Breathe Read online

  Life was happening all around me. This boy was alone in the cold, getting beaten up by someone and dumpster diving. And I might lose my job and the town its library.

  Both of these last were tragic for me, only one for the town.

  This was tragic for me not only because it was my job, it was the only thing I ever wanted to do. I loved that library. Since I could remember, Mom took me there to check out books. Since she did this, she told me her Mom did the same with her when she was a little girl. And since I could get there on my own, I went there to get them.

  I stayed there to read them. I did this because I loved it there, the feel, the smell of books, the quiet. Most of all I loved the serenity that came from being alone in a world of books at the same time not being alone because the world was around me, some of it real, the vast majority of it worlds all their own, contained on pages bound to a cover.

  I didn’t know what I’d do if Carnal Library was closed and not just because it was my paycheck.

  So I didn’t have time to worry about the confounding, mixed-message-giving Chace Keaton.

  This was precisely the thought I was having when I heard my passenger side door open.

  My body jerked, I let out a small cry and my head whipped around to see none other than Chace Keaton climbing in wearing jeans, a fantastic western style belt with an even more fantastic buckle, a canvas jacket lined in fleece, cowboy boots, a pearl snap denim shirt with western style stitching and carrying two white coffee cups from La-La Land Coffee. I knew at a glance that Sunny had either prepared the coffee or the cups because, in purple marker on the side, a bunch of flowers were drawn all around and Sunny drew flowers. If the mood struck him, Shambles drew moons and stars.

  “Take this,” Chace ordered apropos of nothing, like, sharing why he was in my car outside the library at eight thirty in the morning with two coffees.

  He was extending a cup.

  Automatically, my mittened hand reached out and took it.

  He settled in, slammed the door closed and kept being bossy.

  “For God’s sake, Faye, it’s twenty degrees out there. Turn on the truck.”

  “I’m on a stakeout,” I informed him and his eyes came to me so I finished, “I think it’s against the rules to have the car running during a stakeout. The noise will give you away.”

  “Yeah, I guessed that you were on a stakeout. Newsflash, darlin’, since you don’t drive to work and your car is the only one in the lot, your sweet ass is in it and you aren’t hiding, I don’t think our street urchin is gonna miss you. This means he’s gonna get nowhere near this place so you might as well turn on the truck so you don’t freeze that sweet ass off.”

  That was two “darlin’s”.

  And when did my ass turn sweet?

  “Chace –”

  “Turn on the truck.”

  God, he was bossy and annoying in the morning.

  “Chace!”

  He leaned into me and said quietly, “Baby, turn on the fuckin’ truck.”

  Oh God.

  Baby was nicer.

  Like, by a lot.

  I put my coffee between my knees and turned on the truck.

  “What does it take? Around a year for this heap to warm up?” Chace asked before taking a sip from his coffee.

  “It’s dependable,” I told him, taking my coffee from between my knees.

  “Jeeps are. That being said, this should have been put out of its misery about ten years ago.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “It’s a heap.”

  “It’s fine, Chace,” I snapped then kept snapping. “What are you doing here? You’re blowing my cover.”

  His eyes came to me and his lips were tipped up at the end.

  Oh jeez.

  His handsome lips on his handsome face tipped up looked nice.

  “Blowing your cover?” he asked.

  “I think you’re endowing our street urchin with bigger powers than he has. He’s just a kid.”

  “He’s a kid living on the streets which means he’s in survival mode. Since no one, including teachers, knows who he fuckin’ is, that means he’s survived awhile.”

  This was news.

  “The teachers don’t know him?” I asked.

  He shook his head and took another sip of his coffee which reminded me to take a sip of mine.

  Hazelnut latte. My favorite.

  “Nope,” he answered after he swallowed. “Asked the day after you reported seein’ him banged up, principal approached his staff. Went back with the sketch, no one recognizes him. Fingerprints were a bust too.”

  “No one?”

  “Nope.”

  “How can that be?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t go to school?” he asked back but it was an answer.

  “Oh,” I whispered, his eyes dropped to my mouth and his lips tipped up again.

  I liked that.

  Frak.

  Before I could get my wits about me, Chace spoke. “What’s in that haul?”

  “Pardon?”

  He tipped his head to the library, taking another sip of coffee so I took one of mine and looked to the library.

  Then I looked back at him when he asked, “Those bags by the return bin. What’s in them?”

  “A new coat, hat, scarf, gloves, three pairs of wool socks, two pairs of jeans, two warm sweaters, some underwear, a pint of milk, three bottles of water, bologna, cheese, bread, a box of granola bars, three apples, bananas, a cucumber and a ginormous bar of Hershey’s chocolate,” I shared. Chace stared at me without saying a word and he did this awhile so I finished, “He won’t eat the cucumber but Dad would be disappointed in me if I didn’t add roughage.”

  “Christ,” he whispered.

  “Don’t start,” I commanded. “I know I shouldn’t have added the chocolate but he’s a kid. He should have a treat.”

  He kept staring at me without speaking and he did this another while and he did this in a way that made me weirdly nervous. The weirdly part was that I was nervous in a good way so I did the only think I could think to do.

  I kept talking.

  “By the way, I’ve been thinking on things, Chace, and you chased him too.”

  “What?” he asked quietly.

  “Thursday night, or Friday morning… whatever. You chased him. You told me I shouldn’t but you did too.”

  I got another lip tip. It made me more weirdly nervous in an even better way and he muttered, “True enough. Though, I started out chasing you.”

  I felt my brows go up. “You were chasing me?”

  “Yeah, I started to chase you but the way you were goin’ after him, hell bent for leather, it occurred to me you would not be best pleased I caught you and stopped you. I didn’t want to deal with that backbone of yours getting any stronger if you were denied what you wanted. Especially in the middle of the night with you in an emotional state, in the throes of dealing with hearing Dobie Gray’s undeniably kickass but, no offense to you, honey, or Dobie Gray, in my opinion not cry worthy song. It also occurred to me you would be pleased I caught the kid for you so I went after him instead.”

  It occurred to me, right then, that he was teasing me. Just a little bit but he still was.

  And he said straight out he went after the boy for me, which was super nice.

  This made me more nervous, the good kind so, of course, I kept talking.

  “Right then. Also, I will point out, when we first saw him, you put your hand to your gun. So it could be me shouting at him that terrified him. But you have to admit it could also be you not only having a gun, but putting your hand to it when you saw him. Then you chasing him and being bigger, stronger and faster than me, and, I’ll repeat, doing this in the possession of a weapon.”

  “I’ll give you that too and it’d suck, I freaked the kid out but no way I’m gonna be in an alley in the middle of the night or at any time with a pretty woman, hear a crash, know an unidentified person was in the alley and not go for my gun
. So, I get the chance, I’ll apologize to the kid. What I won’t do is apologize to you.”

  Holy frak!

  Not only was my ass now sweet, I was now a pretty woman.

  What was going on?

  No, no, I didn’t want to know. Chace could be sweet or quiet or soft and then he’d switch off, go remote, get mean or walk away.

  I wasn’t going to go there. Not again.

  So I went somewhere else.

  “I know you find it hilarious that Dobie Gray moves me but, for your information, life is pretty crazy right now. Not to mention I’m worried about some kid I don’t know, like super worried so even the littlest thing might set me off. Including Dobie Gray.”

  This, of course, was me defending my reaction to a lie I’d told him about a song I wasn’t listening to, but I thought it was my best course at that moment.

  It was, I would find, not.

  His brows drew together and he asked, “Life is pretty crazy?”

  Fabulous.

  More proof lying got you into trouble in a variety of ways.

  “Yes,” I answered, luckily not a lie, and said no more.

  “Your life?” he enquired, sounding incredulous. I shifted my booty in my seat and squared my shoulders all while I watched Chace shift slightly up in his. His eyes lit and he muttered, “Christ, here we go. Backbone.”

  At his mutter, I got it.

  And it irritated me.

  Therefore, I snapped, “Is it that surprising I have a backbone?”

  “Well… yeah.”

  “Why?” I kept snapping.

  “Baby,” he said softly and gave me another baby and it was soft so I felt my heart skip, “you live in a book.”

  I ignored my reaction to him calling me baby and replied, “I might do that but I still live and to live, walk, talk, breathe, eat, you have to have a backbone.”

  “I think, pretty much, of all of that, you need it just to walk,” he returned, lips tipped up again. He was teasing me again, I liked it again but still, I felt myself glaring.

  I was uncertain if I’d ever glared at anyone who wasn’t related to me.

  But I was certain I was glaring at Chace Keaton right then.

  “Are you making fun of me?” I asked sharply.

  “No,” he answered, his lips still tipped up.

  “Then why are you grinning?”

  “’Cause you’re cute and you’re cuter when you get pissed though that’s debatable since you’re cute a lot.”

  Now I was cute?

  What was going on?

  I felt my brows snap together and I asked, “Do you have multiple personalities?”

  “Not that I know of,” he answered instantly.

  “I suggest you get checked out,” I shot back then watched as he threw back his head and laughed.

  I took an angry sip of coffee. Even delicious La-La Land coffee, and Chace looking and sounding gorgeous while laughing, didn’t make me any less peeved so I was glaring at him still when he stopped laughing.

  I was also ready for him.

  “Why are you here, bringing me coffee?”

  He answered immediately, “At first it was ’cause I saw you sittin’ here in the cold so I got you a coffee and came to tell you that you didn’t have to sit here in the cold since I set up cameras.”

  He lifted his coffee cup but his long, attractive index finger (yes, he even had an attractive index finger) was extended and pointing through my windshield. I followed it and screwed up my eyes to look and, indeed, there they were. In the upper corner of the library, three cameras pointed in different directions aimed around and at the return bin.

  “Feeds go to a tape,” he continued and I looked back at him. “Interns at the Station can scroll through ‘em. They see the kid, they alert me or Frank. We got an image of him, it’s better than the sketch, we might be able to get a hit on missing persons or runaways in a national database. We get a direction coming or going, I can put up more cameras, different places, different angles, find out which direction he heads here from and if he goes back the same way.”

  “Oh,” I whispered.

  “That was why I’m here bringing you coffee until you told me your life is pretty crazy,” he went on. “Now I’m here to listen to why your life is pretty crazy.”

  “It’s nothing,” I blew it off.

  “It’s something if Dobie Gray sets you into the dark night putting yourself in danger in order to brood.”

  “I wasn’t in danger,” I retorted.

  “Faye,” he said softly, “I know you know not too long ago we had a serial killer who lived undetected amongst our own and did it for a good spell. I also know you know that recently, serious shit went down that rocked this town and I’m guessin’ you, like everyone, is waitin’ to see if more will come of that. And, honey, more might come of that so you have to have a mind to your safety.”

  “More might come of that?” I asked quietly, adding onto my mental list of things to do when I got home. I needed to message Benji and Serenity and implore them to give up their long-distance sleuthing.

  “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

  At his words, I felt my eyes get wide and I breathed, “What?”

  “Crazy life,” he stated as his explanation and I got it.

  I decided I might as well tell him. It was becoming clear that along with multiple personalities, Chace Keaton cursed with alarming frequency and was bossy and annoying in the morning. He also was obstinate, but not just in the morning.

  “There are rumors that due to budget constraints, there are going to be cuts and one of those cuts is Carnal Library. They’re thinking of closing it down entirely.”

  I watched his eyes flashed right before he noted softly, “You’ll lose your job.”

  “And the town will lose its library,” I replied.

  “Shit, Faye,” he whispered.

  “So, yeah, crazy stuff. Now, you show me yours.”

  He shook his head and asked, “Is there something we can do?”

  “Who can do?”

  “You, me, the town,” he answered.

  I shook my head but said, “I’m asking. We can conceivably fundraise, go for grants and it doesn’t cost a mint to keep a library running but it isn’t a drop in the bucket either. There are things we’ve needed to do awhile and haven’t had the money, such as upgrade our computers which are five years old and see a lot of use. Carnal has some money in it, a few private donors who, if feeling generous, might help out but if they don’t, local fundraising might not be enough.”

  “Petitions?” he asked and I shrugged.

  “No idea.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt,” he told me. “Get one made up, I’ll take one to the Station. You can give Lexie one, she’ll get signatures at the salon. Stella, the garage. Krystal, Bubba’s. Maybe they see the community backing the library, they’ll look elsewhere.”

  “That’s nice, Chace, but the elsewhere they’ll be looking to cut is at the schools or the Police Station. If people know that, the library is screwed.”

  “Honey, they’ve had consultants in and deemed Carnal Police was overstaffed. They’re keeping us at two detectives, twelve officers, the Cap and no Chief. Admin pool is cut back from four to two and they’ve dumped the position of receptionist, putting a uniform on desk duty. The City Council is taking over as Chief and the Cap will report directly to him. That’s a loss of ten personnel. Just Fuller’s salary was over six figures, his inner sanctum also were overpaid. They’re saving a fuckload on that.”

  “Is your job safe?” I asked quickly and I watched his mouth get soft.

  But his tone was strange, it sounded slightly self-deprecating when he answered, “Yeah, no way they’re gonna get rid of the savior of CPD.”

  “Chace,” I whispered but said no more because I didn’t entirely get what he said or, more to the point, how he said it because he was the savior of the CPD. People were dying, his wife being that people, and others were gett
ing framed and doing time for crimes they didn’t commit. Chace and Frank Dolinski had taken grave risks working undercover locally for Internal Affairs in order to witness, document and uncover the corruption that had infested CPD and kept the entire town of Carnal under the thumb of a small-minded, bigoted, self-important tyrant for over a decade. Everyone knew that.

  “I’ll look into this library shit,” Chace offered, taking me from my thoughts.

  “What can you do?” I queried.

  “Ask around. Find out why CPD cut back spending by hundreds of thousands of dollars and, on the heels of that, we’re gonna lose our library.”

  “You don’t really have to do that,” I told him.

  “You’re right. I really don’t. But I’m gonna.”

  I drew in breath.

  This was nice too.

  Then I whispered, “Okay,” and after that, I took a sip of coffee.

  He took a sip of his and aimed his eyes out the windshield.

  “Now,” I started carefully, “you were going to show me –”

  “Fuck,” he muttered and I saw his eyes were focused on something.

  “What?” I asked, turning my head and whispering, “Holy frak,” at what I saw.

  The boy was by the return bin. He was crouched, looking through the bags I left him.

  I held my breath and I didn’t even notice my hand shooting out and blindly finding Chace’s. Not even when his fingers closed around mine.

  We sat, still, silent, watching and holding hands as the boy found my note, read it quickly and shoved it in the bag. Then he shoved some books into the return bin and snatched up all the handles on the bags. Darting a glance left and right but not behind him where we were, he crept around the front of the library and disappeared.

  “I’m gonna follow him,” Chace muttered and I heard his door open.

  My hand clenched his and he stopped folding out of the truck to look back at me.

  “Don’t scare him,” I whispered.

  “I won’t, baby,” he whispered back, squeezed my hand, let it go then angled out of my SUV.

  He closed the door and I watched him jog to the library and around it until he disappeared.