Colton's Lethal Reunion

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Maybe she’d lie low at least until he heard back from Jason. He’d rather know his adversary before meeting the guy’s goons unexpectedly in the dark. Or up on the mountain.

  Kerry had insisted on driving her Jeep because she was the one carrying a badge and gun, and she didn’t say a lot as they headed back through town to the hospital.

  He wanted to tell her how much she meant to him. To ask her if they could try to find a way to be together sometimes, not just for sex, just to be—but knew it wouldn’t be enough. Not for either of them. Most particularly her. He’d be positioning her for a life alone with only occasional visits from him to break up the monotony. And he knew that even if she said yes, she’d regret it someday. He’d regret doing it to her.

  She parked in the visitor lot and turned off the ignition. He’d changed from work clothes to jeans and hiking boots before leaving his office at Colton Oil just after lunch that day. Would have liked to have changed back before heading to the hospital, but intended to walk in beside her just as he was.

  Payne wouldn’t approve. So this would be the day that he woke up.

  Pray God, let him wake up.

  As much as Rafe sometimes kept himself distant from the older man, he loved Payne. Respected him.

  “You’re sure you want to be seen in here with me?” Kerry asked, turning to him in the Jeep, with one foot already out on the blacktop.

  In her blue tweed pants, light blue cotton oxford, and cowboy boots, and with that gun hanging from her belt, she was all business. She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail. He had a sudden vision of that long, straight auburn halo half covering him as she sat on top of him, and shook the vision away.

  He was proud of her. Of what she’d made of her life.

  “Of course I want to be seen with you,” he told her. If his family saw them together, he only had to say he was making use of police resources working on the case—finding out who switched Ace at birth, and that he was trying to help Kerry find who shot Payne, so that she’d leave Ace alone. And other than the family, he didn’t much care what people saw or thought.

  He was the Cinderella boy. The cowboy’s kid who’d been lucky enough to be adopted by the rich and famous Coltons. It didn’t matter what Rafe thought or did, or who he actually might be; no one saw anything but that feel-good story. So he’d quit trying to be anything else or getting to be close friends with anyone in Mustang Valley. At home he was a bit of a loner.

  When he traveled on business, he was different. He socialized. Went to the theater. Out to dinner. Lived more of a regular life.

  He didn’t bother explaining it all to Kerry.

  Chapter 13

  “Mr. Colton? The doctor hasn’t been in to see your father yet today, so no news yet...” The brown-eyed blond nurse didn’t even seem to see Kerry when she walked in the door of the hospital next to Rafe. “Will I see you up there?”

  The woman then glanced in Kerry’s direction briefly, long enough to take stock of the gun at her hip, and the badge she’d hooked to her belt loop on their way in. Long enough to dismiss her as potential competition for Rafe. She was just the cop on the case.

  For a second there she thought about letting the woman know just where and how Rafe Colton had fallen asleep at four o’clock that morning, but she rose above her baser self, and said, “Have you been working here long?” Before Rafe had a chance to answer the woman’s initial question.

  “Ten years, why?” the woman asked, friendly enough, but looking back at Rafe as though she’d much rather be speaking with him. So would Kerry. It was the effect Rafe Colton had on women, apparently.

  “I’m looking for anyone who might have worked here forty years ago. Or who knows someone who did.”

  The woman—Brenda, her name badge said—nodded. “You want someone who was here that day the electrical fire destroyed all the nursery records, the same day Ace Colton was born,” she said. “I heard Mrs. Colton and her daughter talking about it upstairs.”

  What she wanted to know was who switched Ace Colton at birth, and to get there she was hoping to find the doctor who’d delivered him, but her purpose was no business of Brenda’s.

  “I’d really just like to speak to anyone who might know who was working at the hospital around that time.”

  Brenda shook her head. “I really don’t know, but if you ask Terrence, downstairs in janitorial, he’ll have a better idea. I didn’t think of him until I was coming down for my lunch, because he’s not medical personnel, but he’s like a fixture around here. The guy’s like, sixty. From what I hear, this was his first job. He quit school to take it to help his mom and he’s been here ever since...”

  The story wasn’t a surprising one. Life in the mountainous desert wasn’t easy. And jobs weren’t plentiful, either, unless you worked a ranch. Some of their residents actually commuted the hour or so back and forth to Tucson every day just to work a decent, well-paying job with benefits.

  “Thank you,” she said to the woman, and headed toward the elevator before she could see Rafe smile his goodbye. He pushed the down button before she got there.

  And didn’t say a word about pretty, available Brenda. Which didn’t stop Kerry from thinking about her. And all of the other women who’d known the pleasures of Rafe’s body over the years.

  He’d have had a lot of them. And not just because he was rich, but because he was gorgeous. Smart. Kind. He had a way of focusing on who he was with, making you feel special.

  But she wasn’t special. She was one of many. Had been one of many. There would be no more of Rafe’s body in her future.

  It would be best if she’d remember that.

  * * *

  Used to commanding attention, and having people jump to do his bidding, Rafe struggled a bit to take a back seat to Kerry as they made their way to Terrence Jones via two other hospital employees, one of whom was hospital administrator Anne Sewall. Rafe had already spoken with the woman the morning after Payne was admitted, but when she started to address him, to answer Kerry’s questions about a janitor named Terrence, he took a step back and looked toward Kerry. Anne, a professional, sixtyish woman with her blond bob and wire glasses framing brown eyes, took his cue and not only gave Kerry the man’s last name, but walked them down to him.

  Terrence was an interesting fellow. Someone Rafe felt he’d like to have a beer with just to be able to sit and listen to his observations—that was if a Colton ever had a beer with a janitor. Terrence knew nothing about the fire, other than remembering hearing about it and calling in to make sure that they didn’t need him to come in. He’d taken vacation that week to be home with his mother and younger siblings for the holiday, and had no idea what medical personnel had been working. Back then he’d been in charge of cleaning labs, not wards.

  These days he ran the whole janitorial department.

  “I do know someone you might want to ask, though,” Terrence said, glancing from Kerry to Rafe and then back. “Noelle Lando. She’s been a nurse here for about as long as I’ve been around. She’s sixty-five now and someone was trying to get her to retire, but that ain’t gonna happen. Not yet, anyways. I’m not sayin’ she was in the maternity ward back then. Just that she was working here and might know who was. I think she’s up on surgery now, but maybe its pediatrics. Something with the older kids.”

  Kerry went right back to the hospital administrator, Anne, who’d told her she’d do anything she could to help. The woman made a call and within minutes Kerry and Rafe were sitting at a table within a little conference room on the second floor with Noelle. In scrubs, and with her blond hair in a bun at the back of her head, the nurse frowned as Kerry asked about the day of the fire.

  “I was working days then,” she said, seated directly across from Rafe. “I remember Mrs. Colton coming in, in labor, while I was still there on Christmas Eve. That was a pretty exciting thing for us. The local oil
baron’s wife having her first child. Everyone was making excuses to get to that floor, to get a peek at her. There was some question about the health of the baby. It was stressed, as I recall. I remember hearing someone say Baby Colton...”

  “Do you know the name of the doctor who delivered the Colton baby?” Kerry asked, almost as though to distract the older woman from trying too hard to come up with a name. So she wouldn’t unwittingly block the memory?

  Either way, he liked watching her work. Was impressed all over again.

  His family had been trying to figure out who’d delivered Ace. With Tessa gone and Payne in a coma, none of them knew...

  “I don’t remember,” Noelle said. “I was newer then and didn’t work maternity. And the Coltons had their own doctor, not someone who was here all the time. I do know it was someone different than the doctor who delivered the next two Colton babies. I heard someone mention it when the second child was born a few years later. Something about how tense the first delivery had been and the second one being the exact opposite...”

  “Do you know who was working maternity back then?” Kerry asked, when Rafe would have liked to hear more of the story. Needed to hear more of the story. Biting his tongue, he waited for Kerry to do her job.

  Another frown, and a shake of the head was Noelle’s response. “I know that none of them are still here,” she said. “I’m the only nurse on staff who’s been here that long.

  “I was working when the fire happened. There was a lot of excitement that morning, I can tell you that. And not the good kind. We didn’t know how fast it would spread, and everyone was running around trying to get patients to safety, directing ones who could walk by themselves, and finding enough chairs to get those who couldn’t. We needed to keep the bed traffic to a minimum as much as possible because they took up more room in the hallways. The beds required use of the elevators which, technically we weren’t supposed to use, but when it was a question of having a chance to get the patients out, or possibly being trapped in the elevator, we took the chance.”

  She shook her head again. “As it turned out, the damage was mostly in the nursery, but it could have been much worse.”

  “Did you ever hear how it started?”

  “No. I mean, some of us talked. It was an electrical fire, so could have just been a short, but maintenance has always been a priority here. I, and some of my coworkers, thought it had been set. Which makes no sense, either. Why are you asking about it?”

  Kerry looked at Rafe.

  “Please just tell me about Ace’s birth.”

  “We’ve always been so careful here...and with that baby...everyone was on high alert. I just can’t...” She stopped again. “It was really odd how well he’d improved overnight,” she told them. And then looked kind of sad. “I...um...actually... I started going back to church again, after that. It was like this Christmas miracle, you know, that he’d thrived so much in just one night... We all took turns going to the nursery to look at him!

  “That’s really all I know, though,” she said. “We were all crazy busy that day, getting our patients resettled after the scare and with it being Christmas Day everyone was having visitors and what celebrations they could. The cafeteria cooked a huge Christmas dinner for family, and for what patients were allowed to eat it. I managed a quick look at the Colton baby in the nursery, but like, two seconds. It was out of my way and I had patients to tend to. It was just...you know...something famous... Tessa and Payne Colton’s first baby right here in our midst.”

  She stopped, her gaze far-off, and then stared at Kerry.

  “I remember one nurse!” she said, looking at both of them. “I remember because we were all so excited about the baby, and relieved about the fire being contained so much more easily than expected, we were all talking about Christmas miracles and she was grousing because she’d had to stay late. She’d been on nights, Christmas Eve night to Christmas morning in the maternity ward, so the fire definitely affected her ability to leave. I can’t remember her name, but it started with N.”

  Rafe glanced at Kerry, who was sitting at the head of the table and to his direct left, his own sense of attention on high alert, knowing she had to be getting excited, too. If they could search hospital records for female nurses whose names started with N, and then narrow the search to those who worked in the maternity ward...

  “Nan! Her name was Nan,” Noelle exclaimed, throwing her hands up off the table and then settling them back down. “Nan Belman, maybe. Telman...” She snapped her fingers. “Gelman, that’s it. Nan Gelman. She was a real grump, even on normal days.”

  “Do know where we can find her?” Rafe wanted to jump out of his seat.

  “I have no idea,” the other woman said. “I’m sorry. I remember that she didn’t live in town, but I don’t know if I ever knew where she did live. I just remember thinking that maybe she was always such a grouch because of her commute. I know making that drive across the long desert roads into town at ten o’clock at night would have made me tense, and having to make a long drive after a shift just to get home and rest would have done it, too. A lot of people didn’t like her, but I kind of felt sorry for her.”

  Rafe was eager to be gone, to get on with what they’d found out, but Kerry took a couple more minutes, talking with Noelle, listening to her memories. Gaining information beyond the facts, he figured out eventually. Because nothing that happened was just a series of events; it also included the motivations and feelings of the people who figured in those events. By the time they walked with Noelle to the elevator, and thanked her, he realized that Kerry had just obtained a more thorough picture of the day Ace had been switched than Marlowe and Callum had managed to do.

  And it left him wondering—did she do the same when she thought about the things that had happened to them? Did she try to put herself in his shoes—to understand the motivations and feelings that had driven him?

  She wouldn’t have been successful at it. There was no way she’d ever understand the boy he’d been with her, the friendship they’d shared, and put it together with the choice he’d made. Because she was missing a key fact.

  Which meant she’d have spent twenty-three years spinning her wheels. Settling for solutions that didn’t fit—at best. Or she was still battling the situation.

  Was that why she was still single? Unwilling to trust in love? Because she didn’t trust herself to know when she had it? To know it was real?

  For the first time since he’d made a promise to himself at thirteen to keep his reasons for ending their friendship to himself, Rafe wondered if not telling Kerry about Payne’s ultimatum had been the best choice.

  Chapter 14

  Finally. She was getting somewhere. She had a name. Nan Gelman. And a onetime title: maternity nurse.

  If Ace Colton didn’t shoot his father, and she was not at all convinced that that was the case, then there was someone else out there who could make another attempt on Payne’s life. Someone from the Colton family’s past? She must know something about Ace’s birth, and that must be connected to the shooting.

  It was just too coincidental that there had been no viable threats against Payne Colton in recent history. And then right after the board of Colton Oil received an untraceable email with the truth of Ace’s lack of Colton DNA, Payne got shot? The two incidents had to be related. It was the only thing that made sense.

  Could this nurse, Nan Gelman, be involved somehow? If she had information, she wouldn’t want to upset the Coltons, who could sue her, but if the information helped...they’d be grateful. If nothing else, the woman would know someone else who’d worked at the hospital when she did. And surely she’d remember the birth of the first Colton child, since, as Noelle had stated, it was such a big deal to the hospital.

  And Nan Gelman had worked later than planned Christmas morning. She’d been there at the time the babies would have been switched.
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  Kerry discussed her theories with Rafe on the miles-long drive from the hospital back to Colton Oil, where he’d left his truck. Or rather, gave him her rundown. She didn’t stop talking long enough to allow him to get a word in. Couldn’t take a chance that he was going to make things personal again. She just didn’t trust herself not to respond.

  Being with him all day, working with him—they’d never had this much time together in one stint in the past. Not since they were five at least and she couldn’t really remember before that. After his father had died, all of their time together had been stolen moments over the hill behind the barn.

  So, yeah, it was nice not to have to watch the clock every second, fearing that they wouldn’t get told all that they had to tell.

  Ironic that she now had the time with him, but didn’t have the freedom to share all her thoughts. Their current association had to be all business. It was the relationship she was allowing herself to have with him.

  The one she’d chosen.

  She couldn’t see him otherwise.

  And she wanted to see him.

  For now. It made no sense. Craving time with the man who’d broken her heart and soul was illogical. She didn’t get it.

  But she knew she needed to, if she was ever going to be fully whole and happy.

  She had to find her life without him in it. Find the mystery that drew her to him and solve it. To dissolve it.

  “There are trunks in the attic of the mansion filled with keepsakes,” Rafe said as she pulled up to his truck. “Each sibling has one. I’ll get up there and go through Ace’s tonight...see if I can find anything from when he was born...”

  She put the Jeep in Park.

  “Can you do that? Without his permission?” It wasn’t like she had a warrant. And Ace Colton wasn’t likely to let her paw through his stuff. But that Rafe would do that... For her...