by Lisa Childs
Would it have even happened? Or would Ernie and Alfie have headed home earlier. Her heart ached that she would never know what might have saved them...or if anything could have.
“Jones went racing out of here the minute I showed up,” Parker remarked. “Didn’t give me the chance to ask him any questions.”
“I didn’t think that’s why you came,” she said. “I thought it was just to notify us...” Her voice cracked. She would not give in to the tears again—not yet. Next time she cried, she would wait until she was alone. She needed to be strong—for her children, her sister, her mom and mostly for Ernie. He would have wanted her to be strong for their family and for herself.
She drew in a deep breath and lifted her chin. “What did you want to ask Jones?” she asked. She had a few questions for her youngest child, too. Like how he was doing.
He seemed so broken, even more so than the others. The only time the grim expression had left his face was when he’d been teasing Heath about Kylie. That young woman was good for her entire family—not just Heath.
“Do you doubt his alibi, too?” she asked.
“I doubt everything, Mrs. Colton,” Detective Parker admitted with a slight smile and a heavy sigh.
“It must be sad to be so cynical,” Fallon mused with genuine sympathy. While she hated how he was looking at her family, like suspects, she respected that he was just doing his job and seeking justice was admirable—just sometimes hard to come by.
He shook his head. “I’m not cynical. I’m realistic. And despite some of the horrible things I’ve seen on the job, I’m very happy.”
Fallon wondered then if she would ever be happy again—truly happy. Ernie would definitely want her to be, but she knew that there was only one thing that would bring her true happiness now. If her kids—all of her kids—were happy, then she would be, too.
* * *
Kylie shivered again and slid into the car. Maybe she was just cold. Maybe there wasn’t anyone watching them...besides that detective and Heath’s family.
Heath’s family...
Guilt twisted her stomach over having to deceive them. But if she and Heath admitted now to lying about the alibi, they would be in so much trouble. Even with the alibi, Heath was still apparently Parker’s number-one suspect. If having an alibi hadn’t convinced him of Heath’s innocence, what would?
Finding the real killer.
Like Heath, she didn’t believe it was anyone within his family. The patriarchs had been too beloved for any of their family to harm them.
But who else could have wanted them dead?
Someone from Colton Connections?
While all of the employees had loved them, too, there were a couple that Kylie didn’t quite trust. One in particular...
Of course, trust had never come easily for her, though, so she’d wanted proof before bringing her concerns to the company CEO.
To Heath...
He passed in front of the vehicle before jumping into the driver’s side. “Good thing I left the keys in here instead of my coat pocket,” he murmured as he started up the SUV.
She waited until he eased down the driveway, away from that house, before she asked, “When did you feel like you were being watched?”
He chuckled. “Besides now?”
“Yes,” she said, although she had had the sensation that someone besides his family had been watching them. But how? From the street? The driveway was pretty long. But if they’d had a telescope...
God, she sounded paranoid even to herself now.
Once around the curve of the circular drive, he stopped the vehicle and turned toward her. “When did you feel like you were being watched?”
“Yesterday,” she said. “But maybe I’m just paranoid.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” he said, and he glanced across the console at her. “I had the feeling for the first time that night I found you in my kitchen.”
She nodded. “You did immediately assume I was an intruder when I could have been any of your family or...”
Gina. But his ex-girlfriend hadn’t shown up until the next morning—when she’d caught them in bed together. They hadn’t done anything but talk before they’d fallen asleep, though. She suspected that if they shared a bed now, they would be tempted to do more than talk.
At least she would be.
“But I’d just been to the morgue.” He shuddered.
She couldn’t even imagine what he’d seen, the evidence of how violently his dad and uncle had been murdered. “And you knew that had happened in the parking lot where you and I are every day.” She nodded. “I felt someone watching me when I left the building yesterday. Was it you?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t know you left until I found your office empty.”
“You weren’t on the ninth floor?” she asked.
He shook his head again. “I haven’t been up there since their deaths.”
Ernie and Alfie had had their offices on the ninth floor—just off the open area where they’d designed and invented so many amazing things. They were the only ones with offices up there, but several other employees used the space.
“It must have been someone else,” she mused. “I thought I saw someone at a window.”
He shrugged. “Some of the other inventors work odd hours.”
She nodded in agreement. But she wasn’t thinking of other inventors. “There is a certain lawyer who is always hanging around.”
“Tyler,” Heath said. “He’s ambitious.”
She wasn’t sure that was all the man was, though. “I wonder if there’s more to it than that with him.”
“Are you thinking he would try to kill you to get your job?” he asked.
Apparently Heath was more aware of the situation between her and Tyler than she’d realized. “Maybe. But maybe it’s not just my job he wants. He could be after yours, too.”
Heath chuckled. “He is ambitious.”
Kylie sighed. “Ambitious, yes, but a killer? I don’t know.” She didn’t want to believe that of a man with whom she’d worked for so many years.
“Maybe he was just watching you because you’re hot,” Heath said.
She chuckled, thinking he was joking, but when she glanced at him, he returned her look with a certain glint in his blue eyes.
And her pulse quickened in reaction.
“Then he wouldn’t be the same person watching you,” Kylie remarked.
“You don’t think I’m hot, too?” he asked.
Now she knew he was teasing, or so she hoped—because she was not about to admit just how incredibly hot and sexy she thought Heath was.
“I don’t know what to think,” she said.
“About my hotness?” he teased.
“I don’t know if someone really is watching both of us,” she said.
“We were also almost hit by that car,” Heath mused, and his voice was all serious now.
“You said it was an accident,” she reminded him. “That we weren’t paying attention.”
“I wasn’t,” he said. “I also don’t want to think that someone could have purposely tried to run us down, though. So I don’t know what I was wrong about—being watched or someone trying to run us down.”
“What if it’s both?” she wondered aloud. “What if someone is watching us and did try to run us down?”
“You think someone’s trying to kill us?” he asked, and he glanced at her again, his blue eyes wide with shock.
She didn’t want to think it either. “I don’t know.” And there was only one way they would know for certain...if someone tried again to kill them.
But she didn’t dare express that opinion aloud. She didn’t want to tempt fate any more than they already had with their fake alibi.
Heath must have felt the same because he lifted his foot
from the brake and pressed on the accelerator. He said nothing as he drove out of his aunt’s drive, past his mother’s French provincial house and down the street.
Oak Park reminded Kylie of the Home Alone movie she’d watched over and over with Baba. It was such a quaint neighborhood full of nice homes as well as a mix of shops and businesses and parks.
They had just approached the corner near one of those small parks when a loud noise shattered the silence that had fallen between them.
“Get down!” Heath yelled. “Someone’s shooting at us!”
They had their answer: they weren’t being paranoid. Someone was trying to kill them.
Chapter 14
The windshield hadn’t broken. Only one small hole pierced it, but from that one hole, a spiderweb of cracks spread out. Heath couldn’t see through it. He had no damn idea what was on the road ahead of them.
But for a gunman.
More shots rang out, the gunfire sounding like claps of thunder. That first bullet, that had struck the windshield, hadn’t been fired in error. It wasn’t like some hunter with lousy aim had struck them instead.
No. It seemed more like open season on them. Someone was definitely trying to kill them. And coming too damn close this time.
“Get down!” he shouted again at Kylie.
That first hole had pierced the windshield more on her side than his. But it couldn’t have hit her. Could it?
He glanced over the console at her, but she was leaning over, her head near the dash. He couldn’t see her face, couldn’t see if she was conscious.
Had she been hit?
Panic pressed hard on his chest, stealing his breath away. “Kylie?” he called out to her, fear for her filling him. That hole was so close to where her head had been.
Needing to make certain she was okay, he took one hand from the wheel and reached for her, but as he did, another bullet struck the SUV. One of the tires blew, the rubber squealing against the asphalt of the street. The steering wheel shuddered within his one-handed grasp as the SUV started spinning out of his control.
He pulled his other hand back to the wheel, gripping it tightly, grappling to bring the vehicle back under control. Where the hell could he go? How could he get out of the line of fire?
Yet another bullet struck, scraping across the metal of the roof. Then another tire was struck, and the vehicle started to careen across the street.
He lost all control of the SUV...as the firing of those gunshots continued. There was no way to avoid them now, no way to avoid getting hit.
* * *
His heart heavy with sympathy and with regret for upsetting the Colton widows even more, Detective Joe Parker headed toward his vehicle. He was only doing his job, but sometimes the job sucked. The worst part of it was the suffering—of the victims and of survivors—and that sometimes in the course of his investigation, Joe had to add to their suffering.
Hopefully, he was as wrong as Mrs. Colton and Heath Colton had told him he was, and that nobody within the family was responsible for the murders of the patriarchs. But he wasn’t certain yet.
Money was so often a motive for murder that he couldn’t rule out the heirs. And as far as he could tell, Heath Colton stood to gain the most and along with him, his next in command at Colton Connections—Kylie Givens. Along with the show of affection, which he suspected might have been for his benefit, they’d also been talking for a long while in the vehicle parked just down the driveway.
They were gone now, as he climbed into the driver’s side of his. But they couldn’t be far ahead of him. Maybe he could catch up and see where they were heading.
But as he pulled the door closed, a noise caught his attention. A familiar noise...
The sound of gunshots. He cursed and reached for the police radio. “Shots fired...” He gave his location.
What the hell was going on?
And why did he suspect it had to do with Heath Colton and Kylie Givens? Were they firing the shots or were they being shot at?
* * *
That first shot and the shock of someone shooting at them had struck Kylie hard, making her freeze in silence. But when the SUV careened off the road, she found her voice again. A scream tore from her throat as the SUV skidded off the road into the ditch.
Airbags exploded out of the dash and the side of the vehicle, hitting her in the face like a soft slap. Like someone might have struck her to stop her hysteria.
She stopped screaming and gasped for air for a moment, coughing and sputtering at the slight powder that emanated from the inflated bags. Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked, furiously trying to see...anything. But the airbags enveloped her. As quickly as they’d inflated, they began to deflate. She turned her head toward Heath who was slumped over the airbag that had sprung out of the steering wheel.
A shaggy lock of blond hair had fallen across his eyes, so she couldn’t see if he was conscious or not. But his big body was so still, so frighteningly still that it was almost lifeless.
“Heath?” she called out to him. “Heath?”
Had a bullet struck him?
She couldn’t even remember how many had been fired. Did the shooter have any bullets left in the gun?
She peered around the deflating airbags into the shattered but intact glass of the windshield. Was the shooter out there yet?
Coming for them?
“Heath!” she called out. She reached across the console and grabbed his arm. “Heath!”
With her other hand she reached for the door handle, tugging at it to open her door. But it wasn’t budging. Had the SUV stopped against something?
Was the door too crumpled to open?
They had to get out of the SUV. They had to run to some cover. Now, trapped inside the SUV, they were easy targets for the shooter.
Realizing why her door wouldn’t budge, she pushed at the lock until it clicked. When she grabbed the handle now, the door creaked open.
But she had no intention of getting out alone and leaving Heath behind and at the mercy of the merciless shooter. Worried that he was seriously hurt, she didn’t dare shake him, though. So she just squeezed his arm and implored him, “Heath, please wake up!”
He murmured something, and her heart thudded with a surge of relief. He was alive.
“Heath,” she breathed his name with a sigh of that relief. But then she heard movement outside. Because of the shattered windshield and all the dangling curtain airbags, she couldn’t see who was coming toward them.
Innocent bystanders or the shooter making sure that they were dead?
“Heath, if you can move, we have to get out of here,” she urged him. “We have to find some cover.”
He murmured something and finally his body moved, shifting against the steering wheel. And he turned his head toward her. “Are you okay?” he asked her, all his concern for her.
She nodded. But she really wasn’t sure. Between all the gunshots and the crash.
So much adrenaline coursed through her now that she couldn’t feel anything but the quick pace of her pulse and her madly pounding heart.
“But we have to get out of here,” she said. “I don’t know if the shooter is still out there or...”
His hands still gripped the steering wheel, so when he straightened his arms, he pushed back against the seat. “Yeah, yeah, we have to get out of here.”
He reached for the shifter, but it wasn’t in Park.
“We crashed,” she said. “We have to get out of here on foot.”
They had to run, but it was clear that he could barely move. Then it was too late as a shadow fell across that shattered windshield.
Someone had found them.
To help them?
Or to finish them off?
Chapter 15
Heath flinched as he drew in another breath. The airbag or the steering w
heel behind it had struck him like a fist to the chest and the chin. He ran his hand over his face, which was stinging a bit from the blow.
“You should have let Detective Parker call an ambulance,” his mother said as she fussed around him where he sat at the island in the kitchen of Aunt Farrah’s house. Tears dampened her face.
The last thing he wanted was to be the cause of any more crying for her. She already had enough reasons to weep.
All of his family did, and all of them were in the kitchen except for Jones, who’d left earlier. His sister and cousins looked as if they’d been crying. He doubted it was over him, though; it had been because of the news the detective had brought them earlier.
About the bodies...
“I’m fine,” he assured his mother. “Just had the wind knocked out of me for a moment when the airbags went off.”
Kylie made some little noise in her throat, and when he glanced at her, he could see, from the concern on her beautiful face, that he’d been out for more than a moment. He remembered then that desperation in her voice as she’d called his name. She’d been worried that they were trapped with the shooter still out there.
He was still out there. Nobody had seen anything. Not even Detective Parker who’d arrived on the scene shortly after the SUV, with the two blown tires, had careened into the ditch. “It seems so surreal.”
But then everything did—the murders of Pop and Uncle Alfie, the detective suspecting him of those murders, Kylie providing him an alibi and more.
“Could it have been a hunter?” his mother asked. “Someone accidentally firing toward the road?”
“I wish it was, Mom,” he said. He understood her wanting to believe that—just as he’d wanted to believe that nobody was really following him, that nobody had really tried to run down him and Kylie. “There were just too many shots fired directly at us for it to have been an accident.”
She gasped, and he stood up. But before he could comfort her, Aunt Farrah was there—with her arm around her shoulders. He was so glad that they had each other and their unbreakable twin bond right now.