by Kimberly van Meter - A Sinclair Homecoming (The Sinclairs of Alaska)
No ID. No name. No memory.
Who wants John Doe dead?
After a murder attempt leaves him with amnesia, business mogul Clint Broderick has no clue who he is. He knows even less about his mysterious connection to Detective Jordana Colton and one of her cases. He does know that they must find his would-be killer and resist the powerful attraction between them. But will the dangerous investigation restore his memory...and shatter their bond forever?
“I’m sorry, Clint. If it counts for anything, I hate the idea of you leaving.”
“It does count,” he admitted, but the determined set of his jaw told her he wasn’t giving up. He gazed into her eyes. “Someone tried to kill me, Jordana. I don’t trust anyone but you to find out who’s behind this murder plot.”
“How do you even know I’m a good investigator? Clint, you don’t even know me. I have an investigation on my desk right now that’s growing colder by the minute, and I’m no closer than I was when I got the call that two bodies were found walled up in my family’s warehouse. Maybe I wouldn’t even be that much help.”
She wasn’t usually insecure about her skills but now wasn’t the time for bravado, not with Clint’s life on the line.
“You’re the one I want. I have a sense about people—I don’t know how I know it but I do. From the first moment we met, I had a good feeling about you. You’re strong, confident and capable. I want you by my side.”
* * *
The Coltons of Kansas: Truth. Justice.
And secrets they can’t hide.
* * *
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Dear Reader,
When I was asked to contribute to the Colton continuity, I was so proud to be part of such a distinguished lineup of authors, but once I started writing, I fell in love with the characters. There’s something so satisfying about watching a story evolve, knowing that it will continue as the torch is passed.
I love big family connections and complicated relationships, which is something the Colton clan has in spades! I hope you enjoy my vision for Jordana and Clint as they push their way toward a much-earned happily-ever-after while struggling to put together the pieces of a deadly puzzle.
As always, I enjoy hearing from readers. Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter or drop me an email at [email protected].
Warmly,
Kimberly Van Meter
COLTON’S AMNESIA TARGET
Kimberly Van Meter
Kimberly Van Meter wrote her first book at sixteen and finally achieved publication in December 2006. She has written for the Harlequin Superromance, Blaze and Romantic Suspense lines. She and her husband of seventeen years have three children, three cats, and always a houseful of friends, family and fun.
Books by Kimberly Van Meter
Harlequin Romantic Suspense
The Coltons of Kansas
Colton’s Amnesia Target
Military Precision Heroes
Soldier for Hire
Soldier Protector
The Sniper
The Agent’s Surrender
Moving Target
Deep Cover
The Killer You Know
Harlequin Superromance
Family in Paradise
Like One of the Family
Playing the Part
Something to Believe In
The Sinclairs of Alaska
That Reckless Night
A Real Live Hero
A Sinclair Homecoming
Visit the Author Profile page at
www.Harlequin.com for more titles.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Excerpt from Incognito Ex by Geri Krotow
Chapter 1
“You’re gonna love this,” Reese Carpenter promised with a subtle quirk of his lips that pretty much guaranteed his partner, Jordana Colton, would not agree. “John Doe at the hospital, all banged up, unconscious, no ID. And—wait for it—nothing but your name on a piece of paper clutched in his hot little hand.”
Jordana, Braxville police detective, looked up from her report and narrowed her gaze. “Come again?”
Reese wagged the phone receiver at her. “Yeah, line four. All yours, practically gift-wrapped.”
Jordana rolled her eyes and switched the line. “Detective Colton here.”
“Detective, we’ve got an unconscious male Caucasian with no identification that we might need your help identifying down here at the hospital. Think you can come down and take a peek?”
“Sure thing,” Jordana said, perplexed. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Jordana clicked off and returned to Reese with an annoyed sigh. “Guess I’m heading down to Braxville General to unravel a mystery.” Like she had time to spend on a John Doe when there was a case potentially involving her family on the desk. Sidenote: she hated mysteries of any sort.
“Oh, your favorite,” he quipped, to which Jordana shot him a look that said, I’m going to spit in your yogurt if you leave it unattended, then grabbed her keys to leave. “Hey, call me if you hear back from forensics, yeah?”
“Sure. Let me know if your mystery guy is an old boyfriend looking to rekindle a lost love.”
“Screw you. I don’t have old boyfriends,” Jordana returned, adding with a smart-ass grin, “None here, anyway.”
Reese chuckled and Jordana exited the building. The sticky heat of Kansas in September clung to her face and body as she climbed into her car, the steering wheel burning hot to the touch. God, she’d be so happy when the weather turned to cooler temps. She’d had enough of this fall heat-wave crap.
Hot weather made people cranky and mean-tempered. Just last week she’d nearly been clocked by a mean drunk standing in his skivvies outside his place, waving a whiskey bottle, ranting at the world, sweat dribbling down his sun-weathered face.
In a small department, even detectives had to do fieldwork and that meant answering disturbance calls if none of the street cops were available.
As luck would have it, Jordana plucked the short straw on that one.
Heat and booze, a combination guaranteed to bring out the worst in people.
Braxville General loomed ahead and she pulled into the emergency loading zone reserved for cops bringing in perps with medical issues.
She waved at Rosie, the front desk volunteer, a living fossil if there ever was one, but hers was a face Jo
rdana would associate with Braxville General until the day she died.
“Hi there, honey,” Rosie called out. “Say hello to your mama for me.”
Jordana offered a short smile and a thumbs-up, saying, “Copy that, Miss Rosie,” before going through the double doors to the emergency room where her John Doe was being held.
Jordana knew this place like the back of her hand. Before she retired from the Navy and became a cop, as a kid she’d been a regular at this place.
In spite of her mother’s ardent attempts to change her, Jordana had been a straight-up tomboy, more content to spend time running with the boys than hanging out with the girls.
As a precocious twelve-year-old Jordana had come to the conclusion that girls were boring. As opinions went, nothing had changed much since she was twelve. Shocker: Jordana didn’t have many girlfriends. But that suited her just fine. She didn’t have anything in common with most of the women in Braxville and small talk was excruciating.
So, best to avoid it was her motto.
Dr. Cervantes saw her enter and waved her over to a bay. “Sorry to break up your day like this but all he had was this in his hand.” He handed Jordana a slip of paper. Sure enough, her name and cell were scrawled in masculine handwriting, plain as day.
Jordana took a closer look at the guy who remained knocked out, an IV drip feeding fluids into his body, but otherwise he seemed in relatively stable condition. “Head injury?” she surmised.
“Yes, concussion with some minor brain swelling. He should regain consciousness soon but I thought you might want to come down and take a look. I was hoping you might recognize him.”
But Jordana was looking at a stranger.
Older, best guess in his mid-thirties, some salt-and-pepper seasoning in his sideburns but an otherwise strong head of dark hair. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that this man wasn’t from Braxville.
Also, she didn’t have a clue who the hell he was or why he’d been looking for her.
“Sorry, drawing a blank on this end,” Jordana said to Dr. Cervantes, but offered to run his prints. “Something tells me this guy ain’t living off the grid. His prints ought to be in the system.” Jordana pulled her fingerprinting device from her pocket. One of the fancier gadgets the department had purchased with some help from a Homeland Security grant. It was all digital and it went straight to the database.
Jordana gently pressed his fingers against the pad, recording his prints. No messy ink, no cleanup. Sometimes Jordana loved technology. Other times she missed the days when everyone wasn’t so heavily connected.
While the device ran a search, Jordana asked for details about the John Doe. “So, what happened to him?”
“Someone found him out on Range Road, like he’d been dumped. Looks like someone thought they’d done the job with that crack in the head but he’s a lucky bastard because it didn’t fracture the skull, just knocked him around plenty.”
“He ought to run out and buy some scratchers with that kind of luck,” Jordana said. “That blow could’ve killed him.”
Dr. Cervantes agreed. “Like I said, lucky. I wish I had that kind of luck. If it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any.”
Jordana chuckled at the doc’s wry humor even if he was full of bologna. Dr. Cervantes seemed to live a charmed life. His wife, Valeria, was a Peruvian beauty and his kids all looked like they were plucked from a magazine photoshoot. On the surface, he had it all.
Jordana knew better than to trust appearances. Still, she hoped that all was as it seemed when it came to Dr. Cervantes because she genuinely liked him.
“Your wife is too pretty for you,” Jordana quipped with a snort. “Take your blessings where you find them.”
Dr. Cervantes chuckled with a nod. “Such wisdom from someone so young,” he said, a twinkle in his eye.
She barked a laugh. “Young? I feel every second of my thirty-one years. Some days I’m pretty sure I might be sixty.”
“Someday someone is going to turn you from a cynic to a romantic,” Dr. Cervantes prophesied. Jordana laughed because it was highly unlikely but the doc was certain of it, saying, “If I were a betting man...you’re too attractive to spend your life chasing criminals.”
Jordana wagged her finger at him. “Ahhh, watch out, Doc, your sexism is showing. I happen to like chasing criminals.”
Dr. Cervantes sighed as if he’d never understand but said, “I stand by my words. I’m never wrong about these things.”
A soft ding alerted Jordana that the search was finished. “Saved by the bell,” she teased, lifting the device to read the results. Oh, damn. She, sort of, did know him. Well, not in person but she’d spoken to him on the phone two weeks ago. “His name is Clint Broderick, thirty-six, from Chicago.”
Clint Broderick was the last living relative of the dead body fished out of the wall of a warehouse scheduled for demo by Colton Construction. The body was identified as Fenton Crane, a private investigator with a shady past, with only one living relative: Clint.
“So you do know him?”
She couldn’t get into specifics, not with the Crane investigation still ongoing. “Yeah, part of a possible murder investigation. Mr. Broderick was supposed to meet with me two weeks ago but then I didn’t hear from him.”
“Seems he must’ve tangled with the wrong people,” Dr. Cervantes said.
“So it would seem.”
Instead of solving the mystery, the mystery had deepened.
If Clint Broderick had been on his way to see Jordana, what happened along the way? The fact that the only living relative of the dead guy walled up in an old warehouse ended up bashed in the head and left for dead didn’t seem like a coincidence.
Did someone want to protect a secret? Did Broderick know something someone wanted to keep quiet?
She had questions only Broderick could answer—but the man was still out cold.
To the doc, she said, “Can you move him to a private, secure room?”
“That can be arranged. Should we post security, too?”
“Might be a good idea. At least until he wakes up.”
Dr. Cervantes nodded. “Consider it done. We need the emergency room bays, anyway.”
Jordana took one last lingering look at Broderick, noting with reluctance that even unconscious the guy had an impressive bulk about him. Those nice rounded shoulders and well-defined, broad chest gave away his dedication to the gym.
The man had discipline.
Everything about him told a story without his mouth saying a word.
The only thing it wasn’t saying was how he’d ended up in a Braxville hospital instead of in her office like he was supposed to.
More questions.
Another damn mystery.
Oh, goody.
* * *
Clint Broderick awoke to dimly light darkness in a place he didn’t recognize, hearing sounds he couldn’t place.
Panic threatened to bloom, tightening his chest as he sat up with a jerk, nearly upsetting the IV cart attached to his wrist by the thin tubing.
What the hell?
Then the pain hit. His head felt as if a badger were trying to gnaw its way free from his skull using nothing but blunt chompers and a will to succeed. He cupped his head gingerly and found a large bandage covering a knot that throbbed like an angry protestor at a political rally. His mind swam as he blinked back the vertigo that threatened to make him puke.
He was in a hospital? How’d he get here?
The night nurse came in to check his vitals and realized with a start that he was awake.
“Oh, goodness, you gave me a fright. How are you feeling? You have quite the nasty bump on your noggin.”
He didn’t know how to answer, admitting gruffly, “Hurts. Can I get some water?”
“Of course.” She filled a cup from t
he pitcher at the end of the bedside table, handing it to him. “Careful now, you’ve been out for quite a while.”
“How long?”
“Almost twenty-four hours. Are you dizzy? Faint?”
“All of the above.”
“Understandable. Head injuries hurt like the dickens and they do some kooky things to the brain. Lucky for you, you only had minor swelling but only God knows what kind of damage that can do. Do you know your name?”
“Of course I know my name,” he grumbled, but when he tried to produce it from his memory, there was a scary blank spot. “It’s...” He struggled to remember. “My name is, um...”
But the nurse seemed to expect his memory gap. “No worries. Short-term amnesia is also common for a head injury like yours. I can help you out. Your name, according to your fingerprints, is Clint Broderick. Does that ring any bells?”
Clint Broderick. Sounded right but he couldn’t be sure. Still, he took her word for it. Fingerprints don’t lie. “Yeah, sounds about right.”
“Well, you try to get some rest. The doctor will see you in the morning.”
Rest? He’d just been unconscious for nearly a day. Lying in a hospital bed for another couple of hours until the doctor made his rounds wasn’t appealing but what else could he do? He didn’t even know his damn name; he couldn’t exactly check into a hotel room.
“Where am I exactly?” he asked, wincing against the throb in his brain.
“That would be Braxville General, in Braxville, Kansas. Just outside of Wichita and pretty as a picture if I ever saw one. We have a lot of community pride around here.”
He couldn’t muster a polite smile; instead, he took a swallow of water to wet his dry throat, then said, “I’m guessing I didn’t have my wallet or anything when I was found?”
“Nothing but the clothes on your back, sugar. Sorry about that. Someone must’ve been right mad at you to do you like that.”
Yeah, guess so. Too bad he couldn’t remember who the hell he was or who might be so pissed at him that they’d knock him into next week and leave him for dead. Talk about waking up in a nightmare.
He nodded to the nurse. “Thanks. Can I get something for this headache?”