Conflicting Evidence (The Mighty McKenzies Series Book 3)

by LENA DIAZ,

  Yes. But he should have been there for her too. He should have fought for her, realized something was keeping her from being at his side. Instead, he’d been so hurt, so consumed by his own pain and the giant-sized chip on his shoulder that he’d never once considered that she might be hurting. That maybe she needed him too.

  What lies had her father told to keep them apart? She’d mentioned him locking her up, taking away her phone. Had his goal been specifically to isolate her from Colin? Had he told her Colin’s injuries weren’t significant or that he didn’t want to see her? She’d been young, naive in many ways. They both had. Colin could easily imagine her being manipulated by her father, using her fierce protectiveness toward her brother as a means to control her.

  As she’d said tonight, the fact that her father hadn’t been close to his son didn’t mean he wouldn’t fight for Brian. Benjamin Sterling’s reputation, his family’s reputation, his business reputation as a trusted financial advisor, had all been at stake. If he’d seen Colin as the enemy, because his testimony could send Brian to prison and hurt his business, Colin could easily imagine him doing everything he could to stop him—including using his own daughter. The elder Sterling had wanted a united family front behind Brian. And he’d probably hoped, planned, that Colin would be so distraught over not being able to see Peyton, and worried about hurting her, that he might not testify.

  His plan had almost worked.

  At eighteen, Colin’s entire life had been centered around the beautiful strawberry blonde with the sexy smile and silver-gray eyes that made promises his body was only too willing to take her up on. When she cut him out of her life, it had nearly destroyed him. Only the love and support of his tight-knit family had gotten him through. Ultimately, a stern lecture about civic responsibility from his father, William—known in legal circles as The Mighty McKenzie—had been the only reason that he’d persevered and kept it together long enough to testify. He’d done his duty, sitting upright in the witness stand, his face carefully blank, pretending that he wasn’t in excruciating pain. After walking out of the courtroom, he’d collapsed, and ended up in the hospital for another month.

  The combination of his injuries and the belief that Peyton had willingly dumped him had sent him on a downward spiral. But he’d never considered that Brian’s treachery, and her father’s duplicity, had done the same to her.

  Even later, after finding out that she’d gotten married, he’d assumed life was great for her. Well she didn’t seem to have a husband now and wasn’t wearing a ring. But he’d never bothered to ask if she was okay, if she’d suffered through a divorce or went through the trauma of losing her husband in some kind of accident or illness. Instead, he’d chosen to assume her life was all roses, that she was doing whatever she wanted, making friends, living a carefree life. In reality, she’d been working herself ragged going from job to job to help pay her brother’s legal bills, while Colin had nursed his hurt feelings and congratulated himself on being the better person.

  What an arrogant ass he’d been.

  That wasn’t his only sin against her. The supposed deal he’d made with her at the police station was a farce. Arresting her was never something he’d considered. The charges never would have stuck, as Landry knew, or he’d have arrested her himself. Then Colin had compounded his lies by exaggerating the danger to Brian.

  His brothers in arms weren’t a bunch of Mayberries who shot first and asked questions later. They were experienced professionals, intent on recapturing—not killing—four escaped convicts. He’d known the search for Brian and the others was in competent hands, which was why he’d been comfortable exchanging information with them. But he’d allowed Peyton to stew in worry, using that fear to make her answer his questions.

  He shook his head in disgust and stopped pacing. All this self-recrimination wasn’t doing him, or Peyton, any good. He owed her a heartfelt apology. But waking her up at midnight when she’d cried herself into an exhausted sleep would be one more selfish act to lay at his door. He wouldn’t do it. But he had to do something with all this guilt and nervous energy or he was going to explode.

  He moved to the window and looked out past the covered, wraparound porch. A gentle breeze rippled across the lawn, making the rain-wet blades of grass sparkle in the moonlight. The grass was a bit ragged and higher than he liked to keep it. His lawn tractor had broken down a couple of weeks ago and he hadn’t had time to fix it. Sweating and struggling with that stubborn tractor engine was infinitely preferable to wrestling with his conscience. He could change the oil in the ATVs he kept in the workshop building too. Might as well do something productive if he wasn’t going to sleep.

  He figured the odds of Brian and his fellow thugs heading up the mountain and being anywhere near this place were low. Without knowing that Colin had a house here, or that Peyton was with him, there was no reason for her brother to risk being caught by remaining in the immediate area. Besides that, Officer Simmons was staying at the Sterling home for now. If she’d seen anything suspicious, she’d have called him. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to take precautions.

  He dressed as if he was going to work, making sure his gun was loaded and holstered at his hip with two extra magazines of ammunition in his pocket. It wasn’t unusual for the occasional black bear to wander onto the property and it was best to be prepared. He grabbed a flashlight before heading out back.

  Except for the well-used charcoal grill and a couple of lounge chairs, his back deck was empty. No muddy shoe prints marred the surface to indicate any recent visitors. He jogged down the steps into the yard, stopping at the tool shed fifty yards from the house. A circuit around the perimeter with his flashlight didn’t reveal any tracks other than some paw prints that had likely been left by a hungry raccoon searching for its next meal. The padlock was securely in place on the door. The shed didn’t have any windows.

  He swept the beam of his flashlight back and forth along the trees that bordered two sides of the property. But aside from low-hanging branches gracefully moving in the steady, warm breeze, there wasn’t any unexplained movement or shadows that didn’t look like they belonged. Satisfied that all was well, he clicked off the flashlight and used the light of the moon to guide him toward his workshop. He was ten feet from his destination when the little hairs stood up on the back of his neck.

  Chapter Eleven

  Peyton bolted out of bed and fell to the floor, her legs tangled in the sheets. She batted at the stubborn material to free herself as she scanned the dark recesses of the bedroom. No bogeyman waited to pounce on her from the shadows. But something had startled her awake. What was it?

  A small sliver of light leaked beneath the bedroom door. Was Colin still awake? She pushed herself up off the floor and checked the time on her phone, which was charging on the nightstand. A little past midnight. Maybe he was catching an old movie or watching a rerun of a favorite college basketball game. He’d always been a Tennessee Vols fan and had hoped to go to the University of Tennessee after high school. Had he gone? She hadn’t thought to ask him.

  Maybe he was having a late-night snack. Or, more likely after her humiliating outburst earlier tonight, he was regretting having his crazy ex-girlfriend around and was trying to think of a polite way to get rid of her. She certainly wouldn’t blame him.

  Bam!

  She jerked back, swearing when her shin slammed against the wooden bedframe. What was that?

  Bam! Bam!

  She sucked in a breath. Gunshots. Coming from outside, behind the house.

  She hesitated, not sure what to do, half-expecting Colin to burst into the bedroom to check on her. When he didn’t, a nagging sense of unease released a firestorm of butterflies in her stomach. She grabbed her phone, fingers poised to punch in his number—but she didn’t have his number, or Duncan’s or any of the McKenzies. Not anymore.

  Clutching the phone, she ran to the closet to throw on some cl
othes. She yanked on a pair of jeans and a shirt, not bothering with a bra. After shoving her feet into some tennis shoes, she took off running. She practically flew down the stairs, hopping down them two at a time, a feat she’d never have thought possible before tonight, since she wasn’t blessed with long legs like Colin.

  The big-screen TV hanging on the far wall of the family room wasn’t on. The light she’d seen from upstairs was coming from the back hallway. She hopped off the bottom step and circled around to the rear of the house. Her sense of unease intensified when she discovered that the lights in his office were on too, but the office was empty. A quick peek behind the other doors in the hall revealed a bathroom, a closet and the laundry room, but no sign of Colin.

  “Colin? Colin? Are you here? Are you okay?” She yelled for him as she ran toward his bedroom at the front of the house. All the while she prayed that he’d yank open his door and look at her as if he thought she’d lost her mind. That would be infinitely better than the alternative, that he was outside where she’d heard those gunshots. But when she reached his door it was standing wide open. She didn’t have to flip on the light to see that his bed was empty, looking as if it hadn’t been slept in.

  “Colin?” Her voice came out a hoarse whisper. The butterflies degenerated into full-blown panic as she ran through the house to the last place he could be, the kitchen. Just as she’d feared, it too was empty.

  Boom! Boom!

  She dropped to the floor, her pulse rushing in her ears. That had sounded so close!

  Please, please don’t let that be Brian out there shooting at Colin.

  Her nerdy, insecure brother wasn’t someone she’d ever thought could hurt someone. But as Landry had reminded her earlier, Brian did know how to shoot, almost as well as Peyton. Colin had taught both of them. Was Brian out there right now? Shooting at the man who’d been so patient with him when they were teenagers, and far kinder than most kids at school had been to her socially awkward brother?

  Listening to Colin’s theories and being forced to reevaluate every facet of her life—and Brian’s—had opened jagged cracks in her confidence, letting the first stirrings of doubt creep in about his innocence—or guilt. Even if her long-held beliefs about Brian were still valid, she had no illusions about the men who’d escaped with him. One of them had murdered a police officer. They probably wouldn’t think twice about killing a marshal.

  Drawing a bracing breath, she forced herself to stop cowering and look out the window. A yellow bug light cast a warm glow across the deck. Beyond that, there was only darkness and the looming silhouette of a building that resembled a small barn. Had Colin taken his gun with him and gone outside to confront someone he’d seen sneaking around his property? Or had he already been outside, maybe without a gun at all, when the shooting started?

  She yanked her phone out of her pocket, berating herself for not making this call as soon as she’d heard the first shot.

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” a woman’s voice came on the line.

  “This is Peyton Sterling. I’m at Deputy US Marshal Colin McKenzie’s home.” She rattled off the address. “I can’t find him. He was in the house earlier. But now he’s gone. I heard gunshots out back. I think he’s in trouble. It’s possible that the escaped convicts everyone’s been looking for are here and they’re—”

  “Ma’am, Ms. Sterling, hold it. I need you to slow down. You said you heard gunshots?”

  “Get the police out here immediately, and an ambulance just in case. Send the marshals, send everyone. Colin needs help!” She tossed the phone on the counter, tuning out the operator’s barrage of useless questions.

  Bam! Boom! Boom!

  Muzzle flashes appeared in the woods off to the left. There was no answering flash in the yard, but earlier she’d thought she heard return gunfire. If that had been Colin, then he was either inside the barn-like building firing from a window, or he was on the other side, possibly pinned down and unable to get to safety. He needed backup. Now. Not in twenty minutes, or however long it would take the police to climb up that crazy winding road out front. The only person around to be his backup was her. She swallowed and rubbed her palms against her jeans. What she really needed right now was a huge dose of courage.

  And a gun.

  Think, Peyton. Think. If you lived here, where would you keep an extra gun and ammunition? It would be some place easy to get to in case an intruder broke in. But not where a child or casual visitor would stumble across it.

  She whirled around and her gaze locked on the pantry door. Colin put his coffee mugs where she kept hers. Would he put a gun and ammo where she’d keep hers too, easy to grab, close to an exit in case she had to run outside to either pursue or run from a bad guy?

  She jogged into the pantry, throwing open the door so hard that it banged against the wall. Then she flipped the light switch and looked up. There—a wooden box on the top shelf. Just the right size to store a weapon. It was too high for small children to reach. Which meant it was too high for her too.

  Bouncing on her tiptoes, she jumped up and down, desperately stretching her fingers up, up, up. She stumbled and fell against the shelving, barely managing to stay upright.

  “Dang it, Colin. Why do you have to be so tall?”

  She whirled around, looking for a ladder or a step stool, cursing herself for wasting time when she didn’t find any. Colin wouldn’t need them to reach the top shelf. So what could she use? A chair. But he didn’t have a dining room where she could grab one. There wasn’t even a table in the kitchen.

  But there were bar stools.

  She ran to the kitchen island and dragged one of the bar stools into the pantry, wincing at the sound of the metal legs scraping the hardwood floor.

  Boom! Bam! Bam!

  The sound of fresh gunfire sent her flying up on the bar stool like a monkey and grabbing the wooden box. She jumped down and tried to flip open the top. It wouldn’t budge. The dang thing was locked!

  She cried out in frustration. Of course it was locked. Colin was a marshal. He wouldn’t take any chances that someone might get hold of one of his guns and hurt themselves. It looked sophisticated too, one of those fancy electronic boxes that required a fingerprint to open it.

  Using curse words she hadn’t realized were in her vocabulary, she scrambled to her feet and grabbed a large can off a nearby shelf. English peas. She hated peas. She raised the can and brought it crashing down. Again. Again. Again. Wood splintered and crunched. The lock held. The box didn’t. She kissed the can, deciding she liked peas after all.

  Lying on a bed of red velvet dusted by bits of ruined wood was the prettiest sight she’d ever seen. A Glock 22, the .40 caliber pistol framed by two full magazines. How many times had she complained when Colin insisted on taking her shooting in the mountains, sometimes with her brother tagging along? She’d assured him that her career path in the criminal justice field wouldn’t be the same as his, that she’d be a victim’s advocate or a defense attorney, not a cop. She didn’t need to know how to fire a gun.

  He would tell her it wasn’t about her career. It was about making sure the woman he loved could protect herself in a world that too often was cruel and dangerous, especially for women. Well, tonight it was dangerous for men. One man in particular.

  She shoved one of the magazines into the pistol and chambered a round. Pocketing the other magazine, she lunged to her feet.

  “You’ve done everything you could to protect me, Colin. Now it’s my turn to protect you.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Colin crouched down, his left shoulder butted up against the workshop building as he pointed his .40 caliber Glock 22 toward the woods to the south of his property. In spite of there being no physical evidence that anyone was out here when he’d reached the building, his instincts had told him something was off. He’d cleared the inside, then made a circuit around th
e perimeter. He’d just reached the far side of the building when the first shot had kicked up the dirt beside him. Since then, he’d been pinned down in this same spot.

  The solid wall on this side of the structure offered no access to the inside. And the shooter, or shooters, were having fun at his expense. They were aiming their shots at the ground, or above his head, forcing him to stay where he was. It was only a matter of time before they tired of their sadistic game and made their shots count.

  He had to get out of here.

  He eased back toward the corner as he’d tried twice before. This time, he measured his stride in inches, going as slowly as possible, hoping they wouldn’t realize he was backing up until it was too late to stop him. One inch, two, three—

  Boom! Boom!

  He swore and jumped away from the rain of wood and sawdust above and behind him. Laughter sounded from the trees. Familiar laughter? Was that Brian, hiding like the coward he was? Once again playing God with other peoples’ lives?

  This cat-and-mouse game would end as soon as his tormentors got bored. He couldn’t risk waiting any longer. He had to make a run for it, take his chances, lay some heavy cover fire so he could try to get to relative safety. And after that? If the gunmen decided to circle around, get him in their sights again? That was a worst-case scenario he didn’t want to think about.

  He popped out his empty magazine and shoved in another one. It was now or never. He aimed directly toward where he’d seen the last muzzle flash. Bam, bam, bam, bam! He squeezed the trigger over and over, never stopping, emptying the magazine as he backed up.

  Boom!

  A guttural scream sounded from the woods.

  He slammed his last magazine of ammo into the gun and fired again, ducking and weaving, scrambling back toward the corner.

  Boom!

  The bullet slammed into him like a battering ram, stealing his breath, sending a shockwave of blinding pain through his entire body. He managed to squeeze off two more rounds then dove around the end of the building. He landed on his side and rolled onto his back, clutching at his chest, desperately struggling to get his lungs working again.