“I know.”
“Hutton got anyone she can stay with until this blows over?” he asks.
“I’ll call her,” I grunt.
“I’ll talk to the department about adding some extra patrols in that area, but to be honest, with as big as the county is, we have a hard time just keeping up with our call outs.”
“I understand, I’ll take care of it, just try to find this fucker,” I snap.
“We will, Beau.”
I end the call, then inhale a deep calming breath and dial Hutton’s number. Thankfully she answers on the first ring. “What’s wrong?” she demands.
Chuckling, I can’t help but smile at her. “Nothing, why aren’t you at work today?” I ask.
“Neither me or Laurie had any appointments until this afternoon, so we decided to grab a late breakfast before going in. We don’t get to do that often, especially since we’re trying to get everyone in before our next trip out to see y’all,” she says.
“Don’t go to the salon, at least not yet.”
“Why?” she breathes.
Clearing my throat, I decide that I need to tell her instead of trying to beat around the bush, she’s going to see it or figure it out anyway.
“It was vandalized last night. Louis is there with the sheriff deputy right now. I’ll have him call you with what you need to do next, but darlin’, let them take care of it. I’ll have Louis clean it all up.”
“What kind of vandalization,” she demands.
“Fuck,” I hiss.
“Pictures?” she guesses.
I blink, unsure of how she figured that out on the first guess. It wouldn’t have been mine, which means this isn’t the first time she’s had trouble with photos.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
I can practically see her pressing her lips together and moving them around as she thinks about what she’s going to say next. She inhales deeply, then lets her breath out in a long slow exhale.
“When I came back from seeing you, there were two posters waiting by my front door. I got rid of them, but they were there. Someone has been following me, following us.”
“Do you have any clue who it could be? Chelle?” I ask.
She clears her throat, then I hear her take a drink of something. “I don’t think it was Chelle, they were pictures from California and I don’t think she would have gone that far.”
Hutton is right. She said the same thing that Robby did. Chelle is crazy, but I doubt she did that either.
Fuck.
If it isn’t Chelle, then I have no fucking clue who could be behind all of this. I could possibly suspect Daniel or Austin, just judging by their behavior alone. This isn’t their style, either, and I was with them when Hutton flew back to California, no way could they have gone out to Texas, dropped off some posters and come back like that.
The timing just isn’t possible. Plus, with their resources, they would just make the images go viral, or come up with some other kind of social media scheme, that’s just who they are.
Chapter Thirty-Two
HUTTON
Louis is standing in front of my shop. As soon as he hears Laurie’s car pull up, I watch as he turns around, his green eyes finding mine immediately. He shakes his head once, then lifts his hand, palm toward me as if to stop me.
“Fuck,” Laurie hisses.
Opening the car door, I ignore Laurie’s word and Louis’ hand. The closer I get, the more my stomach twists at the sight in front of me. Ford is ripping down posters, but I can see them. They’re the same ones that were sent to my house, except this time they’re plastered all over my windows for every single passerby to see.
“What on earth?” I whisper.
“Didn’t Beaumont call you?” Louis barks.
My body jerks. “Yeah, but I wasn’t going to stay away. This is my salon,” I snap. “Besides, I’ve already seen these, I just didn’t expect the rest of Burnet to see them, too.”
“What do you mean?” Louis asks.
“Someone left a poster of each on my front porch. They were there the day I got back from seeing Beaumont in California.”
“You didn’t tell the cops?” he asks.
Shaking my head, I turn toward Deputy Hernandez, a man that I’ve known for a few years. He’s a nice guy, a few years younger than me, but he’s usually the one that patrols the downtown area where my salon is.
“Would you have been able to do anything?” I ask him.
He grimaces and shakes his head once. “Take a report.”
“That’s what I thought,” I breathe.
“Fuck this shit,” Ford shouts. “You know this was Chelle, she’s batshit crazy. Go and bring her ass in,” he growls.
“Can’t do that, Ford, and you know it,” Hernandez drawls.
Laurie takes a step closer to Hernandez, and it’s then that I remember they had a short fling last year. “Enrique, can’t you do something off the record?” she asks, using her sultry sexy voice. I almost laugh, if I didn’t feel like crying, I would.
He snorts. “Not a chance, Laurie.”
I cringe at the coldness of his tone as he speaks to her. His gaze shifts from his side where she’s pressed against him, to me. “I’m really sorry, Hutton. For you, if I could, I would. All I can do is take the report, take pictures, and wait to see if anything else happens.”
“I appreciate it,” I lie.
I don’t appreciate it. I want to know who did this. I want him to take fingerprints like they do on TV, find hair samples around the ground and test them. But since I know that’s all fake, I’ll settle for a stupid report.
Deputy Hernandez writes down all of my information, then writes down the incident from the other day and promises to have it filed soon. Without a glance back at anyone, including Laurie, he leaves us.
“What happened with him?” Louis asks on a chuckle, looking directly at Laurie.
I wait, because I’m curious as well. She never told me that they parted on bad terms, but judging by his cool attitude toward her, they certainly did.
Laurie shrugs, then tips her head back to look up at Louis. “He didn’t like it when I called him a pussy in bed.” She grins.
“Laurie,” I sigh.
“What? He was. I mean there is a fine line between being too soft and being too rough,” she announces as her gaze drifts to Ford.
I know which side of the line he falls on, because she made it very clear that he was too controlling in bed. It’s moments like these that I’m kind of glad I haven’t had the time to run around town with her.
“Do you want me to stay for the afternoon after we clean this up while you work?” Louis asks, ignoring Laurie’s words.
I smile as I press my lips together. I think about telling him to leave, but honestly, I want him to stay. I don’t feel safe in the slightest. I don’t know what’s going to happen, if anything, but I would like someone like him at my side if it does go down, especially since Beaumont can’t be here.
“Yeah, I think I do,” I admit.
I watch for a few more moments as Ford and Louis clean up the windows. Once the posters are down, it looks exactly like it did yesterday. It looks completely untouched by the ugliness that this stranger left behind.