Mission--Colton Justice

by Jennifer Morey

  * * *

  “I would suggest you stand very still and keep your hands where I can see them,” Emma St. John said, pointing her 9mm directly at the powerful back of the man standing in her sister’s living room. “Slowly turn around and don’t make any sudden moves. I’d really hate to end the day with killing someone. It was going so well. Besides, blood is really hard to get out of the carpet.”

  The man did as he was instructed.

  Whoa.

  Emma straightened, her stomach giving a funny little lurch when she saw him. It took all her professional private investigator willpower not to react to the man’s gorgeous features. He certainly didn’t dress like a thief, but Emma never took any unnecessary chances. That suit was expensive; the tie, too. He looked a bit tired—his eyes gave that away—but other than that, nothing. She absorbed the details she could, her observation skills her biggest asset. But she was frustrated when this man didn’t reveal much.

  She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but this man wasn’t it. Big and wide-shouldered, he stood framed in the light from the lamp in the living room. His fingers were long and well shaped, and there was something almost deceptively casual about his stance, about the way his hands weren’t quite relaxed. Something lethal and a little too careless, as though he had small regard for danger.

  Experiencing a strange flutter at the unexpected thought, Emma clenched her palm around the grip of the gun. She was looking for her sister, and she had a gut feeling that something was terribly wrong.

  Lily had to work late tonight and Emma had agreed to pick up Matty from day care and watch him until Lily finished her shift. Except, when she’d gone to the base, they’d told her Matty hadn’t been dropped off today, nor had Lily called in to let them know he wouldn’t be there.

  “Who are you?” she demanded, her fear for Lily overriding anything else.

  “Drop the weapon and kick it over here,” a male voice said from behind her. “I also would prefer not to kill anyone today.”

  She complied, the voice of the man who had the drop on her firm and commanding. Feeling as if her heart was going to come right through her chest, she watched the guy in front of her approach, her heartbeat stopping completely when he reached into his suit coat. He was stern and unsmiling as he met her gaze with an unreadable expression, his chiseled features neutral.

  A warrior. That was what he was.

  A cop, she thought a moment before he pulled out the NCIS badge and showed it to her. Navy cops. What were they doing here? “Oh, God. What happened to Lily?” she said, dropping her hands and taking a step toward him, her voice compressed.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Emma St. John, Lily’s sister.”

  The man who had been holding the gun on her came around to face her, and he was very different. Much more casually dressed in chocolate pants, a baby blue Polo and deck shoes, his hair a mixture of blond and brown—very California beach boy. He flashed his badge. “I’m Special Agent Austin Beck, and this is Special Agent Derrick Gunn.”

  She took another step as the men exchanged glances and her stomach plummeted. “Why are you here? What happened to my sister?”

  “She was found at the bottom of the stairs hours ago. She’s at the base hospital. It appears she fell.”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  A strong hand gripped her wrist, and something wrenched loose when she met Agent Gunn’s flat, unreadable gaze. Grasping her shoulder, he drew her over to the sofa and guided her down to the cushions, his tone firm when he said, “I know this is terrible news and you want to be with your sister, but we need to ask you some questions. Where is your nephew?”

  Cold to the bone and scared to death, she sank into the sofa, the solid pressure of his hand on her shoulder strangely reinforcing. She stared at him, her heart hammering in her throat; then she drew a deep, stabilizing breath. “Oh, man, that’s why I’m here,” she said, brushing at her hair. She was trying to recover, to catch her balance. She clasped her hands between her thighs, aware of the panic rising and trying to remain calm. Getting hysterical wasn’t going to help the matter. She needed to think like a PI, not a panicked family member. “I—” She paused and took another deep, shaky breath, then said, her voice still unsteady, “I was supposed to pick Matty... Matthew, up from day care.”

  “Do you normally pick up your nephew?” Austin asked.

  “No, Lily had to work late today, and I was going to watch him.” Fear twisted up her stomach. “I knew something was wrong,” she said as her voice dropped into a distressed murmur. Agent Beck turned away and pulled out his cell. After dialing, he started to talk. He was speaking to someone about notifying NCMEC. Emma didn’t know what NCMEC stood for, but before she could say anything, Agent Beck stopped talking and asked for a description of Matthew.

  “What is this for?” she asked.

  “National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,” he replied.

  Emma pulled up her phone and navigated to a recent picture of him, sending it to his phone when he requested it. Then he was focusing again on his conversation.

  “Ms. St. John—”

  “Emma is fine,” she said, absently caught up once again in her shock. This couldn’t be happening. She was supposed to watch out for her baby sister. But they’d had an argument and Lily was being stubborn. She was still absorbing this information. Matty gone? Lily hurt. “How bad is she?” Their argument had been intense, but Emma was always there for Lily and she knew that. Their conversation had been strained, but for the sake of Lily’s job and Matty’s care, they had both agreed they would talk again with more level heads. Work things out.

  “Critical. She’s in a coma. I’m sorry that you have to go through all of this, but we’re here to help.” Concern showed in his unique deep blue eyes. “Where is the boy’s day care?”

  “On base—Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, NAB.” She took a fortifying breath. “They told me Lily hadn’t dropped him off. At first I thought maybe Lily or Matty was sick, and she forgot to call me. She can be flighty, but she’s been so responsible since she joined the navy and had Matty—much more responsible.”

  “I need you to confirm his age for me,” Austin said as he stopped talking into the cell, waiting for Emma’s response.

  “Nine months,” she said, her voice catching. “I tried to call Lily several times, but there was no answer, so I came over to make sure everything was all right. What is going on? What happened to my sister? Where is Matty?”

  She knew the sound of her shell-shocked tone was edged with anger. She wanted answers. Had to have answers. Lily was the only person she had left from their family. Their grandmother didn’t count.

  “I understand the need for answers, and I understand your anger even if I don’t completely know what you’re going through,” he said, his voice now warm and soothing. “We don’t know at this point, but we’re going to do everything in our power to find who did this and find out what happened to your sister.”

  “The phone dump is in progress. The boss wants an update as soon as we have one.”

  Derrick nodded. “Canvass the neighborhood. I’m taking Ms. St. John back to the office for more in-depth questions.”

  Agent Beck nodded. “See you back at Pendleton.”

  Derrick nodded and escorted Emma out the front door and to his car.

  * * *

  She moved as if in slow motion, as if her limbs had been frozen and were now just thawing. Once inside the car, she looked over at him, their eyes clashing in the silence; his heart skipped a hard beat. Her face was stiff and only her mouth quivered, her eyes moist, devastation there in the striking blue depths. She stared at him as if her whole world had just crashed and burned. Derrick stared back at her, his expression neutral. He was trying to remain professional. Remain detached, and for the fir
st time since Afsana, he was struggling.

  She broke eye contact and faced forward, her head bent as she just stared down; a curtain of shoulder-length copper hair fell on either side of her oval face, her forehead fringed with thick bangs. Something about her moved him, stirring sympathy and deep interest.

  He felt as if someone had just dropped a load of bricks on his head.

  The woman was beautiful, the kind that stopped a man’s heart. But her beauty wasn’t what affected him; it was those eyes, thickly lashed and straightforward, filled with the kind of courage he’d seen on the battlefield. This woman was a fighter through and through.

  She looked like trouble wrapped up in a redheaded package.

  With everything that had been stirred up during the mission with Dexter Kaczewski and coming face-to-face with his tumultuous past in Afghanistan, then that harrowing jungle adventure with Kaczewski’s brother Rock, Derrick had needed more recovery time than he’d gotten. It was all messing with his head.

  It had been easy to handle his emotions when he didn’t have to see the boy or interact with Afsana. His colossal mistake had jeopardized his mission and her life. He regretted his lapse in judgment, compromising himself and the safety of the troops in the area. But he’d fallen in love for the first time in his life and hadn’t known how to deal with it. He’d made a mess of it by getting her pregnant.

  Derrick’s guilt, even after eight years, was still fresh, his remorse even more of a bitter pill. He had a son and he could never see him or be a father to him like he wanted. His only consolation was that Afsana had married a good man.

  When he walked into the office, he ushered Emma to the conference room. Pouring her a cup of coffee, he watched her out of the corner of his eye. Damn, she was striking. And off-limits, he reminded himself. He wasn’t about to muck up an investigation by thinking inappropriate thoughts about the victim’s sister. This was at the very least a suspicious incident, and at the maximum, a child abduction with Lily’s attempted murder. His gut said kidnapping. He fully expected someone had thrown a five-four, one-hundred-ten-pound woman down the stairs and abducted a nine-month-old infant. The child was the key if they could figure out why someone would want to snatch him.

  Reaching out, he clasped the woman’s arm, but she shrugged off his touch and stepped back. “Have a seat. I need to ask you more questions,” he said, keeping his voice calm and soothing, yet urgency churned in his gut.

  For a moment she stared at him, the color gone from her face; then she closed her eyes and drew a deep breath, as if it hurt her to do so. She folded her arms around herself. Turning, she sat down wearily at the table and cupped her hands around the mug. Still, he couldn’t help but look. She was beautiful, really beautiful.

  He settled into the chair diagonally from her and said, “Tell me about your sister. There’s a clue in there somewhere that will give us information that may point to who took your nephew and what happened to Lily.”

  She looked away and there was resistance written all over her face as if their past was something that was painful and guarded. And again, he couldn’t seem to help his response. He knew exactly what that was like. He tempered his reply as best he could, but this copper-haired woman got to him, even with his formidable skills in deflecting complex human emotion.

  “We lost our parents in a car crash when Lily was six and I was eight,” she said, her voice also filled with dissent. “We were raised by our...grandmother.” There was a discordant undertone to her words now. “She wasn’t exactly sympathetic or tolerant of two little orphaned girls.” She didn’t waver, her gaze steady and strong on his. “My sister was pure, trusting and kind. She always got herself into situations she needed help getting out of and I was there for her, until we grew up and went our separate ways. Lily was always looking for love. She wanted it desperately enough that she rushed into relationships, hoping and praying it would work out. She ended up going from inappropriate boyfriends to abusive boyfriends to indifferent boyfriends.”

  Emma sipped her coffee, then said, “She acted on impulse and danced to music no one else could hear and there was no holding back with her.”

  It surprised him that Emma’s sister was a sailor. The navy was all about conformity and rules. Where did the child at heart fit in? “It makes me wonder how she ended up in the navy.”

  Emma sighed and shook her head. “She met a sailor and, on a whim, joined the navy, but she landed on her feet and seemed to love it. Maybe it gave her structure.”

  “What is this sailor’s name?”

  “Petty Officer William Samuels. I don’t believe they are together anymore.”

  “Was she married?”

  “No, she was secretive about the men in her life lately. I think she was seeing someone, but she wouldn’t tell me who. I suspect she thought I wouldn’t approve.”

  “And the father of her son?”

  “I don’t know. She wouldn’t say. Maybe he’s married? Maybe someone she works with.”

  “An officer?”

  Emma shrugged. “I wish I could be more help there.”

  Derrick reached for one of his cards and slid it across the table toward her. “If you think of anything else, Emma, please call me.”

  She rose at the same time he did. He was far, far from the touchy-feely sort. That was why he often worked with Austin or Amber. They were the ones who got all sympathetic and supportive. It wasn’t that he didn’t have compassion, it was that he chose to channel everything he had into a case. It worked the best for him, but this woman always seemed to be shifting the firm ground beneath his feet into sand.

  For a moment they stood there while this “thing” passed between them. Finally, she reached into her purse and pulled out a card. She handed it to him. “Call me when you find out any information. I want to know everything, no matter how small.”

  He nodded, not trusting his voice.

  Then she slipped past him and the door closed behind her. He felt instant relief that she was gone. Not since Afsana had he had such an instant connection, an interest that he couldn’t shake. But it went deeper than his feelings for the woman he’d lost. There was the case to consider and her vulnerability. No matter how much she tried to hide it, he’d seen it. He was damn good at seeing beyond barriers.

  Except now he knew that she was attracted to him, too. She was fighting it just as hard and that suited him fine.

  He looked down at the card, then swore softly under his breath. She was a private investigator. It didn’t require a stretch of the imagination to think that Emma would want to be involved in locating her nephew and finding out the mystery of her sister’s attack. The reason the boy was abducted had to be directly tied to the mother. Investigating Lily St. John was where they would start, but it sure wouldn’t be where it ended.

  He knew Emma’s type and she was definitely the sort from the top of her copper head down to her feet. He had to wonder if she had either military training or she’d been a cop. Something he was going to find out right now.

  There was no time to screw around. They had a missing child kidnapped by unknown persons. That had to take top priority.

  God help Emma if she got in his way.

  Copyright © 2017 by Karen Alarie

  ISBN-13: 9781488016660

  Mission: Colton Justice

  Copyright © 2017 by Harlequin Books S.A.

  Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Jennifer Morey for her contribution to The Coltons of Shadow Creek miniseries.

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