“How bad?”

“Eye swollen shut, bruises on his face, nose swollen and a gash on his lip that isn’t being treated.”

“Fuck,” Chace muttered.

“It’s worse,” she whispered and Chace nodded to her to go on. “He… well, he’s very thin. And he’s not clean, as in, way not clean. And his clothes don’t fit him. And he’s very, very thin.”

“You said that,” Chace noted quietly.

“He’s so very, very thin, Chace, it bears repeating,” she said quietly back.

Chace held her eyes and repeated his muttered, “Fuck.” Then he put his hands on his hips and asked, “You know this kid?”

She shook her head.

“Speak to him?” Chace continued.

She shook her head again but replied, “Every time I’ve tried to approach, he runs away. I tried again today and chased him. He was terrified. He outran me then disappeared.”

Jesus, she’d chased him? The town’s pretty, curvy, quiet librarian chased a kid?

He verbalized his question. “You chased him?”

“Yeah, out of the library and into town. He disappeared the minute he turned onto Main Street. Well, not the minute seeing as I was half a block behind him but close after. And I told him he wasn’t in trouble but he still ran.”

“You chased him.” It was a statement this time.

“Yeah,” she answered anyway then he watched her body give a small jolt and she whispered, “Oh no, was that the wrong thing to do?”

“Sorry, honey, but you gotta know in case the opportunity comes up again. A kid being beaten and malnourished, which gives us an indication who’s likely beating him, and not taken care of, which pretty much solidifies who’s beating him, should not be chased. It’s clear he’s not livin’ a good life. It’s likely that life is filled with a good deal of fear. And him borrowin’ library books outside of acceptable practice says to me whatever’s happening at home means he doesn’t trust anyone so he takes every opportunity to dodge connecting even if it means checking out a library book.”

As he spoke he saw her eyes had grown wide, her lips had parted and she was staring up at him with that appealing wonder she’d stared at him with yesterday morning.

And alone in a small interrogation room while discussing an abused child it was far more appealing.

Then she whispered her cute, “Oh.”

At this point he was seeing his error at giving them privacy. Top to toe, she was an itch he’d wanted to scratch for a long time. Faye Goodknight talking and reacting two feet away, her voice coming at him, her face expressive, her scent filling the room, she wasn’t an itch.

She was a craving.

Chace buried it and asked, “He keeps coming around?”

She blinked and asked back, “What?”

“This kid, you said you’ve tried to approach, the times you didn’t chase him down the street, he kept coming back?”

He saw her bubblegum lips twitch but she nodded and added her, “Yeah.”

“Right,” he muttered, reaching into his jacket pocket to pull out his phone. “He comes back, you don’t approach. You call me.”

“Call you?”

“Yeah,” he bent his head to his phone and activated it, saying, “I wanna get a look at him. See if I know him or who his kin might be. Maybe find a way to make my own approach.”

“He doesn’t look familiar.”

Chace lifted his head and looked at her. “You lived here your whole life, Faye, but still, it’s likely I’ve met more folk around here than you have.”

“This is true,” she said softly.

Christ.

Cute.

“Give me your number,” he ordered.

She blinked.

Then she whispered, “What?”

“Your phone number. Give it to me. I’ll call you, you’ll have mine you can store in your cell.”

“Can’t you just give me yours and I’ll program it in my cell?” she suggested.

“I could. But, darlin’, things the way they’ve been…” he trailed off, shook his head and let that speak for itself. She might live in her books but the shit that’s gone down, he knew from the limited conversations they’d had, had not escaped her notice. “I’m not big on surprises. You need to call me, when my phone rings, I like to know what I’m dealin’ with before I answer it. I got your number, it’ll come up on caller ID.”

She nodded and pressed her lips together before she said quietly, “That makes sense.”

Then she stood there staring at him.

“Faye, your number?” he prompted and her body gave a slight start.

“Oh,” she whispered. “Right.” Then she gave him her number.

Chace punched it in and hit go. Her purse rang and he heard her making the moves to pull her phone out but he disconnected the call before she answered it. Then he hit buttons and programmed her into his phone while he heard her hitting buttons programming him in hers.

This meant access to Faye Goodknight’s voice whenever he wanted it.

Fuck.

He buried that as he shoved his phone back in his pocket and looked again at her.

“I also need you to bag a book he’s stolen and bring it to me,” he told her.

Her head cocked slightly to the side and she asked, “Why?”

“’Cause he might have hit the system. We can lift prints, we might find out who he is which might lead us to where he is.”

“Oh,” she again whispered, then another, “Right. Okay. I’ll do that.”

“Try not to handle it too much.”

“Uh… Chace, our books, at least some of them, are handled a lot.”

“We’ll sort out what we find, don’t worry about that.”

She nodded again.

“I need a physical description of the kid too. I’ll give it to the boys. They can keep their eyes peeled.”

More nodding then she described the kid and his behavior. Nothing she said struck him as familiar to any kid he’d seen. Seeing as everything she said was not good, if he’d seen him he would have noted him.

When she was done speaking, he started.

“I’ll talk to the boys, see if they’ve seen anything or heard anything. I’ll also do some digging to see if any reports were made. Way things were, they could have been ignored or buried. I’ll do what I can to uncover it if they have. Tomorrow, I’ll call Child Protection Services to see if they’ve had any reports we haven’t acted on or any at all. I’ll also swing by the school to talk to the principal and ask him to talk to his teachers to see if any of them have concerns, either reported or unreported. In the meantime, you bag a book he stole and call me. Tell me when you can bring it in. When you do, I’ll have an artist here who can take your description and give us a picture we can go on. That all good with you?”

“A police artist?” she asked, again looking at him with that expression of adorable, effective wonder.

“A police artist, yeah,” he answered, expending not a small amount of effort to ignore her look. “You might not think you’re good at describing someone but they’re trained to pull it out of you and they’re good at what they do.”

“A police artist,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” Chace replied.

“And fingerprints.” She was still whispering.

“Yeah, Faye, got no clue who this kid is. Gotta do something to find him, find out what’s happening to him and put a stop to it. We don’t have a name. We don’t have an address. So we have to work with what we’ve got.”

She was still whispering when she repeated, “Put a stop to it.”

Now, Chace was confused. She seemed stunned. Not in a bad way, that wonder was still clear in her expression. But stunned all the same.

“Uh, yeah, Faye. That’s why you came here and reported this, isn’t it? To put a stop to bad shit happening to a kid. So, let’s set about doin’ that, yeah?”

He stopped speaking and she said nothing, just stared up at him, those blue eyes big and locked on him.

But Chace was done. Done with this conversation. Done with gathering info and giving detail on what they were going to do. And especially done with being in a private room with the town’s pretty librarian looking at him like he parted the Colorado River so she could get to the other side without the unnecessary hassle of getting wet. Something only her own personal miracle worker could offer her.

But Faye Goodknight was not done.

He’d know this when suddenly she was not two feet away but in his space. So far in his space, her soft body was pressed the length of his, her arms were around his shoulders, one hand curled around the back of his neck, fingers in his hair, putting pressure on to bend his head. And last, her mouth was pressed hard to his.

What the fuck?

He put his hands to her hips to push her away, his mind filled with how he could do that as gently as possible when her tongue came out and the tip touched his lips.

And at that, Chace’s body and mouth made another decision before his mind could catch up. This being his arms closing around her tight, his mouth opening over hers, his tongue spiking out, pushing hers back into her mouth and then he kissed her, very hard, very wet and very, very deep.

She didn’t taste like bubblegum.

She tasted like bubblemint. Sweet and fresh and fucking fantastic.

He kept one of his arms locked tight around her waist while he slid the other hand up her spine, her neck and into her hair.

Fucking hell, silk.

Better than he imagined.

Better than he could even dream.

He bent forward slightly, arching her over his arm, forcing her body deeper into his and she moaned a sweet, soft moan against his tongue.

It was the best thing he’d ever tasted in his life.

In some faraway, vague recess of his mind that wasn’t intent on her body pressed against his, the feel of her hair in his hand, the taste of her on his tongue and what all that was doing to his body, he realized she had no clue what she was doing. She was along for his ride. A willing, eager participant, giving, opening herself to him and doing nothing more but letting him take what he wanted.