The Pregnant Colton Witness

by Geri Krotow

  “Before you get all upset, Patience let Blake know about my future niece and nephew—when Blake and I can finally marry, that is. He couldn’t keep it to himself. I’m so excited for you both.”

  Nash smiled. “And count on me doing everything in my power to keep Patience and the babies safe through this case and beyond.”

  “I’ve got your back if you ever need it,” Juliette said. “See you on the field. Come on, Sasha.” They walked away and Nash took a few moments to calm down.

  Patience needed him to be the calm and cool one, not a hothead. He saw the boys talking to her as they stood with Greta, Juliette and Sasha, and immediately relaxed. They were all family now, no matter what happened between him and Patience.

  * * *

  For the next few hours Patience helped out at the K9 training center, working with the handlers and trainers to put the dogs into every conceivable situation they’d face on the street. Drug and bomb detection, search and rescue, guarding. She got a kick out of watching Jon’s and Troy’s expressions when the usually laid-back Greta turned into a focused, take-no-prisoners attack dog and grabbed the heavily padded arm of one of the trainers.

  “Are we going to do any water training today, Dr. Colton?” Jon Maddox’s face resembled Nash’s so much she wondered if either of the twins would look the same.

  “No, Greta’s had enough real time in the lake lately.” With a chill that had nothing to do with the crisp autumn day, she realized Greta might have more diving to do if the Lake Killer came back. Looking past the fences, she wondered if the thug was out there, watching from a hidden location.

  “Hey, what are you thinking?” Nash was next to her, close enough to touch her, but not doing so. He was professional if nothing else. But with the thought of such a bad guy being out there, she wanted to lean against Nash, let him take care of protecting her and the twins.

  Where on earth had that come from? The baby hormones were making a mess of her self-reliance pact with herself.

  “I’m thinking it’s time to bring everyone in for the potluck lunch. Are your sisters coming to join us?”

  “Not today. Paige has senior class activities and Maeve is with a study group. Which reminds me—I’m signed up to chaperone the senior Fall Fest dance. I was hoping you’d join me.”

  “Are you asking me out on a date?”

  “I’d never do such a cheap date, if it was a date. This is a way to be able to keep an eye on you and also let you get to know my siblings. Meet them on their turf, so to speak.”

  “How are you going to explain my baby bump to the other PTA members?”

  “Do you care?” His eyes blazed with molten heat and her body’s immediate response made her sit down on a nearby bench. “Are you okay?” His lust turned to concern so quickly that Patience had to laugh.

  “I’m good. Just adjusting to all the changes.” She rubbed the tops of her thighs before pressing her hands into her lower back as she stretched her legs out in front. “I needed to get off my feet for a bit, that’s all.”

  “I’m going to be by your side through all of this, babe.”

  “We’ll talk about it later, Nash.”

  He said nothing. Patience would figure out he wasn’t going anywhere. Nash just had to keep showing up.

  Chapter 16

  After the training center potluck, Nash left Greta with Patience for protection and took the boys home. He’d tried to convince himself that it’d be okay to bring Patience back to the house for dinner, but it would be a stupid move with the Lake Killer still at large. And now he had the Larsons’ dog walker to worry about.

  It was past dark when he drove up the mountain to the cabin. The only way to see was with the Jeep’s brights on, given the tree branches reaching out from both sides of the asphalt. As he approached the turnoff to the graveled road that led to Patience’s front gate, he was startled by a huge lumbering figure that came out to block the road.

  Acting on pure instinct, he hit the brakes and the horn, staying focused on the figure as his vehicle came to a rough halt. It wasn’t the Lake Killer or a Larson twin, though. A huge black bear stared him down from its stance in the center of his path, and he had the distinct impression it was sizing him up. It lifted its snout in the air as if it could tell who he was by his scent. Only then did Nash notice a smaller bear, about the size of Greta, meandering through the headlight beams. A mama bear with her cub, out for the last of the autumn feeding before they had to go into hibernation.

  Nash took his hand from the wheel, no longer interested in honking. As he watched the scene play out, an unexpected rush of compassion rolled through him.

  He loved his siblings and had accepted long ago that it was his role to help raise them. And he’d planned on years of bachelorhood, once the kids left for college and whatever their lives might bring. All this he expected and looked forward to. Discovering that he and Patience had created a baby had been a huge surprise, but to his shock, it wasn’t a bad thing.

  The mother bear and cub moved in unison, working their way across the road and back into the dark woods, as if he didn’t exist. The natural beauty of it moved him.

  As much as he had a family, raising his siblings, Nash wanted more. He wanted to feel so in tune with another that she’d know he’d always be there for her. And he loved the idea of waking up to a sensuous woman like Patience Colton every morning. And going to bed with her every night.

  Nash wanted more than he’d ever thought he would.

  As he put the car back in Drive, he realized that it wasn’t what he wanted that mattered. This inexplicable emotion he had for Patience and their unborn children was his problem. His job was to be whatever Patience needed him to be. She’d made it clear that she valued her independence above all.

  * * *

  Patience wasn’t much of a cook except when she came to the cabin, the one place she ever felt she truly had the time and space to prepare a proper meal. She took in the huge bowl of pasta carbonara she’d prepared, and while a nice glass of red wine would have been nice, it was easy to forgo for the health of the babies. Her stomach growled and she dug in.

  As she twisted a second forkful of pasta, dripping with melted Parmesan, on her plate, Greta let out her warning barks. Patience paused midbite and looked at the monitor atop the island counter. Expecting to see Nash’s Jeep, she felt her heart slam into overdrive when she saw an unfamiliar red pickup creep up the drive.

  She dropped the fork and ran to the bedroom, where she retrieved her weapon from the safe. After making sure it was locked and loaded, she made her way back to the kitchen and turned out the lights. How had she gone from routine K9 surgeries to needing to draw her weapon multiple times in a few short weeks?

  “Greta, here.” She pointed to the floor behind the kitchen island to offer the dog the most protection. “Quiet.”

  Greta sat but remained alert, and Patience wished she could read her mind. Wished the dog could tell her what she smelled and what she heard.

  The computer display lit up as the motion detector light turned on, and she grabbed the monitor and put it on the floor next to her so that it wouldn’t give the intruder a clue as to where she was, or if she was in the cabin. Her car was parked around back, so it wouldn’t be obvious to anyone that she was home.

  Unless this was Nash and he’d taken one of the RRPD pool vehicles. In which case she was going to berate him. Patience glued her gaze to the screen, and felt her stomach sink when she didn’t recognize the person who got out of the vehicle. It was a male, over six feet tall, and he held a gun in his right hand. But it wasn’t Nash. Patience immediately called 9-1-1.

  “Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?” Frank’s voice, sure and calm.

  “Frank, it’s Patience Colton. I’m in my cabin in the mountains and there is an intruder with a weapon, looks like a Colt .45, approaching my front door.”

>   As she relayed the information, a gunshot cracked through the air, followed by loud pounding.

  “He’s breaking into my house!”

  “Are you armed, Patience?”

  “Yes.” She braced her elbows on the island and aimed at the front door. The wood splintered and shuddered as it resisted the thug’s attack, but within seconds the door burst open. The porch motion light backlit the man, and Patience thought she recognized his profile as that of the same suspect who’d been caught on security cameras at the clinic, running Nico and the puppy to a getaway car. One of the Larsons’ henchmen. She watched him break into her home with a surreal detachment.

  “Stop! I have a weapon.”

  Greta whimpered next to her, clearly wanting to break her silence and lunge for the intruder.

  “You don’t steal someone else’s property and think you’ll get away with it.” Another gunshot rang out and granite exploded no more than a foot from her.

  Patience was done with talking. She fired at the figure, aiming as she’d practiced countless times on the RRPD range and during the K9 exercises. It wasn’t expected that as a veterinarian she’d ever have to fire a weapon, and it wasn’t something she’d ever wanted to do until now.

  The man jerked, and she wasn’t sure if she’d hit his shoulder or his leg, but she saw his arms drop as he fell backward onto the porch. She took her flashlight and shone it at him. His weapon was a foot away, out of his hand. Patience couldn’t send Greta to investigate, not yet, not while he could still be conscious and reach for that gun.

  “What’s going on, Patience?” Frank asked over the phone.

  “I’ve shot the intruder. He’s down, half in and half out of my cabin. I believe he’s one of the Larsons’ henchmen. We’ll need an ambulance along with the RRPD.”

  “Both already on their way. Nash is almost there.”

  Nash had heard the call on his police radio, she was certain. He’d probably missed the shooter by minutes.

  Dispatch must have heard the shots over the phone and sent the ambulance, per standard operating procedure.

  Patience carefully crawled around the island and to the sofa on her belly. The bulge that felt like an eggplant was undeniable. The babies. She could not—would not—risk her children. She had to make sure this person was disarmed.

  He groaned, his eyes closed. The gun was inches from his outstretched hand, near the back corner of the sofa, on the hardwood floor. She’d hurt him, but how badly was impossible to tell.

  Two more feet and she’d be able to grab his weapon, then have Greta guard him until the EMTs and the RRPD arrived. She timed her movements with his groans, hoping to hide the sound of her crawling. Peering from behind the sofa, she ascertained that he had no other visible weapons. His left shoulder was soaked with blood, where she’d hit him.

  Finally, she was only a few inches away, stretched out on her side with her gun ready to fire again. Her fingers stretched for his weapon—and his arm swung to hit hers.

  “Greta!” Patience swiped his gun and sent it skittering across the hardwood as Greta bounded from the kitchen area, leaped over Patience and landed on the assailant’s chest. The man cried out in pain and surprise. Greta stood her ground as trained, and Patience let out a quick sigh of relief. He wasn’t going anywhere as long as Greta was on him.

  She moved back to the kitchen and turned on the lights, just as a pair of headlights swept up to the porch. A door slammed and Greta let out her signature bark that was only for Nash. She’d done her job.

  * * *

  Nash’s heart had been in his throat the entire time he’d raced up the mountain, fighting to get there before the Larsons’ thug hurt Patience, all thoughts of the bears behind him. He’d known fear for his siblings when they’d initially struggled to regroup after their parents had been killed. The occasional case or law enforcement situation shook him up. But nothing came close to the abject terror that had clutched him the moment he’d heard the dispatch call in response to Patience’s distress over the radio.

  He’d also heard that she’d neutralized the killer, with some help from Greta. Thank God.

  As he pulled up in the clearing, his terror returned in an icy wave at the sight of the downed criminal, Greta with two paws on the man’s chest.

  Nash got out of his Jeep and ran up to the porch.

  “Good girl, Greta.”

  She didn’t acknowledge him; she was in work mode and her job was to keep this loser pinned down. Nash recognized the man as a thug paid by the Larsons, but had to know Patience was okay. He searched the immediate vicinity for her and it was a full second before he met her gaze across the room. She stood in the kitchen, her hair in a disheveled ponytail, stomach bulging under her tight white T-shirt. The babies. She and the twins were okay. It was all that mattered.

  “You all right?”

  Patience nodded, and offered him a shaky smile. “We’re good. Just keep him away from me, okay?”

  His pleasure.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  This particular henchman had done the Larsons’ dirty work for a long time. He had a rap sheet a mile long. Problem was he was sneaky and wily, and for years had eluded conviction for the many felonies he was suspected of committing. Not any longer.

  “Screw you.” Even in his pain and with a pretty nasty gunshot wound, the criminal was still a jerk. A jerk who could have killed Patience and the babies. Pure unadulterated rage hit Nash sideways. It was primal.

  “Nash.” Patience’s voice reached him and he forced the emotions into the compartmentalized box they had to go in, until he could examine them later. Right now he had to focus on getting the intruder the medical care he obviously needed and arresting him.

  Sirens pierced the stillness of the mountain forest and an RRPD unit, followed by one of the Red Ridge hospital ambulances, pulled up next to his Jeep.

  Juliette Walsh and her K9 partner, Sasha, ran up to the porch and nodded at Nash. “Patience okay?”

  “She’s fine—see for yourself.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Juliette took over the scene, directing the EMTs and two other RRPD officers she’d brought with her. Within twenty minutes the thug was on a stretcher and en route to Red Ridge Hospital. Under RRPD escort, of course.

  * * *

  Patience had never seen this side of Nash before. Outwardly, he appeared himself, an even more content version of the Nash who routinely juggled four kids, a law enforcement career and K9 handling protocol. It was the tightness in his throat muscles and the way he kept clenching and unclenching his fists that clued her in.

  As soon as all the first responders had left, Patience pulled out duct tape and large plastic leaf bags. “Here, help me patch up the doorway. We’re going to have to make do with it tonight. I’ll call in a repair on it tomorrow.”

  “I’ll make the repair tomorrow. We don’t want any strangers here.”

  “Larson already found me.” She paused and looked at Nash. “And I heard that there have been sightings of the Lake Killer in the eastern part of the state. It doesn’t sound like he’s looking for me anymore.”

  “We thought we’d taken care of the Larson twins and the dogs when we sent them running from the clinic. That didn’t work out so well.” Nash peeled out a length of tape and ripped it with his teeth.

  “Here.” She handed him a box cutter. “It’s easier on your teeth.”

  He grimaced.

  “Wait, Nash—stop.” She placed her hand on his arm. “What’s going on with you?”

  For a moment she thought he was going to just ignore her, keep adding tape to the tarp-like contraption the front door was becoming. Finally, he lowered his arms and looked at her.

  “I wasn’t here for you. Before you tell me that it’s okay, don’t. I know it’s impossible for me to be everywhere, and
you and our children are going to face dangerous situations that neither of us see coming. Not so insane as this—” he waved at the door “—but life isn’t safe, not all the time. I’m a cop. I know this.”

  “If you’re not beating yourself up about not getting here before I had to shoot him, what is it, then?”

  “It hadn’t hit me yet just how much responsibility a family is. That sounds stupid coming from me, right? I worry about my siblings all the time. Are they getting enough affection? Am I listening to them? Do they feel they can come to me about anything from drugs to sex? Have I handled the girls okay? You know, the female necessities—periods, gynecological health, how to handle boys who are rude to them. Will I be able to be enough of a father figure for the boys?” He paused, his hands on his hips, his face down. When he looked up at her again his eyes glittered with angst. “No matter what, I know that whatever I can do for the kids is good—it’s better than what they’d have without me. These babies, our children, it’s different. It is totally my responsibility how they turn out.”

  “Hey, come here.” She tugged his arm until he shifted, and she led him to the sofa.

  “I don’t want to sit down, Patience. I need to move.”

  “You can move all you want in a minute. Let me have my say.”

  He complied, but his face was screwed up in an expression of pain that told her she had only a few minutes to talk to him.

  “First, you don’t have to worry about the babies if you don’t want to. I’ve already told you that I don’t expect anything from you. Not in a hard or mean way, but in a real, I-can-handle-this-myself way.” She ignored the tug at her conscience. Yes, she’d appreciated him being near and protecting her. More than she’d ever imagined. But she didn’t need him to keep her safe. Hadn’t she just proved that?

  “Second, you’re doing a great job with your siblings, by all accounts. Word gets around the RRPD and I’ve never heard anyone say anything other than very complimentary words about how your siblings behave. You’re raising fine kids, Nash. Which brings me to three.”