Hunting the Colton Fugitive

by Colleen Thompson

  “I got a picture of each of them from Selina and made notes as to how they were related.” Sierra opened the photo section of her phone.

  The rickety chair creaked as Ace leaned forward, straining to see familiar faces—faces that made his heart ache with nostalgia for simpler, happier times as she began to scroll. Would he ever again see them? Ever share another exchange not tainted by lies and weighted down by tragedy?

  As his skin tightened and his pulse spiked, her voice took on an unearthly quality, seeming to echo in his ears. “That’s your daughter, Nova Colton.”

  “Nova Colton...” His own words came out strained and parched as if he’d been trekking through an endless desert. Because this was impossible, some kind of tortured nightmare—or worse yet a flat-out lie, meant to disarm his defenses and lead him to his arrest as calmly as a lamb to slaughter.

  As the panicked thought raced through his head, Ace stood so abruptly that the chair tipped to the floor behind him. “I don’t have a daughter,” he insisted, needing to let her know she damned well wasn’t fooling him with this wild story. Or was he only trying to keep the ground from shifting out from underneath him, as it had so many times in these past months?

  Coming to her feet as well, Sierra turned the cell to hold it against her chest. As she looked up at him, compassion eased the hard set of her jaw and softened her green eyes.

  “You do, Ace. Yes, you do,” she said. “And not only a daughter...” Flipping the phone around, she smiled, showing him a pretty young blonde woman, with an unmistakable bump at her midsection. “But a grandchild on the way.”

  Every atom of him shook, demanding that he turn away. Or curse her for the cruelty of this deception. Why hadn’t he realized earlier she’d only been stringing him along?

  He pictured himself storming out, vanishing into the dark desert night. If Sierra wanted to stop him, she’d have to knock him off his feet again or catch him in time to pepper spray his face as she had the bald thug’s.

  Except he didn’t leave. Didn’t even turn. He couldn’t. Not with the wonder of her words still sinking in, of what he could see with his own two eyes on her phone’s screen, igniting like a spark in a stack of drought-dry kindling.

  “She—she’s pregnant?” he found himself asking instead, as if what Sierra had said hadn’t sunk in the first time. “But she’s so young. What would you say?”

  Sierra scrutinized the photos. “Twenty-two, maybe twenty-three, tops. Couldn’t be much older. And you’re, what is it? Forty now? Not that you really look it but—”

  “Which would’ve made me—Hell, I must’ve only been about...” In the split second it took him to do the math, a buzz started inside his brain. A buzz that morphed into a swarm of tiny, bright dots as it hit him that Nova had her mother’s jaw and forehead.

  “Oh, hell,” he said, groaning at the memory of a girl he’d scarcely thought about in decades. A memory that cracked the dam of disbelief.

  “Maybe you ought to sit down before you fall down.” Sierra’s voice faded to a distant echo, worry threaded through it.

  Swallowing hard, Ace righted the chair he’d toppled before sagging into the seat. But his mind was blazing with another face, with a name that struck like a bolt from the blue. Allegra. Allegra. “That girl. That summer... How could I have been so—” Face burning, he looked up at Sierra, miserable to think of what he’d done. And what he’d missed out on because of it. “Why wouldn’t she have told me, given me a chance to—She never said a word. I don’t understand this.”

  Sierra took a seat as well, saying nothing to absolve or encourage a confession. But the story spilled out of him anyway, too raw to keep inside.

  “I was seventeen. We both were. I’m not even sure now,” he admitted, “other than it was just a summer fling.”

  Ace caught the look she slid his way, read the disgust in it. Or maybe he was only seeing his own judgment of his teenage self reflected in her eyes.

  “You’re absolutely right,” he said bitterly. “I was a jerk, a stupid kid who got caught up in the magic of summer and a few heady hours of freedom. What was the harm? I remember thinking. No one would ever find out.”

  Laughing bitterly, he added, “Joke was on me, I guess, since I never heard from her again.”

  “But you didn’t reach out to her, either?”

  Swallowing hard, he shook his head. “I never imagined there was any need to. I never suspected for a minute. But her—not a phone call, not even a postcard. If she had, I would have...”

  He stopped short, knowing for a certainty how the man he was now, the person he’d grown into, would have responded to such a bombshell, especially after learning such a painful lesson about the real meaning of family. But back then, as a callow youth mostly wrapped up in his ambition and his pleasures, he couldn’t say for certain—to his great shame—that he would have done right by the girl he’d barely known. Still... “Why didn’t she at least give me the chance?”

  “You can ask her daughter—your daughter—when you meet her,” Sierra said, handing him her cell with the photo of the young blonde woman with eyes as green as Allegra’s had been still on the screen. “It’s why Nova came to Mustang Valley. To find you.”

  Swallowing hard, Ace nodded, feeling gutted. Emptied of the remnants of the man he’d left behind when he’d fled whomever was plotting to frame him for a crime he had not committed. Yet, along with the grief of that loss, he felt something more, as well. The dim glow of hope, a lone star emerging in the bleakest twilight.

  “I might not’ve been the man I should’ve been back then, with her mother,” he said, his throat tightening and his thumb caressing the image on the phone’s screen. “But I swear to you, as long as there’s any shot of my becoming a—a real father to this Nova and being there for her and her child, I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.”

  Chapter 4

  Though Sierra had met Ace only hours before, she believed him absolutely when he’d claimed he hadn’t known. No way was he faking the roughness of his voice, the hint of dampness in his brown eyes. He’d been well and truly knocked out by the news she’d shared with him. News he had clearly accepted once he’d seen the photo.

  Looking at the image of Nova, Sierra had some inkling as to why.

  “Coloring’s not the same,” she said, “but I think your daughter looks like you quite a bit, too.”

  “The poor girl.” Ace’s laugh was as awkward as she might expect for a man who’d been under such a strain for months on end.

  “Hey, I didn’t say she’d inherited your three-days’ growth,” Sierra teased, barely stopping herself in time to keep from playfully reaching out to brush his jaw. “But the shape of the eyes, her cheekbones—believe me, she could do a lot worse. In person, you’ll see she’s even lovelier than this photo—”

  “Yes, I will see,” Ace said, capturing her hand in his before she could move away. “Once we’ve proved my innocence so I can go home.”

  “You need to let go of me right now,” she warned, her heart crowding into her throat and her body freezing. Except for her free hand, which reached down toward the boot holster...only to find it empty.

  The breath deserted her lungs. She must have lost the little spray gun somewhere after nailing the bald creep in the face. Mind rifling through the equipment she’d had on her when she’d set out early this evening, she realized that the only resources that remained were the zip ties attached to her belt and her fighting skills. But with her muscles quivering with fatigue and her coordination off, she didn’t like her chances of subduing the far larger Ace in any kind of physical confrontation...

  Raising his palms, he said, “You aren’t—you aren’t scared I’d hurt you, are you? Because I thought—aren’t we a team now, Sierra? Can’t we be? I’ll give you the money like I promised, to take care of your troubles and then we—”

 
She rose from the chair and took a step back to give herself more distance. Breathing space to remind herself why she’d come tonight. And what this man was to her. He was a means to an end: her own survival. No matter how drawn she was to him, or how sympathetic to his situation. “There can’t be any we,” she corrected, with a curt shake of her head. “After we finish our transaction, I drop you back off at your bunker and we forget we ever met. Then, if you’re very lucky, those guys will never connect the two of us. Never have any reason to think the cowboy who shot one of Ice Veins’s thugs might be some missing Colton.”

  His gaze dialed in on her. “Do you really think you’re going to be safe, Sierra? That this Ice Veins and his thugs are going to drop this after we get him his payoff?”

  There he went again, using the word we even after she’d warned him off. Just as he’d gone on speaking of paying off Ice Veins even though Ace must surely know by now that she could no longer force him to honor the bargain they had struck. What was his angle in all this? Did he imagine if he solved her problem, she’d feel obligated to find a way to fix his?

  “I don’t know.” Her anxiety ratcheted higher. Because what she’d said about forgetting they’d ever met—she already knew that part was a lie. She wasn’t likely to forget him or what he was doing for her, whatever his reasons. “Since I crossed his nephew, Ice Veins has been looking for an excuse to make an example out of me. And now, with one of his enforcers shot? Odds are I’ll never get clear of him, not even if I personally hand him over a stack of cash with a big fat bow around it. But there’s no reason in the world for me to take you down with me.”

  Ace had troubles enough, but he also had a real shot at finding out who had set him up and hurt his father, and there were people in his life who still cared deeply about his welfare. Along with that, he had a daughter, and soon a grandchild, whom he deserved the chance to get to know.

  “So what’ll you do then, with the money?” Ace asked, worry lines etched into his handsome face.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe try to call him, work things out directly. Or could be that going on the run’s my better option,” she said, wondering which, if either, was more likely to raise her life expectancy from hours or maybe days to years.

  He moved in close again, so close that she feared he’d once more touch her. But only his gaze did, caressing her in a way that made her—heaven help her—long for more.

  “Take it from someone who’s been there,” he said, his voice somber. “Once you start running, you’ll always be looking over your shoulder. That’s not the life you deserve.”

  “Ace,” she said, her throat tightening as the hour, their situation and the insanity of the attraction she was feeling to a man she barely knew but couldn’t deny rushed in on her from all sides. Or maybe it was the fact that he truly understood the secret she had been afraid to share with anyone—understood it as only a man currently locked in his own life-changing struggle could.

  More likely, her judgment was impaired, too, along with her balance and coordination, for before she understood what she was doing, she pushed herself into his arms. But instead of feeling wrong or off, she felt nothing but relief, her body singing when his strong arms wrapped around her. He held her, cradling her protectively against him, as she hadn’t been held in so very long.

  “Why couldn’t I have met you before?” he whispered, planting a chaste kiss atop her head. “Back when life was simple and I could’ve brought you home to the ranch?”

  She chuckled. “Oh, yeah. I can just imagine your family’s reaction to your slumming with a female bounty hunter who likes to punch people for sport. You should’ve seen Selina, side-eyeing my outfit and talking down to me as if I were the help. Which I suppose I kind of am, but still...”

  He snorted. “Believe me, if Selina didn’t like you, the rest of the family would have considered that a huge plus.” Giving her one last squeeze, he continued, “But Sierra, as things stand, there’s no way I can possibly—”

  “Shh.” Breath hitching, she jerked her gaze toward the window as a soft clunking sound carried on the nighttime stillness. “Was that a car door shutting?”

  Ace was first to reach the blinds. Carefully lifting a slat, he cursed and warned her, “We need to get out now! Ice Veins’s men’ve found your car—and it looks like they’ve brought reinforcements.”

  He grabbed her hand, pulling her toward the door.

  “They must’ve gotten a GPS tracker on my car somehow,” she said. “I should’ve known! I should’ve—”

  “Never mind that right now,” he urged. “Just move, before we end up boxed in! There are at least three of them out there.”

  But Sierra was still so wobbly, she knew there was no way she could escape—especially not with armed men in pursuit. No way she could do anything except get Ace caught, too.

  So with her pounding heart in her throat, she told him, “Head off to the right now. Stick to the shadows.”

  When he tried to pull her, she jerked her hand away and pushed him forward, “Move! I’m just behind you!”

  Except when she exited in his wake, Sierra made a sharp turn, heading to the left with her hands raised.

  * * *

  “Hands up and on your knees, bounty hunter!”

  The bellowed words, coming some forty yards behind him, stopped Ace dead in his tracks. As he stood panting in a deep band of shadow, he recognized that voice, that of the bald ox she had pepper sprayed earlier. Recognized, too, that the men must have been closer to the room than he’d imagined when he had emerged.

  And that Sierra Madden had made the choice, before she’d pushed him out the door, to give herself up instead of running for it. That she’d made that decision to give him a shot at escape and a reunion with his family, knowing that, without his money to appease them, she had almost zero chance to avoid a gruesome injury—and that was if they didn’t blow her brains out on the spot.

  Stomach pitching as he overheard her assurances that she was unarmed and alone, he knew he couldn’t let this happen. Couldn’t leave such a beautiful, brave woman to a gruesome fate, no matter what it cost him.

  Taking a deep breath, he pulled out his phone first, powered it on and prayed it would connect before they hauled her off somewhere to maim or kill her. His stomach pitched at the sight of Sierra kneeling with her fingers laced behind her neck as two men shouted down at her. Meanwhile, a smaller, slighter figure cried, “I’m sorry, miss! I’m sorry! I didn’t want to tell them where your room was, but they barged into the office and stuck that big gun in my face!”

  “Shut your mouth, you,” warned the bald man before he began pistol-whipping the young clerk.

  Bleating with pain, the kid raised his arms in an attempt to protect his head as Sierra called, “Please don’t! He’s just a boy. He doesn’t know anything about this.”

  A blow to the side of the teen’s head dropped him like a stone. If he was lucky, he might wake up with a headache. If he wasn’t, they might pump him full of lead, too, leaving him unable to identify the men who’d been here.

  Unable to risk being overheard making a voice call, Ace fumbled through the act of tapping out a text, his heart pounding like a war drum. Adding the motel’s name and location, he hit Send, and prayed that Sergeant Spencer Colton would jump at this opportunity to bring him in. And that his relationship with his distant cousin, as strained as it was by this time, would ensure that the officer would arrive with the backup—sans sirens—that Ace had requested to deal with the dangerous armed men on the scene.

  A smaller man wearing a calf-length coat with an extravagant fur collar, short-cropped hair and a full, but neatly trimmed red beard was gesturing angrily as he stood over and lectured Sierra. Ace could make out only a few words from this distance, chief among them my money. But a quiet menace carried on the chill breeze and something—perhaps a diamond—glinted coldly as a distant star
at his ear.

  The loan shark in the flesh, Ace thought. Just as he suspected, the notorious Ice Veins’s personal involvement in this matter meant that Sierra and the clerk both might be long dead before Mustang Valley PD made it here.

  “Please,” he heard her saying, “don’t do this. You know I’ve always made good on my dad’s notes, and I’ll keep paying. This is bad business, and I always thought you were a man who put his financial interests first.”

  Panic roared through Ace as the loan shark pulled out a thin knife, the blade’s razor edge glinting in the yellow security light. Still on her knees, Sierra jerked her head back as he raised its point to hover above her face, an inch or so beneath her eye.

  “Yeah, it is bad business,” the loan shark said, “messing up such a pretty lady. Don’t think I enjoy it. But you were warned, and I won’t have it said that I’m a man who goes around making idle threats—especially after the way you did my favorite nephew.”

  “Your nephew—” Sierra’s voice hardened into pure defiance “—is a piece of human garbage.”

  The loan shark said nothing in reply, but Ace saw the swift pivot of his body, the flash of steel as he drew back the weapon.

  Ace shouted, “No!” emerging from the shadows.

  Sierra, who’d clearly tracked the movement, too, threw herself to her side as the knife slashed the air an inch above her head.

  “Stop!” Ace yelled, his shaking hands raised. “I’ve got the money. I can pay you. Everything she owes. Every penny of it.”

  “Hold it! You?” The big, bald man spun around, the hand cannon’s muzzle traveling in a swift arc to aim at Ace’s chest.

  “Don’t shoot him,” ordered Ice Veins. “At least not until I’ve heard him out.”

  Vibrating with fury, the human ox ground out through clenched jaws, “But he was the one who killed my partner!”