Her Colton Lawman

by Carla Cassidy

  “Good afternoon, Flint,” she said. “What can I get for you?”

  “A burger and fries and a cup of coffee,” he replied. Before she turned to place the order, he quickly spoke again. “How’s business these days?”

  “Not great, but I suppose I can’t complain. At least we still have customers coming in.” She looked around the diner, which on a Saturday afternoon would usually be packed but now only held a handful of people. “I almost feel as if I’m on vacation since we’re opening at 9:00 a.m. now instead of five-thirty, but business has dropped off enough that I couldn’t justify the early hours anymore. I’m planning a big Thanksgiving feast for everyone in town, a free traditional turkey dinner. I’m hoping to have a big crowd that day. I think we could all use a day of community and mutual support.”

  “That sounds great. It’s a generous gesture.” He knew through the grapevine that Nina was known as a positive force in town. She was a Search and Rescue volunteer and had a reputation for being cheerful and optimistic no matter what the circumstances.

  He frowned thoughtfully. “Aren’t you afraid of getting sick? You work here with the public every day, and if you’re inviting the whole town to a feast, there’s really no way to know who might be sick with the virus and who isn’t.”

  Her eyes sparkled, and her lips curved into a smile that fired a hint of heat in the pit of his stomach. “If I was going to get the Dead River virus, it probably would have already happened by now. Besides, I refuse to live my life being afraid of friends and neighbors.”

  She didn’t wait for him to reply, but instead twirled on her feet, placed his order with the kitchen and then wandered back down to the opposite side of the counter.

  Flint drew a weary sigh. It was obvious she didn’t feel any spark of interest in him. It was probably a good thing because with a killer to catch and his own grandmother suffering from the mysterious illness that had the town quarantined, the last thing he needed to entertain was any idea of a romance with the hot owner of the local diner.

  * * *

  Nina Owens was acutely aware of Chief of Police Flint Colton at the opposite end of the counter. As she’d served him his meal, she’d tried not to notice the richness of his dark brown hair or the almost electric green of his eyes. She tried to ignore his handsome, chiseled features and the commanding aura that radiated from him.

  His shoulders were broad, his legs long and his waist slender. She’d been physically drawn to him since the very first time he’d walked into her diner around a year ago, but at the same time she’d been faintly repelled by the uniform he wore and the job that he did.

  She knew her distaste for any officer of the law was irrational and that she should have grown out of her belief that all police were bad, but it was a vague uneasiness that she’d never been able to overcome when encountering any law-enforcement person.

  She knew Flint was a highly respected man, known for his sharp intelligence, his sense of fairness and the seriousness with which he took his job.

  She remained overly conscious of his presence at the counter until he’d eaten his lunch and left. Only then did she fully relax. She’d been in Dead River for the past three years, and it was a cruel fate that had made the first man she felt any attraction toward a law-enforcement official.

  She’d seen enough dirty cops while growing up to never want to see one again for the rest of her life, not that she’d heard anything to indicate that Flint was anything close to a dirty cop.

  It was just after the dinner rush that she went into the kitchen and found one of her waitresses, Flint’s cousin Molly, crying.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” Nina asked as she draped an arm around the young woman’s slender shoulder. Even though Nina asked the question, she knew what probably had the pretty redhead weeping.

  “I’m sorry,” Molly said as she gazed at Nina and quickly swiped the tears from her cheeks. “I know it’s stupid, but I just started thinking about what a fool I was with Jimmy. I can’t believe I let him talk me into putting his name on all my bank accounts and credit cards. I can’t believe I gave him my grandma’s ring to give to me at our wedding and most of all I can’t believe that I fell in love with him and didn’t realize he was such a slimy creep.” She drew a tremulous sigh as tears once again filled her bright blue eyes.

  “Listen, honey, you aren’t the first woman in the world who fell in love with a creep,” Nina replied as she gave Molly a hug. “Just be grateful that you found out what his real character was like before the wedding actually took place.” Nina pulled a napkin from a nearby container and handed it to Molly.

  “Flint says he can’t go after him for the money Jimmy stole because his name was on all the accounts, and that means he had the legal right to take it. I don’t care so much about the money, but I’m so sick that he took my grandmother’s ring.” She dabbed at her eyes with the napkin.

  “And didn’t Flint tell you that once they find him, he will be arrested for the theft of the ring?”

  “Yes, but I’m afraid he pawned it or something, and I’ll never get it back,” Molly replied.

  Nina patted Molly’s shoulder. “If he pawned the ring here in town, then Flint will find it, and since he can’t get out of town, the odds are good that he still has the ring with him. Are you okay to work or do you need to go home?”

  Molly sniffled and wiped her cheeks once again. “No, I’m fine. I just had a momentary mini-breakdown. Besides, I’m helping Helen close up tonight.”

  “And I’m leaving a bit early to take dinner to Grace,” Nina said.

  Molly’s blue eyes deepened in hue. “Aren’t you afraid that she has the virus?”

  Nina smiled gently. “All I know for sure is that Grace went home sick yesterday. I don’t know if she has a bad cold, the common flu or the Dead River virus. I’m sure she won’t feel like cooking tonight so I’m fixing up a care package, and I’m taking it to her and Billy.”

  She gave Molly a shove toward the dining area. “Now get back to work and stop beating yourself up over that jerk Jimmy, and stop worrying about me.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Molly gave her a saucy salute and left the kitchen.

  Nina was grateful to see Molly back to her cheerful sweetness. At twenty-one years old, Molly was probably going to kiss a lot of frogs before she finally found the man meant for her.

  Nina had certainly kissed a lot of frogs in her life, but she wasn’t looking for any special man to share her life. She was perfectly content alone, always had been, always would be.

  With the dinner rush finished, Nina got busy filling a large Styrofoam take-out container with slices of meat loaf and mashed potatoes, green beans and two dinner rolls. There was not only enough food to feed Grace, but also her eight-year-old son.

  Grace had left work early the day before with a bad cough and complaining about a bad headache. Nina had called her this afternoon, and Grace had confessed she still didn’t feel well at all.

  Nina had told her to stay in bed, drink lots of fluids and had promised she’d stop by this evening with dinner for both her and her son, Billy.

  Just before she finished packing up the food, she threw into the bag a couple of her special double chocolate chip cookies, knowing that they were one of Billy’s favorites.

  Billy was almost a daily visitor to the diner. Grace worked an eight-to-five schedule, and Billy would come in after school during the weekdays and take a two-top table in the corner to wait for his mom’s shift to be over.

  He was a cute kid with shiny brown hair and blue eyes like his mother. He was also a good kid, who sat quietly and did his homework, never bothering anyone while he was there. Nina had taken to him immediately, as she did most of the younger diners who came in with their parents.

  Darkness had already fallen when Nina finally stepped out of the back door of the diner
where her car was parked. Clad in a long-sleeved white blouse and a pair of black slacks that all the waitresses wore, she wished she’d thought of bringing her coat with her that morning as the night had brought with it a nip of a wintry chill.

  She got into her car and placed the bag of food on the passenger seat and then turned her key to start the engine. She frowned at the sound of the familiar whir-whir of her battery refusing to catch. She turned the ignition off, waited a minute and then tried again, grateful to hear the engine finally roar to a start.

  Gus at Dead River Auto Body had put in a new battery for her last week, but had warned her that the problem might be her alternator.

  She waited for the heater to begin to blow warmth, trying to decide when she could take the time off to get the car back in for Gus to fix. Most days and evenings she was at the diner.

  She supposed she could drop it off on the way to work one morning and pick it up on the way home. She could get either one of the cooks or a waitress to drive her from the auto shop in the morning and take her back there in the evening.

  As she waited, she thought of all the recent events that had changed the town she had come to love and call home.

  It was hard to believe that it was just a month ago that Mimi Rand, a local socialite, had returned to town with a baby she claimed was Flint’s brother Theo’s, the result of one night the two had spent together.

  She’d arrived at Theo’s house, introduced him to the three-month-old little girl and then collapsed.

  Dr. Lucas Rand, the head doctor at the Dead River Clinic had worked desperately to save the woman, who was also his ex-wife, but she had died anyway. By the time of her death, another man was dead along with two children, also suffering from the same mysterious symptoms.

  When Flint’s grandmother, Dottie Colton, had fallen ill along with a teenage boy, the town was shut down by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  Overnight the town had transformed from a small tight-knit community to something out of a science-fiction film. CDC trailers and equipment now surrounded the Dead River Clinic, and National Guard and other security forces, who looked like space men in their HAZMAT gear and guns, formed a perimeter around the town. Nobody in...nobody out.

  With warm air finally blowing out of her car’s heater vents, Nina pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward Grace Willard’s small home.

  She hoped her words to Molly proved true, that Grace had a simple cold or a common case of the flu and not the Dead River virus, of which the initial symptoms were very similar but then escalated quickly until the patient was deathly ill with severe respiratory issues and a high fever.

  Nina wasn’t afraid for herself by going to Grace’s house. She figured she’d already been exposed to the virus day after day with the stream of people who came into the diner to eat. Of course, as a waitress, Grace would have the same kind of exposure and so would Billy.

  There had also been the escape of a hardened criminal and Molly’s heartbreak, and all of these issues had changed the very heart and soul of Dead River.

  Everyone regarded everyone else with suspicion, wondering who might be sick with the mysterious illness or who might be some sort of carrier. Then there were the suspicions of who might be helping the two fugitives in town, killer Hank Bittard and Molly’s jerk, Jimmy Johnson.

  She desperately hoped that the Thanksgiving feast she had planned would bring people together, bring back a sense of community and remind everyone that they were all in this mess together, but the holiday was still weeks away. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem likely that a cure would be found by then.

  Just before turning onto the side street where Grace lived, she frowned and slowed as she saw a couple near the streetlamp just ahead. As she drove closer, a sense of horror swept through her.

  In the spill of illumination from the light, she could now see that it was a man and a woman. The man had a rope around the woman’s neck, and although Nina couldn’t hear a scream or a single indication of the woman’s terror, she felt it ripple through her blood.

  Nina stopped her car, unsure what she should do but knowing she needed to do something and fast. It would take her too long to dig her cell phone out of her purse and call for help.

  Still, if she didn’t do something quickly she knew that the woman would be strangled to death. She opened her car door and stepped halfway out.

  “Hey,” she cried out. “Hey, you, let her go!”

  At that moment the woman fell to the ground in a boneless drop that made Nina realize it was too late, the woman was definitely unconscious or possibly dead. As the man raised his head and stared at her, Nina’s heartbeat raced with a frantic rhythm.

  He started toward her, and she nearly stumbled as she got back into her car and locked the doors. She had to get out of here and fast. Her heart nearly halted as she realized her car had stopped running.

  “Come on, come on,” she cried as she turned the key and heard the familiar grinding noise. She glanced out the window to see that the man was getting closer...closer.

  “Please,” she begged as she pumped the gas and tried to start the car again, knowing that if she didn’t get rolling she was a sitting duck for a man who had just possibly committed a murder right in front of her eyes.

  Chapter 2

  Terrified, sobbing gasps escaped Nina, and she cried out in relief as headlights appeared from a car coming from the opposite direction on the road. Maybe the presence of another car, of other people, would stop the man and save her.

  Her engine finally started. For a single instant her gaze caught the killer’s, his cold and glittering with unsuppressed rage.

  She threw her car into gear and spun out, nearly losing control of it in an effort to escape the scene. She sped down the residential road, passing Grace’s house as she continued to play and replay in her mind what had just happened, what she had just seen.

  She needed to get to the police station. Maybe the woman on the ground wasn’t really dead, but had just been strangled to unconsciousness. If Nina got help soon enough, maybe she could still be saved.

  Surely the man had run from the scene when he’d seen the other car coming and knew that if he stuck around, there would be more witnesses to what he had done.

  A glance in her rearview mirror showed no car pursuing her. She hadn’t even seen a vehicle near the corner where the man might have come from, but she’d been riveted to the struggle, not looking for nearby cars.

  It took her only minutes to pull onto Main Street and squeal to a halt in front of the police station. She jumped out of the car and raced inside, still crying with shock and fear.

  She flew past Glenda McDonald, who worked the night shift at the front desk. “Hey, wait,” Glenda yelled in protest as Nina burst through the door that led into the inner sanctum of the station.

  Flint appeared seemingly from nowhere and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Nina, what’s wrong?” he asked urgently.

  “I...I think I just saw a murder.” She was once again overwhelmed by sobs as she tried to choke out what had happened. She was vaguely aware of Officer Mike Harriman moving closer to where they stood with Flint still firmly grasping her.

  She feared that if he released his hold on her, she’d fall to the floor as her legs shook so badly beneath her, and she couldn’t halt the violent trembling of her entire body.

  “Where did this happen?” Flint asked, his handsome features tense, and his green eyes piercing as he stared at her intently.

  “At the corner of Cherry and Oak Street. I was on my way to Grace Willard’s house when I saw them struggling near the streetlight. I think he killed her, Flint. I think she was dead when I drove off.”

  Flint gave a nod to Mike, who immediately left, taking with him Officer Sam Blair. Flint guided Nina to a chair and gently pushed her t
o sit. He knelt down to one knee, his calm demeanor a counter to the terror that still screamed silently inside her.

  He didn’t speak for several moments, and she finally stopped crying and felt his calm slowly sweeping through her. Even the scent of his woodsy cologne smelled of safety.

  “Better?” he asked.

  She nodded and released a deep sigh. “A little better.”

  “Good. I need you to be as clearheaded as possible and answer some questions for me.” He stood and grabbed a chair from a nearby desk and pulled it in front of her. He sat close, his knees almost touching hers. “What did the man look like?”

  Nina frowned, trying to fight the fear that leaped back into her throat as she thought about the man she’d seen. “He was dressed all in black, and he had dark hair and evil, glittering eyes.”

  “What color eyes?”

  “I’m not sure. I think they were dark, but the lighting was bad.”

  “Was he young or old?”

  “Maybe late twenties or early thirties,” she replied.

  “What kind of build? Tall...short...skinny?” Flint’s gaze never left hers. She hadn’t noticed before that his green eyes held a faint touch of gold right in the center, along with a sharp focus that made it appear he was looking not just at her, but rather into her very soul.

  She finally broke their gaze, looking down at her trembling hands in her lap. “He was tall and had a muscular build.” A sob welled up, and she swallowed hard against it as she remembered the sight of his arm muscles bulging, his taut neck muscles as he pulled the rope so tight against the woman’s throat.

  “Sounds like Bittard. Was it Hank?”

  Nina shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know...maybe. It was dark and everything happened so fast. I didn’t get a solid look at him. Plus, I’ve only seen Hank a couple of times and that was before he murdered Donny Gilmore at the gas station. Hank never came into the diner so I only saw him from a distance. That, plus his mug shot.”