Colton's Killer Pursuit

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  When her hand went immediately to her short, sexily ruffled, perky blond cut, and then almost immediately dropped self-consciously, he wished he’d left them at life insurance.

  Tried to fix that with, “You don’t need to pay me.” What he wanted from her was her trust. And that was something he was going to have to earn, first.

  He wasn’t a novice at that particular situation. After the exploits of his twenties and early thirties, disappearing for days at a time on some challenge, adventure or case, without checking in, he’d spent a lot of time earning back the trust of his family members. Melissa’s request that he protect Everleigh Emerson, just until they could figure out what was going on, was a huge sign of the trust he’d earned back.

  And part of the reason why he’d agreed so readily to do so.

  Part of the reason... The other part was standing in front of him, frowning again.

  “I don’t want your money.”

  The words didn’t help. If anything, they made the situation worse.

  “The GGPD owes you.”

  She nodded, and he breathed out a sigh of relief as the third try got him out of hot water. Momentarily, at least.

  “I don’t want to scare you, but I think it’s pretty obvious that you aren’t safe here...” He glanced around them and then back at her. “And based on what happened at the grocery store, you might not be safe in town, either. So, what I’m proposing, first and foremost, is that you...”

  “I’m not leaving town. Not with Gram still in jail. No way.” The adamant shake of her head, the way her hair bounced, distracted him for a second.

  “I was going to suggest... In truth, my sister, Chief Colton, advised me to suggest I help keep you safe. I’d be happy for you to temporarily move into my guest room,” he told her. “It’s there specifically for the use of anyone my family needs to house. As your newly appointed personal private investigator, I’m advising you to accept this invitation. Just for a few days. Maybe less. Give us time to find out who’s behind the incident at the grocery store this morning. And the break-in.”

  “I’ve got my family...my mom... I can stay with her...” She frowned again. “But...I don’t want to put them in danger...”

  He pounced. “Exactly. I’m armed. And trained.”

  “I’m also still dealing with the fact that they all turned on me, believing I’d actually murdered Fritz... I love them, but I’d rather not stay there, not with dealing with this, too...still... I’m not going to put you out because your sister orders you to...”

  “Hey.” He cut her off right there. “Police chief or not, she’s my little sister, and she doesn’t order me to do anything. She thought it would be a good idea for me to help you out. I offered for you to stay at my place.” He took a breath, surprised at the tension tightening his chest as he waited for her response. “She claims that I have a tendency to speak my opinions as though I’m always right and leave little room for others to disagree.”

  “Do you?”

  He shrugged. “Not as much as I used to. But I don’t often say something unless I’ve looked at the situation and have reason to believe I’m correct. And I’ve learned to trust my gut. It generally steers me right.” But maybe not about this. What was he doing inviting this woman into his home? Just the two of them. Alone. With her being so gut-wrenchingly a...turn-on...and him...noticing that?

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Okay, I’ll stay in your guest room.”

  Wow. He’d gotten off easy on that one. “You should get some stuff together—let us get out of here before Troy and his crew take over the place...” He wanted to get her out of there before she changed her mind. He wasn’t telling her, but he was in no doubt whatsoever that her life was in real danger.

  Anyone who’d try to run down a person in a grocery-store parking lot in broad daylight in the middle of downtown wasn’t going to just go away. Or follow any kind of logic, either.

  “Is the idea to leave my car here?”

  She caught on quick. The beater would be easily recognizable. “Yes.”

  “Then I have a favor to ask...”

  Whatever she needed...he was officially at her disposal.

  “I need to see my grandmother. I’m worried about her spending too much time without seeing a loved one... She thrives on family and...”

  That wouldn’t even be a favor. It was a given. “Of course,” he told her. “I’ll call ahead to make sure that she’ll be available for a private visit with you...”

  Because there were times when knowing the police chief’s brother in Grave Gulch came with perks—not a price to pay.

  Chapter 3

  He didn’t want her money. How did you trust a guy who wanted you to believe he was asking nothing from you? Women the world over knew that if a guy didn’t want your money, he most likely wanted something else.

  Her money was all he was going to get.

  Didn’t matter if he billed her or not, she would pay him. Everleigh had spent too many years of her life forced to take what others were willing to part with and to be grateful for it.

  She wasn’t doing it again. Life had exacted too much from her already. She wasn’t giving away any more of her pride.

  Before she packed, Clarke asked her to take a look around to determine if she noticed anything missing, paying particular attention to any place where there might have been valuables. From what she could tell, nothing had been taken. Not even the wedding and engagement rings she’d had in her jewelry box. None of the jewelry, most of it costume variety, had been disturbed.

  After calling the neighbor who’d watched Forester while she’d been in prison, she got the cat out from under the bed with only a minimal scratch and saw him safely housed next door, had a bag packed and was sitting in the front seat of Clarke’s navy blue SUV twenty minutes after she’d accepted his offer of help.

  Troy Colton had arrived while she’d been packing, and Clarke had handled that aspect for her. She’d never even had to speak with the detective. Clarke had earned some of his fee right there. And a tad bit of gratitude, as well.

  Still, sitting there in his car with her suitcase in the back, bundled up in her thick black coat, she was almost overwhelmed with trepidation. What was she doing moving in with a man she’d known only a couple of hours?

  Not moving in with him, of course. She was going into protective custody in a guest room of a licensed, armed and trained professional investigator and under the watchful eyes of the chief of police.

  And she needed to get on top of the morning’s events. Not let them control her.

  “I guess this is kind of odd, asking you to take me to visit the woman who kidnapped your cousin.” Gram had kidnapped the toddler from a wedding where the entire Grave Gulch police department was in attendance, but not with the intention to hurt the child. There’d never been a threat to that baby’s life.

  “She took drastic measures to get us to see what was right under our own eyes,” Clarke said, not taking his gaze from the road and the world outside the vehicle. He seemed to scan everything at once. Constantly. Moving his head little, but his gaze a lot. Intently.

  She’d hate to be a bug under his microscope.

  And appreciated his honesty where her grandmother was concerned. Still, Gram’s drastic measure...wow...so drastic. She’d broken the law in a way that couldn’t be ignored. You couldn’t just kidnap someone anytime injustice was done. The action had helped eventually exonerate Everleigh—but it was still inexcusable.

  “She would never have hurt Danny.”

  “I know.”

  Okay, then. That conversation was done. They had fifteen minutes to go until they got to the prison.

  Time for her to figure out who wanted her dead? Who’d vandalized her home with so much rage?

  All she got was blankness. No one
, other than maybe Fritz, had ever thrown that kind of anger in her direction... How did she find a demon with no suspects?

  “Hannah apparently loves you an awful lot.” His words pulled her thoughts back from the dark abyss, and it took her a second to realize he was still talking about Gram.

  “I know. And I love her the same. I can’t let her just spend the rest of her life in prison. There has to be something I can do...” She’d trade places with her if she could, if the law would allow such a thing. She glanced at Clarke. “Or maybe, instead of you working for me, there’s something you could do?” She couldn’t think of it at the moment.

  “I could talk to her, if you’d like. Try to convince her to take a plea deal so that the case doesn’t go to trial. Once a jury and judge get it, there are laws that dictate their choices and her sentencing...”

  Heavy weight settled over her as she listened to him. She knew full well how the legal system worked. Knew that she’d been days from a life sentence herself, in a trial that hadn’t been going at all in her favor, when Gram’s bold move had turned the tide for her.

  So, what bold move could she make to save Gram? The townspeople were still holding protests. She’d seen a group of them on the courthouse steps depicted on the news that morning.

  But the law was the law. Those in charge had to uphold it or risk going to jail themselves.

  “Can I take a rain check on that?” she asked Clarke. “I’d like to talk to her first, to see what I can do...”

  “I’m fairly certain that if she’d take a plea agreement, the DA’s office would be willing to offer some kind of sentence that doesn’t have her dying in jail.”

  “If she lives long enough, you mean.” Ten years in prison would make Gram ninety when she got out. Ten years in prison would kill her.

  He shrugged. And Everleigh wasn’t happy to have won the point. Nor was she happy with any other options where her grandmother was concerned. An insanity plea might hold some weight—except that Gram was as sharp as they came and wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice her cognitive freedom to get out of paying for what she’d done.

  And there was the crux of it...

  “Gram’s a stickler for accountability,” she said, tears pushing at her. She pushed back, and won, but the profound sadness that had ignited them lingered. “No way she’d be right with walking away from a crime she committed,” she continued. Because it was important all of a sudden that he know that, in spite of her impoverished background and having a family who’d all—except for Gram—accepted her guilt when presented with DNA evidence, she came from some good stock. “She knew when she made the choice to take that baby that there’d be a price to pay.”

  It was she who was struggling with her grandmother paying it. Not Gram. They were on the outskirts of prison real estate and her stomach tightened to the point of pain. Two days ago, she’d woken up within those walls.

  Being caged up, losing all of her freedoms... Those months were going to haunt her for the rest of her life.

  She couldn’t let Gram end her life that way. “I’ll talk to her about the plea agreement,” she said out loud.

  “There are mitigating circumstances here. The fact that she didn’t hurt the baby, in fact, loved him well during the hours he was in her home, that she never even threatened to harm him, that she’d tried to get someone to look at your case through all normal channels, that his mother doesn’t want to press charges... By law, all of that allows the DA to offer a plea agreement that would be much more in her favor,” Clarke said, as though he was on Gram’s side.

  And, though her guard didn’t come down where he was concerned, that comment did have her softening toward him a little bit.

  * * *

  At Everleigh’s request that he not accompany her to see her grandmother, Clarke waited for her out in the parking lot. It meant he had to turn the vehicle on a few times to keep warm, but he wasn’t keen on hanging out in prison reception.

  The Free Granny protesters were out in full force, in spite of the cold, lined up along the wall with their signs, warming their gloved hands over disposable coffee cups. Melissa had told him that the group was being well run, with everyone serving shifts and stationed outside the GGPD and the prison. They also had a quickly growing social-media presence.

  Where they needed to be was outside the DA’s office.

  And even then...did they really want to have a society run by herd justice, as opposed to laws? If it were up to him, Hannah McPherson wouldn’t have spent one minute in jail, but you couldn’t just let a kidnapper go free because you understood their motive.

  The ramifications of that... What if anytime anyone felt their cause justified, they just broke the law?

  Where had all the protesters been when Everleigh was in prison? If more had raised a fuss to free her, maybe Bowe’s wrongdoings would have been found out sooner. Everleigh had proclaimed her innocence from the beginning, but no one had listened.

  Except for Hannah McPherson.

  But then she’d broken the law. She didn’t proclaim her innocence. They’d found the toddler in her home. And now protesters got involved?

  The time in the car gave him a chance to formulate a plan of investigation. He’d started his early February Thursday morning expecting to be pursuing the Randall Bowe case. Instead, Troy would be taking a lead on that, and while he’d still be helping, his first priority now was Everleigh Emerson. Keeping her safe. And finding out who wanted her dead.

  With a constant watch on the prison door, just in case she didn’t text him that she was on her way out as he’d instructed so he could pick her up at the curb, he took out the little notebook and pen from his inner coat pocket and started jotting notes.

  Questions for Everleigh mostly.

  Maybe whoever was after her had nothing to do with her husband’s killer, but his instincts were telling him the murder and subsequent murder attempt were connected.

  Could be someone had wanted both her and Fritz dead. Someone who benefited from them both being gone before their divorce was final, maybe? But then, why not kill her off, too? Before she was sent to jail?

  Who would such a beneficiary be? They had no children. She’d mentioned life insurance... Did they have a joint policy? He jotted another question.

  And his text-message alert sounded. She was ready.

  And so was he. Ready to get to work on her case.

  But first...

  “How’d it go?” he asked, trying to assess her expression as she climbed quickly back in beside him, waving as the protesters cheered her. The waft of floral perfume that came with her distracted him.

  She shrugged. Stared out the front window. Taking her cue, he drove off the premises. And then asked, “What did she say about the plea-agreement angle?”

  “That she’d think about it.”

  Could mean so many things. “Do you think she will really consider it?” Or had it been a polite blow-off? How could anyone choose to spend more time in jail than necessary?

  “Yes. She wouldn’t tell me she’d do something and then not do it.”

  But still, Everleigh was clearly upset. If anyone had hurt the eighty-year-old woman...

  “How was she doing?”

  With a grimace, Everleigh glanced at him, her eyes moist, though there were no visible tears. “Better than I am,” she told him. “She’s in good spirits, really. Proud of herself for getting me out. For helping to prove my innocence. She wants me to be happy about it, too, and while I’m relieved to the point of light-headedness at being exonerated, not at the cost of her being in prison...”

  It was almost as though he could feel her pain. The helplessness of knowing that someone was suffering as a result of caring for you, and there was nothing you could do to help them. He’d felt a bit of the same in the recent breakup nightmare. If he’d had any idea the woman had wanted a li
fe with him, he’d never have asked her out once, let alone multiple times.

  “She’s being treated okay?”

  “Yeah. As far as I can tell. Gram’s feisty. She looks and acts younger than she is. It’s just...seeing her in that jumpsuit...” She shook her head, glanced out her side-door window.

  There was nothing he could do. His job was to drive. To find out who was after Everleigh. This woman seemed to care more about her grandmother in a cell than she did about her own life. He didn’t know what to make of that kind of selflessness. Sure, he’d die for any of his family...but to grieve over their life circumstances... Maybe he needed to do a bit more in the loving department.

  Or maybe he was making far too much of his current client’s saddened demeanor.

  He was much better and more successful at his job when he could get into the mindset of his clients. That was all he was doing.

  He welcomed the reminder. The chance for a return to his own sense of normal.

  A way he could be moved by the woman who’d so unexpectedly, and temporarily, entered his life, and not get freaked out about it.

  “Melissa made sure that she’s being kept with light offenders on a ward that has seen no violence whatsoever,” he offered.

  She nodded. Whether she’d already known or not, he couldn’t tell.

  He drove some more.

  And reminded himself that he was on the job, not being a friend to a beautiful woman.

  “You mentioned your husband’s life insurance,” he said, thinking of the questions on his list. “Do you have a policy, as well?”

  She shook her head. “Fritz didn’t want to pay for both. He said that we needed it just for him to protect his business.”

  “So that’s yours now, too?”

  Another shrug. “Yes, but I don’t intend to keep it.”

  So maybe her attacker had something to do with the business? Joint life insurance was out.

  “Who would be the beneficiary if you were out of the picture?”