Bounty(213)

That pissed him off more.

Susie saw it.

“She sleeps with anything that moves,” Susie defended.

“I didn’t say she wasn’t a troubled woman. I said she was a good one.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about your work,” she suggested. “Get your mind off it.”

Susie didn’t want his mind off it. Susie didn’t want to think about it or talk about it. She never did and she never gave a fuck if he did.

February would listen if he wanted to talk. She’d get him a beer or she’d pour him a Jack and Coke and she’d keep them coming. When he was done, she’d slide the tips of her fingers around his ear then curl them at his neck, her touch warm and steady and real and his mind would blank.

“All right, let’s talk about Puck,” Colt told Susie and her head jerked.

He hadn’t wanted her to do it but she’d pushed it so he’d let her look after his dog Puck, a German shepherd. Puck, when Colt got home from fishing, surprisingly hadn’t seemed the worse for wear under Susie’s care. But the day after he got back, Puck’s body had been found blocks down. Colt suspected he’d gotten out like he usually did when Susie would leave after Colt in the morning and she wouldn’t fully close the door. This was something she’d done before; like Colt’s house and what he kept in it didn’t matter much to her. Puck, being a smart dog and liking it when he could run, nearly always got out when Susie didn’t make certain the door was closed. Then again, it wasn’t hard. He just had to pull it open further with his paw and go. Puck had been hit by a car or, by the looks of him when Colt found him, a fair fucking few of them.

Normally he’d take Puck with him when he went fishing but he and Morrie went to a new place that Morrie wanted to try and, at the cabin they rented, it was no pets allowed. Thus Susie getting the key.

Colt had loved that dog. He hadn’t accused Susie, mainly because it served no purpose, especially considering the fact that she’d soon be out of his life. But he missed his damned dog and there was no denying it, he blamed her.

“Puck?”

“I’m not goin’ fishin’ again anytime soon and even if I did Puck’s no longer here. You don’t need my key.”

Her eyes closed slowly, the lids taking their time on their descent like she was drawing the movement out, sucking more of his time.

She knew what he was saying.

She’d be stupid if she didn’t. He hadn’t taken her out in months, didn’t spend the night at her place, didn’t ask her to his, didn’t call, barely touched her anymore, hadn’t fucked her in that long and only slept with her the night before Puck died because she’d already been asleep in his bed when he got home. That had pissed him off too. He’d considered dragging her ass out of bed and sending her home or sleeping on the couch but he’d been too damned tired to bother with either.

The desperate play of her newfound desire to watch his dog meant she knew it was coming.

And now it was time.

When she opened her eyes he knew she was pissed and when Susie was pissed it was never pretty.

“February,” she said.

“What?”

“It was all good, you and me, until February came back to town.”

Jesus, not this again.

She was wrong. February had been back for two years, came back to help Morrie with the bar after Jack and Jackie finally retired and moved to Florida. He and Susie had been on a break then, one of many.

And everyone knew there was no fucking way Colt would get near February.

She’d made her choice but Colt had dealt with it. He’d told her but she didn’t listen. It could have ended his career, could have landed him in prison, but he’d done it, for Morrie, for Jack and Jackie and especially for February.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t forgive her for what she did. It was that he couldn’t trust her judgment. Because after he’d done what he’d done, she never let him back in, and that…

Well, that he couldn’t forgive her for.

And obviously, since she’d tried to hack it for a while then given up, taken off for fifteen years and then steered clear of him the last two, he figured it was because she couldn’t forgive herself.

No, his problem with Susie had nothing to do with February.

“This has nothing to do with Feb.”

“Everything with you is wound up in February.”

Colt wasn’t going to have this discussion. It was late. He’d started the day with Angie’s murder. Having Feb in his arms for the first time in twenty-two years only to have her pull right out of them. Spent some not-so-much fun time with Cory and his loud, screeching wife Bethany, who looked eighteen months pregnant rather than the six she was supposed to be. However she’d also given her husband an alibi, even though Colt knew Cory didn’t have it in him to hack up Angie. And running up against bizarre dead end after dead end on a fresh case he had to crack, because this town had never seen a murder as brutal as Angie Maroni’s and the whole fucking place was going to go berserk if word spread what happened to her.