Her Colton P.I.

by Amelia Autin

  “Not surprised. It starts early.”

  “What does your sister do? Is she a PI like you?”

  Chris shook his head. “She’s a cop.” He hesitated. “My brothers and I—we didn’t want that for her. I know it’s chauvinistic in this day and age, but this is Texas. We wanted her to be safe, you know? I had a big argument about it with her. And—” he had the grace to look ashamed “—none of us except Sam attended her graduation from the police academy. She graduated top of her class, too.” He took his plate and settled in a chair at the other end of the table.

  They ate in silence for a minute, then Chris said roughly, “I know how it sounds, but we’ve already lost one sister. Josie. We don’t want to lose the only one we have left.”

  Treading cautiously, Holly asked, “What happened to Josie?”

  “No one knows. We haven’t heard from her in six years.” His brows drew together in a troubled frown. “And even before that she practically refused to have anything to do with us for years.” He thought for a moment. “I guess she was about twelve when she told the social worker she didn’t want us visiting her anymore.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Twenty. The summer before my junior year in college.” He sighed. “But even before that she... When Trevor turned eighteen—Trevor’s the oldest, three years older than me—when he turned eighteen, he tried to get custody of Josie, take her out of foster care. But she refused. We figured it had something to do with her foster sister, Lizzie. They were particularly close. And Lizzie says they were both attached to their foster parents.”

  He sighed again. “I also tried to get custody when I turned eighteen and graduated from high school. I’d have passed on college if that’s what it took—scholarship be damned. But I didn’t have any more luck than Trevor.” He looked down at his plate, forked a bite of chicken and swirled it in the mashed potatoes, then ate it.

  Holly pried peas off Jamie’s tray, piled them on his plate and tapped an imperious finger. “Eat those, mister.” She glanced over at Ian to make sure he was eating what was set before him without difficulty, then looked up at Chris. “What happened then?”

  “Even with the scholarship it wasn’t easy, but I managed. I worked to put myself through school, and when I graduated, I came back here to Granite Gulch. Laura was waiting for me—we’d been engaged since my junior year in college—but I told her I needed to try one more time with Josie...who turned me down flat.”

  That hurt him. Chris didn’t have to say it; Holly just knew. “Josie didn’t say why?”

  “Nope. Basically her message was ‘Leave me alone.’” He paused. “I don’t blame her in one way. She was only three when our father murdered our mother—I doubt she even remembers her or us as a family.”

  But you do, Holly thought. You remember...and it hurts you to remember.

  “So it only makes sense she didn’t want to have anything to do with her brothers and sisters—we’re not her family anymore. Then six years ago...” Chris began, but when he stopped, Holly raised her eyebrows in a question, so he continued. “Josie ran away six years ago. At least that’s the best we can figure. I’ve been searching for her off and on ever since.”

  Now Holly thought she understood what Peg had meant when she said Chris needed to do this, needed to shelter Holly and her boys from the McCays. Chris carried a load of guilt over his missing sister. Probably some guilt over his mother, too.

  “You said there were seven of you, and that Trevor’s the oldest. What does he do?”

  “FBI profiler.”

  “Wow. Impressive.”

  Chris nodded, but Holly got the impression there were some unresolved issues between Chris and his older brother. I wonder what that’s about. She wasn’t going to ask, of course. But maybe he would volunteer something later on. “After Trevor it’s you and Annabel, right? And Josie’s the baby. Who else?”

  “Ridge. He’s two years younger than me.”

  “Unusual name.”

  Chris laughed. “It suits him. He’s in search and rescue. He’s big and bad and nobody messes with Ridge.”

  Kind of like you, Holly thought, but she kept it to herself. “And after Ridge?”

  “Ethan. He’s twenty-seven, and he is intense. He kind of keeps himself to himself, if you know what I mean.” Holly nodded. “He’s a rancher. His ranch is...oh, about ten miles from here. The isolation suits him, but he’s going to have to get accustomed to having more people around—his wife, Lizzie, is expecting a baby any day now.”

  “Oh, that’s nice. You’ll be an uncle again.” She counted up in her mind, then said, “One more. Another brother, right?”

  “Yeah. Sam. He’s a police detective, right here on the Granite Gulch police force, just like Annabel. He’s twenty-five, and he just got engaged in January to the sweetest woman, Zoe. You’d like her.”

  “Wait. Zoe Robison? The librarian?”

  Ian piped up, “Zo-ee, Zo-ee!” and Jamie copied him. Holly quickly looked over at her boys and realized they were pretty much done. They’d left a disaster that would need hosing down to clean up, but at least they’d managed to eat most of what was on their plates. What hadn’t been eaten was now adorning them. She shuddered at the mashed potatoes Ian had massaged into his eyebrows.

  “You know Zoe?” Chris asked.

  Holly jumped up and grabbed the washcloth from the sink. “She runs the Mommy and Me reading program at the library,” she explained as she wiped Jamie’s hands and face, then did the same for Ian. “Ian and Jamie adore her, and yes, she’s really sweet.”

  Chris waited until Jamie was clean, then he unstrapped the boy and lifted him out of the high chair, setting him on his feet. When Ian was ready, he got the same treatment.

  “Leave this,” Chris told Holly. “I’ll clean up and put the dishes in the dishwasher.”

  “I should do it,” she protested. “Ian and Jamie are the ones who made such a mess.” She grimaced as she took in the condition of the floor, which had a few peas scattered beneath the high chairs—the ones Wally hadn’t gobbled up—not to mention a couple of gooey globs that looked like mashed potatoes.

  “You probably want to give the boys a bath before too long.”

  “You mean before they track the mess into the rest of the house?”

  Chris grinned. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean.”

  “You really don’t mind cleaning up in here? I feel awful leaving this for you.”

  “Don’t sweat it.” He was already swiping a damp paper towel over the mashed potatoes and picking the remaining peas up off the floor as she spoke. Chris’s cell phone rang at that moment, and he threw the peas into the garbage disposal before he checked the caller ID. “Annabel,” he told Holly. “I should take this. Excuse me.” He pressed a button. “Hey, Bella, what’s up?”

  He stiffened almost immediately, and Holly watched his lighthearted expression fade away as he listened to his sister on the other end. Two minutes passed, then three, before Chris said, “I’m sorry to hear it. What does Trevor say?” He made a sound of impatience, then nodded as if Annabel could see him. “Okay. I understand. Besides Trevor and Sam, who else knows?” He listened for a minute, then said, “Nothing I can do, but thanks for letting me know. Watch yourself, okay?”

  He disconnected but didn’t put the phone away. He hit speed dial, waited a few seconds, then said, “Peg? It’s Chris. Have you been watching the local news?” Apparently the answer was no, because he added, “Turn it on. Now. Annabel just called me. They found another body with the bull’s-eye marking. Yeah, number eight—Helena Tucker.”

  Chapter 5

  Chris hung up with Peg, then glanced at Holly. She was kneeling on the floor, an arm around each twin, clutching them tightly. “Sorry,” Chris said, thinking she was trying to keep the boys from h
earing his side of the conversation. “I forgot there were little ears around.” The face Holly raised to his was ashen, and guilty. “What?” he asked.

  “It’s terrible,” she whispered. “I should be praying for that poor woman. But all I could think about when I heard her name was that I could stop worrying.”

  Chris shook his head. “You didn’t really think you were in danger, did you? Yeah, your name begins with H, but hell—” He caught himself up short, remembering too late his vow to watch his language. “Heck,” he amended, “you don’t have long dark hair. Your hair isn’t even really dark—I have the pictures to prove it.”

  “I know. I wasn’t really worried, but...fear isn’t always logical. It was just there in the back of my mind, you know? And the newspaper reported that the woman who’s suspected of being the Alphabet Killer—I forget her name—”

  “Regina Willard.”

  “Right. She once stayed at the Rosewood Rooming House, same as me.”

  “I know.” Chris suddenly thought of something. “Before I forget, I wanted to tell you there’s no internet service here at the house yet. And no cable. Water, gas, electricity and phone—yeah. I couldn’t turn the water off—unless I wanted to let the landscaping shrivel up and die. Not to mention Peg needs water when she comes out here to take care of the place. And electricity and phone service are necessary for the alarm system. But no cable or internet landline. I called to get them turned on when we were at Peg’s, but it’ll be a few days.”

  “That’s okay,” Holly informed him. “I haven’t watched TV since I left Clear Lake City. And I only browse the internet at the library anyway, so it’s not a hardship to do without. But what about you?”

  “I can survive without cable for a few days. And I’ve got mobile internet access for my laptop and smartphone—I need it for my PI business. So, I’m good.”

  Ian and Jamie both squirmed to get free at that moment, and Chris said, “Better get them their baths. Go on,” he insisted. “It won’t take me more than a few minutes to clean up in here. Then I have some work to catch up on. I’ll be in the office.”

  * * *

  A half hour later Holly ruefully fished her dark pixie-cut wig out of the tub in the master bathroom, where Ian had dunked it after he tugged it off her head. She rolled the wig in a towel to dry it as much as she could, then hung it on a hook over the shower. “Laugh,” she told Ian in a mock-threatening tone as she lifted him out of the tub and wrapped his wriggling body in a towel. “You just wait until you grow up. I’m going to take delight in embarrassing you by telling your friends all the things you did to me.

  “No, Jamie, we don’t eat soap,” she said, changing subjects, quickly removing the bar of soap from his vicinity. She scooped him out of the tub and wrapped him in a towel, too. She played peekaboo with both boys and their towels for a couple of minutes, then gathered them close as intense motherly love for her babies washed through her. “You’re little monsters—you know that—but I love you madly,” she told them. “And I wouldn’t trade you for anything in the world.”

  Clean, Ian and Jamie looked like little angels, their golden curls fluffed into tiny halos. Holly brushed their barely damp hair, ruthlessly suppressing the curls, before using the brush on her own head when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. She wasn’t vain about her appearance—well, not much—but she didn’t want anyone seeing her with her hair a flattened mess. She refused to acknowledge who she meant by “anyone,” but in the back of her mind lurked the memory of her dream that afternoon. The dream, and the kiss. Not to mention her erotic reaction to it.

  Holly let the twins run naked into the bedroom, dabbing futilely at the large, damp patch on her pale blue T-shirt where Jamie had—deliberately, she was sure—splashed her with soapy bathwater. Then she followed her sons into the other room.

  She dressed them in the pull-ups they still wore at night because they weren’t quite potty trained yet, then in their nightclothes. “Come on,” she told them, taking their hands in hers. “Let’s go say good-night to Mr. Colton. Pretend you’re really as angelic as you look so he won’t mind sharing a house with us.”

  * * *

  Chris leaned back in his leather desk chair and absently fondled Wally’s head as the dog lay quietly beside him. “Look at this, boy,” he murmured. “You think...?” This was a news article on his laptop’s computer screen—a story about the daring capture of a fugitive on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. A dangerous man who was an alleged associate of a drug lord who’d been dead for six years—Desmond Carlton. The name Carlton was enough like Colton for the story to have caught Chris’s eye, and he shook his head at a vague memory. Then he picked up his smartphone and hit speed dial.

  “Hi, Chris,” Annabel said when she answered. “What’s up?”

  “Carlton,” he said abruptly. “Wasn’t that the last name of Josie’s foster parents?”

  “Um...I think so. Yes, it was. Why?”

  “I was just reading something on Yahoo News about a man who ran with Desmond Carlton six years ago.”

  “The guy who was on the Ten Most Wanted list? The one the FBI just captured?”

  “Yeah, him.”

  “Why is that important? Other than someone else will be promoted to the list tomorrow, now that he’s in prison where he belongs, the creep.”

  “I don’t know,” Chris said slowly. “But as I was reading the story the name Carlton rang a bell. That, and the fact that Desmond Carlton has been dead for six years. Six years, Bella. Think about it.”

  “You don’t mean... Josie? It’s got to be a coincidence.”

  “I don’t like coincidences. And I don’t trust them. Especially two coincidences together.” He thought a minute. “Do me a favor, will you? Find out what prison this guy is in. I might want to have a little chat with him.”

  Annabel’s soft drawl took on a hard edge. “You don’t want to ask Trevor? He’s FBI. He could probably get in to see this perp whether or not he wants visitors.” When Chris didn’t respond, his sister said, “Are you still holding a grudge against Trevor? I thought you agreed it wasn’t fair to him.”

  “Trevor’s got enough on his plate right now,” he pointed out, “what with trying to find Regina Willard. Especially now that she just added number eight to her victim list—the pressure to catch her has got to be intense.”

  “It’s not just the FBI, you know,” Annabel said drily. “The Granite Gulch Police Department is involved in this case, too.”

  Chris winced. His sister didn’t say it, but it had been Annabel’s solid police work that had identified Regina Willard as the Alphabet Killer. The woman hadn’t been caught yet, though not for lack of trying on Annabel’s part.

  But the real reason Chris didn’t want to ask for Trevor’s help wasn’t that his older brother was too busy—that had just been an excuse. Chris was still holding a grudge...but he wasn’t going to admit it to Annabel. Okay, it was an old wound from his childhood that he should have gotten over long since—he knew that. The adult in him knew that. And yeah, it wasn’t fair to Trevor—Annabel was right about that. And true, he and Trevor had finally reconnected years back...mostly.

  But deep inside him resided that eleven-year-old boy who’d idolized his older brother, who’d felt betrayed when the family was split up and Trevor made no attempt to maintain the connection with him when they all went into foster care. Yeah, they’d seen each other a few times a year at the home of Josie’s foster parents—court-mandated visits—but that wasn’t the same thing at all. Chris had pretended it hadn’t hurt...but it had. Badly. He was still trying to excise the scar tissue that had left on his psyche, but he wasn’t there yet.

  Then there was the whole Josie thing. When Trevor turned eighteen, he’d tried to get custody of Josie...or at least that was the story. But how hard had he tried, really? Chris didn’t k
now, and the uncertainty of that ate at him. Josie would have been only seven back then. She’d turned Chris’s offer down when he turned eighteen, but by that time it was already too late—she’d been ten, and had spent seven years with the Carltons. Maybe it was unreasonable, but Chris laid the blame for losing Josie squarely on Trevor’s shoulders.

  “But you’re right,” Annabel said, breaking into his thoughts. “Trevor’s got enough to worry about. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “Thanks, Bella.”

  “No problem.” Silence hummed between them, until Annabel said out of the blue, “I can’t stop thinking about the day I saw her.”

  “Josie?”

  “Mmm-hmm. I can’t swear it was her, but—”

  “But that gold charm you found clinches it,” he finished for her.

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “Ridge and Lizzie believed it was her when they had their own Josie sightings.”

  “I know. At least she’s alive. For the longest time I...” Chris’s throat closed as he thought of how he’d imagined the worst. Young women disappeared all the time. Murdered. Their bodies disposed of in the most callous ways. It had killed him to imagine that was Josie’s fate.

  Annabel seemed to understand Chris couldn’t talk about it, and she changed the subject. “Speaking of sightings, Mia told me she spotted you coming out of your apartment this morning carrying a suitcase and your laptop bag. You taking a trip? Something to do with your work?”

  Chris hesitated, then remembered his heart-to-heart conversation with Annabel last month and his promise that he would take her seriously as a police officer going forward. She’d earned that right and then some. “No,” he told her. “Remember that missing-person case I mentioned the other day? The one I was taking pro bono?”

  “The widow who ran off with her twin sons? The one the in-laws are trying to track down?”

  “Yeah, her. Turns out I was way off base.”

  His sister snorted. “Told you there was more to the story.”