Colton Copycat Killer

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Zoe has a point,” Trevor agreed, speaking up. “I don’t think it’s Josie, either, but we’re not going to get to the bottom of that by sitting here and arguing about it. We need to find her,” he said, agreeing with what Ridge had said a minute ago.

  “You’ve got more resources for that than the rest of us,” Sam pointed out.

  “Which is why I’ll put my team on it,” Trevor answered.

  “I’ll give you the little I’ve managed to put together,” Christopher told him. Trevor looked at him quizzically. “I’ve been looking for information on Josie’s whereabouts ever since she disappeared.” He looked around at the others. “I’ll say one thing for our little sister. If she doesn’t want to be found, she’s done a damn good job of covering her tracks.”

  “That could also mean she’s in the witness protection program,” Ethan volunteered.

  “Another possible avenue to explore,” Trevor agreed.

  “There’s also another explanation,” Ridge said, adding his voice to the discussion.

  “You mean other than being in the witness protection program, or just not wanting to be found?” Christopher questioned.

  “Yeah,” Ridge answered grimly.

  They all knew what Ridge was thinking and none of them wanted to say it out loud: Josie was in the same place as their mother.

  “That’s a last resort and for now, we’re not going to talk about it,” Sam told the others with a note of finality.

  Nobody argued with him.

  Chapter 8

  “No.”

  The single word, firmly voiced, seemed to fill the entire room, seeping its way in through the walls of the house.

  But Zoe didn’t retreat. She stood her ground.

  Sam was admittedly surprised the young woman didn’t just absorb the force generated by his loudly voiced refusal and visibly shrink away from him. From his doorway, really, and back to the vehicle she’d driven over here. What little he remembered about Zoe—and although she had always been there, existing somewhere on the perimeter of his life, there wasn’t all that much, but from what he did recall— she’d always been a timid, accommodating soul, easily manipulated.

  This was neither timid nor accommodating, at least not in his point of view. She was being annoyingly stubborn.

  “I’m coming along,” Zoe informed him, ignoring his refusal.

  She was well aware she didn’t have a leg to stand on—especially not the two shaky ones that were holding her up right now. She had literally shown up on Sam’s doorstep a few minutes ago and had stated her intentions when he had demanded to know what she was doing there. At that point, it seemed as if all hell had broken loose.

  What had brought her to his doorstep was the same thing that had brought her to the roundtable meeting he had held with his siblings at Ethan’s house to discuss their next move, both collectively and singularly. At the time she had been given a heads-up about the meeting by Annabel and although Sam had obviously not been happy about it, he’d grudgingly admitted that maybe she did have some right to be there. To find out what, if anything, they knew about the killer.

  It had turned out they had no significant information regarding the killer’s identity, but they did have a plan in order to hopefully, eventually, find out something.

  To that end, Trevor was searching for Josie. But since the tips coming in from the public weren’t leading to anything productive, Sam had decided to do what had only been mentioned previously in passing. Much as he would have rather done anything else, he had firmly made up his mind at that meeting to go talk to his father who was currently serving life without the chance of parole in the state prison fifty miles outside Granite Gulch.

  He was pinning his hopes on the slim chance that his father was getting fan mail from some lunatic who was behind these serial killings. If that was the case, Sam felt certain the killer was undoubtedly writing to Matthew, bragging about being his disciple and the killing spree he was currently engaging in. With any luck at all, the killer would tip his hand and add in a description of one of the murders. If it matched what they already knew, then they had themselves a viable suspect rather than just a wistful wannabe.

  Up until today, going to question Matthew at the sprawling, three-story state prison had been an option, but one he wanted to hold in reserve, leaving it as a last resort.

  He no longer had that luxury.

  Since there were no other options left open to him at the moment—and no new dead bodies to follow up on—this was the only course of action he could think of that might possibly yield him a lead.

  But as much as he hated the idea of having to do it, he hated the idea of doing it with an entourage even more, even if that entourage consisted only of one person.

  He was not about to let Zoe tag along. This wasn’t some holiday fishing trip he was going on. This was immensely serious business.

  “Don’t you have a job to go to?” he all but shouted at her when Zoe refused to back off. “You know, books to alphabetize or whatever it is that librarians do these days.”

  “I don’t know about librarians in general, but this librarian is taking a long, overdue vacation,” she told him.

  “So take it,” Sam ordered angrily. “Go somewhere that people actually go when they take a vacation. Go to some theme park in mosquito country, or watch whales swim wherever it is they swim. Do something normal. Nobody goes to a prison on vacation,” Sam informed her.

  Zoe brought herself up to her full height and then rose a little farther on her toes, as if the extra inch could help her get her point across to him.

  “I do,” she countered.

  When he turned his back on her to finish getting ready, Zoe didn’t wait for him to slam the door, she pushed her way farther into his house. She had one chance to make her argument and she took it.

  “This man ruined your childhood and nearly destroyed your family. He did destroy your mother and there are some people in the county who still hold things against your family because of the things Matthew Colton did.” When he swung around to glare at her, Zoe refused to back down. Instead, she continued trying to make her point. “That’s a lot of baggage to bring into a meeting.”

  “So, what, you’re volunteering to be my baggage holder now?” Sam challenged, confused as to what point she was attempting to make.

  Inside, she was cringing, but outwardly, Zoe forced herself not to flinch in the face of his erupting temper. Instead, she kept talking. “I thought having someone in your corner while you talk to your father might somehow make things a little easier for you.”

  Sam’s face turned dark as his eyes narrowed, fixing their glare on her. “He’s not my father. He’s just someone who donated some DNA to my gene pool. It takes a lot more than that to be a father.”

  Zoe met his glare and didn’t look away the way she instinctively knew he wanted her to.

  “I agree.”

  “I don’t care if you agree or not, you’re not coming with me,” Sam informed her firmly.

  That should have been enough to get her to back down in his estimation—but it wasn’t. The look in Zoe’s eyes made him feel that he was losing ground. That wouldn’t have happened with the Zoe he recalled knowing.

  Maybe he hadn’t really known her at all.

  “I am—” she said with more conviction than she actually felt “—unless you have someone else who’s coming with you.”

  “I do,” he told her.

  Surprised, she managed not to show it. Instead, Zoe challenged him on his assertion. “Who?”

  He’d thought just telling her there was someone would be enough to make her back off and give up this ridiculous sidekick idea she had dreamed up. But obviously he’d thought wrong.

  “You just don’t give up, do you?” he retorted, stunned.
/>
  Her nerve was quickly dissolving. She wanted this to be over with—ending in her favor, and thus in his. Her eyes met his. Hers had defiance in them.

  “Nope.”

  There was almost admiration in Sam’s voice as he said, “I never knew that about you.”

  It wasn’t in her not to be truthful. “Between you and me, neither did I,” she confided. “But what it boils down to is I just can’t let you go into that prison alone.”

  “I won’t be alone,” he told her. Then, when he saw she was waiting for more, he flippantly said, “The inmate count is at an all-time high at that prison they say.”

  Zoe managed to gather her flagging courage to her for a final rally. “This is where I’d laugh, because you made an attempt at a joke. But it’s really not funny—and neither is your seeing that man alone.”

  This was getting tedious and he had to get going. The drive was long and boring and he wanted to get it out of the way and be done with it already.

  “Get it through your thick head, Zoe, I don’t need backup,” he enunciated slowly and firmly, hoping to finally get through to her.

  She ignored the insult and his patronizing tone. “I think you do. And if you don’t let me come in with you, I’ll still follow you there,” she threatened, “and find a way to get in.”

  “So now you’re breaking into prison?” Sam scoffed incredulously.

  “Not exactly.” God, but her mouth felt dry. “But I know people. I can get one of them to get me into the visiting area.”

  “What people?” he wanted to know.

  It was obvious that he didn’t believe her, but she refused to back down. “People-people,” was all she ventured as an answer.

  Sam laughed shortly as he shook his head in disbelief. He would have never thought this of her, never thought she could be this stubborn, this annoyingly unmovable.

  There was obviously more to the woman than met the eye and maybe, if the stakes weren’t so important—and he wasn’t who he was—he might have been intrigued. But he was who he was and that meant he wasn’t allowed to have a normal life. All he had was a job to do.

  “You’re bluffing,” he told her, deliberately making his voice sound cold. It was his last attempt to scare her off.

  He hadn’t counted on just how stubborn she could be. “You don’t know that for a fact—and won’t know until you put me to the test.”

  Sam stared at her in disbelief. “You’re just stubborn enough to get yourself into a hell of a lot of trouble, aren’t you?”

  “That’s entirely up to you,” she countered, surprising him further. “If you let me come with you, you’ll be there to protect me,” Zoe concluded simply.

  Sam sighed. This was getting him nowhere and he had a feeling that short of leaving her tied up, Zoe was pigheaded enough to make good on her threat to follow him to the prison and maybe even into it.

  “I can’t begin to unscramble that and I don’t have the time to even try.” He was aware he was letting Zoe win by default, but he felt he had no choice. “Okay, you can come with me. But if having you there at the prison presents any sort of a problem at all, you’re out, do you understand?”

  “I understand,” she answered solemnly.

  It was a real struggle for her not to grin, but somehow, she managed.

  * * *

  They drove to the prison in silence.

  Sam spent the entirety of the trip reviewing in his mind what he wanted to say to his father—while fervently wishing he never had to lay eyes on the man again. Had this not come up, had this new serial killer not had an MO so similar to the one Matthew Colton had employed more than two decades ago, he would have been completely satisfied to never see the man who was responsible for so much misery, both in his life and in general, ever again. Not even after he rotted away in prison.

  But Sam was a law enforcement agent first, a wronged son second, so he had to put his own feelings aside in order to try to solve this crime that had all but fallen into his lap.

  He was both relieved and at this point somewhat surprised Zoe said nothing during the drive to disturb the silence, leaving him to his thoughts and mental preparations. He had to admit, given her newfound backbone, he had expected her to talk at least part of the way to the prison.

  But she kept quiet the entire time. So much so he slanted a glance in her direction several times before they finally saw the gray, forbidding gates of the prison looming in the distance.

  “Having second thoughts?” he asked Zoe as they drove up to the prison and then waited for a guard to approach to open the gates and admit them into the inner perimeter within the compound.

  Zoe saw two guards, armed with high-powered rifles, looking down at them from the observation tower high above the prison. She told herself it was for their own protection and tried not to be uncomfortable, but it wasn’t easy.

  “No,” she answered, her firm tone masking the nerves underneath.

  Sam studied her profile, saw the one twitch of her cheek. “I thought maybe that was why you’ve been so quiet.”

  Zoe brazened it out. “I figured you wanted to get your thoughts together. It’s been a while since you saw him, hasn’t it?”

  Sam didn’t have to pause to try to remember how long it had been. He knew. Down to the minute. “Twenty years. I was five when the police came to take him away.”

  He remembered holding Josie’s hand, telling her not to cry. He didn’t know why he’d remained so stoic. Probably because he hadn’t had any tears left to cry. He’d used them up, crying over his mother’s murder.

  She knew the story. But somehow, hearing Sam actually say it conjured up a vivid image in her mind of a little boy watching his father being dragged away, then helplessly witnessing his brothers and sisters being herded off in separate directions while he was being taken somewhere himself.

  Tears shone in her eyes.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Sam caught the glisten of tears in hers as he handed his identification to the guard who approached his window.

  “You’re not going to cry, are you?” he demanded.

  “No,” she answered quickly, tilting her head just a little.

  She was trying to keep the tears from spilling out. She didn’t want to have to wipe them from her cheek because that would give her away.

  “Good. Because if you did, I’d have to leave you in the car,” Sam told her harshly.

  “I’m not crying,” she told him firmly.

  “So that’s not a tear rolling down your cheek?” he asked, wondering just how far she was going to take this denial.

  Despite all her efforts, one tear had managed to cascade down, leaving a zigzag pattern in its wake. “No. That’s an allergic reaction,” she told him.

  It made him laugh. Here he was in a situation he didn’t want to be in, preparing to see and talk to a man he had never wanted to see again, and having it all witnessed by a woman who, by all rights, he should have been able to ditch hours ago sheerly through the power of his dark scowl.

  There was nothing funny about any of it, and yet, she’d made him laugh by virtue of her ridiculously creative excuse.

  “You’ve got guts, Zoe, I’ll give you that,” he told her. There was just a hint of admiration in his voice.

  It made her smile.

  She knew coming here with him was the right thing to do even if she hadn’t felt about him the way she did. No one should have to go through something like what Sam was about to face alone and she wanted to offer him her silent support since no one else in his family had thought of it—or perhaps they had, but they knew he wouldn’t allow them to come because he didn’t want to appear weak in their eyes.

  She was well aware Sam didn’t care what she thought about him, because she didn’t count. She was convinced the second she w
as out of his sight, she was also out of his mind.

  The fact that he had come to apologize to her for the way he had acted when she had told him about Celia’s deception had surprised her tremendously. But she felt that somehow the apology had probably been motivated by something that had to do with his job, not by something he felt personally because he didn’t feel anything personally when it came to her.

  Be that as it may, she still stood by her decision not to have Sam go through this alone and she would have stubbornly found some way to be there for him even if he had made things really difficult for her.

  He meant that much to her.

  “Last chance to back out,” Sam told her as the guard waved them on. He looked at her for a long moment, waiting. He waited in vain. “This isn’t going to be pretty.”

  “I didn’t come to be entertained,” she reminded Sam. “I came here for—because no one should have to go through something like this alone,” she said, catching herself at the last minute.

  She was repeating herself because she had almost said she had come here for him, and she knew that wouldn’t have gone over well on any count. He didn’t want her feeling he needed his hand held—and she knew he would have balked at the mere hint that her feelings for him had been her motivation.

  Leaving her reason in the realm of generalization made it easier for him to accept her being there. Not easy—because God knew that nothing that had to do with Sam was ever easy—but definitely easier.

  Having passed the guard, they drove slowly onto the compound. Driving quickly would have attracted attention—and distrust. So they crawled toward the parking area at a snail’s pace.

  Zoe used the time to look around and acquaint herself with the area. She’d never been there before, had no reason to have been there before.

  It was all so depressing, she couldn’t help thinking.

  The prison had been built in an out-of-the-way area in Texas. So out of the way it would have been generous to describe it as desolate.

  The feeling of loneliness and isolation seemed to throb from the very rocks and stones that had gone into the initial building’s construction.