Cole in My Stocking (21 page)

With his arm around her, he guided her to where Glenmore was talking to Vernon Falworth, Newburgh’s fire chief. The fire crew was wrapping it up for the night while Newburgh PD searched the site for evidence. There would be more of that tomorrow, and then the cleanup could begin.

Glenmore didn’t bat an eye at the way Cole kept Mandy tucked against his side, but the other guys weren’t so tactful. Jerry and Gord were volunteers on the FD. Cole had tossed back countless beers with them over countless hands of poker. That all came to an end after Tooley’s smear campaign. Now they slid glances his way while they whispered together and smirked the way guys did when they want to communicate to some schmuck he was the lowest of lowlifes. Bob Bennets, one of the guys he’d worked with on Newburgh PD, glanced up from scraping evidence into a bag. He glanced at Cole’s hand on Mandy’s shoulder then looked him dead in the eye. He shook his head like Cole should be ashamed of himself. The only thing keeping him from striding through the rubble to knock the superior look off Bennets’ face was not wanting Mandy to see him lose his shit.

He forced his attention to the two chiefs.

“Yeah, there’s a safe over there,” Falworth told Glenmore, pointing to roughly where Gripper’s home office had been. “Fell through the floor boards. Hopefully whatever’s inside wasn’t too fragile. The rest is a total loss, though.” He made a sweeping motion to encompass the disaster zone.

Glenmore folded his arms over his chest and fixed his gaze on Mandy. “I suppose Gripper has valuables in there?”

“Yes,” Mandy said. Good girl not elaborating when there were so many men within earshot. Glenmore and Falworth were all right, but Bennets had a big mouth. Jerry and Gord had moved over to the fire truck to stow equipment, but there were two Newburgh PD guys and another FD worker Cole didn’t recognize. They were younger. Hell, they might have been in high school with Mandy. For all he knew, there were guys here who had called her trash way back when.

He tightened his hold, pleased when Mandy wound an arm around his waist. She was letting him know she didn’t mind his crowding her right now. Good. He didn’t think he could back off if he tried.

“Suppose we shouldn’t leave it out here for some industrious asshole to carry off in the night,” Glenmore said. “But, shit, we’d need a truck with a lift gate to move it off premises. Might be hard to find one at ten o’clock on Christmas night. I’d hate to post a guard out here on the holiday, but that’s what we might be looking at.”

“Couldn’t we just open it and remove the contents?” Mandy said.

Glenmore blinked at her. “That’d be a good idea if anyone here happened to know the combination.” He sounded skeptical.

“I know it,” she said.

Glenmore’s eyebrows went up. He turned his attention to Cole. “You got room at your place for whatever’s in there?”

He nodded. He could fit the most valuable guns in the safe in his basement with his own collection. The rest could go in the closet in his home office.

Thank fuck he’d gotten that duffel bag of cash out before all this. Glenmore would no-doubt insist on inventorying everything they pulled from the safe tonight. While he had no problem explaining that money if he needed to, it was simpler to keep it between him and the FBI…and Mandy, when the time was right. That would have been one hell of a surprise to spring on her tonight.
Oh, yeah, your dad had almost half a million bucks in the safe. But it’s dirty money. I’ve got to turn it over to the FBI.
Jesus, it was like something out of the movies. Mandy had just lost her dad and now her childhood home. She didn’t need that drama right now.

“That works,” Glenmore said.

Falworth said, “I can’t let you in there to open it. It’s a disaster zone. You write the combo down for Morris here, and once my crew clears a path, he can get in there and open it up.”

Mandy jotted the combination on Glenmore’s scratchpad. Maybe Cole should have told her he knew the combination for the safe too, but now wasn’t the time.

He tucked her into his truck to wait. After starting the engine and making sure the cab was nice and warm, he headed toward the rubble. On his way past one of the cruisers, Bennets bumped him with his shoulder.

Cole stopped and stared him down. “You got something to say to me?”

“Yeah.” Bennets lifted his chin toward Cole’s truck. “You got balls for going public with something that got you fired from your job back when it was a secret. Jesus, Plankitt, you’re old enough to be her father. You were fucking
friends
with her father. What would Gripper say?”

He was only old enough to be her father if he’d impregnated some girl at the age of sixteen, but he didn’t owe this shithead an ounce of explanation. “Gripper would say, ‘Mind your own fucking business.’” He stalked away from Bennets. The bastard was lucky they were in Mandy’s line of sight. If they’d been a few paces over, behind the fire truck, Cole would have had a nonverbal thing or two to say.

“Hope the young pussy’s worth it,” Bennets said. “Because you’re going to get nothing but shit for this. Gripper had a lot of friends. They’re not going to look kindly on you taking advantage of his little girl in her time of grief.”

There were times a man held himself in check out of respect for his woman. And there were times a man got physical out of respect for his woman. This was one of the latter times.

He spun around and had Bennets by the collar of his jacket in three strides. He backed him up until they were in the shadow of the fire truck, where Mandy couldn’t see. A jolt of satisfaction surged when he banged Bennets against the side panel.

Bennets gripped Cole’s wrist with one hand and reached for his piece with the other.

“You want to think carefully before drawing your weapon on me,” Cole said. “And you want to think carefully before insulting Mandy in front of me on the pretense of looking out for her or Gripper. We can keep this personal and meet up someplace to discuss it privately or we can make it official right here and right now and deal with the consequences. What’s it going to be,
Officer
Bennets?”

“Problem, gentlemen?” Glenmore approached, hands shaped like hooks by his side, ready to step in and yank apart two hotheaded cops.

Cole let Bennets’ jacket go. “Just a misunderstanding,” he said.

“Yeah,” Bennets agreed, straightening his jacket. “A misunderstanding.”

“If you’ve got it cleared up, Falworth’s got a path cleared to the safe. You coming?” he asked Cole.

With a parting glare at Bennets, Cole went with Glenmore to where four guys were using ropes and straps to lift the safe into an upright, if listing, position. The thing had to weigh a thousand pounds between the safe itself and the contents. Cole didn’t envy those guys the task of raising it like that. Hopefully, none of the guns inside had gotten scratched when it fell over.

He stepped carefully along the narrow path that had been cleared, stopping with Glenmore in front of the safe as the crew made way for them. Falworth angled in to hold a flashlight for extra illumination.

Glenmore squinted at the paper in his hand then at the wheel as he worked it. After a minute, he swung the door open.

The safe was facing away from the spotlight, but Cole didn’t need a lot of light to be able to see the inside. All of the inside. The carpeted sides, floor, and rear wall were all plainly visible. Because the safe was empty save for a few scraps of paper and the accordion files Gripper had kept up top. No more rows of rifles jam-packed side by side. No more handguns on hooks on the inside of the door. No more boxes of specialty ammo lining the top shelves. It was all gone.

Glenmore cursed. “I don’t suppose this thing was empty before tonight.”

“It wasn’t,” Cole confirmed. He told Glenmore how he’d seen inside when Mandy got out Gripper’s military records for the funeral planning. “I didn’t get too close a look,” he said honestly, “but I can make a list of what I remember seeing in there. Had to be at least twenty grand in guns. Some specialty ammo too.”

“I figured,” Glenmore said. “I’ll get that list from you tomorrow.” He held Cole’s gaze. “You know what this means.” It wasn’t a question.

Cole nodded. Made to look like a property crime, the fire was an attempt to cover what this was really about. Theft. No small-time theft, either. The safe had been charred but locked up tight when they got to it. No obvious signs of tampering. That meant whoever had set the fire had either cracked the combination or had somehow known it.

Tooley came to mind again. It was possible Gripper had given him the combination at some point. After all, he’d given it to Cole, and Tooley had been even tighter with Gripper than he’d been. Still, this didn’t feel like Tooley.

His gut told him this wasn’t even about the guns. The thief or thieves had made away with a good haul, but that was just a consolation prize. They’d been after the money.

He was going to have to come clean about Gripper’s deathbed request, at least the part about the dirty money. With Mandy and with Glenmore. And he was going to have to do it tonight. The next hour was going to suck.

Chapter 16

Something was wrong.

I kept my eyes glued to Cole as he watched Newburgh’s police chief, Morris Glenmore, open Dad’s safe. Nothing about Cole’s expression or posture had physically changed, but the level of his intensity skyrocketed. That was saying something, since he’d been practically vibrating with intensity after the confrontation I’d just witnessed between him and one of the cops on the scene. I didn’t know what it was about, but I could tell something the other cop said had made Cole angry. Very angry.

He was even angrier now.

Why? Were Dad’s guns damaged? Please, no. I couldn’t handle that on top of knowing everything else in the trailer had been burned to a crisp.

Mom’s clothes. The flag I’d gotten at Dad’s funeral. All the stuff I’d packed for this trip. All Dad’s clothes and boots and coats and clutter. A thousand useless pieces of manly bric-a-brac, the refuse of a life lived and lost. Proof my dad had been a hunter, a veteran, a weapons fanatic, an addict of cheesy action flicks, an alcoholic, a recluse, a cancer patient, a widower. All week, I’d been dreading sorting through it all. Now I felt robbed of the chance to do just that.

I couldn’t believe someone had burned it all down to spite me. The message spray painted across the garage doors made my stomach turn every time I looked at it. I kept looking anyway, the same way I could never resist picking at a scab.

How embarrassing Cole had to see those words. I was his girlfriend now. After the conversation we’d just had, I knew better than to think he’d regret being with me because of something stupid like hateful graffiti, but I couldn’t help wondering what he thought of the accusation.
Trash.

He’d told me Tooley had spread rumors that Cole and I were boinking back when I was in high school. Hideous, untrue rumors. Yet I could tell they were a sore spot for Cole. Like being called
trash
was a sore spot for me.

Accusations hurt the worst when there was a kernel of truth in them. For Cole, that kernel had been his attraction to me. For me, the kernel was that ever since the assault, I’d been longing for someone to tell me I wasn’t trash, I was worthy of love, clean enough to be cherished. Though no one had expressly told me those things, in Philly I’d made friends who treated me that way. In Philly I felt strong and capable and worthy. Empowered. Emotionally healthy, except for the minor fact I couldn’t seem to trust anyone with access to my body. The point was, in Philly I didn’t feel remotely like trash. But seeing the word there in black and white gave those old memories teeth. The pain was as fresh tonight as it had been when I’d heard that word whispered about me in the halls of my high school.

Who had written that message? Who cared enough to do this to me after six years? I wouldn’t have thought the kids who had called me names back then were still thinking about me. When I’d returned to Newburgh, I’d expected some residual fallout, sideways looks or disapproving stares, not an outright attack. Nothing like this.

This hurt. On so many levels, it hurt.

I was embarrassed. I felt vulnerable. Sad. Angry.

I tore my gaze from the garage and focused my attention on Cole. My protective warrior. My handsome boyfriend. Officer Oakley. What would I have done without him the last few days?

The sight of him standing shoulder to shoulder with Chief Glenmore on the edge of the charred rubble soothed me. I felt safe knowing I had him at my back.

She’s got a place to stay.

No hesitation. He’d uttered it immediately when the chief had asked about my accommodations for the night.

Long as you want, honey.

For a second there, looking into his concerned, intense eyes, I’d thought,
how does forever sound?
Then I came to my senses and remembered we’d been dating a grand total of one day. I also remembered I didn’t do sex. All at once the thrill I’d felt at the prospect of staying in Cole’s house turned to terror.

He’d known.

He’d also known just what to say to ease my panic. He’d reminded me that he wasn’t in a hurry. Which seemed insane since he was so much older than me.

Cole was no fresh-faced, college guy or young professional looking to date around before settling down. Cole was a man. A middle-aged man. Granted, he didn’t look or act middle aged. He looked and acted like he was in his prime. But on paper, he was past the age where most guys were starting families of their own. I’d learned today he was a man who valued family. I couldn’t wrap my head around him being the age he was and having all those married couples and kids around him and being okay with taking his time in any relationship. Didn’t he want to get started on his own family?

And yet I trusted him when he said he wasn’t in a hurry. I trusted everything that came out of Cole’s mouth. Intuitively, I knew hurting me was about as appealing to him as hurting himself. He cared deeply for me and had for a long time. I trusted that, and so I trusted him.

He looked up and met my gaze through the windshield. A look of defeat passed over his features, gone before it had a chance to stick, replaced by his usual stony intensity.