One day, I walked into the kitchen and found his gun, badge and handcuffs on the table. Cole was in the other room on the phone. I’d never held a gun before, and there it lay on the table, black and dangerous. My fingers itched to touch the forbidden. Had Cole ever had to use it?
I knew there was a dark side to Licking Hole. I’d flirted with it, literally—I’d dated a boy who worked in his father’s shady business. Donnie DeMarco bragged about it to me as if it was funny, but when I met his father, I felt the undercurrent of violence. Donnie’s father was nice to me, but was full of hate for the people he chose to cheat. He talked about society like it was a club he couldn’t join. Us and them.
I dumped Donnie so I didn’t have to watch his father teach him that hate.
When I started embezzling, I wondered how much he had taught me. Was my past a black hole, just waiting to suck me in?
I reached for the gun, diverting at the last second to pick up the handcuffs. Like so many other kids I grew up with, I’d come close to wearing these for real. Only Cole kept that from happening.
A hand wrapped around my throat from behind. Cole’s body pressed against my back, hard and dominating. I dropped the handcuffs with a clatter.
“Gah! How are you so quiet?”
The heat at my back, and hand at my neck made me still. Cole’s breath hit my ear.
“What are you doing, Regina?”
“Tidying up.”
“Do I really have to tell you not to touch my gear?”
“It’s not my fault you leave your stuff lying around everywhere.”
I swallowed hard. My pulse beat against his palm.
“You were thinking about touching my gun, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, breathless. “You know me. I’m always ready to touch your…gun.”
He laughed softly. “Naughty girl. What am I going to do with you?”
“If I can make a suggestion?—”
“No.” He stepped back, grabbed my wrist, and pulled me into the living room.
“Kneel,” he ordered. I did, looking up at him.
He cuffed one of my arms to the coffee table. I’d set a laundry basket full of clean clothes to be folded on the coach, and he dumped these onto my lap.
“Here. You wanted to touch my stuff.”
He sat on the couch and I folded laundry at his feet. It was a bitch with one of my hands secured, and I complained about it until he ordered me to shut up. I did, for a few seconds.
“Have you ever fired your gun?”
He raised a brow at me from behind the papers he was reading. “I plead the fifth.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I’m a cop. Of course I’ve fired a gun.”
“But I mean, have you fired that one? At someone?” He looked at me with a face of stone, and I felt a chill. “Oh my god, you have, haven’t you?”
He kept reading his papers, and I fell silent. I didn’t want to know. I wracked my brain for a way to change the mood.
“What about a car chase? Have you done many of those?”
“This is Licking Hole, not the Dukes of Hazzard.”
