The Colton Sheriff

by Addison Fox

  “No.” Despite the bluster he’d rode in on, Wright had calmed during the discussion, his respect for Roberts clear. His equal respect for the frustration facing all of them coming clearer, as well. “We are here to help, Sheriff. You have my word on that.”

  “Thank you.”

  The men lingered a bit longer and Daria even managed to push a few slices of pizza on them before they left. It was only after they’d gone that the weight of the day made itself known. His shoulders knotted in tension, and he debated his next step.

  Go down to the gym and work some of it off or head straight over to Aisha’s? The fact that the latter held nearly his entire focus was more than enough reason to head to the gym but he was sick of doing what he was supposed to.

  Of following some internal protocol that didn’t rile up a bigoted opponent campaigning for his job and didn’t intrude on the Feds and most certainly didn’t ask his best friend why she was happily dating someone and not telling him.

  All of it weighted heavily on him. His deep-seated desire to do what was right instead of acting in the heat of the moment. He was in law enforcement and he knew what happened when people acted in haste. Only...

  Weren’t there times to act in the heat of the moment?

  He marched back to his office and snagged his workbag off the chair. He’d come back if he had to, but he needed to get to Aisha. Needed to finish out their discussion from earlier, even if it meant they were going to butt heads a bit more.

  Maybe they’d even make up.

  The hope of that carried him from the building and back into town. He would have taken his car but it was quick enough to walk to her place. And it would give him a few extra minutes of early evening fresh air as he worked out his approach.

  As he considered all he wanted to say.

  The sun settled low over the mountains that rimmed Roaring Springs, a bright light that had his eyes squinting even as his soul soaked up the rays and the glorious reds and golds in the sky. It gave him hope and the innate belief that he and Aisha would get through this. They’d find their way and they’d come out the other side, even better than where they’d started.

  An explosive night together indicated there had to be a good outcome for them. And he had to believe a lifetime of friendship further ensured it.

  It was that thought—no, belief—that put the extra spring in his step, speeding up his pace.

  And it was likely the thing that saved him as a car came whipping out of nowhere, clipping him from behind and driving his body into the air with the force of a tornado.

  Chapter 16

  Aisha took the call from Daria. Her hands trembled as she heard the words. The room swam before her eyes. And the world disintegrated into a clanging whirl as she registered the roaring sirens that screamed outside her window, clearly in answer to the call made by the sheriff’s office.

  Someone had run Trey over.

  Or tried to.

  Or did.

  It was all jumbled as she fought for breath and struggled to take in Daria’s instructions.

  “Do you need me to call his parents?”

  “I’m calling them next.” Daria’s voice was strained but steady, projecting a calm Aisha was nowhere near feeling. “Do you need me to send someone for you?”

  “No. I’m okay.”

  She wasn’t, but she didn’t need to pull a single member of Trey’s team away from where they needed to put their full focus. Going after the bastard who dared to hurt him.

  “I’ll be there in ten.”

  Aisha disconnected and sat down hard on the couch, the phone falling from her hand.

  Trey had been run down. The details were fuzzy as to the why or how, but that fact was 100 percent clear. He’d left the station and had apparently been walking, his car still parked in the station lot. His prone body found out on the main drag through Roaring Springs.

  Which meant he’d been coming for her. He left his car only when he walked to her place. His own apartment was too far away and his parents’ ranch on the edge of town meant their home wasn’t his destination, either.

  Why had she left?

  Or why couldn’t he take their fight at face value and leave her alone to cool off for the night?

  Instead, his choice to walk had put him in prime view of a killer.

  She considered calling Audrey and Calvin to see if she should drive out and pick them up, but the need to get to Trey overrode the thought. Daria would make the same offer to them—she could send out a cruiser to pick them up—but if Aisha knew Trey’s parents, they’d arrive at the hospital within minutes of her.

  And then they’d wait.

  She’d tried to suss out how badly he was hurt, but Daria had little information beyond the fact that Trey was unconscious when the ambulance took off for the emergency room at Roaring Springs Memorial.

  Ever since the Avalanche Killer’s crimes had been uncovered on the side of the mountain, Aisha had battled a subtle sense of dread. The idea crimes of such magnitude had taken place, roiling beneath the surface of their small town, had shaken her. She’d done everything she could to keep the fear at bay. From working out to focusing on her job to helping Trey, each action had been designed to give herself some measure of control over the fear.

  Yet where had any of it gotten her? Gotten any of them?

  Trey lay in an ambulance, likely fighting for his life.

  * * *

  The dream was fuzzy, too hazy to grasp any images as it hovered just out of reach. Aisha standing in his office, clad in a summer tank the color of a tangerine and khaki shorts that showed off her long, sexy legs. Her face was angry and her mouth set in hard lines, but he couldn’t figure out why.

  Was she mad? Sad?

  It nagged at him, even as something else tugged at him. He kept looking out the window of his office, trying to see what lay beyond. Was he looking for something? And why did he have to call the governor?

  Someone took his hand. Was it Aisha? Or was that his mom’s voice? All of it mixed up in his mind in a hazy whirl. It was only when that voice spoke again that a weird humming started in his mind.

  “Wake up, baby. We’re here.” Definitely his mom.

  “Trey? Please come back to us.” Okay. That was Aisha.

  Come back?

  Where was he?

  Before he could ask, a low, steady beep sank in, a counterpoint to their gentle voices. That beep was subtle but insistent, keeping him from truly sinking back into the hazy fog that wanted to wrap his mind in a warm blanket.

  He’d nearly given in to the fog and ignored the beeping anyway when he caught the sound of tears. It was light—just a sniffle and a small gasp for air—but he knew that sound. He hadn’t been raised with a sister not to know what tears were.

  Was his mom crying? Or Aisha?

  His eyelids were stuck closed, and that added a subtle sense of panic. Why was someone crying and he couldn’t see them? Focusing on the task, he ignored the beeping that seemed to grow louder and pushed harder, desperate to surface.

  To wake up.

  And then his eyes popped open and Trey realized three things. His mom was crying. So were Aisha and Bree. And there was a weird beeping.

  Because he was in a hospital.

  “Hi.” That lone word croaked from his throat. Everyone began talking at once so his mind just kept on whirling, trying to take it all in.

  He fought the subtle disorientation as his mind shifted directions, anxious to understand what had put him in the hospital. He mentally cycled through the past few days—it had been only a few days?—cataloging memories as he went.

  A picnic at his parents’ house on a pretty summer evening. A dinner with his extended family over at The Chateau. Making love with Aisha.

  Aisha.

  “What happened?” he finally asked.
>
  “Shh,” his mother whispered. “You were hurt, baby.”

  “How?”

  “Someone tried to run you down.” His father spoke up, his voice husky. His eyes were shiny, just like Audrey’s.

  That welcoming haze that insistently tugged at his mind, willing him to drop back into darkness—back into the dreams—beckoned, but the intense looks on everyone’s face kept him focused.

  They were all there. His parents. Bree as well as Rylan, who was hovering behind her, his hand on her shoulder. And Aisha. She had taken up a spot at the foot of the bed, her hand resting on his foot as she kept watch. She’d tell him what was going on.

  “What happened to me? Aisha?”

  “Someone came after you in their car. When you walked out of the parking lot at work.”

  He remembered walking. He was going to see Aisha, their fight still lingering in his mind like an open wound. He needed to make up with her. Needed to make it right, even if he wasn’t sure at that moment what had been wrong.

  All he did know—and could remember clearly even now—was that he had to fix it somehow.

  “You were ambushed, son.” His father spoke up. “Best your deputies can tell, someone lay in wait for you to come out of the office. You were hit from behind and left in the middle of the street as the bastard drove off.”

  His father’s careful words, simple and direct, were enough to ground him. He’d been hit from behind, and ambush was the right word.

  “When?” Trey asked.

  “Around six o’clock.” His father continued to provide answers. “It’s about ten thirty now.”

  Trey didn’t remember much of the hit, the car coming out of nowhere, just as Calvin had described, but vague memories of what had come since drifted through his mind. The heavy whirl of sirens that screamed, seemingly outside him even as they clanged in his head. That must have been the ambulance ride, he realized now. He’d been so cold, only made worse by the fact that they’d ripped open his shirt to check his vitals.

  He also remembered questions. Requests to move his body or wiggle his fingers. A doctor asking him to rotate his feet and then running something over his heel that had made Trey push against whatever it was tickling his skin.

  And then he’d slept.

  It was the constant drowsiness, that thick, heavy exhaustion that kept tugging at him, even now. So he pushed on, pressing against the promise of sleep to understand what had happened.

  He struggled to sit up, grunting through the pain as the movements sent a new wave of agony coursing through him. The pain had been dull and vague when he’d first opened his eyes, but now that he’d moved it seemed to take over. Everything hurt, including the fiery pain that ran up and down his back.

  A nurse bustled in and Trey vaguely recognized the guy. He and his deputies knew most of the staff at the hospital and Trey was still struggling for a name when he caught sight of Dan’s name tag.

  “How you feeling, Sheriff?”

  “Like I was run over.”

  “That’s good.” Dan went to work, his gaze scanning a monitor as he tapped on the keyboard beneath. “It hurts but the pain means you can feel everything.”

  Dan’s attention shifted from the monitor, his bright green eyes direct. “That means you have movement.”

  Trey didn’t miss the underlying message and knew his family hadn’t, either. Since Dan’s arrival, they’d made varying mentions of leaving and it was only as his mother squeezed his hand, telling him they’d wait outside, that he keyed back in and focused on Aisha.

  “Stay. Please.”

  She nodded but moved to the side of the room as Dan bustled around, taking various readings, tapping more notes into the keyboard and even adding something to an erasable board at the foot of the bed. It was only when Dan left with a wink and a promise to snag Trey some extra dessert that Aisha moved closer.

  Before he could say a word, she’d leaned forward, her lips fervent against his.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.”

  Even though it hurt to move, the pain faded to manageable as he settled his hands on her shoulders, his thumb tracing lightly over the side of her neck. “I’m sorry, too.”

  “It was me. I was overwhelmed from last night. From us. And I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

  “Yes, Aish. You should have. You can say anything to me. Always.”

  The tears he’d sensed earlier as he’d heard sniffles came back in full force, filling up her eyes and spilling over her cheeks. “I was so worried. And then I kept thinking those were the last words we were going to say to each other. I can’t lose you.” She laid her hands over his, her palms cold from the cool air of the hospital and something else... Fear?

  He tried to reassure her, but as he struggled to find the words he realized he had none.

  Someone had deliberately come after him. As a member of the law enforcement community, he recognized he put his life on the line for his job. He’d understood that from the start and knew it was a requirement for the job.

  But this?

  A deliberate act, perpetrated against him?

  This was a warning. There was someone who lurked, roaming the streets of Roaring Springs, who wanted him dead.

  They’d made that abundantly clear.

  * * *

  He heard the commotion coursing through town, like a steady heartbeat. That morning while picking up doughnuts for the team. Later that day after he got to work. Even at the gas station between the pumps as he and a few others filled their tanks.

  Everyone was talking about Trey Colton.

  The sheriff’s near miss in the center of town as someone tried to run him over was all anyone in Roaring Springs could talk about. That topic was followed quickly by another. Those poor, poor Coltons and all they’d endured this year. The pain and suffering that poor family dealt with, evidenced by this latest mishap and the still-missing Skye Colton.

  The poor Coltons, his ass.

  As far as he was concerned, that family had made this bed themselves. But he didn’t tell anyone else that.

  Oh, no.

  Instead, he’d listened to it all, seemingly rapt with attention as he selected a few glazed, a few chocolate filled and a cruller he knew a coworker loved. He’d nodded sagely as he topped off his tank, offering up the subtle note of affirmation that he hoped the traffic cameras downtown could see who was at fault. And he’d listened to all of the gossip, disguised as well-meaning words, as he ate his own Boston cream.

  There would be no traffic cameras capturing anything worth noting. He’d seen to that as well as the blurring of the license plate with fresh mud on the car he’d “borrowed” from a few towns over to do the deed. He’d subsequently returned it where he’d found it, parked just outside town with a large dent in the front.

  It was a damn shame Trey Colton had sped up there at the end.

  He’d deliberately selected a hybrid, their quiet motors ensuring he’d get closer before his victim knew the direction of his intention. But even with that, Colton had seemed oblivious to the impending danger.

  Like they all were.

  Wasn’t that the real joy in all of it?

  Everyone talked about the poor Coltons, which he knew was a steaming load of crap. He knew better than anyone that they’d earned every bit of trouble they were now facing, after a lifetime of lording their name and their money over everyone.

  But even as he’d stared down this path, determined to have his vengeance, he had to admit that he’d expected them to be more aware. Clearer, somehow, on the danger they all faced and the fact that their time was up.

  So freaking up.

  Ah, well. He took another bite of doughnut—the one he’d allow himself this week—and focused on the day in front of him.

  It was time to shift attention back where it belonged. H
e had Trey Colton in the hospital, a sitting duck for whomever else meant him harm.

  He had a sense of who’d committed the murder of the woman in the woods. It had come to him late last night and he just needed to tug a few lines there to make sure. Shame the cops were too dumb to figure it out, but that wasn’t his problem.

  He dealt in information and careful calculation and vengeance.

  He understood what the cops didn’t: those were the qualities that made the world go round.

  * * *

  Aisha had rarely, if ever, regretted her decision not to go to medical school. She’d chosen clinical work because she wanted to interact with patients day in and day out and hadn’t wanted to delay that work by the demands and time required to earn her MD.

  It was only now, as she watched the steady stream of medical professionals who came in and out of Trey’s room, that she’d like to better understand what they were looking at.

  He’d been told several times now how lucky he was that he’d rather miraculously avoided a concussion. But he hadn’t avoided the equivalent of two tons of steel bearing down and clipping him from behind and putting his entire body in a world of hurt.

  What had to be at least a hundred Coltons had come through his room or called or texted over the past twenty-four hours. The network was strong and family members from as far-flung places like South Dakota and Texas had called to check in and see how he was doing. He’d handled all of it with steady equanimity, even as she saw the strains around the edges.

  Which meant now, Monday night, he was still cooped up in his hospital bed and loaded for bear.

  Even Bree and Rylan’s arrival hadn’t done much to calm Trey’s ire. Although he did put on a good show. It wasn’t fooling Aisha and it certainly wasn’t fooling his sister, but they’d both used the time to verbally tap dance over Trey’s frustration.

  “I’d love for you both to come out to the animal sanctuary this weekend. Rylan’s adding a few emus soon and we’re fixing up an area for them.” Bree’s gaze darted to the machines that surrounded Trey’s bed. She hesitated slightly before seeming to come to some decision. “We’d love the help in getting set up.”