Yashi’s face had gone pale, making her eyes seem ridiculously blue in contrast. She pressed her lips together, and muscles clenched in her jaw, her neck, her hands. “And?”
He didn’t want to go on. Delivering bad news to a family about their loved ones was always hard, and the fact that he knew both the family and the loved one made it even harder. Especially since the family in this case was pitifully small. Yashi was an only child; so was Will. Their parents had died when they were kids, and their grandparents before that. Both sets of great-grandparents had immigrated, one from Canada and one from Russia. Other than distant relatives back in their homelands, the family line was down to Yashi, Will and his kids.
Maybe just Yashi and Brit.
She waited, motionless. Her eyes were fixed on his face, steady and unyielding, and her breaths were measured. To anyone watching her, she appeared calm and patient. To the person unlucky enough to be the focus of that stare, she appeared slightly less lethal than a nuclear warhead.
He took a deep breath, wished he’d let Sam or Daniel or JJ have this job, then quietly answered. “There was a struggle in the living room. Things knocked about, spilled milk and wine, table upturned. It doesn’t look as if any of the beds were slept in, but the kitchen is clean and there are leftovers in the refrigerator, so we’re guessing it happened last night, between dinner and bedtime. Do they still stay up late on Fridays and watch movies?”
Yashi’s nod was vague, not as to the answer, but lacking the strength to be emphatic. No wonder. While she’d been cozied up doing whatever occupied her Friday nights these days, three of the four members of her family had been fighting for their lives.
And it was absolutely not the right time to remember that he used to occupy her Friday nights.
He closed his eyes briefly, let himself see the scene again in his head, then looked at her. “There was blood in the living room. A lot of it.”
She’d been pale earlier. Now she turned white, and her body began sliding to the porch floor. If not for the balusters behind her, she would have pitched back into the yard. As it was, she slid down until her butt hit the floor, knees drawn up, and she hugged herself tightly, hiding her face in her arms.
Ben listened for tears, watched for the shuddering of her shoulders. This was one of the things he hated about interviews. It wasn’t in him to offer emotional or physical support to someone whom he’d just given bad news. JJ could do it if she had to. Sam was really good at it. Lois excelled at it. Even Daniel, who was a little on the stiff side, could unbend much better than Ben could.
But no tears came from Yashi. No shudders. No sobs. No great sorrow unleashed. Dragging a wheezy breath into her lungs, she lifted her head. The sorrow was there on her face, shifting her appearance from pretty blonde to tragic beauty, but her eyes were dry. “So my family’s been attacked, injured, kidnapped and possibly—” her voice caught, a hiccup, then turned steely “—possibly murdered. Do you have any clues yet? Any ideas why this happened to them?”
He was shaking his head when his cell beeped with a text. Seeing it was from Sam, he automatically glanced across the road and saw that everyone over there had gone inside the house except Morwenna. Morwenna knew her limits when it came to the job, and she observed them strictly.
The text was short and terse. You need to see this. Putting down his pen and notebook, Ben shrugged into his slicker and set off. Even as he said, “I’ll be back,” Yashi scrambled to her feet. He didn’t tell her to stay put. He wouldn’t in her situation. She wasn’t just any citizen or worried family member. She’d been an assistant district attorney for six years. She was more familiar than most with the damage people could inflict on others. If Sam didn’t want to let her in the house, she could wait on the Mueller porch.
The rain was showing signs of easing up finally. It still fell with a steady patter, but the rivers running down the road were narrowing, and the ditches were slowly draining. Ben and Yashi climbed into the shelter of the porch, took off their jackets, kicked off their shoes and put on booties before Ben gave the partly opened door a push.
Sam pulled it open, gestured for Ben to come inside, hesitated with Yashi, then gave her a nod. When they’d joined the small group of grim people in the foyer, Sam closed the door.
There was a message written in red on the inside of the white door. Clunky letters, paint running in drips from the overspray, looking all too much like drops of blood, and the text—the promise—was chilling.
I’ll trade them for her.
* * *
Yashi walked outside, barely glancing at Morwenna. Some small part of her brain that was still functioning in Normal Land noted that Ben’s friend was younger, prettier and possibly color blind. That part of her hoped that if he wanted her, he got her, complete with happily-ever-after.
She took the steps one at a time, grasping the railing, unable to see through the rain and the dampness in her eyes, unable to make out anything without that gruesome bloodred message superimposed over it. She walked to the driveway, past Lolly’s minivan and Will’s SUV, and stopped where the ground dropped steeply into a small valley. The creek that cut through it rushed with surplus water. It was the kids’ favorite playground: wading, climbing the boulders that edged it on both sides, sailing makeshift boats. Brit liked to stretch out on the flat rock in her bikini, invisible from any vantage point except where Yashi was standing now. It was the only time she welcomed Theo’s splashes because they cooled her baking skin.
Every time Yashi saw her in a bikini, she was struck anew by how young she seemed to Yashi and how attractive she was to the males out there. Though Brit was restricted from the more revealing clothes her friends wore, she could be covered head to toe and guys would still notice her.
One pervert in particular wanted her badly enough to come take her from her house in the night. Badly enough to kidnap her family when he found she wasn’t there. Irrationally enough to think he could trade them for her. Oh dear God. Where had Brit met him? She was too savvy to fall for someone online. She knew the hooks, the lures, had been taught internet safety along with use your napkin and brush your teeth and reuse, reduce, recycle.
Was it a teacher at her school? The coach of her soccer team? Someone sitting in the pew behind her at church, benignly singing hymns? The parent of a friend? A neighbor? Her doctor, her dentist, someone she trusted as a friend?
The possibilities were endless. Yashi knew too well that more often than not, criminals didn’t look like criminals. Sure, there was the guy with Kill all cops tattooed on his forehead who’d, surprise, shot a cop. The unshaven, unbathed, wild-eyed terrors who made protective instincts scream from a hundred yards away.
But so many looked normal. Behaved normally. Did everything but think normally. The ones whose friends and neighbors said, But he seemed like such a nice guy. He coached my kids. He treated his grandmother like a queen. The ones no one would ever look at and think, He could be an embezzler, a rapist, a predator, a kidnapper, a murderer.
Everything inside Yashi shuddered with despair. She hugged herself tightly, willing the sickness back into her stomach, calling on years of coping to gain some semblance of emotional control. She was bending forward at the waist, eyes closed, taking short, steady breaths through her nose, when a light touch on her arm startled her upright again.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to surprise you.” Morwenna stood there, concern lining her face. Like Yashi, she’d left her slicker on the porch. It was too hot a day to swelter inside rainproof fabric. “I’m Morwenna. I’m the one who called you.”
Yashi sniffed and dashed her hand across her face, wiping away raindrops—teardrops—only to have more appear in their place. “Yashi.”
“Would you like to go back to Ben’s to wait?” Morwenna’s sympathy was sincere, but different from what she’d seen on the faces of the officers and crime scene investigators when she’d walked insid
e Will’s house. There was an innocence to it that offered both acknowledgment and hope. She knew this was a bad situation, but she expected only the best outcome. Her faith touched that cold, hollow spot in Yashi’s gut.
“Yes. P-please.”
Morwenna took hold of her arm and guided her around the vehicles in the driveway to the road. She wasn’t chatty—Yashi had expected chattiness—but got her across the yard, onto the porch and seated before she disappeared inside the house. The moments until her return passed unmarked, no thoughts, no words, only images of Will and Lolly, Brit and Theo, the way Yashi had always known them. Laughing, happy, teasing.
Morwenna came back, arms full. First, she set two bottles of water on the round table between the chairs, then she shook out a thick fluffy bath towel and handed it to Yashi. “I’d offer something stronger than water, but the only other thing Ben has in the house is coffee, and trust me, his coffee isn’t drinkable.”
Yashi knew that. He drank the other stuff at work and in restaurants because no one made it his way, but he insisted the only good coffee in the world was his. In the time they were together, she’d come up with a dozen good uses for his brew—cleaning sludge from car engines had topped the list—but drinking wasn’t among them.
And Morwenna knew. How long had they been together? Was it dating, a relationship, all good fun, friends with benefits or more? Did he love her? Did she love him? Did she deserve him?
Yashi hoped so, because she certainly hadn’t.
Morwenna gave her dark hair a quick rub with the second towel, then wrapped it around her before she sat down. No sooner had she settled in, when a tiny gray kitten appeared from nowhere, leaped into her lap, rested its paws on the chair arm and lifted a disdainful nose in Yashi’s direction before curling into a ball.
“Ben’s got a cat,” Yashi said blankly. He’d registered official complaints against Bobcat practically every time he’d come to her apartment. The cat was possessive and always lying where Ben wanted to sit. He sharpened his claws on Ben’s holster, shed an immense amount of yellow hair on Ben’s uniform and preferred to sleep in the center of the bed—claws on Ben’s side, of course.
“This is Oliver. He had to find a new home after his human went to jail for making meth.”
“And Ben volunteered?”
“Oh no. He lost to Sam and Daniel in Rock, Paper, Scissors.” Morwenna gave a boys-will-be-boys shrug before uncapping her water and taking a drink. She waited while Yashi did the same, then cautiously said, “So you know Ben.”
Knew him. Had loved him. Tennyson, in her never-humble opinion, had been so off the mark when he’d written, “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” She’d loved deeply, lost deeply and could live without the pain again.
Not that falling in love with Ben had been a choice.
Aware that Morwenna was waiting, Yashi gave the easiest answer. “I used to work in the DA’s office. I prosecuted some of his cases.”
Let her think that was all there was between them. Nothing but business. Not that it mattered. Ben wasn’t the type a woman got insecure about. He was solid and steady and loyal. He was an emotional rock, and it had nothing to do with his height or the broad shoulders and granite muscles that went with it. He was a man who never strayed from his beliefs, who did the right thing not because he should but because it was who he was.
“He’s a very good detective. They’re all very good.”
A ghost of a smile quivered on Yashi’s lips. “I know.”
“They’re the people I’d want looking if it was my family missing.”
Eyes misting, she whispered, “I know.” They were dedicated. They did their best on every case. Will, Lolly and Theo deserved the very best.
She was taking a drink when her cell phone rang. Cold water spilled over her chin and dripped onto her shirt. More splashed her legs as she dropped the bottle to dig the phone from her pocket. The screen identified Brit, and when she lifted the phone to her ear, she was greeted by her cousin’s hyped-up, high-pitched and breathless voice.
“Yashi? What’s going on? Officer Bear called and told me don’t come home, and Mom and Dad aren’t answering their phones, and he said they’re not home. Where are they? Where are you? I’m at your house, but you’re not here. What’s happening?” The last words came out a wail, accompanied by the soothing sound of a male voice in the background. Her boyfriend, Jared.
“Honey, I’m at Ben’s house.” Yashi needed less than a breath to choose a lie to tell—a partial one, at least—because no way was she breaking the news over the phone. “Sweetie, your house was broken into and—”
“Oh God, are they all right? Mom? Dad? Are they hurt? What—who—” The shriek dropped to a frantic, fearful whisper. “Is Theo okay?”
Dear God, I pray so.
Without stopping for air, Brit went on. “I’m coming out there right now. I want to see—I want to talk to Officer Bear. I want—Jared, come on! We have to go! We have to—I have to—”
“Brit, listen to me.” Yashi’s words were sharp, the only way to cut through the girl’s emotions to reach the rational part of her brain. “You still have the key to my house, right? Go on in and wait for me. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Brit?”
The only answer was a thud. A moment later, Jared got on the phone. He identified himself, his sixteen-year-old voice quavering with fear and the effects of Brit’s drama and trauma. “Should I bring Brit home now? Officer—Detective Little Bear told her to wait until he called, and she’s called him, but he’s not answering.”
Yashi got to her feet, repeating the instructions, feeling the brush as the towel fell to the floor. “I’ll be there as quick as I can. Just get her inside and—and let her cuddle with Bobcat for a while.” The cat usually managed to bring Brit back from the edge of hysteria to the-world-hasn’t-ended balance.
The world hasn’t ended yet.
Or maybe it had.
She was halfway down the steps when she turned to Morwenna. “I don’t know if Ben has more questions, but—”
“You have to go. Of course. I’ll tell him. He knows how to reach you.”
The rain had become little more than a mist that dampened their faces as they hurried across the road. Yashi began patting her pockets for her keys, then remembered they were in her jacket. With a quiet word, Morwenna jogged ahead to the porch and brought the slicker back to her. Apparently stricken by impulse, she gave Yashi a quick, tight hug.
“Have faith,” she said when she let go.
Faith. Hope. Trust.
Yashi was feeling pretty low on all three at the moment.
Copyright © 2020 by Marilyn Pappano
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ISBN: 9781488064081
Colton’s Last Stand
Copyright © 2020 by Harlequin Books S.A.
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Karen Whiddon for her contribution to the The Coltons of Mustang Valley 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 w
ork 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.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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Colton's Last Stand Page 26