Colton's Twin Secrets

by Justine Davis

  Chase. Like the cops were chasing her.

  She’d just seen a fugitive. A multiple-murder suspect.

  But she was family. Not the closest, but family.

  Family that Dev put out a $100,000 reward on, don’t forget that.

  She shoved away the fact that had bothered her since Dev had done it.

  She should call the police.

  But Demi was innocent. She was sure of it. The police, including some of her own relatives, seemed sure she was guilty, though. They’d haul her off to jail, and she’d end up in prison, maybe for life.

  The baby. How could Gemma report seeing her when Demi had a baby even younger than the twins?

  How could she not report it?

  She shivered despite the mild weather. Wrapped her arms around herself.

  She looked at the twins. “What should I do?” she whispered to them.

  Lucia, who had been trying to reach the brightly colored ball that hung above her from the stroller’s handle, shifted her gaze to Gemma. Zita helpfully said, “Ba ba ba.”

  She got out her phone. Stared at it for a while. Minutes ticked by. She felt torn, uncertain. It just seemed so cold, so heartless, to sic the police on family. And Demi had a baby...

  She didn’t know what to do. Twice she punched in 911 but didn’t send it.

  Maybe she should call Finn Colton. He was also family, after all. But she found the chief of the K9 unit rather intimidating.

  Brayden. She could call the other Colton cousin who was a K9 officer. He was Demi’s half brother—surely he’d be more open to thinking her innocent? She’d even heard that he didn’t believe she’d done it. Gemma wished now she’d paid more attention to all the stories circulating.

  She called the K9 unit and asked for him, without saying why she needed to speak to him and hoping her name and the family connection would do it. She was put through, but it went immediately to voice mail. This was not something she wanted to leave a message about, so she disconnected.

  God, she didn’t know what to do. Time was passing, Demi was running and she had to do...something. Tell someone. But someone who would give Demi a chance. She didn’t think she could bear it if she turned Demi in and she ended up dead. But if she couldn’t reach a Colton cop, who could she—

  Zita chimed in again, this time with an equally helpful, “Pa pa pa.”

  “Thanks, kid,” Gemma said. “But—”

  Dante.

  She could call Dante. He would understand. Of all people, he would understand.

  Feeling like a fool for not having thought of it sooner, she grabbed her phone again.

  * * *

  “How long ago?”

  Dante knew his voice had gone up a notch, but he couldn’t believe she’d waited twenty minutes to call him. Loading up Flash and getting here had added another ten, which he had spent alerting the department.

  “Just after ten thirty.”

  “Damn it, Gemma, she’ll be long gone by now! Especially if she got in a vehicle.”

  “I know. But...she has her baby with her, and...she didn’t kill anyone, Dante. I just know she didn’t.”

  Her eyes were glistening, and he reined in his temper. “That’s for the court to decide.”

  “No! The truth is the truth, and the court doesn’t always get it right. You know that.”

  Dante smothered what he wanted to say, because he knew it would come out in a yell. The twins were already restless and looked as if the slightest thing would set them off into those ear-piercing wails.

  “I tried to call Brayden right away, but it went to voicemail,” she said.

  At least she’d tried, then. Dante calmed down a bit.

  “You’re absolutely certain it was her?”

  She nodded and told him about the sunglasses Demi had been wearing.

  “All right,” he said, rather grimly, “if she’s still anywhere around here on foot, Flash can find her.” If I can get him on her scent. Big if, with no scent article on hand.

  Her eyes widened. “You’re going to sic him on her?”

  “He’s not an attack dog, Gemma.”

  “But—”

  “Just figure out how we’re going to explain why you waited so long to call,” he snapped. “Now, tell me where she was.”

  “Over there, next to the playhouse thing. Where all those kids lined up to climb the big slide.”

  He’d been afraid of that. “Did she touch anything?”

  Gemma blinked. “What?”

  “Did she touch anything? The slide, that fence there, anything?”

  “I...don’t think so. She was just standing there, watching the kids play. Then when she saw me, she ran.”

  “Which way?”

  “Toward the parking area.”

  “Did you see her get in a car?”

  “No. I couldn’t see from where I was. But I didn’t see her after that.”

  She was starting to look a bit harassed. He was sorry for the barrage of questions, but he didn’t have time to be polite—too much time had already been wasted. He wasn’t on the Groom Killer case officially, but in effect every cop in the county was.

  “Did you see or hear a car leave after that?”

  “Yes.”

  “About the right time for her to have gotten to it?”

  “I... Yes. I heard a car start. And then the bus.”

  His turn to blink. “Bus?”

  “With the children. It must have been a field trip or something, that’s why there were so many here.”

  “How many?” he asked, his energy suddenly ebbing.

  “Twenty or so. Maybe more.”

  Twenty kids all over the parking lot, leaving fresher scents than Demi, and him with nothing with Demi Colton’s confirmed scent on it to use to home Flash in.

  “What?” she asked. “You changed all of a sudden.”

  “Twenty kids,” he muttered, surprised she’d noticed.

  “You mean he wouldn’t know who to follow?”

  “If I had something she’d touched—we call it a scent article—he could sort it out, pick out her trail infallibly. But I don’t. Flash is brilliant and a tireless trailing dog, but he can’t start from nothing.”

  “But she was right there—”

  “Along with a couple of dozen others. No way to isolate which scent is hers for him. And in the parking lot, with maybe thirty other people and a bus likely putting out carbon monoxide? That’ll contaminate scent for even the best trailing or tracking dog.”

  “Aren’t they the same thing?” she asked.

  He wondered why she’d fastened on that. “No. Most tracking dogs are trained to follow a specific trail, footprints or whatever, to the end. A trailing dog follows the scent he’s given, whether it’s on the trail or on the wind.”

  Gemma was looking thoughtful. “So...that must be useful if somebody doubles back or something. He’d go after the scent, not the tracks.”

  He looked at her, startled. She’d gotten that quickly. “Exactly.”

  He heard the sound of vehicles approaching, saw the troops had arrived. He tried to marshal his thoughts, what he was going to say. Logically he knew it wasn’t his fault she hadn’t called immediately upon seeing Demi Colton, but he still felt responsible somehow. He wasn’t sure why—they’d never even talked about the Groom Killer case.

  But they were going to ask, the cops who were on the case. Why she’d waited. Wonder if it was because of her family connection to the suspect. He’d have to convince them that being related to a criminal didn’t make you one.

  And that was something he’d had practice with.

  Chapter 19

  In the end it took almost two hours for him to extricate them from the process, between Gemma being questioned and him having to explain w
hy using Flash wasn’t feasible, and then the inevitable arched eyebrows and lewd suggestions when they learned Gemma was his new nanny. He knew he was on edge when he snapped at Collins, who ribbed him once too often.

  “I only need a nanny because my brother is freaking dead, so back the hell off.”

  The man looked surprised, putting up his hands. Dante didn’t know if it was because of the uncharacteristic flash of temper or that Al had simply forgotten why Dante was suddenly the guardian of two babies. He found he didn’t care. He’d had enough.

  “We’re out of here. You’ve got my number.”

  He went and rescued Gemma, who was looking more than a little harassed and had been saying to the other detective, “I’ve told you three times,” when he got to her.

  “And if you want a fourth repetition, you can call me later. We need to get my nieces home.”

  As if on cue, the girls began that wailing. Every head turned, some in rueful recognition—likely those with kids of their own—and some in horror at the decibel level, or maybe the pitch.

  They walked back to Dante’s car, where he opened the back and greeted Flash. The animal looked woeful, and Dante could have sworn he winced at the barrage of sound from two obviously healthy sets of lungs.

  Zita spotted the dog first, and her wailing stopped abruptly. “Ah ew ah,” she said.

  Flash’s head came up. By now Lucia was curious about her sister’s change of mood and stopped wailing to look around. She also spotted Flash and began to smile.

  “A miracle worker,” Gemma said. “Now if he could only change diapers.”

  “Tired of that already?”

  “You’re not?” she countered. “You’ve done your share.”

  He appreciated the acknowledgment, although his efforts in that arena were undeniably second-rate. How they ever did it with cloth and pins he didn’t know.

  “Thanks. Figuring you’ll quit when I get the hang of it?”

  “If you ever do,” she came back at him quickly. “And I won’t quit. You’ll have to fire me.”

  Something in her voice told him she meant it. She wouldn’t quit. And he filed that away in that place in his mind where he’d been putting the numerous Gemma surprises.

  Since she’d walked the twins here and the car seats were in her vehicle, she had to walk them back.

  “I’d walk them and let you drive, but—”

  “That?” she said, glancing at the big SUV full of police equipment and Flash’s gear along with the dog himself. “No, thanks. Besides, isn’t there a rule against civilians driving police vehicles?”

  “Probably. It’s never been an issue before, so I plead ignorance.”

  “Think that’d fly?” she asked, and he saw the corners of her mouth twitching slightly.

  “About as far as Flash’s drool,” he said with an exaggerated sigh.

  “Gross!”

  “Only when it hits your plate.”

  She looked as if she didn’t know whether to laugh or gag. But more importantly, she appeared to have put the last couple of hours out of her mind—for now, at least. Which had been his intent.

  It was much later, after they’d gotten everyone and everything home, he’d fed and groomed Flash while she fed and bathed the girls, and they had mutually decided frozen lasagna would do fine for dinner. She wasn’t above such things, he’d already noted, which had been yet another Gemma surprise for the file. They were waiting for it to bake when he saw her expression shift and he knew she was thinking about today again.

  “I understand,” he said quietly.

  Her gaze shot to his face. “What?”

  “Why you...waited. To call, I mean.”

  “Oh.” She looked down again, as if there were some secret code in the pattern of the granite counter.

  “I had to rat out my uncle once.”

  Her head came back up. “Why?”

  “He pulled an armed robbery right in front of me. A woman got hurt. I was fifteen. I had to testify against him.”

  Her eyes widened. “My God. Why on earth would he do that in front of you?”

  “I think it was a test. Of my family loyalty.”

  She stared at him. “You mean...they expected you not to turn him in?”

  “That’s who my family is. So you see, I knew he was guilty and it was still hard as hell to do it. But you’re convinced Demi Colton is innocent. So I get why it took you a while.”

  She was still staring at him, but he thought he saw her eyes glisten a little more, as if moisture were pooling. He didn’t want her to start crying, even if he didn’t understand why she would. He’d had enough female crying from the younger set today. Instinctively he reached out and put a hand over hers where it was resting on the counter.

  For an instant he felt as if he’d touched a live electrical wire. The snap made his fingers tingle, and all he could do was stare at their hands. She’d turned hers until her fingers were curled around his. Not gripping, or hanging on, but there, touching, and it felt...right. So very right.

  Uh-oh.

  He risked a glance at her face. She, too, was staring at their hands and looking almost as stunned as he felt.

  Double uh-oh.

  It took everything he had to gently disengage rather than yank his hand away as if hers were that live wire. He stood up abruptly, and for lack of any other idea he walked over to the oven on the pretense of checking on the lasagna, which had a good twenty minutes yet to go.

  He wanted to turn back and look at her. He wanted to see her face, her expression. He wanted to go back to her. He wanted to ask her if she’d felt it, too. He dared do none of it.

  He stared at the timer. Watched as it clicked over another minute gone.

  Another minute of his life gone.

  The hand that had reached out to hers clenched into a fist. He let his fingernails dig in, trying to replace one sensation with another. Wipe out pleasure with pain.

  He nearly groaned aloud at his own thoughts.

  He had to be losing his mind.

  * * *

  Gemma lay in the dark, staring at nothing.

  She had never expected him to understand. But when he’d told her why he did, her heart had almost broken.

  She had never expected him to stand between her and the other cops, the suspicious one. He did.

  She had never, ever expected the mere touch of hands to send a jolt through her like that.

  She held up that hand, some part of her swirling brain surprised that it wasn’t somehow glowing in the darkness. It should be. There should be some sign of that connection—surely something that strong, that instant, should leave a mark?

  For a long time she lay awake, trying to make sense of it all, trying to see the path she had once thought so clear.

  When she finally fell asleep, she was more confused than ever.

  Chapter 20

  “Do you think there will be very many there?”

  Dante looked over at Gemma as he strapped Lucia into her car carrier in the luxury SUV. Saturday and the funeral were finally here, after a relatively quiet morning that had still managed to have a steep learning curve. Lucia liked carrots, Zita did not. Since they were only starting on solid food, they ended up wearing as much as they ate. Which resulted in the knowledge that Lucia squealed at cold water on a washcloth, but Zita did not. And on it went.

  They had finally agreed on taking the girls, but only to the quiet, private room in the chapel, and if they started to fuss, Gemma would take them outside to the peaceful, tree-lined garden beside it. Then, if that someday came, he could tell them they had at least been there.

  “I can guarantee there will at least be a police presence,” he answered.

  She looked startled. “Why?”

  He didn’t tell her it had been his suggestion. “They
never miss a crook’s funeral. You never know who on the wanted list might turn up.”

  She stared at him. “You...really grew up with this?”

  “All my life.”

  “Until you walked away from it.”

  “Yes.”

  She seemed to ponder for a moment. “Is that why you decided the twins could come? Because there will be police there?”

  “No other way I’d take them into what will likely be a den of thieves.”

  Again she looked at him thoughtfully. “That’s why you wanted me to drive them separately, isn’t it? You might get into something...police related and I’ll need to get them out of there?”

  He straightened up from fastening Lucia’s carrier—why did they make the damn process so tricky?—and looked at her. Anybody, he thought, who dismissed this woman as a pampered airhead heiress would be making a serious mistake.

  “What?” she asked at his look.

  “Just thinking you’d make a hell of an undercover operative.”

  It was a moment before she smiled. “I’ve the perfect cover, haven’t I? Silly, spoiled rich girl, and throw probably stupid into the bargain.”

  “Exactly. They’d never know what hit them.”

  She gave him a look that reminded him of how she’d looked when he’d asked why Harrington didn’t ask for her help on everything. It warmed him in a way he didn’t quite understand, and he bent to double-check the seat belt fastening to keep from letting his disconcertment show.

  “Dante?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Don’t worry about the parenting thing. You’re already getting it down.”

  He couldn’t stop the pleased smile that curved his mouth, but he couldn’t think of a thing to say and so said nothing.

  They started on their way, Dante in the lead. He was already thinking ahead, wondering if Flash would alert on anybody at the funeral. Dante might even let him out after for a round of sniffing, just for that reason.

  About a mile out his cell rang, and he used the car system to answer.

  “Mancuso.”

  “Hey, man, it’s Duke. Just wanted to give you a heads-up. Collins and I will be there this morning, and we’ll be set up for video.”