Colorado 03 Lady Luck (62 page)

Ty parked, waiting for me to round the car
and took my hand as we walked through the bright outside lights up
to the deck. Tate came out the sliding glass door that I knew led
to the dining area off the kitchen and he slid the door to.

His eyes moved down to the DVD case Ty was
carrying.

“Already told Jonas he’s to stay upstairs
but Laurie’s curious. How bad is this shit?” Tate asked when we got
close.

“You like gettin’ some from your wife?” Ty
asked back when we stopped at Tate.

Tate’s lips twitched and he answered the
obvious, “Yeah.”

“Then keep her far away,” Ty replied.

Tate’s amused eyes slid to me, I cocked my
head because Ty was not wrong. He was going to have to work hard to
get that shit out of my brain the next time we had sex. Lucky for
me, he always worked hard.

Tate opened the door and motioned us
through. We went in and I’d been there before but, again, even with
what was happening, I processed how cool it was and repeated what I
did the other times I was there and memorized Laurie’s flair with
décor intending to use it myself one day. This was essentially
making everything look really, freaking good, purchasing nothing
but top quality but underlying it all was comfort for her boys and
she decorated in memories, the place was full of pictures.

Laurie’s ass was planted on a stool at the
butcher block topped island in their awesome kitchen like she kept
vigil there, cell phone on the counter in front of her, laptop open
and on, a half full glass of what looked like iced grape Kool-Aid
in a super girlie but kickass glass in front of her, her eyes
riveted to us the minute we entered and they were visibly
curious.

If I wasn’t still seriously grossed out and
totally freaked out, it would have amused me to consider super-hot,
tall, great body, total man Tatum Jackson drinking from that girlie
glass.

Then again, the way Laurie spoiled her boys,
she probably had a whole other set they could drink from.

Jonas was flat out on the couch watching TV
and he was not curious. Clearly Dad spoke, Jonas listened or,
alternately, there was something he was really into on TV.

We exchanged greetings then Tate headed
through the kitchen toward a back room saying, “Closed party,
baby.”

“Tate –” she started, he stopped, turned,
caught his wife’s eyes and shook his head. She looked to me. “That
bad?”

“My brain is still burning and if Ty wasn’t
holding my hand, I’d be bumping into stuff because I’m temporarily
blind,” I answered.

She wrinkled her nose in a “gross” look
that, considering she hadn’t seen it, didn’t do it justice.

Tate led us down some stairs, through a room
with weight equipment in it, down a hall and into a room he clearly
used as an office considering the desk, filing cabinets and office
equipment. He already had his computer booted up. He didn’t delay
in sitting in front of it and loading up the DVD. Then he set it to
go.

Then it went.

“Fuck me,” he whispered, then, not done
being horrified and expressing it, “Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”

“Told you, brother. Sick shit,” Ty
muttered.

Suddenly, Tate leaned forward, the first
impact of what he saw wearing off and he focused.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ.” He was still
whispering.

“What?” Ty asked and I got closer to him, my
hand still in his tensing

“Trane,” Tate said.

“Train?” I asked.

Tate’s head turned slowly and he tipped it
back to look up at us. “Trane. Trane Keaton. Chace’s father.”

My body locked right beside my husband’s
that was doing the same.

“Come again?” Ty asked but the words were
tight, forced through his lips.

Tate looked back at his computer monitor.
“That’s Misty. Don’t know the brunette.” He looked back at us. “But
that is definitely Trane Keaton of the Aspen Keatons. Chace was in
uniform while I was on the Force, hadn’t made detective yet and his
Dad came around more than once. Hotshot. Shit don’t stink. You
didn’t forget him mainly because he didn’t want you to. He was in a
Police Department with men who got more testosterone than most
and
still
took his
time pissin’ in every corner. Jackass, huge. Dickhead, bigger.
Treated Chace like shit, Chace’s choice to bail on Aspen and the
good life and live in a small biker town wearin’ a uniform was not
Daddy’s favorite thing and he made that apparent.”

Tate turned back to the screen, commandeered
the mouse and did what Ty did to take the video to the end. Then he
saw Fuller. Then he thankfully closed the video window and turned
back to us.

“You suss it out?” he asked Ty.

Ty moved to the desk, rested his fine ass
and a hard thigh on the edge of it, foot hanging. I again moved to
lean into him and his arm curled around my hips.

“Heard of his perversion, set Misty on him,
got ‘im by the balls,” Ty answered as a confirmation he had sussed
it out.

Tate nodded but said, “More.”

“Give it to me,” Ty invited.

“
I will but I’m also gonna break it down,
some speculation in this shit but gotta tell you, Keaton turning to
the dark side threw me. He was a straight arrow. Made Frank look
crooked. That said, he was no choirboy and I mean that only in the
sense that he liked to get him some and he’s a good-lookin’ guy, he
had choice and he enjoyed it, including Misty. He didn’t talk about
it but I reckoned he might play as much as he liked but when it got
down to bein’ serious, no way the likes of Misty Keaton would have
his ring on her finger. He might accept a woman who had some
experience…
some
. If he
couldn’t bag himself a virgin, though, he would not be settling
with a girl of Misty’s array of knowledge. He’s a man who likes
control and my guess is, he wouldn’t mind he had to do a fuckload
of training seein’ as, when he was done, he’d get it just like he
liked it. Just a guess but Chace wanted a quiet life, out from
under Daddy’s thumb, white picket fence he earned his own self
fencing in a family with two point five kids and a wife who made
kickass pies, was the leader of his daughter’s Brownie troop but
still gave world class head,” he paused, looked at me and said,
“Sorry, Lexie.”

“That’s okay,” I whispered on a grin.

Tate grinned back.

“And?” Ty prompted when Tate didn’t continue
speaking.

So Tate continued speaking.

“What I’m sayin’ is, this man was his own
man, not his father’s son. He was who he wanted to be. Took balls
to walk away from all that. So, him goin’ under shocked the shit
outta me. Everyone knows Misty got Chace outta your deal and
everyone knows Chace didn’t pretend to like it. Before that, he
kept his head down, his nose clean, did his job. Like all the boys,
he wanted to stay employed, he looked the other way with shit but
he didn’t participate in it. Without family to hold him close, a
connection to the community, like Frank has, why he stuck around
Carnal and put up with that shit, I don’t know. My guess was, him
movin’ on or quittin’ altogether would get him a big ‘I told you
so’ from Daddy. Also could be, Fuller’s network was so vast, would
be hard to find a job if he left Carnal. I know I didn’t go back
into police work after that, bad taste in my mouth. But I had ties
to the community, I grew up here, this was home, found a way to
stay and earn a living. That said, if Keaton told Fuller and his
boys to go fuck themselves and moved clean across the country that
would not have surprised me. What surprised me and what I never got
was why a man like Chace, his own man, a straight arrow and a man
who liked control, buckled regarding Misty then, directly after,
entered the inner sanctum.”

Ty’s voice sounded distracted when he
muttered, “Didn’t enter it, was shoved in it.”

“Bet he’s seen that video,” Tate muttered
back and I closed my eyes.

Seeing his Dad like that, I couldn’t
fathom it and I didn’t even have a Dad. But being married to the
woman who did that to his Dad, knowing she trapped his Dad
and
him, it was no wonder he hated
her and didn’t hide it.

But this was worse. To keep his father from
enduring untold humiliation should that video leak, a good man got
pushed into the mud. He could go to the grocery store or out to
have a beer anytime he wanted but he was still in prison,
controlled, his life not his own nor his decisions. And, as far as
I knew, he didn’t do anything to deserve any of that.

And that sucked.

“Not hip on the Aspen social scene, Tate.” I
heard Ty say and I opened my eyes as he went on. “What does knowin’
Fuller has this guy by the balls mean to me or anyone but
Keaton?”

“First, it fills in blanks about Misty and
Chace. Second, Trane may not be local but Trane is Trane. He’s got
money, money buys him power and he wields it. He may live two hours
away but there are a lot of ways to squeeze a guy like that, you
got that video, and keep squeezin’ him until he’s dry. Wasn’t
invited and even if I was, wouldn’t go to the wedding, but I bet
Trane sat up front watchin’ his son marryin’ the woman who saw to
his sick kink and he smiled big while adjusting his pants ‘cause
Arnie had his boys in a tight grip.”

“Makes you wonder how many balls Fuller has
his fist wrapped around,” Ty noted.

“
Money, power, judges, lawyers, other cops…
if he made a habit of collecting that kinda video,” Tate motioned
to his computer with his head, “then he would think he’s
untouchable ‘cause if he goes down,
they all go down.
”

And there it was.

Shit, shit,
fucking shit.

“We gotta find that girl in the video,” Ty
stated.

“Fuck yeah, we do,” Tate agreed. “Misty’s
dead, who knows how many assignments he sent her on and now we’ll
never know. That girl was not doin’ that shit because she got off
on it but she got somethin’ from it. One, she could have shitloads
of info and two, if there’s more where that came from, the shit
that’s happening in Carnal, there’s a lot more twitchy men out
there than the ones employed by Carnal PD and this mess has already
seen one woman dead.”

“Maryland,” I blurted, saw Tate’s eyes come
to me and felt Ty’s.

“What?” Tate asked.

I shook my head, feeling stupid butting in
on the boys but I worked in a salon and I heard it all there.
Everyone went to see Dominic or Kayeleen and not just ladies from
Carnal, from all around.

And none of them were friends with
Misty.

“
She doesn’t have any friends,” I said then
pulled in breath and went on, “And she’s not a pro. She was in love
with Chace and, yes, maybe the promise of his father’s money but
the woman I met a few weeks before she was murdered was down,
beaten. Ronnie had girls and I know that kind of beaten, when life
forces you into that. Some of them had just given up but most of
them were hard. That wasn’t the same kind of beaten as Misty and
Misty wasn’t hard. She’d had hope. She’d played her part willingly
to get what she wanted, screwed in the head how she did it but
hoping in the end she’d win Chace around. She didn’t. And, after
they backfired, clearly she was rethinking her actions with
Chace
and
Ty. She said
in her note to Ty that another good man got caught in the net and
she didn’t want to harm him further. If Trane is a jerk, she meant
Chace. Everyone knows she loved him. So, she’s not a paid whore,
she’s a girl who made a play for the man she loves who, if what you
said was true, would never tie himself to her any other way. And,
since that wasn’t her vocation, doing what we saw on that video,” I
tipped my chin to the monitor, “she’d wanna be with a friend. She
pretended she liked it and I don’t want to examine it up close but
from what I saw, it was pretend. And to do something that gross,
she’d want some safety, someone there who she could trust, someone
there she was close to. And the only friend I know that Misty has
is in Maryland.”

Tate nodded and muttered, “I’m on that.”

“You need to know,” Ty said at this point,
“Angel called today. Keaton is also working with IA; he’s been with
them thirteen months. We know Fuller instigated that inspection on
Monday. What we didn’t know was the play was to plant shit. Keaton
and Frank worked together to derail that plan without losin’ their
cover. Frank didn’t know Keaton was with IA, he knows now and so do
we.”

Tate stared at Ty in unconcealed surprise a
moment before what appeared to be relief moved across his handsome
features then he shook his head and whispered, “Jesus, this web is
so fuckin’ sticky, everyone is caught in it.”

That was, unfortunately, true.

Ty gave me a squeeze, I looked up to him and
he said, “Give Tate everything you got on the guy you saw
delivering the envelope.”

My eyes went back to Tate and I told him,
“Not small, not huge, a man, plaid, short-sleeved shirt. It was
dark, I didn’t even get his hair color but –”

“Newcomb,” Tate cut me off and I
blinked.

“No fuckin’ way,” Ty replied instantly.
“Loyal foot soldier for years and that motherfucker makes Fuller
look like a poster boy for Affirmative Action. Newcomb had a white
hood and robe in his closet, I would not be surprised. He wouldn’t
scratch an itch he had on his ass if it meant it might in some way
help me.”

“
Newcomb’s also got a wife who took off
three years ago leavin’ him with three kids and one of them is a
daughter who has leukemia and it isn’t lookin’ good. Those kids
need him to go down
or
disappear
like they need holes drilled into their heads. He’s inner sanctum,
caked in mud so, they all go down, he’s fucked. He’s doin’ what he
can to divert attention to the higher ups in hopes the buzzards
will see him breathin’ when they pick over the meatier carcasses
and leave him be. He’s also a big guy and he doesn’t ever wear
tees. He’s not in a sports jacket and slacks on duty; he’s in short
sleeves, always plaid.”