Hunting the Colton Fugitive

by Colleen Thompson

  “Just help her, please! I don’t know if she’s breathing!”

  The smaller paramedic, with her curly, dark hair and a birthmark partly covering her face, squeezed between the men, kneeling to check Sierra’s vitals before giving her partner the pulse, respiration and blood pressure results. Ace felt his own breath hitch, what felt like his heart restarting. She hasn’t died on me. Thank God.

  Recovering his voice, he explained, “She slammed her head pretty hard. Against that truck, I think,” as the pair continued their examination. “And the man wedged underneath—I believe he’s been shot.”

  When he glanced over, he saw the photographer had been moved, and two women, one in a lab coat and another wearing scrubs, were tending to the injured man. He was lying on his back, clutching his right shoulder as he wailed in pain.

  Someone else grabbed Ace’s arm, turning him around. “I need you to come with me. Now.”

  Ace blinked, his daze evaporating at the sight of Sergeant Spencer Colton in uniform, his normally boyish face aged both by tension and the flashing red-and-white lights of his K-9 SUV parked at an angle nearby, its driver’s-side door thrown open.

  Still shaking, Ace pulled away. “I can’t leave. Those bastards in the black Mercedes—they hurt Sierra, maybe bad. She needs me here, in case they come back for her.”

  “Are you a doctor or a bodyguard?” Spencer demanded bluntly. “Because unless you’re either, there’s nothing you can do for her right now—nothing more important than getting in this car and helping me catch these shooters right now. As far as I know, you’re the only one who got a good look at them.”

  “Bodyguard... I should call Callum,” Ace stammered, thinking of his brother. But still in shock, he hesitated, his feet rooted like tree trunks as Sierra jerked partly upright with a groan, rolled onto her side and started retching. With the two medics in his way, he couldn’t tell if she was fully conscious, only that she was seriously hurting.

  “Come on,” Spencer said gruffly. “There’s no time to make calls at the moment, and she’s in good hands here. I’ll leave an officer standing guard. Hospital security, too, and the ER’s right here, filled with all the machines and medicine and expertise she needs. Now, let’s go and help her in the one way only you can—by stopping these people before they have a chance to strike again.”

  Ace nodded numbly before calling to Sierra, “I’ll be back soon,” though he seriously doubted she was in any shape to register his words. Still, he needed to say them, if only to assure himself that he would find his way back to her. That he would find her well again and safe.

  Inside Spencer’s SUV unit, which smelled faintly of the dark brown K-9 Ace had spotted riding in a cage in the rear, the sergeant asked as he drove, “Just how good a look did you get? Maybe a license plate? A partial?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. They were too damned fast—and I was too busy dodging bullets. I got a glimpse, at best, of both the driver and the shooter—both white males with dark hair, one with a goatee maybe—but nothing I could swear to.”

  “It’ll have to be enough. And I’d bet my next paycheck the car’ll turn out to be stolen anyway,” Spencer said. “We had a patrol in pursuit, but they lost sight of the vehicle somewhere near the industrial area. We’re going to see if we can intercept them, maybe heading out of town.”

  Fresh fear tightened Ace’s gut. “The industrial area? I need to call my family.” Fumbling for his cell phone, he said, “I have to warn them, in case these shooters have somehow connected Sierra to me and know about my condo there.” An image of his sleeping daughter flashed before his eyes.

  “Why would they want to go there?” Spencer darted a glance his way, his hazel eyes intense. “Do you think you might be a target of these—It’s the Las Vegas underworld again, isn’t it? This has their filthy fingerprints all over it, and after the motel shooting, Sierra told me how she’s tied up with those gangsters.”

  Bristling at his tone, Ace said, “She might’ve been in over her head, but she’s no criminal, Spencer. She was working her tail off—honestly and legally—to pay off her father’s gambling debts when Ice Veins came after her once he’d passed. She only ran into real trouble when she refused to allow herself to be corrupted.”

  “So she’s a bounty hunter with a code,” Spencer allowed, still sounding dubious. “But she’s still mixed up with the wrong people. People intent on turning my town into a war zone, leaving heaven only knows how many innocents as collateral damage if that’s what it takes to punish her. Including maybe you and whoever’s at your place if they suspect Sierra might’ve escaped their drive-by shooting and they head over there to hunt her down.”

  “Speaking of which, I’m making this call now,” Ace said gruffly, pushing a number from his phone’s list of frequent contacts. Moments later he was briefly explaining the situation to Grayson, who was fortunately still at the condo with Rafe, Ainsley, Nova and Nikolas. Grayson was able to quickly grasp Ace’s concerns regarding security. He then promised to take charge of making certain the property and everyone inside it remained secure until Ace or Spencer assured them that the threat had passed.

  As Ace disconnected, a call came over Spencer’s police radio, the dispatcher reporting a vehicle fire in progress at an address only a few blocks from their location.

  Cursing in frustration, Spencer goosed the accelerator before taking the next corner fast enough that his police dog barked in alarm from his crate.

  “Sorry, Boris, buddy,” Spencer called back before turning his attention to Ace. “That’ll be the shooters’ car, I’m betting. Dumped and torched in favor of whatever getaway vehicle they had stashed and waiting. Which means they’re one step ahead of us.”

  “That’s the car, all right,” Ace said as the two of them came upon the flames, which were leaping high enough that he had no doubt the someone had doused the black Mercedes in an accelerant before setting it ablaze. With its front doors standing open, it had been abandoned along the street outside the security fencing surrounding the metal sheds that comprised a local storage facility.

  “Could be they stole it out of one of those storage garages in the first place.” Spencer drove past the burning car to point his headlights at what turned out to be a cut chain on the lot’s main gate. “Mostly, the larger bays at these facilities are used for recreational vehicles and boats and such, but occasionally, somebody’ll tuck a vehicle away for long-term storage.”

  “An almost-new, high-end Mercedes?” Ace asked, glancing back toward the burning sedan and hearing sirens in the distance.

  “Could belong to a drug dealer. Which would make this theft a crook-on-crook crime. Right now, though, I’m more worried about the shooting than any property crime.”

  “But how will we find them now that they’ve switched vehicles?”

  “It could take some legwork—and a little luck,” Spencer admitted as the first fire engine came into view down the street. “I’ll call in Kerry,” he added, referring to Rafe’s detective fiancée, “have her drag the facility’s owner out of bed to review the security camera footage, assuming any of them are actually operational. Though by the time we get all that accomplished, these guys’ll likely be long gone. Unless they decide it’s worth sticking around to try again.”

  “Surely they won’t risk that,” said Ace, a slippery feeling low in his gut as he remembered being cut off from Sierra as the shots rang out, “not after shooting up a parking lot in front of witnesses.” After talking to Grayson on the phone, he’d nearly convinced himself that he’d been overreacting with his earlier fear that the killers might head over to his condo. Or maybe—he had no idea—his overblown fear of something happening to his newly discovered daughter was a normal part of this whole parenting routine.

  “Like you said yourself before, they were in and out too fast to see much. Maybe they’ll figure they were quick enough to chanc
e it. What else can you tell me?”

  Ace frowned, remembering his final, frustrating conversation with Sierra before all hell had broken loose. “She’d just told me she needed to take off, run from Mustang Valley before she got me or anyone I cared for hurt. Her cop friend in Vegas had told her there might’ve been a hit put out on her because of Ice Veins. By his nephew, most likely.”

  The hydraulic air brakes of the fire truck momentarily captured their attention, its flashing emergency lights splashing the streets in garish illumination that competed with the leaping flames.

  “Detective Stratford from the organized crime bureau?” Spencer asked as the crew came off the pumper. “She called me to vouch for Sierra earlier, after the motel shooting.”

  “Sierra didn’t mention the name,” Ace said, “but you’re probably right.”

  “I’ll give the detective a call, see if I can get anything more on what we’re dealing with. But right now I’m damned worried. Because my instincts tell me that these kinds of hired killers aren’t the type that give up easy—that until Sierra’s dead, they’ll keep on coming, no matter who stands in their way, to collect the bounty on your bounty hunter.”

  Ace opened his mouth, meaning to argue, She’s not my bounty hunter, only to shut it firmly as an idea struck him. An idea that just might be the solution to their problem, if only they could pull it off.

  “So what if somehow we did convince these hit men, and everyone else, that tonight’s attack in the parking lot succeeded in its mission?” Ace suggested. “What if we somehow coordinated things with the hospital and Detective Stratford and then you set up a press conference—a news briefing condemning Sierra Madden’s murder right here in Mustang Valley?”

  “You’re talking about faking Sierra’s death? Do you have any idea how hard something like that really is to pull off? How many levels of authority I’d need to run this past, how many people would have to sign off to coordinate—”

  “Let me ask you, then, Spencer, these so-called authorities, are they going to be the ones cleaning up the bloody mess, putting out the fires and notifying next of kin when more people end up hurt or killed in the crossfire? And are they going to be ready to deal with me if I do end up losing a woman I’ve very much come to care for, after I’ve already lost so much?”

  * * *

  Sierra couldn’t understand why, before they’d buried her, no one had made sure her mouth was somehow sealed shut. Dry and dusty as her throat was, she imagined it was full of grave dust. The dirty, gritty taste of it, along with a sudden, overwhelming revulsion, woke her, stomach heaving, and a firm but steady hand helped her as she rolled to one side.

  “That’s it. Just take a sip of water, and you’ll feel so much better,” said a female voice, kind and reassuring and definitely alive, the same as she apparently was.

  Still, the sound exploded in her head and the room’s lights—so many lights in this room—felt like spikes of pure pain driven through the back of her skull. She threw up into a shallow basin held by a woman in large glasses and matching raspberry-pink scrubs, whose platinum-streaked hair was shaved on one side of her head and chin length on the other.

  When the nurse, whose lopsided hairstyle confused Sierra’s vision somehow, started talking again, the words looped back onto themselves and tangled into gibberish. The one word she did make out, concussion, had her shaking her throbbing head and struggling to rise from what she realized was a hospital bed, which took up most of a small room, whose lack of windows left her even more disoriented, not knowing whether it was day or night.

  “I can’t just lie around here, waiting for a bunch of tests and—what if someone else ends up hurt?” Images streaked like meteors through her memory: black car, gun muzzle flashes, a shiny dark smear on the pavement. Her pulse bumped at her throat.

  “Where’s Ace?” she cried, panicked at the thought there was something she was forgetting. Something bigger, something worse. “Where is he? Is he—did they—” Staccato bursts of gunfire echoing in her ears, she couldn’t stop the hot tears from streaming down her face. “They shot him, didn’t they? Was he—is he still—”

  Firm hands pushed her gently back down. “Settle down, Miss Higgins. Now, don’t you remember? We’ve been through all this before already. Mr. Colton’s fine. He’s just stepped out for a few minutes to make a phone call. You’re in a secure room at the hospital. There’s no need for you to be frightened. I’m here to stay with you until he gets back.”

  Sierra didn’t remember any previous discussion and couldn’t understand for the life of her why this woman was calling her by a stranger’s name. But Sierra was distracted from that question by the thought of a male boxer from her gym, who’d ended up sidelined for weeks, unable to drive or work at his day job or even watch TV or read the paper after a serious concussion.

  Her blood ran cold at the thought of being so helpless—a sitting duck for whoever walked through that door, intent on finishing what the gunmen in the parking lot had started.

  “I have to get out of here,” she said, breaking free of the nurse’s grip and attempting to thrust her feet over the bedside. A raised railing blocked her, so she pushed herself upright, explaining, “I have to leave before they—”

  With the abrupt change of her head’s elevation, a dark wave overrode her doubled vision. Pain and nausea collided, and she grasped the railing and closed her eyes, needing a moment to ride out the churning storm.

  “They’ll hurt you, too, when they barge in. Get away from me,” she warned, forcing her eyes open.

  The nurse moved fast—a raspberry-pink blur—through the doorway to call into the corridor, “I need some help here—another sedative!”

  Ace passed her, saying, “That won’t be necessary. I’ve got this.”

  His gaze latching on to Sierra, he raised his palms, his expression both concerned and calming. “You’re fine now. We’re safe. I’m right here with you, and that’s where I intend to stay.”

  Though it still beat much too quickly, her heart resettled into her chest when he came close, so warm and real and solid as he enfolded her hand in his and squeezed it gently.

  “I thought—” she began, voice breaking with emotion. “I thought the nurse was lying. I thought I’d gotten you killed, just like I did that guy with the camera.”

  “I ran into that photographer’s husband out in the parking lot, while I was out making my call where I could get a halfway decent cell signal,” Ace told her, “and he said how grateful he was that you helped him hide underneath that pickup. He came out of surgery just fine last night.”

  “Last night?” she interrupted.

  Ace nodded, scrubbing a hand over a lightly shadowed jaw. “You were out briefly at first, sleeping off and on since. But it’s almost eight-thirty in the morning.”

  As she grappled with the loss of time—and wondered if part of her wooziness and memory issue might be related to some drug or another she’d been given, Ace continued speaking.

  “The cameraman’s recovering from a gunshot wound to the shoulder, but he will recover—because of your quick thinking.”

  “He never would’ve been shot if I hadn’t hung around here longer than I should have.” She raised her voice, needing to make certain she was getting through the noise inside her head. “Which is why I have to go, right now, before it’s too late. What if it’s you next time? I couldn’t—I couldn’t live with that.”

  Grabbing the railing, she threw one foot over with the intention of climbing. But Ace surprised her, trapping her wrist in one hand and producing a zip tie—which he must have swiped out of her street clothes—and securing her arm to the railing before she could get out a whimper.

  “You’re confused right now and groggy, so let me explain. Here’s how things are at the moment,” he told her, while she gaped in shock at the betrayal. “According to the doctor, you need to stay a
t least another day here, if not longer, so that smack to the head you took can be properly assessed and you can begin the healing process. In your current state, you’re not safe to drive or care for yourself—and you certainly aren’t fit to make decisions.”

  “I’m not an invalid, or a child, either,” she insisted, her face burning as she yanked helplessly at the zip tie. “I’m fine—or I will be. As soon as I’m clear of you and some nurse who can’t even get my name straight. So let me out of here.”

  “Uh, about that name thing,” Ace said, grimacing as his eyes avoided hers. “There’s something else I have to tell you. A decision that’s been made.”

  Shaking with outrage, she said, “There’s nothing I want to hear from you except, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve overstepped here big time. Now let me cut this zip tie, and here’s the keys to your car so you can get on down the road.’”

  He winced. “I am sorry, for the record, but I’m not about to let you walk out of here, Sierra. For one thing, the doctors think you’ll be okay, that this is only a mild to moderate concussion, but they haven’t completely ruled out a more serious brain injury.”

  “I’d have to be brain dead to want to be tied up here, helpless, while those killers are out there somewhere, circling like sharks,” she said. “And anyway, don’t you still have plenty of troubles of your own to deal with? Have you even visited your father yet? Or looked any more into this thing about—”

  “I’ve been a little busy, Miss Higgins,” he said sharply, countering her attempts at distraction by throwing out that odd name again, “handling the details of your unfortunate demise.”

  “Demise?” she echoed, her skin creeping with the memory of waking to the feeling that she’d been choking on a mouthful of grave dirt. “You mean, like death? Are you sure you didn’t get knocked upside the head, too, Ace? I mean, please correct me if I’m wrong here, but I’m still kicking.”