Leave Me Love(35)

She dropped her head. "Oh. Of course."

I knew she was trying to exonerate me and I appreciated it. "All those pictures of Ash and Brig, what if Jon was collecting them? Maybe he was jealous and was trying to frame me? He wanted to date me at one point, but it didn't work out. Maybe he manipulated Brig somehow." It was a theory that had been rolling around in my brain for awhile.

Gray stood. "Sure, that's possible, I suppose. We'll look into it. Thanks for coming by, ladies."

Dismissed.

I stood, muscles tense from anger. "You have to do something. I'm being framed and you don't seem to give a shit. This isn't justice, detective. You're not doing your fucking job!"

"Catelyn, you need to calm down before I put you back in that cell. Take your medication and let us handle this case. If you're innocent, the evidence will prove it."

He spit the gum he'd been chewing into the trashcan by his desk, giving the room the faint scent of spearmint and nicotine.

Mrs. Beaumont hugged me, telling me to keep in touch as she drove off in her car. As I walked to mine, holding my jacket over my head to keep the rain from soaking me, I spotted Ash's private investigator and changed direction toward his car, ready to give him a piece of my mind, even if it was drugged-up and crazy.

"Shouldn't you be looking for Bridgette?" I asked.

He sucked in his cigarette and exhaled. "Ash likes to keep an eye on you."

"I'm fine. Tell him I'm fine."

"It won't matter." He flicked ash out of his window, and I had to step back to keep from getting it on my shoe.

"Why not?"

"Love is as love does," he said, echoing his words from before.

I dropped my jacket and let the rain soak my head. "The day Bridgette disappeared, were you following me?"

He nodded.

"Did you see Jon around her house?"

He shook his head. "I had other errands to run that day."

A dead end. "Have you looked into Lucky's contacts?"

"He had a few cell mates back in prison."

"Great. Have you tracked them down yet?" Lighting stuck in the distance, and I wondered how long until the thunder. Somewhere in the back of my mind I started counting, remembering an old scary movie I'd seen as a kid. Poltergeist. Even the memory made me shiver.

"Yeah. They're still in prison."

So they couldn't have done it.

Jim continued. "I talked to them. They said Lucky was really messed up. Some serious trauma shit. He…"

"He what?"

"He ran his own kid over in his driveway. Was too drunk to notice."

"Shit. Does he have a wife?"

"She died young. Poor bastard had it hard."

I remembered the night he kidnapped me. The way he held the knife to my face. "He wasn't a poor anything."

"Catelyn, don't feel sorry for the man who hurt you. Feel sorry for the kid he ran over, the wife he lost. Feel sorry for the man he was before he turned hard." He breathed out smoke. "A hard life makes a hard man. Who's to say which one's to blame?"

I sighed, frustrated and lacking any sympathy or empathy for criminals at the moment. "So do you have any leads?"

"Whoever kidnapped Bridgette was close to Lucky. Someone who would have visited him, maybe even at his kiosk. Likely, they were both behind the Midnight Murders. You know anyone like that?"

"I never saw him with friends."

"Anyone kind of older? Got coffee from him often?"

"No one comes to mind."

"Keep thinking about it." He leaned back in his seat.

I turned to leave. "You can go now."

"Hey, I'm following you."



***



I ignored Mr. P.I. and drove to the address Ash told me to meet him at for our first gun and fight club lesson. He kissed me when I arrived and escorted me into a shooting range where we spent the next two hours. Ash trained me in how to hold a gun, how to shoot without stumbling back from the recoil, how to load the gun, and how to turn the safety on and off. By the end of our time, I could successfully hit a target 60% of the time, which I thought wasn't bad at all, all things considered.

He just smiled and kissed my head. "We'll keep working on it, sweetheart."

When he showed me how it was done, I knew I had a long way to go. As he pulled the target toward us, I only saw one hole, straight through the heart, but he'd shot five times. And then I realized all his shots had gone through that one hole. I whistled. "You're like that dude in Lethal Weapon."

Afterwards, he took me to the gym and we sparred. And by sparred I mean he knocked me on my ass a lot. I got a lot of bruises and in the end I learned, A: how to disarm someone who came at me really slowly from one very specific angle, and B: how to fall into my attacker to throw him off balance in order to get away. I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to duplicate either of those lessons in real life, but Ash assured me it was a start and we would keep at it until I was one “badass motherfucker." That was my goal.