
“You don’t have anything to do with that fire,” he clipped tersely.
“Lars is here to hurt me or you, so I do.”
“Don’t shoulder blame that isn’t yours.”
“It’s hard not to when four business owners are suffering for me making poor decisions nearly two decades ago.”
“Stop that shit,” he growled. “It’s a waste of energy because what another person does is not on you. And think it’s important to point out, I didn’t think you had anything to do with the fire.”
He didn’t?
“You made it sound that way.”
“I thought you were with someone or knew something about someone who might know something about the fire.”
“That, Coert, is saying you thought I had something to do with the fire.”
“It is not.”
“It very much is.”
“It very much fuckin’ isn’t.”
How could he not see that it was?
“If I knew something about the fire, I wouldn’t call you and then not tell you I knew something, anything about the fire. Especially not inebriated. I’m chatty when I’m inebriated, as you well know. And furthermore, it was incredibly insulting you’d assume that.”
“Cady, history and you parking your ass in Magdalene then goin’ off and pissin’ off your brother with some unknown but reportedly unpleasant friend is hard to ignore.”
“Only because you won’t let history go,” I retorted hotly, this not being where I’d hoped the opportunity I was creating and the risk I was taking was going to go.