He grinned. Remembering when Callum was about four and had come to him with jelly all over his face and shirt and begged Rafe to help him make it gone so he didn’t get in trouble.
“Got it,” he said. “And this is all overkill, you know.”
“Not from what I understand, it’s not,” Callum said. “I had a talk with Detective Wilder earlier this evening. She called up to the hospital before she left work to check on Dad. You’ve had at least two attempts on your life, Rafe, and that’s nothing to shrug off.”
Maybe not. He figured if someone really wanted him dead, he would be.
And that maybe Callum just needed something to do.
“It’s nice having you around,” he said, as the two of them approached his truck in the dark.
“I’m turning down assignments left and right,” the broad-shouldered man said with a shrug. “There’s a shooter out here somewhere and who knows when he’ll be back to try to finish the job. Especially if Dad can reveal his identity, and I’m fairly certain he can, since the asshole faced him point-blank, shot him at close range. Things are quiet now, with Dad in a coma. And he’s not ever left alone. Why risk getting caught killing a man if he might never regain consciousness? But if he comes out of it...”
“You’re a good son.” Rafe tapped Callum on the back. “I pity the man if he tries a second time.” He wasn’t kidding.
“You’re a good son, too, Rafe,” Callum said, suddenly serious, standing by Rafe’s truck door, preventing him from getting in. “You and Ace, you’re more like Dad than any of us. You two are the sons he wanted. Asher keeps the ranch running, but the ranch is more hobby to Dad than anything. Colton Oil is his lifeblood. Grayson, he’s off saving lives instead of joining the business, and me, I’m really off, doing nothing for the family. But you and Ace...”
“I’m just doing what I’m good at,” Rafe said. “Same as you.”
But as he got in his truck, and felt Callum’s support at his back all the way home, he actually felt like a real Colton.
And the feeling was good.
* * *
The knock at her door had Kerry pulling the gun out of her holster and pointing as she approached her front door from a little to the side of it, in case someone put a bullet through it, hoping to hit her as she answered. At six in the morning, she knew that whoever was there wasn’t making a common house call.
She caught a glimpse of the street in front of her house, looking past the front door through the window in the living room.
Rafe’s truck. What the hell?
Lowering her gun, she took a peek through the peephole, just to make sure he was alone and then pulled open her door. “You scared the hell out of me,” she told him. As her anger dissipated, at the tail end of the adrenaline the knock had sent searing through her, she wished she’d thought twice about opening her door.
The man was freshly showered. She could tell by the smell. In jeans that looked sinfully good on his lean, long legs, and a button-down blue shirt that was properly tailored to him, he’d definitely changed since she’d last seen him. His cowboy boots, a different pair from the day before, were equally flashy as those had been. He’d forgone the shave. And his blond bushy hair could have done with a brush.
“What do you want?” she asked. And then it occurred to her, he could be in trouble. Something could have happened.
“Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not okay, may I come in?”
“Of course.” She stood back, let him in, glanced around outside, but nothing was out of place.
“What happened?” Thank God she’d already showered and dressed. She wanted time to get back up on Mustang Mountain after she’d finished her work for the day. Gun still in her hand, until she knew what they were dealing with, she led him into the dining room. Away from any windows anyone who’d followed him could shoot through.
“Nothing happened. There’s no one out there,” he told her, apparently having followed her gaze. “You can put the gun away.”
Slowly, watching him, she did so. And realized her heart was pounding. “What’s going on?”
“I would never ask you to ditch your family in order to be with me,” he said, his tone kind of harsh.
That again. She’d thought they were done with it. Needed to be done with it.
And was touched that he’d obviously taken her words to heart to the point of showing up at her house disheveled—as disheveled as Rafe Colton ever got—at six in the morning. “It wasn’t about you asking me, Rafe, it was about you including me.”
It shouldn’t matter that it was important to him. It really shouldn’t.
They had to let go. Both of them. They just had to do it. Like ripping a bandage off a wound.
“I wasn’t referring to twenty-three years ago,” he said. She frowned. Had he been drinking?
She was pretty adept at discerning such things. Had a lifetime of experience doing so. Didn’t see it in him. But...
“I don’t get it,” she said.
“I’m a Colton,” he told her. “And you’re asking me to leave my family in order to be with you.”
What on earth? She frowned. “Rafe...” She started slowly, like she was speaking to someone who was confused. Because she was. “I never, ever asked you to leave your family. Or to be with me.”
“No, you just tell me we can’t be together, and the only reasoning you give, in your various ways, comes down to the fact that I’m a Colton.”
He wanted to be with her? He really wanted to be with her? By the looks of him, he’d spent a great bit of the night stewing about the fact that she’d told him the day before that she wouldn’t see him.
Because a Colton wasn’t used to being told no? Didn’t know how to accept a refusal?
Was it a matter of pride to him now?
Or did he really care?
“You being a Colton is what started our separation,” she told him, needing to get the words right. To help them both understand. “But it’s not what’s keeping us apart.”
Granted, she wouldn’t be happy living in a mansion. But then, he didn’t live in one. She’d never seen the house he’d built. On “their” land.
Because she’d meant that much to him.
But that was all beside the point.
“It’s you, Rafe, and, probably me, too,” she admitted. “Me, because I’m done. I’ve carried our love with me for decades, keeping it alive, only to find that all I was carrying was memories.”
“How can you say that? Look at us. We’ve been back in contact four days and have hardly been separated since. And let me tell you, lady, that’s not just because of the job we’re doing together. I didn’t hold you the other night because of the job. You weren’t crying because of the job. You didn’t climb down off that bed because of the job. And we most certainly didn’t make incredible love, nine times, because of the job.”
“You counted how many times we did it?”
And that mattered how in that moment?
She had to help him understand. Her sanity, and future happiness, depended on it. “We have a past, Rafe. A precious one that will always connect us and will always have the power to evoke emotions within us. But it’s in the past.”
“Because I’m a Colton.”
“No. Because you weren’t willing to fight for us, in spite of you being a Colton. Or me not being good enough for them. You let us go. Not just physically, but in your heart.”
She saw the second her words hit home. It was like he’d been sucker punched. She stood there, physically watching reality dawn—in the drop of his shoulders, the shock in his gaze, the way the hand that had been outstretched to her dropped at his side.
It was almost done.
Chapter 22
Kerry was just getting ready to tell Rafe that the time had come for her to let him go fr
om her heart, too, when there was another knock on her front door.
“What the hell!” She moved forward more quickly this time, but careful as always to take precautions. Another vehicle was out front, behind Rafe’s truck. A somewhat new-looking white sedan. A glance through the peephole showed her a woman she’d never seen before, middle-aged, with graying hair, looking strung out.
Motioning to Rafe to get back into the dining room, behind the wall, waiting until he’d done so, she slowly pulled open the door, her gun ready to aim and fire.
“Detective Wilder?” the woman asked.
With her free hand she pointed to the badge already hooked to her belt. “Yes.”
“My name’s Lavinia Alvin. Grant Alvin was my husband.” Looking more frightened than dangerous, the woman glanced behind her and, not sure she was making the right choice, Kerry let her in the house.
And then checked her for weapons the second she was in the door.
“I don’t blame you for being careful,” Lavinia told her. “I heard you’ve been asking around about your brother’s death this past year, even though it was ruled an accident,” she said. Standing in Kerry’s foyer in jeans and wrinkled T-shirt, she had her lower lip sunken in as she spoke, and her thin, shoulder-length hair hanging around cheeks that were marked with a couple of scabs. “Tyler died just like my husband did,” the woman said, surprisingly well-spoken.
Was Rafe listening?
The Rafe she’d known would be.
“Grant had some shady dealings,” Lavinia said. “Started out to feed my habit. I got addicted to pain pills when I had my back surgery and just couldn’t get off them. Too much pain, still,” she added.
While she felt deeply sorry for the woman, a familiar feeling of excitement started to settle over Kerry. The cop’s instinct that told her she was about to get her missing piece. Someone out to screw you didn’t generally stand around and talk about their medical history.
Not with that genuine tone and unmistakable sorrow in eyes that were watery and looking straight at you.
“He was trying to break free,” she said. “I’d been approved for a new surgery, but had to be clean to qualify for it. I’m supposed to be heading into a clinic next week. Grant was up on the mountain, getting rid of any evidence that could link him to what was going on up there. He was intending to tell them that he was quitting, that he wouldn’t be following any more illegal orders, the night he was killed. He was going to put in for a leave from the forest service, too, so he could be in Tucson with me.” Lips that hadn’t been steady to begin with started to shake.
“Do you know what was going on up there?” Kerry asked. She had to stick to business. To help people by getting scum off their streets—and mountains. “Or who your husband worked for?”
Lavinia nodded, glanced behind her at the door, and around her, too. “Odin Rogers,” she said, and everything inside Kerry went on alert.
She’d known. She’d been right.
But that meant Rogers wasn’t just a two-bit slime that she suspected anymore. He was a real danger to Mountain Valley. A murderous threat.
“His real business is stockpiling weapons, but he runs drugs from across the border, too,” Lavinia continued, her voice low, but her tone intense. “I wasn’t going to say nothing, especially after Grant was killed, but he’s watching me. Rogers and his goons. Everywhere I go, even outside my house, they’re watching me.”
Did that mean they were outside Kerry’s home? Ready to strike?
“The only way I got away from them this time was by meeting my sister at the grocery, changing clothes with her and taking her car,” she said. “She and her husband drove down from Phoenix to help me. She had another change of clothes for herself, not the ones she walked in with, and she put those on, with a hat, and her husband pulled up to the curb and she got in and they left. They called me when they were back out on the road, and waited to make sure I got away without being followed.”
“Where are they now?”
“In nearby Mountain Valley, waiting to hear from me,” Lavinia said. “But I’m not calling them. I’m not going to put them in any real danger. I just had to be able to get to you without Odin’s people knowing, so you have a chance to do something about Odin and when my sister came up with the plan, I figured it would work without them getting hurt. I wanted to see you in person, wanted you to look me in the eye and know I’m telling the truth. Grant deserves that.”
The woman was smart. Conscientious. Kerry wondered who she’d been, what she’d done, before a back injury had changed the course of her life.
Obviously she’d been someone who’d inspired Grant Alvin’s love and loyalty. Kerry hadn’t much liked the man, but she now knew why he’d wanted her and Rafe off the mountain.
“Do you have any idea where on the mountain they’re holding their stash?” she asked next, already planning the phone calls she was about to make.
First and foremost, to get Lavinia Alvin into protective custody. The rest had waited two years. It could hold on a few more hours.
“I just know it’s in an old mine,” she said. “It used to be a working mine, a hundred years ago. It’s near the middle of the mountain, away from the road, because Grant had to cover the area on foot. His job was to keep hikers and people like you away from it, and to run lookout when merchandise was going in or out. When they’re moving guns, they use off-road vehicles to get them most of the way and then have to break them out of containers and carry them the rest of the way.
“Grant had to spend the night there once...he got caught up on the mountain when a monsoon hit. He said you go downhill to get in it, and then there’s a flat area where the guns and drugs are stored. He slept down there with the guns. I thought they’d killed him then...” She shivered, and Kerry offered her a seat in the living room. Said she’d get her a sweater.
“A hoodie would be good, if you have one,” the older woman said, and when Kerry grabbed one out of the closet just beyond them, Lavinia was still standing right there by the door.
At some point Odin’s thugs were going to realize that Lavinia had slipped their watch. It would take some time. They’d have to look down every aisle in the grocery store first. But they’d get there.
And when they did...
“I have to go,” Lavinia blurted. “They’re going to figure out I’m gone and I don’t want them to know I came here. They’ll know they’ve been found out...”
“You can’t go out there!” With a hand on the woman’s shoulder, Kerry tried again to get her into the living room. “I’m going to make a phone call and get you into a safe house. Outside of Mustang Valley. I can ask the DA to provide police protection at all times, night and day, until we bring this guy in. But as a cop, I can tell you, you’ll probably have it anyway. We need to stop this guy and we’ll protect you on our own dime if that’s what we need to do. No one else is going to die...”
She wanted Rafe out of there, too. Being on Odin Rogers’s radar was like an infectious, terminal disease. No way could she bear the thought of it bringing Rafe down, too...
She let go of Lavinia to reach for her phone, and the other woman jerked at the front door. “Nowhere is safe for me,” she said, and ran out.
Kerry turned to go after her but only got one step toward the door before two gunshots rang out, one after the other.
* * *
“Kerry!” Heart in his throat, Rafe ran from around the corner to see Kerry alive and running out the front door. Following her, he stopped himself from calling her name again. He needed to support her, not distract her.
Keeping himself covered by a half wall, a pillar attached to the overhang across her front door, he saw a black SUV pull away from the curb across the street and down one house. At the same time, Kerry darted out from behind the other pillar, gun drawn, and ran over to the body a few feet away.
He hadn’t seen Lavinia Alvin, had only heard her voice, but he knew that the woman who was lying there with her eyes wide-open, and bleeding from the chest and the throat, had been the ranger’s wife. Kerry’s finger was pressed to the other side of the woman’s neck.
“She’s gone,” she said, grabbing her phone and pushing a speed dial. “Come on,” she said, “give me your keys.”
He didn’t hesitate, just tossed them to her as they ran, and jumped into the passenger side of his own truck, whether or not she intended him to ride along.
She was armed. He wasn’t.
He also wasn’t sitting this one out.
“Chief, I’ve got a body outside my house,” Kerry was saying into the phone, her voice even but also filled with urgency, as she broke speed limits. “Lavinia Alvin, wife of Grant Alvin. She just gave me the goods on Odin Rogers. I’m after the shooter. There are two of them in a black SUV...” She rattled off the license plate number. “I’m in Rafe Colton’s truck. He’s with me. I’ll keep you posted.” She disconnected the call immediately.
“You didn’t wait for a response,” Rafe said, holding the grab handle above his seat as he watched her race down her street and on to the next. With a couple of quick turns she took a shortcut out to the boulevard and got there just in time to see the SUV speed past them. “Hold on,” Kerry said, and turned quickly to follow them.
As early as it was, there was little traffic out, for which Rafe was thankful. For their safety, but also for the citizens of Mustang Valley, who could be caught up in hell just for going about their daily lives.
He’d just heard a woman talking about her husband, about back surgery, grieving the second chance they’d almost had, and then seconds later had seen her lying dead on the ground, her blood draining out around her.
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