* * *
After the bath, I dressed myself in a plain red cotton t-shirt and jeans. I glimpsed in the mirror and was delighted at the progress of my five o’clock shadow’s return. I practiced my bedroom eyes on myself in the mirror and then laughed. What kind of girl would fall for a face like this? I looked like mountain terrain, all brush and stones. Oh, well. If Michelle wanted to swing her hips and saunter down to my league to be with me, that was her decision.
I went to her house with a can of spray whipped cream and her car was still in the driveway. Huh. I was going to strip down and stretch myself out on her bed, but if she was already home, maybe I could spray it on her instead. I wondered briefly if she was the kind of person who would get upset if her bedding was damaged, and then disregarded the thought. She wouldn’t care. If she cared about us staining the bed, I wasn’t doing my job right.
My mind was on Michelle’s mouth as I strode up her front porch steps. There was a spring in my step and a song in my heart as I reached for the doorknob.
But it twisted before I could touch it, and I pulled back. I assumed it would be Michelle on the other side.
But the door fell open and Chet Browntooth strode into the dying July afternoon, an old composition notebook and a photo album clutched to his chest.
Within an instant, I knew everything. The look in his eyes told me everything that context couldn’t. It hit me like a bolt of lightning and I broiled. He was the reason the police department never received any alerts. He was the reason there were no signs of forced entry. He was the reason the profile of this thief was so creepily obsessive. How hadn’t I seen before that his personality fit the crime perfectly? Why had I believed his story on that first night, when he was on her porch in the dead of night, front door hanging ajar? How could Michelle have been the only female Chet ever successfully bought a gift without offending? He knew she would like the pearls because it was in a journal or a picture or something. He’d probably been plying her with her own secrets and memories all month.
I launched myself at him with all the primitive instinct of a caveman and we tumbled back over Michelle’s threshold together. Chet telegraphed his first swipe one beat before it came, so I dodged easily and pinned him to the wood floor.
“You’re one sick son of a bitch, Browntooth,” I told him through gritted teeth. “What were you doing in there, huh? Reading her diaries?”
“Jerking off in her panties,” Chet sneered up at me, and I swiped his jaw with my knuckle too quickly to even comprehend what I was doing, what I had just done. “You’re about to be under a-fucking-rrest, Ace!” he roared, mouth spraying blood where I busted a tooth loose.
“Oh, yeah?” I gave him a little shake. “How are you going to explain what the fuck you were doing in here, Browntooth? I’m supposed to be here! You’re not!”
“Just because you’re here doesn’t mean she’s yours, grease monkey,” Chet jeered. He grinned, even though blood seeped over his lower lip. “I see her all the time, and she loves to talk to me. Giving me little smiles. Shaking that ass when she walks away. You’re not the only one she wants, and I live right next door.”
“You’ve been stealing her shit!” I struggled off Chet and snatched the composition notebook from his hands. “What is this?” I flipped it open and saw handwriting on lined paper. Vintage. There was a Chapter One heading, and it spilled right into some deep, passionate love scene.
My palms raked a little trail down the patch of hard stubble on Gavin’s jaw…
The guy sounded a little like me, actually.
My eyes thundered down at Chet and I said nothing.
“I’m going to tell her,” I informed him solemnly. I had to keep my cool, or it was going to look like something it wasn’t. “What she decides to do with this information is up to her.” But she better fuckin’ move in with me and sue your ass for harassment if you come within 300 feet of her.
“I think you should tell her,” Chet encouraged me, propping himself up on his elbow. In spite of Chet’s slimmer stature and the fact that his hands weren’t half as hard as mine, he’d taken that punch like a champ. As I recall, he was in a lot of fights as a kid, and his old man was pretty sour, too. We were born in the ‘80s, but that kind of stuff still happened behind closed doors. “I think you should be the one to tell her that you have been breaking into her house and stealing her little treasures,” he explained as he shambled to a stand and dabbed at his lip. “That’s noble, Ace.”
“She would never believe that, even if I did tell her myself,” I said.
Chet grinned. “You mean, the way she didn’t believe that you were still hooking up with Lola?” he provoked me. “Don’t you have a license to locksmith? Didn’t you get all that equipment when you started the garage?” He rolled his tongue thoughtfully in his mouth and sauntered toward me, sizing me up like he thought he was becoming the alpha in this scenario. I watched him with even, calm eyes, waiting for his next move. I knew one was coming soon. His body language radiated restrained aggression like heat waves coming off a desert road. “And isn’t it so fucking weird how perfect she thinks you are? How perfect you seem to be?”
I swallowed and told myself that violence never solved anything.
Who said that? Can’t remember. Doesn’t matter.
I surged forward and bound one arm around his weasel neck, wrestling his head down into my armpit in a snug headlock. Unbelievably, Chet laughed.
“And while she’s crying and vulnerable and so scared, I’ll be right next door, making all her favorite foods, listening to all her favorite songs,” he sneered up at me. “She’s gonna lay that pussy out for me like a goddamn buffet, Ace. Mm, mm, mm!”
Everything went white for a second, and the next thing I knew, I felt searing heat travel down both my arms and we were outside, Chet in the air, dangling by his throat. I tossed him into the yard like he was a rag doll and he rolled.
I wanted to feel satisfied and victorious, but I didn’t. I knew that it wasn’t over yet. I knew Michelle was in real danger. No one would believe my word against Chet’s. She wasn’t going to move in with me. I knew that. Even if she trusted me about Chet—and Chet was right, she’d chosen his side before—she’d think moving in was too sudden and risky. She’d be trapped, right here, next to that leering psycho. She’d be trapped, and he must have had a key to her place. She’d be trapped, and he was willing to do everything in his power to make her his own.
Chet scrambled up, streaked in dirt and bloodied, a bruise forming on his cheekbone.
“You never really got to know me, Chet,” I barked at him from the porch, feeling like Michelle’s own personal Rottweiler. “But the first goddamn thing you’re gonna learn is that I protect the people I love. I protect them to the death.”
“Are you threatening a police officer?” Chet wondered, rolling his tongue over his dirty cut lip.
“Fuck yeah, I am,” I snarled.
“You’re not gonna tell Michelle,” Chet sang eerily. His eyes gleamed as he loped backward across Michelle’s yard, back to his own property. “I’ve got access to a lot of things in my line of work, Ace. It’d be a shame to watch that garage get shut down. See little Connie grow up without a stepdad.”
Everything went a little hazy again, but this time, I fought through the urge to kick his motherfucking ass and just nodded at him, eyes slits, jaw tight. Everything in my expression said that I was serious, and he’d understand that. He was not to come back. His life might depend on it.
I closed the door behind him and I almost moved to lock it, but then I remembered that he’d made a copy of the key.
We were changing these locks tonight.