Colton 911--Family Defender

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  And Brody... Riley pulled out his phone. Checked both email and text. Nothing from Brody. But there were a couple of pertinent pieces of information from Ashanti and Bailey regarding the cold case.

  He’d avoided the group chat with siblings. Hadn’t opened it to read any of the seven responses he’d received. He’d said he’d get to them when he had answers and he would.

  But it was a new day. And they used that same thread sometimes to check in with any updates on current CI cases. Most particularly if they were engaged in day job activities and couldn’t make phone calls to everyone.

  He pushed to open the thread.

  The first four replies were emojis only. A thumbs-up. Two that had hearts. And one with a worried-looking face. Or maybe it was consternation. Frustration. Who could tell with those damned things?

  The fifth was a message from Griffin.

  We’ve got you.

  That was unexpected.

  Pushing back against a surge of emotion he didn’t know how to handle, and most particularly not in a semi-public place, he scrolled down to the most recent two messages, coming in back to back that morning.

  Sadie hadn’t found anything on the scientist yet.

  And Griffin was going to be in court all morning, so out of pocket.

  While he’d been debating whether to respond to any of the texts, or continue to hold his silence until he had something pertinent to say, the door had opened and his name had been called.

  He had no reason to be uptight walking down that hall. The medical procedure was information gathering only. They knew there was a baby. He assumed it was healthy. And yet, he was sweating as he walked into the dimly lit exam room, and took his place up by Charlize’s left shoulder as instructed.

  If nothing else, she was safe there. The thought calmed him.

  And then he glanced toward her exposed, still flat, stomach. Remembering...way, way too much. The scent of that skin. The taste of it. How it had cradled his penis as he’d slid down her...and again, later, as she’d slid up him...

  “This is going to be cold,” the technician, a middle-aged woman, said.

  And Riley finally looked at Charlize’s face, saw her looking, not at the tech, or the blank gray screen off to their left, but at him.

  Their gazes locked. With a peculiar recognition he couldn’t explain or deny, he suddenly realized he knew her. Really knew her. And accepted that she knew him.

  Not just physically, though there was definitely that, too. Intimately. Emotionally...

  And then, the technician directed their attention to the screen.

  “Twins run in his family,” Charlize blurted, her voice filled with emotion he couldn’t decipher. The words brought a fresh wave of cold sweats and he stared at the moving gray shadows on that screen, trying to pick out anything that looked human among them.

  “There’s the head.” With one hand controlling the camera she’d been gliding along Charlize’s bared midsection, the technician touched the screen with the other.

  He saw it. A head. Heart pounding, he stared. Clearly saw the head. And from there he could make out the neck. And legs and...

  “How big is it?” he asked, completely stupefied at the moment. If his mother had ever had ultrasounds, he didn’t remember hearing about it. Or seeing the film.

  The tech had been zeroing in on different things. Seeming to take separate images. “Three and a half inches,” she said.

  How could a human possibly measure less than four inches?

  “Your doctor will give you the full report as soon as we’re done here and she’s had a chance to look at the imaging,” the technician continued. “And I’m making copies for both of you to take, as well.”

  He opened his mouth to say that he wouldn’t need any. But didn’t get the words out. His sisters might want to see them.

  Or...he didn’t know. Just kept staring. Watching the movement. Trying to figure out how that tiny little being could move. Wondering who would protect it if it got picked on when it started school...

  An inane thought...

  “There’s definitely only one,” Charlize said. She sounded disappointed. And he remembered her conversation from earlier. Wanting more than one baby.

  “Yep,” the technician said.

  He wanted to tell her she had a lot of time to have her other children. Didn’t like how that felt when he thought about it. Looked at the screen again.

  Just...wow. He couldn’t get over how small that being was, and imagined how much work it had ahead of it in the coming months.

  “Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?” he asked. Not his gig, really. He was only a bystander at the moment. With some sort of commitment. And sisters and a brother who...

  What?

  How could they all be a family? He and Charlize weren’t even a couple...

  “Your doctor will discuss all that with you,” the woman said. “But just from personal experience, I don’t see anything that tells either way. It’s usually eighteen to twenty-two weeks before an ultrasound will show. You’re at what? Thirteen weeks?”

  Riley drew his eyes from the screen for a quick glance to see Charlize nod. And then resumed his suddenly panic-filled viewing.

  He didn’t want to take on fatherhood. Not now. Not with...

  “Okay, let’s get the heartbeat up here...”

  Before he’d had time to compute, to follow along, the room filled with sound. Rapid tattoos. Kind of a heartbeat rhythm, but much more rapid than he’d expected.

  A whole new panic suffused him, making him almost nauseated. The baby’s heart wasn’t right. Oh, God, no. That tiny little thing...

  Why wasn’t the technician running for help? Sounding alarm bells. Poised to leave the room himself, to yell for someone to come running, he heard Charlize’s voice as though through a muffle. Or far away.

  “It’s so fast...”

  “Yeah, that’s normal,” the technician said and Riley felt so weak he could hardly keep himself upright.

  He did. Riley Colton didn’t give in to weakness. Of any kind.

  But he had to stand still for a second or two. Breathe.

  And let the relief wash over him.

  Chapter 12

  Charlize needed to go home. She had some things to pick up, her blow-dryer for one. And some different clothes. She’d packed in such a hurry the day before she’d just grabbed and thrown in.

  Those things were the excuse she gave Riley for needing to stop by her house after they left the clinic. But the deeper truth was that she needed to breathe in her own space for a few minutes. To look at the room upstairs that was going to become a nursery. To walk where she was going to be living, as the realization of what was happening to her sank in.

  She was going to be a mother.

  Already was a mother.

  That picture on the screen, the sound of the heartbeat filling the room, had solidified in her mind what her body had already known.

  She had become a different person, forever. Fantasyland as she’d always lived it, believed in it, waited for it, was gone forever. She wasn’t married to the love of her life, having their child.

  She was a single mother, having her own child.

  And she wanted it more than she’d ever imagined. She needed a few minutes in her own space to absorb it all. The feelings. The changes.

  To accept them. Take them on. To begin the new journey.

  She let Riley practically wrap himself around her as he walked her to the car, with not only his back half covering hers, a leg insinuated between hers, as though they were dancing, her back to his front. He had an arm around her shoulder, too, as though ready to push away anyone who might could come at her that way.

  “Duck your head into me,” he said, his voice not quite urgent, but deadly serious, and she did as he’d instru
cted, heart pounding. She was not going to lose her new life just as it was beginning.

  She was not.

  When she was safely in the vehicle, and saw him come around and get in, rather than go chasing after someone, she asked, “Did you see something?”

  “No,” he said. “But I didn’t see a shooter yesterday morning, either.”

  Of course he hadn’t. He’d been in the house, behind her.

  And...crazy hard to believe that the shooting had just been the day before. She’d moved out of her house. Slept in a new bed. Seen her entire life change before her eyes that morning. The shooting...seemed part of a distant past.

  Funny, though, that her night in the hotel room with Riley didn’t seem that way. If anything, it seemed more recent than all the weeks it had been.

  He didn’t drive straight to her house, saying he wanted to check out the neighborhoods first. And make certain they weren’t being followed.

  She wanted to know what he thought about the morning. They’d just witnessed the miracle of life. A life they’d created together. And he hadn’t said a word.

  “I can’t believe how formed the baby was,” she said when she couldn’t sit silently with their miracle unspoken between them. “I was expecting to see something more like a peanut, not be able to make out an actual facial structure, and torso and legs...”

  “I feel that I should warn you,” Riley started, and she almost told him just to stop. Wanted to put her hands over her ears. He had to do what he had to. Reject his part in it if he must, but she didn’t want to hear it right then. Not yet...

  “In light of what’s going on, the danger you’re in, that after what I saw this morning, I’m going to be hovering close until we find who’s out to get you, and I know the guy’s safely behind bars.”

  Oh.

  “I’m not going to be able to step back, to give you space. You have a right to it, I understand that. But...” He shook his head. “I just don’t see it happening.”

  She smiled. She just couldn’t help it, even while she warned herself not to make too much of the ownership he was showing over their child. He’d never denied responsibility. Or a willingness to provide for the child. “We both want the same thing, Riley,” she told him quietly as she sobered. “To keep this baby safe. I’m grateful for your protection.”

  He glanced her way, but only briefly. She got a glimpse of those striking blue eyes, just not enough of one to read anything in them. When he turned in a direction opposite of her house—and CI headquarters, too—she immediately tensed and asked, “Is someone following us?”

  “No. I’m just being diligent.” He told her he’d spoken with Iglesias that morning, repeated what the detective had told him about her shooter being unpredictable. One who might act stupidly. Which made him that much harder to protect against. The guy could try anything, out in plain sight.

  “Chances are, he doesn’t know my vehicle,” he said then. “It’s lucky that both times I was at your place, I walked there. I’m planning to park on the street behind your town house and cut through the backyard. But we’ll drive the street a time or two first, to make certain there’s no one lurking there.”

  He glanced her way again. Circling through neighborhoods slowly, mostly keeping an eye on the road and their surroundings.

  She appreciated his keeping her apprised. But when it came to keeping them safe, she trusted him to know his stuff.

  He got them inside the town house, through the back door safely. Easily. So much so that she began to hope that maybe all the precaution was overkill. And yet, she was still grateful for it. If ever there was a time designed to fit “better safe than sorry” that was it.

  She was upstairs, a second suitcase open, more carefully selecting what she might need over the next few days, adding some shadows and eyeliner and some earrings to her growing stack, when she heard the front door open. Moving to the wall, she waited, inched her way until she could at least partially see out the window. Her heart pounded and she told herself she had to get the fear in check.

  She wanted to call out to Riley but didn’t want to give away her location, or even the knowledge that she was in the house, if someone besides him was inside.

  Where was he? Outside? Had he seen something? Heard something?

  How did people live with their lives in constant danger?

  Riley had talked about his life with the FBI the night of the fundraiser. About how it felt to make a difference to the world of crime threatening the nation. He’d made mention of having made enemies. He’d been talking about how rusty he was at attending formal, “feel-good” functions, having traded the social culture of his youth for the darkest opposite—chasing down the drug lords and cartel members that were a continued threat.

  The front door closed.

  Afraid to move away from the wall in her own house, Charlize couldn’t really even imagine how he’d lived for more than twenty years with the knowledge that at any time someone he was closing in on could get him first. Or someone he’d put away could get out and come find him.

  “I’m coming up.” Riley’s voice.

  “Okay,” she called back. And moved away from the wall. Feeling foolish. As she heard his footsteps getting closer, she closed the lid of her rolling bag. No point in having intimates right there for them both to stare at.

  If she’d thought about it, or been in her right mind, she’d have wondered why he’d felt a need to visit her in her bedroom. As it was, the first warning she had was the look on his face.

  It was grim. The corners of his mouth tight inside his beard.

  In his hand he held a box, a small brown package. “This was on the side of the front porch.”

  “What is that?” she asked, looking inside. And then up at him. “Is that one of those toy confetti poppers?”

  He nodded. And turned the box so she could read what had been crudely written on the left inner side. I told you to call them off Next time this explosion won’t be fake.

  The letters were black. Bold. There was no punctuation.

  “Do you think they’ll be able to ID him off it?” she asked, too horrified to let herself fully comprehend that someone who wanted her dead had been at her home since she’d left the evening before.

  There and wanting her dead.

  “I doubt it,” Riley said. “He’s dumb, but he probably wore gloves. The good news, if you can call it that, is that this tells us that the perp is likely one of the guys Iglesias visited yesterday. He didn’t tell you to stay away this time. He said call ‘them’ off. Iglesias’s visit pissed him off.”

  She nodded. Not liking what she was about to say, but knowing it was right. “So we keep after them, force their hand,” she said.

  “Iglesias and his guys keep after them,” he told her.

  “I’m not going to desert my clients,” she told Riley. “I’ll stay away physically, because of the baby, but I’ve built rapport with those families. I could be their only hope...”

  All of her visits weren’t in-home. She had phone calls. Video calls. “I’ve canceled my physical appointments for the rest of the week. I did that yesterday afternoon. Rescheduled them for next week. But I can compel my clients to put me on video call and show me around the house, just like I could check out the house on a personal visit. It’s not ideal. Not as good as being there, but for a few days it can work.”

  He nodded. Didn’t argue. Wasn’t trying to talk her out of doing what she needed to do.

  And she needed him to know, “I really want this baby.” The words, when she heard them aloud, didn’t sound like enough. Didn’t in any way communicate the new dimension that had just entered her heart. Showing her a wealth of love she hadn’t known existed. “I’m happy about it. Excited. And scared to death that something could happen to it,” she told him. “Whatever it takes to keep the baby safe... I’m on boar
d with it.”

  “Iglesias is sending someone over to pick up the box,” he said, standing in her bedroom as though he’d been there many times.

  Belonged there.

  “It might be a bit.”

  She nodded. Wanted him to come in. And to go. The battle raged inside her and there was no clear winner. With his free hand he reached out to her face, cupped it, caressed her jawbone—and she wasn’t going to tell him no.

  Right or wrong.

  His hand dropped to his side and she was bereft.

  And relieved, too. As much as her body craved more satisfaction from his, the hurt from the way he’d walked out on her still stung.

  And with a baby coming, she couldn’t just think about herself. About what she wanted in the moment.

  “I loved a woman once.”

  She froze, her hand on the top of the closed suitcase. If she moved, would he go? If she didn’t, would he tell her more?

  She looked up at him. Met his gaze. Held on for as long as he’d let her.

  “She was a fellow agent, a member of my team,” he said. “We were partnered more often than not. It worked because we were both married to the job. Spouses and family weren’t an issue.”

  Was. At the moment, that word was louder in her mind than any other. Was this relationship permanently in the past, like the word he used indicated?

  The way he held himself, not quite defensively, but almost as though he was daring anyone to pass any judgment on what he had to say, told Charlize a lot. She was trained to catch behavioral nuances, to know as much from what she observed as she did from what she heard.

  Riley Colton might look casual standing in that doorway, but there was nothing casual about what he was telling her.

  What he was telling her was significant.

  What it meant, she had yet to know.

  “Her name was Marisol.”

  There was that word—was—again.

  She continued to look him in the eye, but otherwise, didn’t move. He had her full focus. It seemed important that he know that.

  “She’d been married, but her dedication to the job had ultimately broken up her marriage. She couldn’t leave the job. Not so much the FBI. She could have left the bureau, maybe. But fighting injustice against others, facing the bad guys and taking them down...” He shook his head. “She couldn’t leave that.”