Colton 911--Family Defender

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Not illegal, certainly, but...

  Not the way the Coltons worked, either.

  But then, Brody, who’d never known his own father, was raised by an addict and then was shuffled in and out of foster homes. The Coltons had grown up in a lovely home in an elite neighborhood with the district attorney for a father and a wonderful mother who supported him, and them, one hundred percent.

  The Coltons hadn’t gotten a hold of Brody until he was eighteen. Had only been able to influence a third of his life.

  “Go on.” He needed all the facts, and wished they were coming faster.

  “All I had to do to be a part of the exclusive team was make an initial investment, and then for bonuses I could recruit new members and sell the vitamins.”

  “How much was the initial investment?” He hated to ask; heard the dread in his voice.

  “Fifty thousand dollars.”

  Heart sinking, and head going on alert, Riley stood up. “You handed over fifty thousand?” he asked, not quite raising his voice, but getting really close. He couldn’t even get to the part about Brody giving the money to people he didn’t know. He was too busy choking over the amount.

  “My girlfriend...she was...a bit older than me. Used to nice things. I wanted to get her this diamond bracelet she’d seen... I needed her to trust that I could take care of her. And...she didn’t know about my school loans. I had to get rid of them before I could even think about asking someone like her to get serious with me.”

  Brody, who’d always been on the outside looking in where family was concerned, had been willing to do what it took to get one of his own. Riley’s ire stepped down a notch or two, pushed even further back by the twinge of guilt hitting him where it counted. If he’d been more a real player in Brody’s life, instead of a figure at the head of the table during all of the mandatory holiday meals the Colton siblings shared, the kid probably would have come to him for the money. Or at least for advice before investing in such a cockamamie scheme.

  And instinct was telling him they had another, more immediate problem than Brody’s investment choice.

  “Where did you get fifty grand?” he asked.

  Looking nervous again, his brow creased, his lips thin, Brody glanced toward the back door—whether because he wanted to run again, or because he feared someone might be coming in after him, Riley wasn’t sure.

  “Wes Matthews, the banker from RevitaYou, suggested I call this company, Capital X...”

  Riley dropped his head. Biting his tongue, almost literally. He knew of the loan shark group from his years with the FBI and had never been able to bust them—its structure was that intricate, that far underground and into the dark web.

  They were a “company” that always knew where you were, but no one could find them.

  And his family member was involved with them?

  Straightening, Riley braced himself, placing his hands on the desk on either side of him. Filled with the calm that came when he was focused on a case. A calm that wiped out emotion. Doubt. That let his instincts guide him and show him the way to protect those he’d sworn to himself to protect.

  “This Wes Matthews, where is he now? I’ll need his contact information.” The man had led Brody to Capital X. Which meant he could lead Riley to them, too.

  Throwing up both hands, drawing Riley’s gaze to those splinted fingers again, Brody said, “That’s just it...he’s disappeared into thin air!” The younger man’s lips trembled as his voice broke.

  “I’ll need to see the transaction data from the check you wrote him,” Riley said, feeling an urgency growing on him that he hadn’t felt in a while.

  “I paid him in cash.” Brody was really close to full-out whining. “I called him as soon as I knew the vitamins didn’t work, to report the problem with them, and to get my money back, but he didn’t answer so I left a voice mail. And then I get an email from him saying he never received my money and that I had to be mistaken. Next thing I know, the phone number I had for him is no longer working and the emails come back undelivered.”

  “How long ago was this?” His words were short. Succinct. Brody wasn’t just being a kid here. He had a real problem.

  One that Riley was beginning to fear was much bigger than his pseudo little brother even realized.

  Brody was scared, though. He knew he was in serious trouble.

  “Three days ago the guy is in touch with me, giving me all these enticing numbers that were coming my way, excited to have me on board. Two days ago I tell him the vitamins made my girl sick, and then this morning, the day I owe my first big chunk of the payment to Capital X, the emails bounce back, the phone number is no longer in service and the RevitaYou website is down, too.”

  Quelle surprise.

  Brody had done what he could, though. He’d tried.

  “And it turns out that if you don’t pay back the money you owe to Capital X when you owe it, including interest, two goons will show up at your place of business, request a meeting, and then break two of your bones, with a promise to break two more each time you miss a payment.” Brody held up his newly taped ring and pinky fingers. “This was the handshake that happened in the lobby of the professional building where I work.” Brody worked as a very junior corporate attorney, and Riley had gotten the implication that Brody’s position was tenable. He wouldn’t have it for long if thugs continued to show up.

  Riley’s gut clenched. He consciously relaxed it. Brody needed him focused. “How sure are you that they were following you here?”

  “Honestly?” Brody shook his head, his cheeks drooped and his gaze beaten. “I have no idea. I’m pretty sure they were, but I can’t really say if it was real or just fear that had me thinking so. As soon as they left, I got in my car, stopped at a drugstore clinic, had my fingers taped and came here.”

  Brody pulled some brochures out of his bag, handed them to Riley. “I got these at the seminar I attended,” he said. “I was a class ‘A’ idiot. I get that, but I need the family’s help, Riley. Professionally. Please. You have to find Matthews. Get my money back. Capital X is charging me thirty percent interest on top of the fifty grand. There’s no way I can pay all that back...”

  Riley sure as hell didn’t have a quick sixty-five thousand dollars sitting around in liquid cash. And was fairly certain none of his siblings did, either. What he did have was a family team of part-time investigators, full-time lawyers, a crime-scene investigator, too, all with their own accesses to databases and contacts.

  “Stay right here,” he said to Brody. “As in, don’t move from that seat. I’m going to make some phone calls to the others and see what we can find out.”

  Riley moved swiftly to his office, had his phone at his ear and already ringing through by the time he made it to his desk. And while he talked to his sister, Sadie, a twenty-eight-year-old crime-scene investigator, he was scrolling through a password-secured list of his own contacts from the underbelly of the criminal world. Sadie, who had a particular soft spot for Brody, told Riley she was going to see what she could find out about either Wes Matthews or Capital X. She planned also to call her twin sister, Victoria, a JAG attorney. They both had a lot of law enforcement connections.

  He called Kiely next. At thirty years old, the full-time professional investigator sister worked freelance for the FBI and various police departments. Kiely assured him that she’d see what she could find out. She also asked Riley to tell Brody to be careful and said she’d call her twin sister, Pippa, also an attorney.

  When he was satisfied that he had all four of his biological siblings on board, he phoned Griffin, their officially adopted brother. He didn’t call Griffin last because the thirty-two-year-old was any less a family member, but because, as an adoption attorney, he had fewer skills to help solve the immediate problem—keeping Brody safe. Griffin also asked some questions he wasn’t yet prepared to answer—he had s
ome hesitation about getting Colton Investigations involved with something as big as Capital X. But he agreed to attend a meeting that evening with the rest of the siblings to discuss the situation.

  As satisfied with his progress as he was going to be, Riley sent off a quick email to a former confidential informant with ties to white-collar crime, asking for a meeting as soon as possible.

  And, fewer than ten minutes after vacating the main office, he was heading back to Brody.

  Pal was there, sitting by the archway through to the dining room and kitchen.

  There was no sign of Brody. Or his bag.

  Chapter 2

  Worried, Riley spent the next hour looking for Brody. After searching the house and then looking at the security camera footage and seeing the younger man leaving out the front door, he drove to Brody’s place first, and then through the neighborhoods between Heritage Hill, where Brody had shown up on foot at the CI offices, and the fancy corporate office building where Brody worked. He canvassed on foot, too, the area where Brody had said he’d left his car, areas around his home. He saw no sign of either Brody or his vehicle, and assumed that the younger man had at least made it back to his mode of transportation.

  Hoped he’d gotten safely away. Didn’t make sense that Brody would come to him for help and then just run off for no reason.

  He’d texted and called with no response. And then, when he was getting ready to call the police, Brody finally picked up. Thank God.

  Telling Riley that Pal had been out back and acting like someone was coming, Brody said he’d snuck quietly out the front door and made his way back to his car. He was currently driving around with his phone off so he couldn’t be pinged or traced. Brody’s street skills eased Riley’s worry a small bit. But not enough.

  “Listen, I understand you’re scared, man, but we’ve got this,” Riley told him, hoping he wasn’t going to let the kid down. He’d been thirteen when his parents had given him siblings—two at once. By that time, he’d been ready to spread his own wings. And by the time Brody had come around, another set of twins and an adopted sibling later, Riley had been pretty much out of any more space under his massive wings. Maybe if he’d...

  “I’ve talked to everyone and we’re having a meeting tonight at the office,” Riley continued, instilling confidence, reassurance into his tone. Hoping he was obliterating the frustration he felt. He’d woken that morning with two cases awaiting him, and a list of to-dos that had already been an overreaching challenge. “I’ve made a call to someone who owes me a favor and I’m working on a safe house for you, too,” he added. “Where are you now?”

  “I don’t know. In the middle of nowhere. I drove north.”

  “You need to come back, man,” Riley told him. “Get to my house and we’ll take care of you from there.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m serious, Brody. We need access to you if we’re going to be able to help you. You’re the only witness we’ve got.”

  “I know.”

  “We’ll keep you someplace safe, and we’re going to solve this.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Riley.” The younger man sounded as though he was about to break at any moment.

  “Just get your ass home and let me concentrate on figuring this out,” Riley told him, heading back to CI headquarters himself.

  “I’m going to stop for something to eat and then I’ll be there,” Brody told him. “I haven’t had anything since last night...”

  Because he’d been too sick to eat? About to tell Brody that there was food at the house, Riley changed his mind. Let the man have some small sense of control.

  “Fine. Just get there.” His siblings weren’t arriving until eight or so, after everyone was done with their full-time jobs.

  “And, Brody?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Watch your back.”

  “I can promise you, I’m doing that.” Brody sounded almost as though he’d made up his mind to do whatever it took, and Riley, reminded that the kid had spent some years on the street before he’d come to Graham Colton’s attention, hoped that Brody knew enough to trust him and his siblings to save him, just as their father had done.

  * * *

  Brody didn’t show up over the next hour. Or the one after that. Riley texted him. Multiple times. All with no response.

  With his siblings doing what they could, and waiting to hear from his own CI, he’d put aside work on the cold missing persons case, to tend to the second case on his plate: a woman whose soon-to-be ex-husband, a judge, was abusing his power to strip her of everything she had, including their children. He’d been claiming she’d done things she hadn’t done and Riley and the CI team had been hired by the wife to find evidence that she hadn’t done them, that he was abusing power, or both.

  The problem wasn’t so much finding someone who could corroborate the wife’s story as it was finding anyone, attorneys included, who’d go against the judge husband. They had to appear in his court on other cases. And that family’s accountant, who had pertinent information about the finances she’d supposedly misused, still handled the judge’s personal money and had filed a medical excuse from work for the immediate future.

  Riley texted Brody again. Still no response. Damn.

  Brody had said he was keeping his phone off. Riley could only hope that he’d show up at CI that night. Or at least turn his phone on long enough to let them know where he was.

  That he was okay.

  If he wasn’t okay, if Matthews or Capital X had really been after him, if they’d intended to do more than break two of his fingers that morning, if they’d caught up with him...

  Then Riley and his siblings had to find out who “they” were sooner than possible.

  With Ashanti at her desk in the main office, and Bailey out visiting people on the list the judge’s wife had given them, Brody sat behind his closed door and picked up the brochures Brody had left, looking for any clue that could lead them somewhere.

  Ashanti was already calling all the printers in town. If they could find where the pamphlets were printed, they could possibly find out who’d had them done. If she got supremely lucky, and she often did, she might even be able to get an address of that person.

  Riley was looking for something, anything, a little less untraceable. Something in verbiage that could tell him anything about Wes Matthews or the people behind RevitaYou. Was it just Matthews? Or was he merely working for someone else? Someone with a lot more money and power, someone who could afford to hire a scientist to create a possibly harmful product?

  As he opened one of the tri-fold RevitaYou consumer sales brochures, a card fell out. While it was the size of a business card, it was aged, brocade, printed with a raised font, as though from a printing machine rather than a digital printer.

  And bore simply a name, address and phone number. An old-fashioned calling card.

  Blythe Kent.

  It couldn’t be.

  His first thought repeated itself, a number of times, as he stared at that card.

  Could there be more than one Blythe Kent who, lived on the same street as Charlize Kent, who’d said, when he’d told her where he worked, that she lived on a road he knew, just a few streets away. She’d also said she lived with her elderly aunt. It was one of the reasons they’d gotten a room at the hotel where the fundraiser had been. Because she lived with her aunt.

  And because they’d both had some to drink.

  And...chances were good they wouldn’t have made it home with all their clothes in place if they’d had to sit in the back of a cab to get to her street. Or to his.

  He hadn’t offered his place up as a possibility.

  He never did that. Not ever.

  In retrospect it probably would have been better if he’d given the All Welcome fundraiser a miss altogether. But he wanted the community center
Charlize was trying to get built in an underprivileged area of their great city...

  Why did Brody have Blythe Kent’s calling card? And why was it mixed in with the RevitaYou brochures?

  The obvious answer was that Blythe was somehow involved with the product. Question was, how involved? Was she working with Wes Matthews?

  The idea, though abhorrent as it was, considering that her niece was the woman who’d given him the most incredible sex of his life, also held merit. An older woman would be a perfect front if one was trying to deceive people, to make them feel as though they could trust you.

  It was also possible that Blythe had been at the seminar with Brody and had offered the young man her card simply because she was old-fashioned and liked him.

  People tended to gravitate to the young man now that he’d cleaned up his life. Brody was...accessible. Likeable.

  Not at all the unemotional, standoffish version of a man Riley knew he had become over the years.

  Grabbing his cell phone off his desk, he texted Brody again. And then pressed Call. Still no response. But he did see a reply from his old informant, telling him he had nothing to give him.

  Riley slid Blythe Kent’s calling card into his pocket. After he checked his gun by habit, he grabbed his keys and, stopping only to let Ashanti know that he’d be out for a bit, headed out for the few blocks walk to the town house his memorable one-night stand shared with her elderly aunt.

  At the moment, that old woman was the only one who could provide any of the answers he sought.

  And in order to get them he was going to have to face a woman who had good reason to dislike him.

  * * *

  Charlize Kent didn’t usually walk to the store or much of anywhere. She exercised on a treadmill at home when necessary, or on the track at the gym, but when she had a place to be, she just wanted to get there.

  Except, of course, when she was on a mission to find answers she didn’t want. In that case, she’d decided that the procrastination the walk provided was only second to its physical benefit in the warmth of an overcast summer afternoon. She’d made it to the drugstore in less than ten minutes. Had slowed her sandaled footsteps during the trek home, the small, thin white plastic bag dangling from her fingers brushing against the flowing skirt of her sleeveless blue dress, weighing her down.