My eyebrows shot up.

Round two?

We’d never gone a second round.

“Seriously?”

“Not on-duty tomorrow,” he reminded me.

“Well I am,” I reminded him. “I have to work.”

His grin stayed fixed and he reminded me right back, “Yeah, but your day starts at nine thirty. You can sleep in.”

This was true.

I held his eyes.

Then I whispered, “Round two?”

His eyes got intense and he whispered back, “Oh yeah.”

Oh.

Yeah.

“Okay,” I breathed, he bent his head to touch his mouth to mine then rolled off.

I skedaddled off the bed and to the bathroom to prepare for round two.

And yeah.

Seriously.

Sex was awesome.

* * * * *

Twelve fifteen that night

I laid in bed snuggled into Chace’s side, his arm under and around me, hand under my nightie drifting a short path up my spine and down to the top of my undies, my arm around his gut, cheek to his shoulder, top leg tangled with both of his.

We’d had almost a week of us being all the us we could be.

He worked, I worked. He ran or swam or did weight lifting, I went to the gym. We had dinner together. We walked to Bubba’s from my place after dinner once to have drinks. He watched sports, I read.

He did not, however, watch any of my shows and stood firm on this even when I semi-begged him to give Supernatural a go telling him Dean Winchester was most assuredly his type of guy. Although I gave up, I decided next week I’d try again. Dean and Sam could lapse into heartfelt, man conversations and there were demons and ghosts and a variety of apocalyptic storylines. But still, I figured Chace would get into it mostly because they drove a kickass Impala. And all men (or most men and the men who were all man were most of them) liked cars.

Anyway, I had last week’s episode taped. Since I was spending all my time with Chace, if he didn’t watch it with me, when was I going to get my dose of Dean and Sam?

The sex was regular (after the ban, morning and night!) and got better and better (deliriously so). As Chace guided it, I became more confident and we got to know each other better, in bed and out.

It had been another wonderful week.

Brilliant. Fabulous. Amazing.

The only pall was Malachi.

He hadn’t shown all week and daily I asked for reports from Chace about what Deck was uncovering.

Deck, so far, had found nothing.

Chace had also come up with zip. This included him expanding his search by contacting every school in the county and every surrounding county to see if a boy called Malachi was enrolled.

Nothing.

“Kid’s a ghost,” Chace had muttered and his tone eloquently underlined he didn’t feel this was good.

I didn’t either. How could he not be on the register of any school in five counties?

“I’m worried about Malachi,” I muttered into the dark silence and Chace’s hand stopped drifting and his arm curled tight around me.

“I know, baby,” he whispered.

“This amount of time, he’s running out of food.”

“Deck’ll find him.”

I lifted up and looked down at him in the dark. “Chace –”

His other arm reached across his body and I felt his hand cup my cheek.

“Faye, baby, Deck’ll find him. Nothin’ we can do. Not right now. You need to sleep. You got work tomorrow. Tomorrow night, we got your family. And Deck’s stymied. He doesn’t like to be stymied. Not ever but definitely not by a nine year old kid. This was a favor he was doin’ for me. Now it’s his mission. He won’t give up, Faye, and he’ll find him.”

I sucked in breath.

He was right. There was nothing we could do after midnight on a Friday night. I had work the next day and we had to face my family tomorrow night.

This was supposed to be a dinner for Mom, Dad, Chace and me. Then Liza found out about it (Dad and his big mouth). Now she and Boyd and her kids were coming and it was a pre-birthday bash for her son, Jarot.

Don’t ask me about the name Jarot. I told her he’d be teased and called “carrot” and he was. She loved the name and she was Liza, when she loved something she was perfectly willing to pitch numerous fits to get it. So Boyd gave in mostly to shut her up. Luckily, he gave in after demanding the right to name their second kid. His name was Robert. Suffice it to say, Robbie didn’t get teased on the playground.

Then again, Robbie was a bruiser.

Jarot played with Legos all the fraking time and Liza, Boyd and Dad were convinced, with the stuff he built, that he was going to be an architect.

He was almost nine.

Robbie had been sent home from school three times for punching kids in the nose.

He was six.

No one said what they thought Robbie was going to be mostly because the optimistic choice was the next Great White Hope in the boxing ring. But the practical one was he was going to be a drug dealer’s enforcer.

“Oh, all right,” I gave in on a mutter then settled back in.

Chace’s hand at my cheek sifted back through my hair before it fell away and his hand at my spine went back to drifting.

I relaxed.

“We’ll find him, Faye.”

It was quiet but it was a promise.

I pressed closer.

He knew I was worried and he didn’t like it.

But I knew he was worried too. Although I didn’t want him to be, I liked that he was for a kid he didn’t know.

“Okay, honey.”

“Sleep,” he urged.

“Okay.”

“’Night baby.”

“’Night, Chace.”

His hand quit drifting and his arm gave me another squeeze then his hand went back to drifting.

As it moved, my mind quit drifting and my eyes closed.

Then I did as Chace urged. Tucked close to him, I slept.

Chapter Twelve

Family

Faye’s fidgeting beside him in his truck caught his attention so Chace reached out a hand and tagged hers. He linked their fingers and pulled their hands to his thigh.

They were on their way to her parents’ house and she was anxious. This was, she told him when he gently pressed it out of her, not because she was worried about what they would think of him. But what he would think of them.

“They’re a little um… nutty,” she’d said.

“There’s good nutty and bad nutty. My guess is they’re good nutty,” he’d replied.

She gave him a cute but dubious look and went on.

“And loud.”

Chace didn’t reply.

“And opinionated,” she continued.

Chace just grinned at her.

“And in your business,” she carried on.

Chace’s arms, already around her, tightened and his grin got bigger.

“I’m kind of the black sheep. I mean, they all read but none of them are shy, um… at all,” she kept going.

“You love them?” Chace had asked. When he got her nod he finished quietly on a squeeze of his arms, “Then I will too.”

This served to calm her and earn him a smile.

But about a minute ago, his assurance wore off.

Once they got there, she’d settle in and be okay.

As for Chace, he wasn’t worried. Getting the invitation to dinner from Silas Goodknight after he came for his visit and the reason he came for that visit, Chace figured he did something of which Silas approved.

As for the other Goodknights, Faye liked him and he reckoned that was all he needed. If they were good people and they loved Faye, both of which he knew was true, they’d either look deep to see what Faye saw in him or they’d bury their feelings so it wouldn’t distress her. Of what he already knew about them around town and from Faye’s talk, he already knew he liked them.

Therefore, he wasn’t driving to dinner concerned about how the dinner would go.

No, he had a variety of other things weighing on his mind.

The first was Malachi.

As far as they could find, the kid didn’t exist.

This came from Chace checking Colorado Vital Records and finding nothing on a Malachi of their Malachi’s approximate age being born in the State of Colorado. It also came from Chace contacting local and not so local schools. Chace, Frank and Deck pulled favors with folks they knew and looked into the school systems in and around Aspen, Grand Junction, Glenwood Springs, Montrose and even as far away as Denver. Although several Malachis were enrolled, none of them matched their Malachi’s age.

Chace, Deck, Frank and other officers asked around town to see if anyone not only had seen Malachi recently but also if they’d seen him before. Except for a few folks reporting they thought they might have, it was nothing concrete and, outside of maybe noticing him, they had no more.

It wasn’t surprising that he was good at being invisible.

It was surprising that it appeared he didn’t exist at all.

Chace could see him roaming but not very far. In that day and age, folks didn’t pick up kids and give them a ride without having concerns, asking questions and usually reporting it or straight up taking the kid to the authorities. So although Chace could see him making his way to Carnal from another town, even another county, he couldn’t imagine he got there from Denver much less another state.

He’d set an intern on it and there was no one of his name or matching his description on the missing person’s database.

This and his disappearance did not bode well. Even if Faye and Chace freaked the kid out with Faye standing by the return bin on Monday or he’d made them sitting in the truck, the kid had to eat and they’d backed off. Faye kept his stash outside by the return bin even when they weren’t watching. She’d also posted a laminated note on the side of the library asking anyone who discovered the bags to leave them for Malachi.

They’d been left for Malachi. She left the library half an hour before and reported to him they were there. For the last week, every time they came back in the morning, they were still there.

This left plenty of time for him to sneak to the library when he knew they weren’t watching.

It could be he’d noticed or heard somehow that Deck was on his trail. But since Deck hadn’t even picked up a scent and the kid made no connections with anyone but Faye, Chace couldn’t fathom how.

The kid was nine or ten and as far as Chace knew didn’t have superpowers or the capacity for clairvoyance. He was in survival mode and would take chances in order at the very least to eat.

The longer he remained gone, the more Chace’s, and Faye’s, concern escalated.

But this was not the only thing weighing on Chace’s mind.

The town had not surprisingly not rejoiced at Darren Newcomb’s murder.

It wasn’t that he was well-liked. He was roundly hated. But it was the same as Misty. No one felt he deserved that and further, no one felt his kids did.

They were braced for whatever might come next after what had already happened. It didn’t take someone with the powers of deduction akin to Sherlock Holmes’s to know that Newcomb’s murder might be the tip of the iceberg.