Free The Debt 12 (Club Alpha) by Kelly Favor Page B

fresh
clothes, Faith felt like a new person.
    Chase was in a good mood and so was she.
    “Is it weird that we fixed that argument
with sex?” Faith asked him, as she admired herself in the bedroom mirror.
    Chase was putting on his sneakers over by
the bed.   He glanced at her.   “No.”
    She smirked.   “I mean , did we
actually solve the problem though?”
    “There is no problem.”   He tied his sneakers and stood up.   “That’s what you needed to get, and
that’s what I showed you.   Now don’t
make me teach you the same lesson twice, girl.”
    She felt a flutter in her chest as she
looked at him in the mirror.
    His smoldering sexy looks were nothing
she could ever get used to.
    “Maybe I like being taught lessons,” she
told him.
    His eyes darkened.   “Don’t tempt me right now.”
    She giggled a little, and her cheeks
flushed.   Chase approached from
behind, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her neck.   It sent a shiver up her spine and she
laughed again.   “You feel good.”
    He murmured something unintelligible and
kissed her neck and breathed into her ear.
    “Something’s buzzing,” he said.   “Shit, that’s me.”   He grabbed his phone from his pocket and
stared at it momentarily.  
    “Who is it?” she asked.
    “I don’t know.   Detroit area code.”
    She felt a flinch of anxiety.   “You don’t think it’s Boogie, do you?”
    “No, it’s not his number.”   He seemed unsure, but then answered it
abruptly.   “Hello,” he said, his
voice distinctly cold.
    At the same moment, Faith’s cell phone
buzzed and she looked at a text from her sister.
    Mom
and Dad say we r coming to visit u and Chase.
    Faith felt a pit opening in her stomach
at the prospect of her mother and father meeting Chase and how horrible such an
event might be.
    How should she respond?   She’d been ignoring her father and
mother’s texts and voicemails long enough.   Things were going to get awkward indeed if she didn’t find a way to
resolve the situation.
    Besides, she thought.   Could she blame her parents for wanting
to meet her new boyfriend, regardless of how famous he might be?
    It was only when she looked up from the
phone that she saw Chase’s ashen expression.   His face had gone deathly pale.
    “What kind of evidence?” he said, his
voice sounding choked, like he was being strangled.  
    Evidence.
    Maybe it was someone calling about the
incident between Monique and Velcro.
    But that didn’t make sense because he’d
said it was a Detroit phone number.   And then she considered Chase’s history.   Maybe an old crime he’d committed was
coming back to haunt him in the present.
    His eyes stared blindly into nothing as
he listened intently to what the person on the other end of the phone was
saying.   “And you’re sure it’s him,”
Chase said.   “He’s…you have him in
custody?”
    There was another long pause that felt
like it went on forever.
    “Okay,” Chase said.   “Thank you for letting me know , officer.”   He hung up the phone and stood there, as if in a daze.
    “Chase,” she said, swallowing, her mouth suddenly dry .   “What happened?   Who was
that?”
    He turned and looked at her, finally
coming out of his trance.   He
blinked as if seeing her for the first time.   “That was the Detroit police.   They finally solved my mother’s murder.   After all these years, they used DNA
evidence to arrest her murderer.”
    “That’s good, isn’t it?” she asked.
    He nodded slowly.   “Yeah.   I guess it is.”
    “But you don’t look relieved.”   She had a growing premonition that this
was not such a relief after all.   “Who did they arrest, Chase?”
    “Boogie killed my mother,” Chase said,
his jaw flexing.   “The man I
considered a father.   The guy who I
have thousands of dollars to, who I hung out with, partied with, laughed and
joked with.   He fucking killed her
and then spent time with me like it was