Breathe (Colorado Mountain #4)(16)

SerenityWash was her screen name, the name of the spaceship in Firefly, “Serenity”, plus her favorite character from the show, “Wash”.

Benji’s screen name, by the way, was “AdmiralAdamaforPresident”. Seeing as this was a pain in the behind to type out, I’d made him give me his real name. And I knew he was a man since he perved on Number Six from that show in a way no woman could.

He’d also told me his full name was Benjamin and I didn’t know any girls named Benjamin so I was thinking his gender was not in question.

Over the years, I’d kept them up-to-date on the goings-on in Carnal. I’d also shared my long-distance, unrequited love for Detective Chace Keaton. They’d gotten interested, especially when things heated up and finally exploded. That included the news that Misty Keaton was dead and her husband was free to be, they hoped, with me.

They’d stayed interested, maybe unhealthily, and talked me into doing the same. And the unhealthy part about this was that they were both good at computers. They lived on the fringe of society, devoted themselves to on-line communities and geek television. They were always gearing up for then rabidly attending any geek convention that came their way. They also indulged in such other pursuits as, say, hacking and amateur sleuthing.

This also led me to my middle of the night trip, one of many, to the scene of the crime. I, of course, had no clue what I was looking for. Serenity, of course, watched Bones and told me you could catch a murderer by examining dirt. I didn’t have three doctorates in entomology, botany and mineralogy like the fictional Jack Hodgins did on that show, nor did I have a space age lab to take a sample to be tested, so I had no idea what they expected me to do with the dirt at Harker’s Wood. I did, however, live in Carnal and, head in a book, fingers on a keyboard with on-line friends, eyes trained to geek TV or not, I still knew a lot of the bad guys seeing as they were police and made their presence smotheringly known. So this also meant I knew most of them were idiots. And idiots couldn’t commit murder and get away with it.

So up to Harker’s Wood I went when no one could see me. I looked around, combed that wood so thoroughly that by now I knew it like the back of my hand.

But I never found anything.

I also, like Benji and Serenity, never gave up.

Until now.

I hadn’t shared the recent events because both of them were openly hoping that our activities would reach a desirable conclusion, make Chace take notice of me and then, promptly, fall head over heels in love with me.

Obviously, this wasn’t going to happen.

So now it was time for us to stop trying to do what we were never going to do anyway. Even if Benji had hacked into the Carnal Police Department’s computer server and Serenity had somehow managed to hack into and follow along with conversations and text messages on more than a dozen cell phones.

And what we were trying to do that we’d never do was find Misty Keaton’s murderer.

Furthermore, even before the recent unpleasant and confusing (but unfortunately, for several beautiful moments, also excruciatingly exciting) Chace Encounters, I was getting worried.

This was because Serenity was turning up names that my own lame, internet searches showed were wealthy, powerful people. Big money. Old money. Judges. Businessmen. Politicians. Powerbrokers.

Serenity was convinced that the now dead ringleader of a dirty band of dirty cops, Arnold Fuller, had these guys in his pocket. And Serenity was convinced that even though Fuller was very dead, a man like him couldn’t yank the chains of men like that unless he had the goods on them. And last, Serenity was convinced that these goods did not die with Fuller.

They were out there.

She also thought that if we found Misty’s murderer, we’d find this. In the brouhaha that followed Ty Walker’s exoneration and the exposure of corruption in Carnal, none of this came out.

So Serenity was convinced there was another shoe that would drop and the best way for a shoe to drop without causing any damage was to aim it yourself.

As you could imagine, this did not fill me with glee. It didn’t even fill me with trepidation. It filled me with the desire to run screaming from this pet project and never look back.

Alas, Benji and Serenity were dug in. Fortunately, Serenity’s real identity was hidden so far behind a wall of her computer cunning that it was likely no one could hack it. And Benji lived in England so, hopefully, the long reach of Colorado money and power wouldn’t extend that far.

But I was done. Chace had called my charms “limited” and my kiss “bullshit fumbling” so I wasn’t actually done. I was done. I didn’t want any reminders of him. Luckily, I worked in the library, a building, to my knowledge, he’d never stepped foot inside of in thirteen years. And since I was the only paid employee at the library, I figured it was safe to say he never had and therefore never would. And I wasn’t going back to the diner. I was also giving up La-La Land coffee. This stunk. Shambles and Sunny’s coffee was awesome and Shambles’s baked goods were to die for.

But these were the only times my path could cross with any regularity with Chace Keaton’s so until the burn of his words faded away, I was avoiding them.

Benji and Serenity, I couldn’t control. They were adults (I hoped) and they were far from stupid. Maybe less involved in the real word even than I was but not stupid.

And for my part, I’d just keep warning them.