Agent by Her Side
Page 20
Kiely laughed and Cooper laughed with her. Joy blew with a quiet breeze that billowed around them. The temperature was beginning to drop and there was just a hint of a chill in the air. Kiely pressed herself against him and kissed his lips one more time.
“I have tinted windows,” she said. “You ever get a quickie in the back seat of a new car?”
Cooper grinned. “No, but I think I’m about to.”
Kiely turned and headed toward her new vehicle. Her hips swayed seductively from side to side. Cooper looked around quickly to see who might be watching and then he hurried after her. She climbed into the back seat and he followed. As he closed and locked the door, Kiely’s delightful laugh danced sweetly with his.
* * *
Don’t miss the previous volumes in
the Colton 911: Grand Rapids series:
Colton 911: Family Defender
by Tara Taylor Quinn
Colton 911: Suspect Under Siege
by Jane Godman
Colton 911: Detective on Call
by Regan Black
Available now from
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And don’t miss the thrilling next installment
Colton 911: In Hot Pursuit
by Geri Krotow
Available in November 2020!
Keep reading for an excerpt from Colton Storm Warning by Justine Davis.
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Colton Storm Warning
by Justine Davis
Chapter 1
“It’s your own fault.”
Ty Colton gave his colleague a sour look. Mitch was a good friend, but he was also a sarcastic son of a gun. At least to his colleagues he was. He managed to rein it in with clients. Or maybe he was sarcastic to them because he had to rein it in with clients.
“How did getting stuck babysitting get to be my fault?” Ty asked, letting some of his irritation into his voice.
“If you hadn’t gone all heroic and saved that Sawyer kid last year, you’d still be flying under the radar, dude.”
“If I was heroic,” he pointed out, “I should be getting rewarded, not punished.”
“Would that life were that way,” a deep yet quiet voice came from behind them. They both turned to see Eric King, the founder of Elite Security, the man who was technically Ty’s partner but whom he most times deferred to as his boss, walking toward them with his ever-present tablet in his hand. “But then again,” Eric went on, “a true hero doesn’t ask for any reward.”
Ty studied the older man for a moment, judged he wasn’t really angry and said deferentially, “You would know.”
He meant it. He admired Eric King more than any man he knew. Including—perhaps especially—his own father. Fitz Colton was many things, but a loving, involved parent was not one of them. From the first day he’d met him, Eric seemed to care more about the path Ty was on than his father ever had. Once he’d decided the family business wasn’t for him, that seemed to be the end of his father’s interest in his eldest son.
And unlike his father, Eric didn’t bark out orders gruffly. He didn’t have to. Ty’s sister Jordana, a police detective, had once told him his boss reeked of command presence, and he supposed that was a good description. He reminded Ty more of his Uncle Shep—newly returned to their hometown of Braxville—than anyone. Not surprising since Shepherd Colton had spent even longer in the Navy than Eric had in the Marines. Not, Eric pointed out, that anyone ever really left the Marines.
“Buttering me up won’t get you out of this, Colton,” the man said, although his eyes warmed enough that Ty knew the compliment had registered. “They asked for you specifically, so you’re locked in. Mitch, you’ll be his backup.”
“Damned social media,” Ty muttered, knowing that was probably how this family had discovered him, in that photo that had gone viral of him carrying little Samantha Sawyer from the warehouse where she’d been held for ransom. The rescue operation had been kept under the radar, but these days everyone with a phone fancied themselves a journalist, and one of them had caught that moment. When he’d first seen it, he’d simply been glad the terrified little girl’s face had been hidden as she sobbed into his shirt. By the fiftieth time he’d seen it, he’d been well and truly annoyed.
Jordana had teased him, pointing out every time the shot turned up somewhere, and telling him to enjoy his fame. His brother Brooks, on the other hand, understood. “I wouldn’t want it,” he’d said. “It’d be hard to stay a private investigator when your face is all over every public domain in the country.”
Of course, Brooks had been a lot more understanding about many things lately. Especially since he and Gwen Harrison had gotten engaged.
Ty barely stopped a grimace. He was happy for them. He was happy for Jordana, too, whose growing happiness with businessman Clint Broderick was obvious. Even Bridgette, the girl of the Colton triplets, had settled into a happy reunion with her high school sweetheart.
So the Colton kids are three for six on the happy-ever-after front. Too bad the oldest can’t get it in gear.
He shook off the fruitless thoughts—he’d about decided that kind of happy wasn’t in the cards for him—and focused on the matter at hand. He didn’t like the idea of being pulled off the case his family had been sucked into after the grim discovery of two bodies sealed in the walls of an old Colton Construction building. He was getting close, really close, to unraveling that decades-old case.
But Elite Security had first call on his time, and the police—including his sister the detective—had warned him about jurisdiction issues, and not contaminating the case. Not that that had stopped him from doing a little digging of his own. But that was going to have to go on hold, at least for now.
“So what’s the deal?” he asked.
“Parents worried about their daughter, who’s been threatened. They’ve got a lot of clout, and this could be a good thing for the company.” Eric grinned at him. “Almost as good as your heroics.”
Ty grimaced. Dealing with bigwigs was never his favorite thing. “Is it a credible threat, or are we just keeping them happy?”
“Research is working on that.”
“Who threatened the kid, and why?”
“Some guy named Sanderson, out of Kansas City. Another reason they came to us.”
Ty frowned. “Name sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.”
“Research is working up a profile now.”
“Research is busy,” Mitch put in with a lazy smile. “What do they have on the parents?”
For the first time in this discussion—perhaps the first time since he’d known him—Eric looked...not uneasy, Ty didn’t think he even could, but wary. And that alone made the hair on the back of Ty’s neck stand up. “Research didn’t need to find out who they are. I’m guessing we all know.”
Uh-oh. “Drop the bomb,” Ty suggested, already not liking it.
“Her name’s Ashley Hart.”
Ty frowned as he discarded the first thought that had come to him. Mitch let out a low whistle, indicating he hadn’t discarded the seemingly impossible idea. And another look at Eric’s face told Ty he shouldn’t have been so hasty.
“Not...Andrew Hart? The Westport Harts?” In wealth and prominence, the Connecticut family ranked right up there with the likes of the Rockefellers. Although by Hart standards, the Rockefellers might still be considered new upstarts; the Harts had been American aristocracy as long as, say, the DuPonts.
“The very same,” Eric said.
Ty groaned. “Great. So I get to not just babysit, but babysit some spoiled rich kid?”
&n
bsp; Mitch snorted. Ty looked at him. “Like you weren’t one, Colton?” his friend said, but he was grinning.
“Yeah, yeah,” he retorted, his own grin a bit wry. “Hardly on that level.”
“Speaking of babysitting,” Eric said rather pointedly, “if you two are through?”
“Sorry,” Ty muttered. “So where do I connect with the little darling? Westport?” Hartford airport, he thought. It was about twenty miles farther than La Guardia or JFK in New York, but a lot less hassle. He’d make up the time just getting out of the airport. Then he—
“No,” Eric said. “She’s in McPherson.”
Ty blinked. “Our McPherson? McPherson, Kansas?” The town of some thirteen thousand just east of his hometown of Braxville hardly seemed like a place someone from Westport would likely be visiting, let alone a Hart.
“Yes, our McPherson.”
“Why?”
“She was there for some meeting about the Lake Inman wetlands expansion.”
Ty drew back. “Wait, I thought you said she was a kid.”
“She is.” Eric grinned at him. “But I’m old. To me, you’re a kid.”
Ty scowled at Eric. The man might be pushing sixty, but he looked a decade younger and was fit enough to put both him and Mitch on the floor. Probably at the same time. But before he could say anything, Eric’s tablet chimed, and he waited as the man scanned the message. Then Eric tapped the screen a few times as he spoke. “Details on where you’re meeting up and the threat report. I’ll send it to your phone. Mitch, liaison with Research and send whatever they turn up on to Ty when it’s ready.”
“You mean I don’t get to help wrangle?” Mitch’s disappointment was clearly mock.
Eric finished sending the details before looking up at them. “Ty can handle it. McPherson’s close enough you can get there in a hurry if need be. I’ll be tied up with the loose ends of the Rivera case, but I’ll be on our comms.”
Ty nodded. The high-end private communication system was one of the things that made Elite work so well. They didn’t have to rely on easily hackable cell networks or internet to connect with each other while on a job. Mitch, meanwhile, just looked relieved at escaping. “Anything else?”
“Nothing that’s not in the report. Obviously, handle with care.”
Ty sighed. He was not looking forward to dealing with some East Coast high-society type. But he said only, “Yes, sir.”
He looked at Mitch, who was grinning at him, his relief obvious now. Eric turned to go, then turned back. “Mitch, make sure you look at the file now, too. You’ll need to know who he’s watching, in case you have to back him up. There’s a photo up front.”
Ty’s brow furrowed as Eric walked away. There had been something a little too pointed in that look he’d given Mitch, who was pulling out his phone to follow the order.
“Damn,” Mitch said. And it was heartfelt.
“What?” he asked.
“You have all the luck.”
“Luck? Aren’t you the guy who was just—”
He stopped dead when Mitch held out his phone. And Ty found himself looking at one of the loveliest women he’d ever seen. The picture had clearly been taken at some formal occasion. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder dress, white trimmed in black, but he barely noticed. Not with those lovely slender shoulders and delicate throat on display. Her face was...refined, his mother would call it. Delicate features. Dark bottomless brown eyes. Her dark brown hair was pulled back into some loose sort of knot, and small gold earrings her only jewelry. Not that she needed any adornment with all that luscious skin showing.
He sucked in some air, only then aware he’d stopped breathing for a moment.
Damn, indeed.
Copyright © 2020 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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ISBN-13: 9781488064234
Colton 911: Agent By Her Side
Copyright © 2020 by Harlequin Books S.A.
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Deborah Fletcher Mello for her contribution to the Colton 911: Grand Rapids miniseries.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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