The Colton Ransom

by Marie Ferrarella

  Poor Faye.

  Murdered by the devil’s lackey, a hired gun who’d been caught and locked away, though the mastermind behind the murder was still at large. The writer of the note in Kate’s pocket. Someone who, she dreaded, remained on the ranch. Maybe someone she spoke to every day or whom she’d helped prepare meals for. Without money or anywhere else to go, her only two choices were to carry on with her job, hoping that law enforcement levied justice onto the devil behind Faye’s death before more harm was done, or take matters into her own hands and do what she could to help the investigation.

  The note was a testament to her efforts, not that anything had come of the stolen evidence. She’d nearly been caught red-handed tonight in the pantry by Fiona, and she could well imagine the repercussions of being caught with evidence she had no business possessing.

  On one of the two floors above her, the stairwell door opened with a bang that made Kate gasp. The tray tilted perilously. She felt the shift of weight as the dish of pudding slid, the teacup, too.

  Her gasp turned into a cry of panic as she bent her knees and crooked her elbows, willing the tray to level. No, no, no. Not the pudding.

  But her correction was too severe, overcompensating for her first error. The tray lightened as the entirety of the contents crashed to the stairs in an explosion of shattering glass and clanging silver.

  She squeezed her eyes closed and hugged the tray flat against her chest.

  Agnes was going to be furious. Delivering dessert to Mr. Colton’s sickbed was supposed to be the final task of her sixteen-hour workday. Fiona had asked the favor of her on the sly since they hadn’t secured Agnes’s permission. Kate wouldn’t put it past the bitter-tempered head chef to demand Kate’s dismissal, as she’d threatened to do almost daily since Kate took the assistant-cook job four years earlier.

  The flicker of a moving flashlight accompanied hushed footsteps on the stairs above. Someone was moving through the dark in her direction. Wordlessly.

  A savior or the devil?

  Surrounded as she was by broken glass, she wouldn’t have been able to move even if she could’ve convinced her feet to unstick from the ground. Even if she was able to decide if she should climb toward the person whose footsteps were getting louder and closer or if she should run away.

  “Hello?” she whispered.

  No answer.

  She shuffled her feet backward, unintentionally kicking glass shards with her heels. With a tinkling sound, they tumbled down a step.

  Light, either from a candle or flashlight, came into view on the stairs above her. Another door opened, this time from the ground floor, and with the new arrival, more glowing light. The descending footsteps grew louder, the wobbling light brighter.

  Kate held her breath, too terrified to move. Damn the darkness and damn her crippling fear.

  With a crack of surging electricity, the lights came on. Kate’s relief was tempered by the sight on the landing above her of Mathilda holding a flashlight, her expression as severe as her black, high-collared dress. She held her lips in a pucker that drew attention to the numerous little wrinkles on her upper lip. “What on earth,” she said with slow precision.

  Strict but fair on the staff under her command, Mathilda had earned her position in the household through decades of devoted service. She ranked above every other member of the staff, yet the glass ceiling between her and the family was ever-present. Kate didn’t envy her the loneliness of the position.

  A rattle of dishes behind Kate preceded Agnes’s grating voice. “Oh, Kate. What in the name of all things holy did you do, child?”

  Kate bit her tongue against a retort. A child, she was not. A penniless widow, grieving mother and pastry chef, yes, but not a child. Not for a long time.

  Twisting on the spot, she glanced at the dessert tray in Agnes’s hands before fixing her gaze on the round woman’s spiky, persimmon-red hair. “When the power went out, I slipped and the tray fell. There was nothing I could do.”

  A lie, but a necessary one. She had never dared confess her fear of the dark to anyone but dear, sweet Faye, and she certainly wasn’t going to spill her soul for the Dragon Lady—the whispered nickname some of the staff used for Agnes. Kate didn’t have much to call her own anymore but she still had her pride.

  Without a word, Kate knelt and loaded the wreckage onto her tray.

  “Look what you’ve done,” Agnes clucked. “What a disaster.” With every word, Agnes’s voice climbed in both decibel and register. “Careless, is what you are. And where is Fiona?”

  Kate opened her mouth, but spotted the note near Mathilda’s shoe. It must have fallen out of her pocket when the tray tipped. She reached for it but Mathilda was quicker.

  Her heart dropped to her stomach at the sight of Mathilda unfolding the paper.

  “Is this what I think it is?” Mathilda asked. Her eyes darted as she read. “How did you...?”

  On pure instinct, Kate reached for the paper, but Mathilda lifted it out of arm’s reach.

  “She looks guilty. What is it?” Agnes asked.

  Mathilda looked over Kate’s head at Agnes. “It appears to be a copy of the kidnapping-for-hire note.” Returning her focus to Kate, she added, “Where did you get this?”

  There was no good answer that excused her misconduct, or at least Kate wasn’t clever enough to come up with one on the spot.

  The real answer was that she’d brought a tray of sticky buns to the Dead Police Department under the ruse that it was a thank-you from the Colton family. While the officers indulged, Kate pilfered through the police file. Then while they washed the sticky syrup from their hands, she’d made a copy. She had no intention of revealing the truth, however. “I can’t tell you that, but I swear I didn’t mean any harm with it. I thought maybe I’d see something in the note to help the police. Faye deserves justice for what happened to her.”

  “Of course she does, dear. She was a darling woman and we all miss her terribly. I’m sure the police are doing all they can. The Coltons are working closely with them, as am I. There is no need to put yourself at risk unnecessarily.” She returned the letter to Kate. “My advice—destroy this before it gets you into trouble.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She folded the paper and returned it to her pocket.

  “Why do you also have a tray, Agnes?” Mathilda’s tone was placating.

  “Mr. Colton buzzed. He hadn’t received his dessert yet and was in quite a state. That Fiona is a lazy one. Makes us all look bad. She probably would’ve stolen away to eat the sweets herself. Takes advantage, that girl. And you—” She leveled a sneer at Kate. “I have half a mind to fire you both.”

  Kate set the last manageable shard on the tray and straightened. The remaining debris would require the use of a broom. There was no use defending herself during one of Agnes’s tirades. The best course of action was to wait it out in stoic silence.

  Mathilda’s expression cracked into a smile that didn’t quite reach the vibrant blue eyes. “Now, Agnes. It’s not the poor girl’s fault that the wind knocked a tree onto the power lines.”

  So she was a poor girl now, as though she was twelve instead of twenty-seven. Kate kicked a tiny shard of teacup with a bit too much oomph.

  Glancing at the disturbance, Mathilda continued. “I’m certain there is a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why Kate is doing the task you specifically assigned to Fiona. Isn’t that right, Kate?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Fiona isn’t feeling well tonight, with the new baby on the way, and I offered to help so she could get off her feet.”

  “That’s kind of you.”

  “Oh, now, Mathilda, you’re being too easy on her,” Agnes butted in. She wagged a finger at Kate. “You know good and well that we can’t have the likes of you parading in front of the family in your stained chef smock and—” she flicked a grimace at Kate’s neck, where Kate could feel the wisps of hair at her nape sticking to her perspiring skin “—common sweat.”

  There wou
ld be no use in pointing out that she was wearing a jacket, not a smock—and a pristine one at that—or that the air-conditioning unit had shut off along with the lights and Kate was perspiring because she’d been standing in an unventilated shaft for nearly ten minutes.

  “And you decided, all on your own,” Agnes continued, “that you’re good enough to serve not just any Colton, but the head of the household?” She hunched her arms around the fresh tray she’d brought with her, hugging it as if Kate’s lowly station might taint the precious dish of bread pudding sitting atop it.

  This new pudding was from the same batch as the ruined one, but without the whipped cream and whiskey sauce. Agnes had forgotten to add them. Kate squelched a sniff of shock.

  From everything Kate knew about Jethro Colton’s long list of sins, it was he who wasn’t fit to lick her chef clogs, not the other way around. And anyhow, Agnes might think Kate too beneath Mr. Colton’s station to serve him like a proper maid, but she would never, ever, present him with an incomplete dessert.

  She summoned the remnants of her composure. “I thought, with it being so late and with the ranch short on staff, it wouldn’t be so bad for me to step in.”

  Agnes threw an arm up in dramatic disgust. “Wouldn’t be so bad? In the name of all things holy, she’ll get us all canned.”

  “Agnes,” Mathilda soothed, “of course Kate’s face is flushed from working in the heat of the kitchen.” She set a supportive hand on Kate’s shoulder. “But am I noticing correctly that you changed into a clean smock, dear?”

  “A clean jacket, yes, ma’am.” Kate’s face heated. She loathed being talked down to day in and day out by these women who controlled the flow of life and information at Dead River Ranch. But with no money or family she could turn to, this job was all she had. At least it came with a well-stocked kitchen to work in and a house of people hungry for sweets.

  “As you so astutely pointed out, there’s no time to waste,” Mathilda continued to Agnes. “If Mr. Colton doesn’t get his dessert in short order, we’ll all pay the price for the delay. There’s no sense in you traipsing up two flights of stairs to Mr. Colton’s quarters, not after the scrumptious meals you slaved all day to prepare.” Agnes swelled up like a toad at the saccharine compliment. “Allow Kate to do the work.”

  Well, gee. Thanks. She mashed her lips together and thought about cheesecake. Plain, with a single fresh strawberry sliced on top.

  “It would serve you right, Miss High and Mighty. You might as well take over serving Mr. Colton all his meals. If anyone can teach you a lesson about keeping to your rightful place in this house, it would be Jethro Colton.”

  Mathilda interrupted with a reproachful tsk. “Mind your tone. He’s Mr. Colton to you.”

  Agnes’s glare cut past Kate and narrowed on Mathilda. “As if you don’t know what he’s like.”

  A chorus of chimes, low but distinctive, came through the open ground-level door.

  Mathilda gazed at the door, her lips pursed. “What in the world would someone be thinking, intruding on the family at such a late hour?”

  “You’re not expecting anyone?” Agnes asked.

  “Of course not. Mr. Colton needs his rest. I’m afraid our late-night visitor is going to be sorely disappointed. Excuse me.” Holding her long, black skirt out of the way of the spill, Mathilda sidestepped around Agnes’s ample form and strode with neat, stiff steps down the stairs and through the door.

  “I think I’d like to see who it is, myself.” Agnes shoved the dessert tray into Kate’s hands. “Go on, now, and hurry up. You think you’re too good for kitchen work? Fine. From this point forward, Mr. Colton’s meals are your responsibility. Maybe he’ll have more mercy on you than he does on the rest of us.”

  * * *

  Nothing had ever been handed to Levi Colton except his curse of a name.

  Not love or prestige, and definitely not money.

  In fact, it was a wonder his fingers retained the dexterity and sensitivity needed of a doctor given the succession of backbreaking jobs he’d toiled through to fight for the life he wanted.

  For the hundredth time since he’d driven through the opulent gold-and-white entrance gate to Dead River Ranch, he asked himself the same impossible question he’d been asking the whole drive from Salt Lake City.

  What the hell was he thinking, coming here?

  The reason had seemed so solid that morning when he’d left his apartment. And it had nothing to do with sympathy for Gabriella, who’d burst into the hospital office he shared with the other first-year residents, with her high-end tailored clothes and porcelain features, begging him to return to Dead River Ranch, insisting that he was the key to her poor, dear father’s survival.

  Return. As if he’d ever been welcomed there before. As if he would’ve set a toe on Jethro Colton’s property even if he’d been invited. He should’ve never said “never” because here he was, winding through the ranchland en route to the mansion he’d seen only in pictures.

  What the hell was he thinking? Why would he go out of his way, jeopardize his standing at the hospital and place himself in Jethro’s line of fire after he’d sworn to never do so again?

  “This is my last chance to look into the old man’s eyes before he dies,” he muttered in reminder as he took a corner too fast. It was the same answer, the only answer, he’d been able to come up with in the seven days since Gabriella ran from his office in tears, proclaiming, “You’re a lot like Dad. Stubborn to the end.”

  The insult hit its mark. Levi had smarted for days at the comparison, stewing about all the many ways he wasn’t like Jethro and cursing Gabriella because she’d made him feel something other than indifference for the Coltons, a state of mind Levi worked diligently to maintain.

  But for seven straight nights the usual dreams that haunted him were absent, replaced by his mother’s image standing beside Gabriella, both of them chanting that he was the spitting image of Jethro. As bad as him, they’d said, sneering. As corrupt and heartless. Time after time he woke drenched in sweat and breathing hard.

  Last night, he’d reached his limit. Hating the way the dreams and subsequent cold sweat made him feel vulnerable, he’d pushed from the bed and taken a shower without turning on the light. The bathroom fixture was too bright for 3:00 a.m., and besides, the darkness was exciting, as if he was bucking the rules. An explorer luxuriating in an underground waterfall.

  The whimsy of it almost erased the vision of his mother from his head. But not quite. The knot in his stomach wouldn’t completely ease. He braced his hands against the tile, picturing his mother, wondering how accurate his memory of her was or if it had morphed over the years into someone more beautiful, less damaged by the world. He’d have to unearth the box of photographs from storage to know for sure.

  Standing there in the dark shower, thinking about her and the unsettling dreams, the eeriest feeling crept through him, as if he sensed the presence of his mother and she was trying to tell him something important.

  The problem was, Levi didn’t believe in ghosts. He was a doctor, for pity’s sake. He didn’t buy for one second that his mother had returned from beyond the grave to give him a message that he was the spitting image of the man she’d obsessed over until her dying breath. She’d said that very thing repeatedly while he was growing up, and so the dreams shouldn’t have got to him as profoundly as they had. Just random memories surfacing.

  Except...

  Except he couldn’t shake the idea that he needed to prove the lack of resemblance once and for all. He needed to look Jethro in the eye one last time before he died.

  Ludicrous because what did he think he’d see in those eyes besides Jethro’s typical arrogance and spite? He supposed regret would be too much to hope for from a man who didn’t have a soul. Then again, maybe Levi had come back to Wyoming because he knew it would infuriate Jethro to lie there helpless in a sickbed while Levi took charge.

  Hadn’t that always been a fantasy of his as a little bo
y—that his father would need him?

  Wincing with bitterness at the memory of the naive, hopeful child he’d been, he crested a ridge and the estate and surrounding pastures came into view. Illuminated by the moon, white fences spread in all directions over the rambling land, dividing it into sections for the livestock.

  The house itself rose in the center of the spread in grand design, looming over the grounds in absolute darkness. Not a single light was on anywhere around or inside the main house, but only flickers of brightness behind the drawn curtains—candles or flashlights—as though a power line had been cut.

  Given the violent wind, it wasn’t an outlandish theory that a falling tree had taken out the ranch’s power. In the beams of his headlights, leaves danced and skittered across the circular driveway.

  He stepped from the car. A gust of warm, foul-smelling summer wind shoved against the side of his body, flipping his shirt collar up and pelting his cheek with bits of dirt. Those were two things he never missed about Wyoming—the relentless wind and the odor of livestock.

  Folding his collar into place, he studied the house. Thick, beige stucco walls with rows of identical windows reached up to the sky like a fortress, impenetrable and impersonal. How could anyone find comfort living in such a monstrosity? A monstrosity for a monster, he supposed.

  Gabriella hadn’t said if she or either of her two sisters lived here still, but he’d bet they did. He’d bet Jethro kept his children on short leashes—the bastard son excluded, of course.

  His old friend hatred crawled into his heart. He loathed that he was still quick to anger about how the old man had treated Levi and his mother. Because anger meant he cared. Why couldn’t he go numb about the past like he wanted to? If not numbness, then he’d settle for peace.

  Maybe peace would finally come to him when Jethro succumbed to leukemia.

  As he watched from the driveway, the place snapped into brightness. Floodlights burst to life, illuminating the driveway in blinding light. Startled, Levi jumped and gripped the car door. His heart hammering, he squinted until his eyes adjusted. Faint cheers, women’s voices, erupted on one of the upper floors.