Breathe (Colorado Mountain #4)(26)

“I wasn’t in danger,” I retorted.

“Faye,” he said softly, “I know you know not too long ago we had a serial killer who lived undetected amongst our own and did it for a good spell. I also know you know that recently, serious shit went down that rocked this town and I’m guessin’ you, like everyone, is waitin’ to see if more will come of that. And, honey, more might come of that so you have to have a mind to your safety.”

“More might come of that?” I asked quietly, adding onto my mental list of things to do when I got home. I needed to message Benji and Serenity and implore them to give up their long-distance sleuthing.

“You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

At his words, I felt my eyes get wide and I breathed, “What?”

“Crazy life,” he stated as his explanation and I got it.

I decided I might as well tell him. It was becoming clear that along with multiple personalities, Chace Keaton cursed with alarming frequency and was bossy and annoying in the morning. He also was obstinate, but not just in the morning.

“There are rumors that due to budget constraints, there are going to be cuts and one of those cuts is Carnal Library. They’re thinking of closing it down entirely.”

I watched his eyes flashed right before he noted softly, “You’ll lose your job.”

“And the town will lose its library,” I replied.

“Shit, Faye,” he whispered.

“So, yeah, crazy stuff. Now, you show me yours.”

He shook his head and asked, “Is there something we can do?”

“Who can do?”

“You, me, the town,” he answered.

I shook my head but said, “I’m asking. We can conceivably fundraise, go for grants and it doesn’t cost a mint to keep a library running but it isn’t a drop in the bucket either. There are things we’ve needed to do awhile and haven’t had the money, such as upgrade our computers which are five years old and see a lot of use. Carnal has some money in it, a few private donors who, if feeling generous, might help out but if they don’t, local fundraising might not be enough.”

“Petitions?” he asked and I shrugged.

“No idea.”

“Wouldn’t hurt,” he told me. “Get one made up, I’ll take one to the Station. You can give Lexie one, she’ll get signatures at the salon. Stella, the garage. Krystal, Bubba’s. Maybe they see the community backing the library, they’ll look elsewhere.”

“That’s nice, Chace, but the elsewhere they’ll be looking to cut is at the schools or the Police Station. If people know that, the library is screwed.”

“Honey, they’ve had consultants in and deemed Carnal Police was overstaffed. They’re keeping us at two detectives, twelve officers, the Cap and no Chief. Admin pool is cut back from four to two and they’ve dumped the position of receptionist, putting a uniform on desk duty. The City Council is taking over as Chief and the Cap will report directly to him. That’s a loss of ten personnel. Just Fuller’s salary was over six figures, his inner sanctum also were overpaid. They’re saving a f**kload on that.”

“Is your job safe?” I asked quickly and I watched his mouth get soft.

But his tone was strange, it sounded slightly self-deprecating when he answered, “Yeah, no way they’re gonna get rid of the savior of CPD.”

“Chace,” I whispered but said no more because I didn’t entirely get what he said or, more to the point, how he said it because he was the savior of the CPD. People were dying, his wife being that people, and others were getting framed and doing time for crimes they didn’t commit. Chace and Frank Dolinski had taken grave risks working undercover locally for Internal Affairs in order to witness, document and uncover the corruption that had infested CPD and kept the entire town of Carnal under the thumb of a small-minded, bigoted, self-important tyrant for over a decade. Everyone knew that.

“I’ll look into this library shit,” Chace offered, taking me from my thoughts.

“What can you do?” I queried.

“Ask around. Find out why CPD cut back spending by hundreds of thousands of dollars and, on the heels of that, we’re gonna lose our library.”

“You don’t really have to do that,” I told him.

“You’re right. I really don’t. But I’m gonna.”

I drew in breath.

This was nice too.

Then I whispered, “Okay,” and after that, I took a sip of coffee.

He took a sip of his and aimed his eyes out the windshield.

“Now,” I started carefully, “you were going to show me –”

“Fuck,” he muttered and I saw his eyes were focused on something.

“What?” I asked, turning my head and whispering, “Holy frak,” at what I saw.

The boy was by the return bin. He was crouched, looking through the bags I left him.

I held my breath and I didn’t even notice my hand shooting out and blindly finding Chace’s. Not even when his fingers closed around mine.

We sat, still, silent, watching and holding hands as the boy found my note, read it quickly and shoved it in the bag. Then he shoved some books into the return bin and snatched up all the handles on the bags. Darting a glance left and right but not behind him where we were, he crept around the front of the library and disappeared.