Colton's Lethal Reunion

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  The rest of the night would be theirs.

  Their lifetime. Their secret.

  Their little piece of happiness.

  * * *

  She didn’t sleep much. That night they’d made love again. Talked softly about food and movies and sports teams. Changes in the world that made it more inclusive—and scarier, too, as guns entered schools and churches. They held each other through it all, agreed on a lot of it. And they talked about their early days, times on the ranch when his birth father had been alive. And then when only hers had.

  They talked about family. About love. About things that hurt.

  But discussion of the breakup and the years apart was nowhere to be found in their few hours of seclusion. After a third coming together in body as well as spirit, after she rode him hard, almost as though she could somehow get him out of her system, figuring, as he bucked into her that he was getting her out of his. She slid off him, lying close but not touching, and pretended to sleep.

  Letting him get some sleep.

  She tried. She meant to. A full day of police work waited ahead. But for those last few hours, she was purely and completely selfish. Taking care of herself.

  She lay there with a grown-up Rafe Kay in her bed. Listened to him breathe. Memorized the rhythm. Inhaled his earthy, postlovemaking scent, watched the rise and fall of his chest. Got as close to his warmth in her bed as she could without actually touching him.

  For those hours she allowed herself to love him. She dozed on and off, wanting to sleep with him beside her, and before dawn arrived, she said goodbye.

  It had to happen.

  As wonderful as the night had been, it was just a figment of the past’s imagination. She had been waiting all their lives for this to happen. And now that it had, now that they’d had a chance to say an actual goodbye, they could finally both move on.

  Rafe was up and dressed when Kerry woke from her last doze. After she’d said a mental goodbye and let him go.

  “I’ll go make some coffee,” he said, seeing her sit up. He wasn’t looking her in the eye, and she understood. Appreciated the distance that was going to make the morning after easier.

  The pain she felt, the grief, was not new to her. But she was better equipped to deal with it at thirty-six than she’d been at thirteen.

  Deciding to shower and dress for work before she joined him, she half expected him to be gone when she got out to the living room. When he wasn’t, she peeked outside. The sun was barely rising, and James was still sitting upright in his police car, glancing at his phone, and then around him, in the rearview mirror and back to his phone.

  In her light brown pants, white shirt and loafers, with her gun already strapped at her waist, and her long, still-wet hair back in a ponytail, she called the officer and let him know she was up and he was good to go.

  And turned to find Rafe standing there, looking all elite and important even in second-day clothes, handing her a cup of coffee that wasn’t black. She took a sip. And wondered why he’d bothered to make such a clean knot in his tie when he’d just be going home to shower and change.

  “You had hazelnut creamer in the fridge, so I figured that’s how you like it,” he said. She did, sometimes.

  “I was wrong,” he said, when she took a second sip.

  She shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d known. Her expression had given him more than her mouth and brain intended him to have.

  “I need a couple of cups of straight black first thing in the morning,” she admitted. “The creamer was left over from a Christmas party, but I do use it sometimes when I’m working late from home.”

  He had a cup in hand. She couldn’t see how he took his.

  It seemed fitting to her—the fact that they didn’t know such a simple thing about each other. It was telling. Put things in perspective.

  “So what happens next?” he asked her, his gaze too intent for her to pretend the question was anything but personal.

  “I had a text from Al... Chief Barco. We’re going to talk this morning to discuss an investigation into Odin Rogers.” Finally. At least something good had come out of the harrowing night they’d had—and a ranger losing his life. Her peers were finally ready to acknowledge that there might be something in her hunch that her brother’s death hadn’t been accidental. And the chief was willing to listen to her other hunches on the subject.

  “I’ve done a lot of investigation already,” she said, nodding toward the wall that was partially visible from where they stood in the living room. “The chief and Dane, Detective Dane Howman, are coming over this morning to go over what I’ve got. And I have to focus on finding out who shot Payne,” she reminded him—specifically in that moment the reminder was personal. And intended for both of them.

  And to that end, she’d spent her time in the shower, after shedding a few very private tears, focusing her mind on her current assignment. “Who’s going to run Colton Oil now that Ace is out as CEO and Payne is in a coma?”

  “The board already voted to have Marlowe take over as CEO.” He’d know, being a member of that board.

  Marlowe was the fourth-oldest Colton sibling. She’d been the talk of the station recently, as PJ worked to catch her stalker. From what Kerry had gathered at the hospital the other night when she’d gone into the waiting room to bring Ace Colton in for questioning, Marlowe was pregnant and had just announced her engagement to rival energy executive Bowie Robertson.

  Grayson Colton, a first responder, wasn’t on the board, nor was Asher, but Ainsley, Marlowe’s older sister was.

  Maybe Marlowe knew that, with Payne also out of commission, she’d be next in command, and, with perhaps some pushing from her lover who just happened to be the son of the owner of Colton Oil’s biggest rival, a company that lobbied for green energy, had decided to have Payne taken out.

  Recent attempts had been made on her own life. That changed a person. Could have made her temporarily aggressive.

  “Is it possible Marlowe’s involved in the shooting?” she asked Rafe. It was a question she’d ask other members of the board, as well. She was working a case. Living real life.

  Setting down his coffee cup with a bit of force—he took it black, she noted—he asked, “Do you really think all of the Coltons are that heartless?”

  She’d hurt him. Or angered him. “I honestly don’t know...”

  She’d talked to Marlowe at the hospital. Hadn’t had a sense that she was capable of violence. To the contrary, she’d seemed to be one of the calming factors in the room. Logical. Still, she had to be aware of possible motive...

  The sound of glass shattering broke into her consciousness just seconds before a heavy object sailed by her peripheral vision and landed on the floor just behind her.

  Aware of her front window in shatters, and of Rafe moving toward her, Kerry focused on the object. A large brick.

  With a note rubber-banded around it.

  MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS DETECTIVE OR RICHIE RICH IS NEXT.

  Chapter 8

  Rafe was right behind Kerry as she raced out the front door. He didn’t have a gun in his hand, as she did, but he had a sharp eye. The street was quiet. Serene.

  He didn’t say a word as he looked around one corner of the house, following her example as she’d looked around the other. He peered under some flowering bushes that lined the front of her home. Walked to the sidewalk out front. Didn’t find so much as a footprint.

  And neither did she, as she told him after she’d checked both neighboring yards and her own backyard in case the culprit was hiding close by.

  She was already on the phone to the station by the time they headed back inside, and Rafe heard her say she’d write up the report and log the brick as evidence before sending it to forensics.

  If he didn’t know her, he’d assume she was 100 percent on the job, focused and unaffected
by having just had the front of her house shattered, leaving a gaping hole that made her living room open to the outside elements.

  She was focused, but she wasn’t unaffected. He saw the unease in the way the blue of her eyes deepened.

  Her next call was to someone who agreed to come out within the hour to get the front window boarded up.

  “He thinks he can have a new window in later today,” she told Rafe as she hung up from the call. He had calls to make as well, but needed to make sure she was okay, first.

  Cop or no, she lived alone and had just been vandalized.

  Whether or not seeing her was forbidden to him, he couldn’t keep pretending he didn’t care for her. The way his heart was pounding at the thought that she could have been hurt—not because he could have been—was right there in his face. Kerry was...special.

  And not just because they’d had sex. Spent the night in each other’s arms. He’d done that with other women.

  None of them made him feel the way she did.

  He wasn’t just walking away.

  “It’s a standard size for houses around here, so he has one in stock,” she added, putting her phone down on the dining room table and opening one of the files on Odin Rogers.

  His cue to go.

  He read it clearly.

  “I’m going home to shower, but then I’ll be back in town,” he told her. “To see Payne, and with all that’s been going on, I’ve got some work to catch up on at the office.” The oil was drilled, bought and sold whether the boss was lying in a coma or sitting at his desk. “But I’m volunteering to help you on this, Kerry. Whatever you need...even if it’s just an ear to run things by as you think it all through...”

  He was referring to her brother, but would do anything he could to help figure out who wanted Payne dead, too. Any of the family would.

  “You are not helping me anymore,” she said, her tone tense as she swung around to face him. “I never should have taken you up there to begin with. Now you’re a target, too, and I’ll never forgive myself if something happens to you because I put you in danger. You and your family already have enough to deal with.”

  The force with which she spewed her words moved him so much it took a few seconds to respond. Regardless of circumstances between them, she cared.

  But then, the passion in her lovemaking the night before had already given him that much.

  They both cared. And it wasn’t enough.

  The sad story of their lives.

  “I was compared to a cartoon character. Richie Rich,” he said with a shrug and a poor attempt at a grin. “But I already planned on hiring a private security detail...”

  “Right, because the Coltons have the funds to do such things. I should have already thought of that. I’m glad.”

  He saw her swallow heavily between her first and second sentence and noted the brief lack of professionalism in the way she gestured wildly with her hands, as well as the hint of bitterness that came and went from her expression.

  He chose to pass them by.

  “So you’ll let me help?”

  “No.” She turned back to the table filled with details of her investigation. “Whoever killed my brother, and the ranger, is worried about what I might know. And, now you, too, clearly. The deeper I delve, the more worried he’s going to get.”

  “Can’t get any worse for me than it already is,” he told her, walking around to face her across the table. “He won’t have any way of knowing whether you update me or not. Or whether or not I’m going to hire a private detective to see what he can sniff out. I’m already in, Kerry.”

  Her glance wasn’t as discouraging as it had been. He got that she didn’t want him in danger. He got even more that, after the night they’d spent, she had to push him away. Hard.

  He didn’t get why he couldn’t just step back and let it happen.

  But he knew for certain that he was in as deep as it got.

  And staying in.

  At least until they caught her brother’s killer.

  * * *

  After Rafe left, Kerry mentally reviewed the evidence. Three days after Payne Colton got shot, a ranger was killed and her life was threatened. These three felonies—along with the murder of Bowie Robertson’s bodyguard and the attempted murders of Robertson and Rafe’s sister—were more crimes than their little town with its few officers and detectives usually saw in a year. And that didn’t include the attempts on Bowie Robertson’s life over the previous weeks.

  She’d been looking into Tyler’s death for the whole two years, but the day that Rafe Colton got involved, someone died and she and Rafe were targeted.

  And that came right after an attempt on his adoptive father’s life.

  Was she losing perspective by thinking that the two incidents could be related?

  Tyler had grown up on Payne’s property. Was the killer someone who either worked for Colton Oil or Rattlesnake Ridge Ranch? Was Payne’s shooter the same person? Someone Tyler might have known as “Big B”?

  She didn’t think so. The attempt on Payne’s life had come right after the family had made the shocking discovery that Ace Colton had been switched at birth. That he wasn’t a Colton at all. Right after he’d been fired as CEO of the family’s multibillion-dollar company.

  The kind of trouble Tyler had been in was nowhere near the same league.

  And the danger she and Rafe were in wasn’t, either.

  Which was why she didn’t answer his call later that morning, only listening to his voice mail because it could have something to do with his father’s case.

  His father. Maybe if she thought of Payne that way often enough, her adjustment to the present would be easier.

  He’d just been calling to check in. Asked her to call him back.

  She didn’t.

  Instead she did her job, going with Dane to have a talk with Odin Rogers at his residence. The vest and pocket watch might have looked good on the supposed drug dealer if his paunch didn’t strain buttons and the chain of the watch wasn’t stretched to capacity across his girth. The man really should be in the hair gel business, given how much slime he had pasting long strands of what hair he had left over bald patches. When they asked him about any business he might have in the mountains, if he was ever up Mustang Mountain Drive, asked him about people he knew, he was as innocently ignorant as always to their faces. So she asked him about sources for his wealth. He hadn’t had a job in the valley for as long as she could remember.

  He claimed to be independently wealthy from investments he’d made with an inheritance he’d received from a life insurance policy when his father died.

  Right. If life insurance came in the guise of inherited contracts in the illegal weapons trade or drug business. As close to the southern border as they were, such goings-on were not merely suspicions, but a known way of life.

  Catching them, proving things, was another story. Just when they’d think they were onto something a deal would be made to catch a bigger fish. But not this time.

  Kerry wasn’t into fishing for size. She wanted the man stopped and brought to justice.

  She and Dane were just leaving the man on his porch when Kerry noticed a pair of boots sitting under a bench by the door. Not freshly shined fancy ones like Odin was currently wearing, but a used pair with the same worn-down heel on the right boot as the pair he currently wore. Because Odin walked with a slight limp.

  It wasn’t the slight tilt to the heel that interested her, however. It was the cactus needle sticking out slightly from the back of it. An agave needle. Distinctive not only for their poisonous properties, and for the tequila that came from the plant they protected, those needles were also sharp enough to puncture a throat. Or a boot heel.

  There’d been a broken agave arm right by where the ranger had gone off the cliff the night before. The break hadn’t be
en brand-new, clearly hadn’t been a casualty of the ranger’s death, but she’d sidestepped it to avoid being pricked by one of those needles...

  Odin Rogers had been up on that mountain.

  She couldn’t prove it. Odin would say he’d stepped on the needle elsewhere. Agave plants could be from all over. She sure wouldn’t be given a warrant to confiscate the boot based on a needle when she had no other proof that Odin Rogers was involved.

  Her fellow officers might think, again, that she was too close to the case, was stretching reality to avenge her brother’s death.

  But she knew. Odin might not have killed her brother, but he was involved in whatever was going on up on that mountain. He was involved in having her brother killed.

  For the moment, it was information she was going to keep to herself.

  * * *

  Rafe made it to his house and into the shower without anyone knowing he hadn’t been home. And his privacy was one of the reasons he’d insisted on moving out of the mansion and into his own home. He’d never learned to be comfortable living with so many people coming and going and knowing who was coming and going.

  In dark pants that had been hanging in his closetful of similar clothing—all bagged from the cleaners—a freshly laundered and pressed white shirt, and black-and-white tie, he arrived at Colton Oil fifteen minutes before the board meeting scheduled for ten that morning.

  He’d hoped to have more to give the family regarding Payne’s attempted murder. He also had a list of financials to go over with those of his siblings who were fellow board members and their ex-stepmother, Selina Barnes Colton, the firm’s Vice President and Public Relations Director. Why Payne kept his ex-wife on the board, he had no idea, especially since Selina was a bit bitchy most of the time, but as with most things Payne Colton, it wasn’t his job to question.

  Still, he was dreading the meeting, when, generally, he got a bit of a kick out of them. Rafe, a foreman’s son, sitting on the board of a billion-dollar company. Such an unlikely event. Just like him, the unlikely heir. He’d seen Payne’s will. He wasn’t set to inherit an amount equal to the rest of Payne’s biological children, but he’d one day be a very rich man.