Now I did it because it made his expression change. He didn’t smile but there was something there, not treasure but precious all the same. It was nostalgic in that painful way nostalgia could be, but it was still precious and addictive, like a drug. I’d forget between times, but when he walked in, the craving would assault me, too much to fight, I was jonesing for it. So I went after it, lifting my jaw then his face would change and I’d allow myself half a beat to drink it in before I looked away.

Even after all that happened, today was no different.

Quick as I could, the second I got my Alec hit, I looked at Sully and understood why he wasn’t around yesterday.

He looked like hell. Brimming eyes, red rimmed nose and he was carrying a tatty tissue which had been overused.

“You need hot, honeyed water,” I said to Sully when he hit the bar, hot, honeyed water being what Mom used to make Morrie and I drink when we had a cold.

It probably had no medicinal effects at all except those wondrous ones only mothers could generate. Mothers who gave a shit about their kids and took care of them when they were sick like they were the most cherished things on earth and the world would not be right until her kid’s cold went away. Mothers like my Mom.

“I need hot, honeyed whisky,” Sully told me with a smile.

I could do hot, honeyed whisky. I would have to run down to the corner store to pick up the honey but it was only six doors away.

“You on duty?” I asked.

He gave me a look, it wasn’t a bad one. It wasn’t pitying or filled with blame. It was one filled with concern and a hint of understanding.

“Feels like, this case, with this cold, I’ll be on duty until the day I die.”

“I’m sorry, Sully.”

“You apologize again I’ll ask you over for dinner.”

That made me laugh, the first time I’d done it in over twenty-four hours and it felt rusty in my throat.

Still, Sully’s wife Lorraine was a shit cook. She was famous for it. Ever since she brought a half-dozen casseroles to the high school band’s pot luck fundraiser the first year they were married and gave food poisoning to half the band and some of the town.

The extra late afternoon bodies filling the room and the work and likely Alec being there made me feel suddenly hot.

I pulled off my sweater to strip down to the tank underneath as I replied, “I swear, I won’t apologize again.”

Sully’s laughter was muffled by my sweater being over my ears.

Alec’s comment was not because the sweater was off by the time he said it.

“What happened to your arm?”

I dropped my hands, my sweater still in both of them, and looked at my arm. Morrie’s fingerprints were clear as day, purple and blue and looking angry.

Fuck, but I always was an easy bruiser.

“Shit,” Morrie muttered, eyes glued to my arm.

“Shit, what?” Alec asked, his gaze swinging to Morrie who looked just as guilty as he was.

“Alec,” I said.

“Colt,” Sully said.

“Shit, what?” Alec repeated, ignoring Sully and me, looking pissed.

No, looking murderous.

I’d seen him that way once. I was barely conscious then and it scared the shit out of me. I was fully conscious now and worried I was about to pee my pants.

“Alec, don’t –” I tried.

Morrie tore his eyes from my arm and looked at his friend. “Colt –”

“Shit, what?” Alec cut him off, totally ignoring me. “You do that to her?”

Sully got close to him. “Colt.”

“Please calm down, it was not a big deal,” I tried again.

Alec ignored me again. “You put your hand on her?”

“Let’s go to the back, talk,” Morrie suggested.

“That why she moved in with Jessie and Jimbo?” Alec asked.

Oh Lord.

I’d never lived in a city. Even when I was travelling, trying to find a way to get back to myself, I picked small towns. I did this because you were never faceless, not for long. You were never a number. When something happened to folk in small towns, the entire town felt it. Even if you didn’t know someone, just knew of them, or a bit about them, you felt it when something happened. You sent a card. You gave them a smile when you saw them or someone who cared about them, a smile that said more than “hello”. People looked out for one another. You were friendly even to people you might not like just because it was the right thing to do and you’d likely see them again, maybe not the next day, but soon. And their kid would go to school with your kid. Or there would be a time when you knew you’d need their kindness or you’d give them yours.

But sometimes living in a small town sucked.

This was one of those times.

“Really, guys, this isn’t the time –” Jessie entered the conversation and she was just as unsuccessful as Sully and I had been.

“Your job was to keep her safe,” Alec told Morrie.

“Colt, trust me, we don’t want to talk about this,” Morrie said back.

“Jimbo can’t keep her safe. He wouldn’t have the first clue,” Alec said.

“Excuse me,” Jessie put in.

Alec’s eyes cut to me. “You stay with Morrie or you stay with me.”

“Alec,” I said.

“Colt, man, you know that can’t happen. You’re primary on the investigation,” Sully reminded him.

Alec was single-minded, not moving his eyes from me, he’d made a decision. “Morrie fucked up, you stay with me.”

“I’m not staying with you.”

“You aren’t staying with Jimbo and,” his head dipped to my arm, “you aren’t staying with Morrie.”

“She’s fine with us,” Jessie said.

“She can’t stay with you, man, you’d be yanked off the case,” Sully told him.

Alec bit his lip then looked at Morrie. “Explain why you marked her.”

“Like I said,” Morrie was now getting pissed, “let’s go in the back.”

“Explain why she’s standin’ there with your mark on her after what she went through yesterday,” Alec pushed, already pissed.

“Dude, as I said –”

“Explain why she lived through that asshole usin’ his fists on her only to have her fucking brother mark her.”

The bar, already on silent alert, everyone listening in and not hiding it, went wired.

Not me. I felt something else. Something far from pleasant. Something that made me feel sick.

Morrie’s voice was vibrating when he warned, “Colt, don’t compare me to Pete.”

“You aren’t explaining.”

“What’s goin’ on here?” my Dad said as my cell phone at my ass rang.

No one had noticed the door open. No one had noticed Mom and Dad walk in. No one.

Dad was looking between Morrie and Alec, his expression the same as it always was when he had to wade into one of their arguments or one of my arguments with Morrie.

Mom’s eyes were on me.

I wasn’t thinking. I should have said something, defused the situation. At least greeted my Mom and Dad who I hadn’t seen since Christmas and it was now March. But instead I pulled the phone out of my back pocket, flipped it open and put it to my ear.

“Hello?”

I didn’t even hear the words, the screeching was so loud there were barely words to be heard.

But even through the phone I could feel the fury, the anguish, the blame.

“Slow down,” I said into the screeching, “what?”

“Hacked!” a voice I distractedly recognized as LeeAnne’s shrieked a word in my ear that made my chest hollow out again. “Hacked!” she repeated.

“What?” I whispered.

“His landlord was at his fucking house when I called. He fucking picked up the phone. He fucking told me he was fucking hacked up with a fucking hatchet.”

“Who?” I asked but I knew. I knew. I knewIknewIknewIknew.

“Who?” she squealed, “Pete!”

“Oh my God,” I whispered but the phone was sliding from my hand.

I didn’t drop it, Alec was there taking it from me. Then he was talking in my phone. I heard my Mom’s voice, my Dad’s, Morrie’s, Jessie’s, Joe-Bob’s, Sully’s. I felt hands on me.

Then I ran fast to the women’s toilets. Up came Meems’s muffin and the coffee I had at her place. Then I wretched more. And more. Nothing coming out but my body wanted me to expel something else. Something it couldn’t get rid of no matter how much I heaved. I felt the pain in my chest with the effort, the burning in the back of my throat, someone holding back my hair, me holding onto the toilet and heaving.

“Stop it, Feb,” my Mom said in my ear, she was close I could feel the heat from her body.

“I’ve got to get it out,” I gasped.

“Nothing else in there, honey.”

“I’ve got to get it out.”

Her cool hand wrapped around my hot forehead just like it did when I was a kid and I closed my eyes and focused on her touch.

I stopped heaving and sat back on my haunches.

“Go, Jessie. To the store. Toothbrush, toothpaste. Tell Morrie to bring some lemon-lime in here, a cold one, and a wet cloth.”

I heard Jessie move but I didn’t see her.

I saw a body by the dumpster, this time though it wasn’t Angie’s. It was Pete’s.

I hated him, he hurt me, he nearly raped me, my husband, but it was true. He proved what I suspected, that men were no good. There were good men, like Alec, who were no good and there were shit men, like Pete, who were no good. That was all I knew. I’d wanted him to heal the wound but I knew, partway in it with him, he couldn’t do that. Then I’d wanted him to numb the pain, but he’d only given me more then taken away all that I had left.

But I didn’t want him dead. Not any way but not that way.