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  The last time he made that call was three weeks before he saw Faye in Harker’s Wood.

  That meant he’d not had a woman in six weeks.

  This was a record.

  This was also making the carefully controlled necking he’d been using to initiate Faye torture. Exquisite torture but torture nonetheless.

  Their morning phone calls, something he fucking loved, was a form of exquisite torture too.

  Luckily, when they were done, he was in bed, hard and could do something about it.

  Which he always did.

  Today would be the same.

  Tonight, though, was the night.

  Tonight after Faye finished work she was coming to his place for the first time and Chace was making her dinner.

  She wasn’t leaving until Monday.

  She didn’t know that and he was not about to freak her out and tell her to bring a toothbrush and an extra pair of panties.

  Tomorrow morning, he’d leave her in his bed and go get them for her.

  “Yes,” he answered her question.

  He got silence then, “Pardon?”

  “Got ‘im.”

  More silence then, “Already?”

  “Lenny Lemcock tries to stay on the wagon,” he started in answer. “He also frequently fails. When he fails, he needs to get so drunk he doesn’t remember anything for a month. This requires money. Money, since he doesn’t have a job and lives on Disability, he has to steal. Took one look at the house, knew it was Lenny seein’ as he leaves a mess as his signature. He also leaves prints. Didn’t even have to lift a print though to know it was him. He hangs in seven different establishments. I found him at the fourth, three sheets to the wind. He’s in the tank and unfortunately for Lenny, since this is about strike seven and although the guy is funny, can charm a snake and has proven that repeatedly by charming a variety of judges, the last time he appeared, he got the warning. No more second chances. He’s fucked. He’ll dry out doin’ time and my callouts for burglaries will drop drastically.”

  “Do you know everything about everyone in town?” she asked quietly, residual sleep and a hint of sweet wonder in her voice.

  “Only the ones who do fucked up shit.”

  “And Outlaw Al,” she added.

  “Al lives on a diet of canned meat cut by canned beans. His residence is a lean-to in an alley. His best friends are twenty-five feral cats and he can pack all of his belongings in a shopping cart and not one of them is something anyone in their right mind would want. All of that is fucked up shit. Just not the annoying kind.”

  He heard her quiet, musical laughter and, like he always did when he heard it, he savored it.

  When he lost it, he ordered gently, “Right, baby, time for you to go back to sleep.”

  “Okay, honey.”

  He closed his eyes as that went through him.

  He loved her calling him Chace.

  But her calling him honey was something else. Something pure. Something magical. Like the first snow of the season falling at night. You wake up to it, make coffee, wrap up in a jacket and scarf over your pajamas, tug on thick socks and sit outside on your porch, drinking coffee that makes your insides warm but seeing your breath puff out in front of you, the air coming out clean and going in cleaner.

  It was a little common miracle but even common, that made it no less miraculous.

  The first time she’d done it, it felt like he’d been touched by the hand of an angel and he hadn’t gotten over feeling that every time she’d done it since.

  He opened his eyes and asked, “You got the directions to my place?”

  “Yeah,” she replied softly and that went through him too. “I think I’ll be there around quarter to seven.”

  “All right, honey.”

  “You sure I can’t bring anything?”

  “Just you.”

  “Okay, Chace.”

  That went through him too, always.

  “Go back to sleep.”

  “Okay.”

  “Later, baby.”

  “’Bye, Chace.”

  He disconnected, tossed his cell on his nightstand and rolled to his back, his eyes going to the ceiling.

  Misty had slept in the master.

  Chace had slept in the guestroom.

  A month after she died, he’d gotten shot of his old bed that she slept in and bought a new one. Spent a whack on a mattress that felt like sleeping on a firm cloud. It was spectacular.

  Tonight, Faye would be in that bed with him, her hair, her scent, her body, her crystal blue eyes all a pillow away.

  A clean bed, unsullied by the garbage that used to be his life.

  His bed.

  He shoved his hand behind his head at the same time he lifted his knees and wrapped his other hand around his cock.

  Then he closed his eyes and went through one of the many scenarios he’d be taking Faye through in the coming months. This one involved a lot of Faye using her mouth. He took his time. He did it stroking lazy at first, firmer and faster later.

  And when he was done, he came hard.

  * * * * *

  Three hours later, after jacking off to Faye, making coffee and having breakfast and a run, Chace, showered, in jeans, a dark blue twill shirt, a heavy, wool denim marl sweater and thick wool socks, was sitting on the rocking chair on his front porch. He had a hot mug of coffee in his hand, his feet up on the top of the railing in front of him, his eyes pointed out at the plain.

  Chace lived in a four bedroom ranch-style house at the southwestern end of Carnal. He owned fifteen acres and not one of his neighbors owned less than three times that. Therefore, from his front porch, he couldn’t see any of his neighbor’s homes. Just the valley plain they lived on, the trees dotting the plains and shrouding the houses, the hills surrounding the area, the mountains beyond that and, in the distance, the town of Carnal.

  Carnal looked further away than it actually was. Seeming small across the plain, it was only a ten minute drive.

  Chace’s mother’s parents had set up a trust for him that he could access when he was twenty-five. To buy this house and land, he’d accessed part of it for a hefty down payment that would leave him with a manageable mortgage on a cop’s salary. Living room, dining room, family room, huge-ass kitchen, butler’s pantry, walk-in kitchen pantry, two and a half baths, study and four bedrooms, the master having one of the bathrooms and a big walk-in closet. There was an old fashioned front porch, a large square deck out back and a massive two car garage that could easily fit two SUVs, two snow mobiles and an ATV.

  The rest of the money, he never touched.

  This was because, since he could fathom the concept, he decided he’d have three kids. This was mostly because he’d never had a brother or sister and he wanted one, the other, or, better, what Faye had, both. Not having it, he decided that whatever kids he had, they’d have siblings and live in a house full of people, noise and love. Therefore the rest of that money he’d set aside for their college educations. If they wanted to go to trade school, be beauticians or plumbers or got into Harvard or Stanford and became doctors or lawyers, he didn’t care. Whatever it was, they wouldn’t worry about paying for it.

  He’d done this because his father refused to pay for Chace’s education because Chace hadn’t taken business courses but instead law and political science with a view to becoming a cop, not an attorney. In his usual fashion, Trane Keaton tried to use money to manipulate. Chace just got grants, loans, worked while taking classes and during the summers, paid his own damned way and took whatever courses he wanted.

  He didn’t complain, it was no use and he had to do it to get what he wanted. But it wasn’t easy. He remembered the late nights studying, the exhaustion in classes and dragging himself to work after them and he’d paid off his last student loan five years ago. He wasn’t going to put a child of his through that.

  He also, back in the day when he allowed himself to think of this shit, didn’t intend to marry a debutante or soc
ialite with a Daddy who could spend a mint on her wedding. He’d marry who he fell in love with and whoever she was, she would have the wedding of her dreams even if Chace had to use his trust fund to help her. So the money was left alone for that too.

  Last, his house was fucking fantastic. Big rooms. Lots of windows. Lots of places to be inside and out. Fabulous views. It’d been dated when he bought it so he updated all the baths, the kitchen and the flooring. His mother wanted to decorate it so he let her but went with her to guide her hand. Shopping was something he could give or take, usually give, but his mother loved to do it, she loved to be with her son, he enjoyed being with her so it was something they could do together. He couldn’t say he wanted to do it again. He could say it turned out well.

  That said, the woman that he decided to put in his house would be encouraged to make it a house she wanted to live in. If she wanted a new state of the art kitchen, the trust would cover it. If she wanted to add on a room where she could sew or knit or whatever the fuck (in Faye’s case, a place where she could have quiet to read), he’d use the trust to give it to her. Whatever it was, she’d have it and he kept the money aside for that purpose as well as the two others.

  A family, a wife who had what she wanted, a home.

  All Chace ever wanted. Something his grandparents, both dead, would have been pleased as fuck he used the money they gave him to have.

  When Misty lived there, she’d put her stamp on it. This was another attempt to win Chace, making what she said, “his house theirs”. Along with all her other attempts, this backfired.

  She hadn’t worked when they were married but Chace didn’t give her money to keep herself. The money she had was from nefarious sources. It was soiled money.

  They did not share her soiled money in a joint account. She bought herself what she wanted and Chace had no input.

  When she’d died, Chace was left with everything. Her money, her belongings, all of it. He’d given it all away. Her parents took her personal belongings and the rest went to a couple different charities.

  His thoughts made him sigh, he took a sip from his coffee and scanned the landscape he had long since memorized but it didn’t mean he didn’t still gain some peace or wasn’t quietly moved by the scenery.

  This was a feeling he liked having back. He’d lost it when Misty was in the house, a place he escaped as often as he could. He didn’t sit on his porch and drink coffee when Misty was around. He didn’t take the time to gaze at the view when he was coming or going. He dreaded coming home and he was always in a hurry to leave.

  Taking another sip of coffee, as usual whenever his mind was on Misty, it drifted from her to when Chace had approached IA. He informed them of what was happening at CPD, his willingness to make it stop and he’d taken his pay packets to them.

  Every officer on Arnie Fuller’s personal team got a packet once a month, the size determined by what they could fleece from local businesses and blackmail out of powerbrokers. Chace had accepted his because it would have been suspect if he did not.

  He was a willing foot soldier as far as they knew.

  He drew the line at approaching local businesspeople and forcing their donations to the Carnal Police Widows and Orphans fund. He also drew the line at being a blackmail go-between. He explained this to Arnie by showing him the wisdom of folks in town thinking there might be one or two honest cops on the payroll. Arnie had fallen for it so of all of the muck Chace had to swim through and the other filth he had to turn a blind eye to, at least he was clean of that garbage.

  But he’d placed every envelope in a safety deposit box in a bank in Chantelle and handed all of them over to IA when they’d launched the undercover investigation.

  There was nearly fifty thousand dollars in those packets. Six years of being on the take. IA made sure it was leaked to the media that Chace had turned in his money. They set him up as the poster boy for all that was good and right in law enforcement. They wanted no one to have any doubts so they set about making that so, using Chace to do it. Although it was true, in fact, everything they shared with the media was true, just selectively chosen as to what they’d share, it wasn’t anyone’s business. The way they shared it made it seem like he was some sort of white knight with a sword endowed with mystical powers, which he was not.

  Luckily all that had died down, as it usually does, the infested personnel had been fired or incarcerated and replaced and the town seemed to be settling, slowly but they were doing it.

  Which brought Chace to his plans for the day. Grocery shopping for the weekend and his meet with Tate Jackson.

  Tate was part owner of Bubba’s bar but he was mostly a bounty hunter. He had once been a cop. So when the citizens of Carnal had a problem they couldn’t trust the police to handle they went to Tate. Tate, a good cop who never got dirty under Arnie’s rule, a good man, always did what he could.

  Since Chace’s unexpected meeting with Clinton Bonar, Tate had been out of town after a skip. Chace had phoned him and told him they needed a meet as soon as he was home. Frank Dolinski knew about Bonar. To cover his bases, Chace needed Tate to know as well as a select few other men in town.

  Tate got home yesterday.

  They were meeting that afternoon.

  On this thought, and another sip of coffee, something caught the corner of Chace’s eye and he turned his head to gaze at the lone road that wound through the ranchland around his house. Seeing as the area between Carnal and the base of the mountain where Chace lived only had one road, Chace knew every car or truck that came down that road. Living there eight years, he even knew the vehicles of friends and family members.

  This was not one of those vehicles.

  It was a black Jeep Wrangler.

  Chace reckoned he knew who was in that Wrangler.

  The Goodknight family was a Jeep family. Faye, Sondra and Silas all drove Jeeps of varying ages.

  Silas drove a black Wrangler.

  Watching Faye’s father’s approach, sipping coffee, preparing for what was to come next, vaguely it occurred to Chace that Faye and Sondra, when it came to cars, were like mother like daughter. Their cars were not new. Faye had never upgraded hers that he knew of. Sondra took over Silas’s vehicles when he was done. By the look of her and the way she acted the times he saw her, no nonsense, busy and active, she probably didn’t care what she drove just as long as it got her where she wanted to go.

  Chace watched Silas drive through the doublewide opening in the white picket fence at the end of Chace’s lane which led to a fenced off enormous backyard. The rest of his land was unfenced. He liked the land, the space, the quiet, the peace. He didn’t give a fuck if the livestock of his neighbors wandered onto his land. If they chewed the grass it meant Chace didn’t have to mow the shit.

  But that white picket fence was what sold him on this property and he sanded it and painted it once every two years. Any time there was a repair needed, he saw to it as soon as he could and he walked the fence occasionally just to check. The house was big, you could build a family there, you could add to it if you needed more room. But that long, white, rectangular line of fence surrounding it, delineating it, creating a yard, circling and highlighting the house made it seem like a home.

  Chace waited until Silas made it to the end of the lane and stopped close to the house before he took his feet off the railing. He rose as Silas threw open his door. He walked to the top of the steps and leaned a shoulder against the white painted porch post as Silas made his way up the cleared of snow flagstone walk Chace laid six years ago.

  “Mr. Goodknight,” he called when Silas was halfway up the walk and Silas, eyes to his boots, lifted a hand and kept up the path.

  Only when he stopped at the bottom of the steps did his crystal blue eyes rise to Chace.

  “Call me Silas, Detective Keaton,” he invited.

  Chace jerked up his chin and returned, “Chace.”

  Silas jerked up his own chin then tipped his head to Chace’s coffee mug. �
��Got more ‘a that?”

  As answer, Chace turned and walked to the house, opening the storm door, the front door and moving through, turning to hold the storm door open for Silas to follow.

  He did and in they went, Chace leading the way over the oak floors that led to the back of the house that he’d laid four years ago when Misty was on a two week vacation to visit a friend in Maryland.

  Left side, a big dining room with rectangular table. The room had hints of western, hints of country, all of it with an underlying class that was all his mother.

  Right side was what his mother liked to call the formal living room. Chace wasn’t formal so the room had two comfortable burgundy couches facing each other with more hints of western, none at all of country which his mother referred to as “the formal part”.

  Chace moved through a deep, wide archway as he led Silas into the vast space that made up a big kitchen and family room.

  The kitchen had an island in the middle with a five burner stove and so much counter space it served as a kitchen table that could comfortably seat a family of eight. The island was a showstopper but so was the massive picture window over the sink at the back of the house.

  The family room had an enormous sectional, three sides which were essentially three full couches. Big flat screen TV. Shelves filled with books, CDs, DVDs. And a stone hearth fireplace in the corner.

  Off the kitchen leading toward the front of the house was the pantry, a hidden entry to the dining room and doors to a utility room and the garage.

  Straight ahead from the wide hall that flowed from the front of the house to the back, there were doublewide French windows that led to the back deck.

  Chace went directly to the coffeepot, asking, “How do you take it?”

  “Seein’ as Sondra ain’t here, three sugars and a healthy dose of half and half.”

  Chace put down his mug, opened the cupboard and reached for another one as Silas continued to speak to his back.

  “On me all the time, Sondra is. Her Dad had a heart attack so she’s got it in her head I’ll have one. I run two miles a day. Do my sit ups, pull ups, pushups every day. Work outside most of the time. Got ten acres to take care of. And three kids that may be grown but that don’t mean I don’t lend a hand. I do all this so I can enjoy half and half and sweet in my coffee. She doesn’t see the balance.”