“Yeah,” was the only response Colt could come up with for that understatement.

Chip looked over his shoulder, his gaze hitting Feb’s purse on the coffee table, before he again caught Colt’s eye and he said low, “Pleased for you, Colt.”

Then he took off.

Colt locked up after him and headed back to his room. It was likely the Feds found and raided Denny’s spying on Feb lair and he wanted to get to the Station to see what came of it.

He hit the room and saw Feb still asleep. He fell asleep before her so he didn’t know when she finally dozed off. Still, he went to the bed, sat on the edge and pulled her hair off her neck before he put his hand to her hip, gave her a squeeze and bent to kiss her exposed neck. Then he touched his tongue to the chains tangled there.

She moved, he lifted his head and saw her open her eyes.

“You can go back to sleep, baby, just wanted you to know I’m gonna get a shower and head into the Station. Your Dad’s here.”

“Dad asleep?”

Colt reckoned he was and nodded.

“Mm,” she murmured and lifted up to a hand.

“Feb, honey, go back to sleep.”

“In a minute,” she whispered, her hands coming to him, one arm wrapping around his back, the other hand sliding down his crotch over his jeans.

Her intention clear, it killed him when he had to say, “Baby, gotta get to the Station.”

Her face disappeared into his neck, her lips sliding up it and at his ear, her hand cupping his crotch, she said, “Lay back, Alec.”

“Baby.”

He felt her tongue touch his earlobe then he felt his c**k start to grow hard and then he heard her whisper in his ear, “I want you in my mouth, Colt.”

Colt figured he had a lot of work to do to erase the loneliness Feb had felt the last two decades of her life.

He might as well start now.

* * * * *

Colt was feeling unsurprisingly mellow and adjusted when he hit the bullpen at the Station.

However considering the state of things, unfortunately for him this feeling wouldn’t last long.

He saw Jo from dispatch heading toward the front stairs.

“Colt,” she called when she’d stopped and turned to him, “just put a message on your desk. They got a boy in interrogation room two. The Feds just started workin’ him. Sully’s watchin’ and wants you with him, minute you get in.”

“What boy?” Colt asked.

“Denny Lowe’s eyes on the prize boy,” Jo answered.

Colt nodded, uncertain if he felt elation or dread and headed straight to the soundproof room next to interrogation two. He entered and saw Sully, Chris and Rodman watching through the one-way mirror as the profiler Nowakowski and Warren worked a young, skinny, mop-haired, pimple-faced, terrified-looking kid.

They all glanced at Colt when he entered but only Sully kept his eyes on him.

“Got him, Colt. Denny’s officially f**ked,” Sully told him.

“Write down the email address you send the files to, Ryan, right here,” Nowakowski’s voice came through the speaker.

Colt closed the door and walked in, watching Nowakowski sliding a pad toward the boy, putting a pen on top.

Colt stopped beside Sully and saw Nowakowski was seated not across from the kid, beside him. The kid was at the middle of the table, Nowakowski at the side. Friendly, approachable, non-threatening. Warren was standing, shoulders against the wall by the door, head up, eyes looking down his nose at the boy, arms crossed on his chest. Unfriendly, official, a threat.

“I swear I didn’t know,” the kid said, his voice hitching, about to unman himself and trying like hell to stop it. “He said he was a cop. Had a badge and everything.”

“We understand,” Nowakowski told him though Colt knew he didn’t. He thought the kid was a dumb f**k which he probably was. Though for the life of him, Colt couldn’t read that in anything Nowakowski was sending the kid. The guy was good.

“He said I was deputized, an official part of the operation,” the kid said, his eyes on Nowakowski, disbelief at being duped on his face. “Said we needed to keep an eye on her all the time so we could keep her safe. She was under threat.”

Yep, a dumb f**k, Colt thought as he watched Nowakowski nod with understanding and the kid picked up the pen and bent over the pad.

“Um, bad news, man,” Sully mumbled to him, leaning close, “Lowe had eyes in Feb’s apartment. We didn’t find ‘em. Feds did about an hour ago after we saw what all the monitors were picking up. Those were put in professional by Ryan here. Whiz kid, works at an electronic shop, does this shit as a hobby but also part side-business. Nanny cams. Shit like that. He’s good, idiot savant. Chris did the sweep and he didn’t pick them up. Feds said they’d have trouble findin’ ‘em if they didn’t have the angles and a shitload more equipment and experience than a small town PD.”

Rodman’s eyes came to him and Colt kept his reaction to the news that Lowe and his lackey watched Feb in her apartment under control. It cost him but he didn’t even bite his lip.

“He got cameras in my house I didn’t find?” Colt asked.

“Nope. Just on the street.”

“Where else?”

“Meems’s. Boys are there now, yankin’ ‘em out.”

Mimi was going to flip. Al was going to flip a fair bit harder.

“Someone sent to contain Al?”

“Did that myself before comin’ in,” Sully hesitated, his meaning clear before he said, “he’s okay.”

Which meant he wasn’t at first until Sully talked him into being that way. Sully could work for the United Nations he was that good of a diplomat which was the reason why Colt didn’t do bodily harm to Craig Lansdon the day before.

“How’s he gettin’ around the security systems?” Colt asked.

Sully jerked his head toward the mirror. “Ryan here, dab hand at a lotta things, the little f**k. Unfortunately, he taught Lowe along the way.”

“Why the f**k did he do that?” Colt asked.

“Lowe told him he was you. Had a badge and looked official. Lowe told him he’d be helpin’ out the law if Ryan gave him some tutorin’.”

“He half-idiot or something?”

“My experience, the smarter they are at one thing, the dumber they are with everything else. Ryan’s the example that proves the rule.”

“Will I get into trouble for this?” Ryan asked, calling their attention back to him and shoving the pad away, the email written on it, his eyes on the pad like it would come alive, jump up and take a bite out of him.