Chalk Dirty to Me, page 1
Table of Contents
Chalk Dirty to Me
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale
Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Always Someone's Monster
Text copyright ©2021 Lani Lynn Vale®
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To those that have been taken and mistreated like Cannel was, I hope that one day you find your happy. I hope that you never suffer another day in your life. I hope that one day, there’s an end to human trafficking, and every single monster that participated in it has karma bite him in the ass. Or the law. Or both. Human trafficking is not okay.
Acknowledgments
Golden Czermak - Photographer
My Brother’s Editor & Ink It Out Editing- My editors
Alyssa Garcia - Cover Artist
My mom - Thank you for reading this book eight million two hundred and forty-three times.
Kendra, Laura, Penney, Brandi, Tara, Jess, Jen, Kathy, Mindy, Barbara & Amanda—I don’t know what I would do without y’all. Thank you, my lovely betas, for loving my books as much as I do.
Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale
The Freebirds
Boomtown
Highway Don’t Care
Another One Bites the Dust
Last Day of My Life
Texas Tornado
I Don’t Dance
The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC
Lights To My Siren
Halligan To My Axe
Kevlar To My Vest
Keys To My Cuffs
Life To My Flight
Charge To My Line
Counter To My Intelligence
Right To My Wrong
Code 11- KPD SWAT
Center Mass
Double Tap
Bang Switch
Execution Style
Charlie Foxtrot
Kill Shot
Coup De Grace
The Uncertain Saints
Whiskey Neat
Jack & Coke
Vodka On The Rocks
Bad Apple
Dirty Mother
Rusty Nail
The Kilgore Fire Series
Shock Advised
Flash Point
Oxygen Deprived
Controlled Burn
Put Out
I Like Big Dragons Series
I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie
Dragons Need Love, Too
Oh, My Dragon
The Dixie Warden Rejects
Beard Mode
Fear the Beard
Son of a Beard
I’m Only Here for the Beard
The Beard Made Me Do It
Beard Up
For the Love of Beard
Law & Beard
There’s No Crying in Baseball
Pitch Please
Quit Your Pitchin’
Listen, Pitch
The Hail Raisers
Hail No
Go to Hail
Burn in Hail
What the Hail
The Hail You Say
Hail Mary
The Simple Man Series
Kinda Don’t Care
Maybe Don’t Wanna
Get You Some
Ain’t Doin’ It
Too Bad So Sad
Bear Bottom Guardians MC
Mess Me Up
Talkin’ Trash
How About No
My Bad
One Chance, Fancy
It Happens
Keep It Classy
Snitches Get Stitches
F-Bomb
The Southern Gentleman Series
Hissy Fit
Lord Have Mercy
KPD Motorcycle Patrol
Hide Your Crazy
It Wasn’t Me
I’d Rather Not
Make Me
Sinners are Winners
If You Say So
SWAT 2.0
Just Kidding
Fries Before Guys
Maybe Swearing Will Help
Ask Me If I Care
May Contain Wine
Joke’s on You
Join the Club
Any Day Now
Say it Ain’t So
Officially Over It
Nobody Knows
Depends Who’s Asking
Valentine Boys
Herd That
Crazy Heifer
Chute Yeah
Get Bucked
Souls Chapel Revenants
Repeat Offender
Conjugal Visits
Jailbait
Doin’ A Dime
Kitty, Kitty
Gen Pop
Inmate of the Month
Madd CrossFit Series
No Rep
Jerk It
Chalk Dirty to Me
Blurb
Two years ago, Cannel Crow experienced the worst day of her life. She was taken from a supermarket, and forced to spend a year with a man that treated her worse than a neglected, chained up dog.
One year later, she’s saved by a shadow organization that believes the law is a joke, and the only person you can count on is you.
After another year, she finally realizes the law’s limitation firsthand when the man that bought her from human traffickers, and then forced her to comply to his every whim for a year, is given a plea bargain for names of others in the operation.
Knowing that her abuser will spend the rest of his life in the lap of luxury under an assumed name, Cannel spirals.
At least, she begins to.
Then Wilhelm Schultz, call me Will, walks into her narrow world, larger than life, and changes her reality between one breath and the next.
The abrasive, larger, gruff police detective sees the world in black and white. There is right, and there is wrong.
Until he falls for a woman that needs him to see shades of gray.
The second he sees the world like she needs him to, there’s not a single thing on the planet that’ll stop him from fighting for her.
Not even the oath he swore to protect and do no harm.
CHAPTER 1
The hole in a guitar is traditionally used to store soft cheeses and dried meats which are fed to the drummer when he does a good job.
-Text from Will to Cannel
WILL
“So you have the entire summer to yourself, kid free?”
My partner, Brianna, looked at me with such excitement that it was hard not to feel my heartbeat speed up at the sight.
I was a detective for Paris Police Department, and I had a really big fucking problem.
I had a crush on my fucking partner.
A big, flaming crush that was stupid, reckless, and honestly a bit embarrassing.
She was ten years older than me, and I swear to God, she treated me like a child half the time.
But I had a feeling that my feelings were returned.
“I do,” I confirmed. “My nieces are going with my parents for the summer as they cruise around the world in their new luxury RV. I expect to hear from them in about two weeks asking me to come get them.”
“Your parents are good with them, so I doubt that’ll happen,” she disagreed.
I wasn’t so sure.
My parents were good with their grandkids, sure. But the two kids, Petra and Ashlie, my nieces, were wild. They had always been wild.
My parents were partially responsible for that since they spent half the time raising them with me.
Their parents, my sister and her husband, had died in a wreck when they were very young. I’d spent the rest of my time raising them part time with my parents, and used to be my other sister, before she’d decided that it was too much work for her young heart to handle.
That, and my sister, Nivea, found out that it was easier to pick up men without two kids in tow. That was after her time in rehab, of course. Though, that wasn’t to say that she didn’t give me a damn hard time whenever she felt like it.
At least, until I took her to court.
“Where is your head at right now?” Brianna asked.
I grumbled under my breath as I jerked my head toward the hospital entrance. “You ready?”
She rolled her eyes at my evasion, not bothering to hide her irritation.
That was, likely, the reason she hesitated when it came to me and what she felt. We both had our reasons for hiding o
Not that I blamed her for not liking my caginess.
But I didn’t like the way it felt when she psychoanalyzed me.
I wasn’t broken.
She didn’t need to fix me.
“Who are we talking to again?” she asked.
I looked at my notepad that I’d taken notes on. “Her name is Cannel Cantrell Crow. She’s a nurse in the ICU. She said she would meet us down here by the ER entrance. She said she would be wearing blue scrubs. Tall…”
My breath literally left me at the sight of the woman standing by the ER entrance.
She was tall, all right. But not overly tall. About five foot eight, which was about eight inches shorter than me, and willowy.
But damn if she didn’t know how to fill out a pair of joggers.
At least, I thought they were joggers.
But upon getting closer, I realized that they were scrubs made to fit like joggers.
And the white tennis shoes she was wearing were beautiful against the slice of pale golden skin at her ankle.
As I studied the beautiful woman, I wondered what nationality she was.
I couldn’t place it.
“I’m Greek.”
I blinked, surprised to hear that husky, sexy voice answering the question that I knew for sure I didn’t ask aloud.
My brows lifted as if to say, “Did I ask that?” and she flushed.
“You were looking at me as if you were curious what my nationality was.” She hesitated. “Are you Detective Schultz and Detective Panacherie?”
I swallowed hard and nodded, feeling like I had an apple lodged in my throat.
“That’s us,” Brianna said, sounding miffed. “You are allowed to talk?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m always allowed to speak. I just have to worry about HIPAA violations unless you actually have a need for me to talk to you. I can’t just speak about a patient in passing because I feel like it. That breaks the law.”
I could tell that answer pissed Brianna off, and knowing she was about to start acting like a shrew with the poor woman who obviously did her job well, I broke into the silence. “Is there a place that we can speak privately?”
Brianna shifted beside me when she started to realize that Cannel wasn’t going to look or talk to her.
“I’m going to grab some coffee for us.” Brianna touched my shoulder, and I saw the way Cannel’s gaze narrowed on that touch. “Your regular?”
I nodded once, and Brianna disappeared into the hospital to the floor that held the coffee cart.
Cannel gestured toward a picnic table that was in the middle of the courtyard just beyond where we were standing. It was well lit and afforded me a great view of the entire area.
“No offense, but I don’t know you,” she said to me. “If you don’t mind, we’ll have to do it out here. Anything more private, and that will make me uncomfortable.”
I nodded in understanding. “That’s fine.”
She walked to the table, leaving at least four feet of space between us the entire way.
And when we reached the table, she sat down on the opposite side of me, making me smile at her wariness.
“What is it you’d like to ask me, Detective?” she asked in that husky drawl.
I couldn’t tell where her accent was from.
She may appear Greek, but that lovely drawl indicated that she was originally from a Southern state. Like South Carolina, or Mississippi.
“A couple of weeks ago you treated a patient by the name of Hester Greeson. Hester is suspected of killing her husband by poisoning him to death. When we spoke with the family, they told us that there was an altercation that led to the hospitalization of Hester. Can you tell me what went on? Do you know any information? Was she able to talk to you?” I asked.
The murder was fairly cut and dry. Hester poisoned her husband. Everyone knew that. We just needed to know the why of it, and Hester wasn’t talking.
Cannel looked fierce for a few seconds, her rage apparent, as if the suffering that Hester went through at her husband’s hands was somehow familiar to her.
“Hester came in with a broken jaw,” she said. “And a traumatic brain injury, or TBI. When she arrived on our floor, her jaw had been wired shut, and she was in a medically-induced coma due to the TBI.” She paused. “Her husband came every day like clockwork. Around five in the evening, stayed for a few minutes then left. It was as if he was scaring her with his presence into not talking. I just…” Cannel stopped for a really long time, making my eyes narrow.
“You just what?” I asked.
“I’m familiar with that look of panic,” she admitted. “I know it when I see it. When Hester woke up, she was so scared. So I gave her a notepad and a pen and asked her if there was anything she wanted me to talk to anyone about. And she asked me about my job…”
“And what kinds of drugs don’t show up in a system when you murder someone,” I guessed.
Cannel sighed. “That’s not exactly what happened. We were watching a show, or I was keeping her company because this particular day that I’m thinking about…she was really distraught. Her husband had come in, said something to her, and left. She’d been shaking, scared out of her mind, and so I sat with her after my shift was over and we watched a true crime show on her television. A particular one came on, and I made a mention of how insulin doesn’t show up on a tox screen.
“I wasn’t setting out to hand her that information to use to murder her husband,” she admitted. “We were just talking. I…” Cannel shook her head, and her eyes shimmered with frustration. “I was just trying to help her not be scared. It was an innocent comment that I never would have made had I thought she would use it like she did.”
I studied Cannel’s eyes.
Though her skin was nicely tanned to a golden hue, and her hair was as black as pitch in a French braid directly down the center of her head, the tail of which curled around her neck and fell between her breasts, it was her eyes that held my attention.
They were clear and light green, like the hint of a glass Coke bottle.
I’d never seen anything like them.
They were uniquely beautiful, and they really made me want to get a closer look.
“I believe you,” I said as I put my hand out for her to shake. “If you can think of anything else, will you be in touch?”
She hesitated in taking my hand, her gaze going to the large mitt in front of her and looking at it for long seconds, as if forcing herself to be courteous, before taking it into her own hand.
Her hand was tiny. Like, so small that I could crush it if I’d given it half an effort.
My large fingers curled around her smaller ones and shook once before immediately letting go.
The moment that my hand wasn’t in hers anymore, she immediately brought that hand to her body, and pressed it against her middle in a protective gesture that woke instincts that I’d never expressed before.
I stood up, and she scrambled up to her feet along with me.
“Hester did what she had to do,” Cannel whispered. “Sometimes… sometimes that’s all we can do.”
I tilted my head and stared at her for a few long seconds, studying the look of terror that was lodged permanently in her eyes.
What was done to you, baby girl?
Cannel swallowed hard and stared at me as if to prove to herself that she could.
The woman intrigued me.
“Let me walk you back to the front door?” I offered.
The area of the parking lot was well lit, but I didn’t want her walking by herself. Not when there were shadows in her eyes that told me that she was terrified.
That terror burrowed deep into my bones, and I wanted nothing more than to draw the woman into my arms and hold her until she wasn’t so scared.
But I knew that would likely scare her even more.
“Thanks.” She hesitated. “But I’m walking to my car. My shift is over.”
I reversed course. “Then let me walk you to your car.”
She looked like she was about to refuse, but then thought better of it. “Sure.”
Together, we walked in silence, her a couple of paces in front of me as she led the way to her vehicle.
I took everything in, starting with the way she had her keys clutched in her hand, a few of the keys poking out from between her fingers, to the way she walked with light steps, as if to hide the sound of her passing.
