For You (The 'Burg #1)(107)

“Oh no,” Feb whispered, her brows had separated but her eyes were now wide, “now I’m thinkin’ about Freddie Krueger.”

Colt gave her another squeeze. “I’ll keep you safe, honey.”

“You can’t!” she snapped. “He gets to you in your dreams!”

There it was again, it hit his gut like a rocket and Colt couldn’t stop from laughing so hard he couldn’t hold his head up doing it so he bent his neck and shoved his face in her neck.

If someone had told Colt anytime during that day he’d laugh or smile or do them more than once, he’d have told you that you were f**king crazy.

But there it was. Owens magic.

Feb thought he was golden? He couldn’t say he didn’t like that she thought that.

But she and her mother were something else, something that glimmered far brighter than gold. Something that made you believe there was a God but he didn’t make miracles. He created beings and gave them the power to make miracles, miracles both great and small.

Chapter Nine

Cheryl

The door bell jolted Colt awake. He looked to the clock, saw it was five to seven and slid out from under the dead weight of Feb that was pressed to his side.

Yanking on his jeans, t-shirt and grabbing his gun, he hit the hall then the living room and looked out the peephole to see Chip Judd standing on his front step.

He’d unlocked the door when Jack hit the room, his hair a mess, his jeans on, his chest bare and his hand curled around the butt of his revolver.

“It’s Chip, Jack. It’s cool, I called him.”

“Chip?” Jack asked.

“Go back to bed, it’s all good.”

Jack studied him with sleepy intensity for several seconds before he spoke.

“Don’t know what’s good, you callin’ the only boy in town who installs security systems and him bein’ here first thing in the mornin’,” Jack stated the obvious on a grumble then headed back down the hall, muttering, “f*ck.”

Colt turned back to the door and opened it, nodding to Chip and stepping aside for him to enter but his eyes scanned the neighborhood. Chip’s van was parked on the street, no Audi in sight, no other movement. Street was waking up, half an hour it’d be alive, people heading to work. An hour after that, it would be napping again.

He closed the door, locked it and turned to Chip. Chip had his eyes on the lock Colt turned and then they came to Colt.

“You’re standin’ there holdin’ a gun, big man, and you still turn the lock?”

“Man out there’s hacking up people with a hatchet, he threatened me direct and Feb could turn his eye to her. Not leavin’ the door open to that possibility, Chip.”

Chip’s face had drained to the color of his hair, which was nearly as white as an albino, before he muttered, “Fuckin’ hell.”

“Damn straight, now what can you do for me?” Colt asked.

Chip recovered his composure, dipped his head to the door and said, “First thing, get you a decent deadbolt. My experience? Two kinds of cops. Those with families who got so many damned locks their house is like Fort Knox and their wives got scoliosis from carryin’ around their keyring. Those without who don’t spend enough time home to give a crap. You’re obviously Cop Type Two. Gotta tell you Colt, that lock’s a piece of shit.”

Colt couldn’t argue. His lock wasn’t near as bad as Feb’s but it was still a piece of shit.

“Put it in and a chain, all the doors. There’s one at the side, one at the back. I’ll need five sets of keys,” Colt told him, Chip nodded and Colt went on. “What else?”

“We talkin’ the basic model, the basic deluxe or the full-on deluxe?” Chip asked.

Security systems cost some cake, Colt knew, and this would be a hit. It was only six months ago he finished the last payment on Melanie’s kitchen. Other than that he studiously kept out of debt and saved as much as he could so when he quit the department his life could be a fair bit sweeter than a cop’s pension would buy him. He took a financial hit when Melanie left, she had a job and two incomes made their lives a f**kuva lot easier. Further, he let her clean out the house when she left. She let him keep both the house and the boat they bought together. Fair trade, to Colt’s way of thinking, she got a job across the city and wasn’t staying in town so she didn’t need the house and he cared about that boat a whole lot more than any couch. Except, he had to dip into savings to furnish his house when she was gone.

Now he intended, soon as he could, to buy a bike. Jack had taught both Morrie and him how to ride years ago and both of them always liked doing it, so much, every once in awhile Colt would rent a Harley and they’d spend the weekend riding.

But now he knew February felt free on the back of a bike and Colt wanted to give her that feeling as often as he could.

A security system would cut into that intention.

Then again, when this shit was over, he also intended to have a talk with Feb. A lot of the way she lived her life was going to change. Her living in a studio void of personality was one of them. Her spending a lot of time in his kitchen cooking him breakfast was another.

“Deluxe,” he told Chip and he knew by Chip’s response that Chip read his face while he was thinking.

“Good call, Colt,” Chip said. “I’ll give equipment to you wholesale and discount the labor.”