by Lisa Childs
“They’ll be so happy,” she murmured, tears pooling in her eyes.
“They will,” he agreed. “They loved you, too. They will be thrilled that the company will be more in your hands than mine now.”
She laughed. “You are the company now, Heath.”
He shook his head. “We are.” They had to be. Pop and Uncle Alfie were gone. “Do you think she did it?” he wondered.
“Gina?”
He nodded. “Do you think she killed them?”
“I don’t know,” Kylie admitted. “But Detective Parker has plenty of time to find out while she’s in jail with bail denied.”
“On one hand, I want it to be her,” he admitted. “So that it’s over. On the other, I will feel so damn guilty if my ex-girlfriend is the one who killed them.”
“Don’t,” Kylie said. “You had no way of knowing how disturbed she is. Nobody knew.”
“You were never a fan,” he reminded her.
She smiled. “I think I was as jealous of her as she was of me.”
“But you never tried to kill her,” he said. Kylie would never hurt anyone. She was too good and honest a person. His heart was safe with her, and he hoped she knew hers was safe with him.
He’d committed to her, and he knew they shared the kind of love that his parents and his aunt and uncle had shared. Lasting...no matter what obstacles they encountered. Even death.
* * *
Joe wasn’t a fan of psychiatrists, especially ones like Dr. Reeth who’d kept him from interrogating his prime murder suspect. He’d had to wait a week for Gina Hogan to be treated and medicated before he was allowed to speak to her. But maybe that was a good thing; apparently she was considered sane enough now that she could refuse a lawyer and he could still question her.
He settled onto the chair across from her. One of her wrists was handcuffed to the metal tabletop. He considered uncuffing her, but then he remembered how she’d eluded him outside the penthouse.
She was fast and maybe not nearly as crazy as he’d thought. Better to be safe than sorry.
“How are you, Ms. Hogan?” he asked.
She smiled at him. “Much better now thanks to Dr. Reeth. I should be able to go home soon.”
He hoped the doctor hadn’t told her that—because there was no damn way he wanted to release her. Ever.
“You’re not going anywhere but back to that jail cell,” he said. “And then you’ll be going to prison.”
She shook her head. “No, that’s not what Dr. Reeth told me.”
“Maybe he isn’t aware of the charges you’re facing.”
“Charges?” she asked. “For what?” She blinked at him, acting all innocent.
Was it an act, though, or was it possible she didn’t remember what she’d done?
He was going to remind her. “You shot the security guard at the hospital—in front of several witnesses and cameras.” The guy was going to be fine, but she didn’t know that.
Or did she? She just blinked again, but she betrayed no other reaction. No guilt.
How the hell medicated was she?
He wanted a reaction out of her, so he persisted. “You’re already going down for his murder. You might as well confess to the other ones.”
He got a reaction.
She smiled and leaned eagerly across the table. “Kylie Givens is dead?” she asked hopefully. “The iodine killed her after all?”
Parker shook his head. “Not Ms. Givens. She’s fine. In fact she’s better than fine.” Thanks to her and Heath’s quick reaction. Joe had been too slow in getting to the ER; he’d stopped to check in the waiting room first and had nearly taken a bullet from Stafford.
Her smile turned into a sneer of disgust. “That’s not fair. It’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair is the other lives you took too soon,” he said. “They were only fifty-seven. Young men still.”
Her forehead creased with confusion, and she stared at him as if he needed medication. “What are you talking about?”
“The other murders you committed,” he said. “You killed Ernest and Alfred Colton. You shot them dead in the parking lot of the building that Colton Connections is in.”
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did,” he insisted. “It’s okay to admit it. One murder, three murders, attempted murders...it doesn’t make a difference. You’re going to plead insanity anyway, so it doesn’t matter. Just tell the truth.”
She leaned across the table then and stared directly into his eyes. “I. Did. Not. Kill. Anyone.” Her mouth curved up slightly at the corners.
She knew the security guard had survived—probably thanks to damn Dr. Reeth. Her smile widened. “Like you said, I’ll plead insanity, so it doesn’t really matter. I’ll tell you the truth.”
His stomach sank as he realized she was being honest. She hadn’t killed anyone.
“The only person I actually tried to kill was Kylie Givens.”
At least he was getting a confession from her. “Why?”
“Because she was the reason Heath could not love me,” she said.
“Because he loves her,” he said.
Tears shimmered in her eyes.
“That wasn’t her fault,” he said. “And even if you killed her, he wouldn’t have come to love you. It doesn’t work that way.”
“But he should have been mine.”
He shook his head. “No. You deserve someone who loves you. Truly loves you.”
She tilted her head and studied his face. “You’re right. I do.”
He nodded. “So you have no reason to want her dead any longer?” He was checking—just in case her damn doctor did get her out on a technicality.
She sighed. “No. I guess they deserve each other.”
“Yes, they do,” Joe said. “I’ve never met two people more perfect for each other.” But for him and Kinsey...
He stood up then, eager to get home to his wife and son. He wasn’t going to get any more confessions out of Gina Hogan. She’d admitted to what she’d done. Attempted murder.
She wasn’t a killer.
The twins’ killer was still out there.
But Joe would find him or her. He just hoped that he did before the person killed again.
* * *
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Colton’s Killer Pursuit
by Tara Taylor Quinn
Chapter 1
The cold was just about freezing her nose off. Two seconds out of the grocery store and Everleigh could already feel the sting through her jeans and thick black coat. Pushing her overflowing cart—as it turned out, spending two months in prison meant most everything left in her kitchen had to be replaced—she got a wheel caught on a chunk of ice. Pushed harder and skidded over it.
Of course, frozen February would be the time she’d be replenishing. Couldn’t be summer, when the long trek to the far end of the lot could have been less miserable.
It wasn’t like she’d had any warning, any time to prepare for an absence. One minute she’d been waiting tables at Howlin’ Eddie’s, trying like hell to make enough money to pay the bills, maybe buy some Christmas presents, and the next she’d been handcuffed in front of her coworkers and a couple dozen customers. Accused of murdering her soon-to-
be ex-husband.
At the point she’d been arrested, she hadn’t even seen Fritz in over a week. He’d moved out the month before. He’d been accusing her of cheating on him, when the truth was, he’d been doing other women behind her back for years. Chump that she was, she’d trusted him.
Crunch. Crunch. Her ankle-length zip-up black boots sounded against the ice and salt crystals as she pushed, lifting a hand briefly to resecure her knitted hat over her short hair and freezing ears, still halfway down the pavement from her beat-up old red Park Avenue...a car that reminded her of herself in some ways. Luxury in name only. Except that her old beater of a car used to actually be top-of-the-line. Her beginnings on the east side of town had been anything but.
Still, she’d made it across the wrong side of the tracks, from lower-income housing and basic public school to the upscale part of Grave Gulch. Meeting Fritz, falling in love with the handsome fitness-guru charmer, marrying and buying a home on the west side, his side of town...
Crunch and...her boot slid forward on a patch of ice. With one hand flailing and her heart in her throat, Everleigh gripped her cart harder, lurching against it as she managed to avoid falling on her butt on the pavement. But the sudden movement knocked the bag of baking goods, flour, sugar and chocolate chips out of her cart and onto the wet ground.
Blinking back tears, she bent to rebag her goods. Stupid to cry. She didn’t need frozen eyelashes, or reason for her nose to run any more than it already was. The plastic handle on the bag ripped when she put the flour back inside. Her fault. She’d known she should have double bagged it. And really, she’d never been one to cry over spilled milk.
Or baking goods, as was the case here.
The tears that hadn’t quite stopped weren’t because of her groceries. She knew that. It was just... everything. The buildup of two months’ worth of sitting in prison twenty minutes from home, awaiting a trial for a murder she hadn’t committed while her little house sat empty.
But even that didn’t cause emotional overflow. No, the tears were for her gram. Every waking second of the forty-eight hours she’d been out of prison, she’d been mourning for her eighty-year-old role model, heroine, example and fount of love. In an act of desperation, her grandma, Hannah McPherson, had kidnapped a police sketch artist’s child just to get leverage so the cops would reinvestigate Fritz’s murder.
Gram had been so certain that Everleigh hadn’t killed her husband—which she hadn’t—that she’d been willing to risk her own freedom to get someone to prove it. Gram had been the only one who’d believed Everleigh hadn’t committed the crime.
Hard to believe...thirty-eight years of living in Grave Gulch, on both sides of the tracks...her entire life...caring for people, trying to be kind, doing her best...and everyone, her own mother and aunt included, believed her capable of murder—and that she was guilty!
And now the one person who’d been there for her, unconditionally, her entire life, was sitting in prison. Because while Gram’s goal had been met—the police had taken another look at her case and found that their own forensic scientist had tampered with evidence and Everleigh had been exonerated—her grandmother had committed a felony by taking that sweet baby boy. Didn’t matter that she’d cared for him lovingly during the few hours he’d been a guest at her home. She’d kidnapped a child. The little cousin of the chief of police.
And still, bottom line, she was a kidnapper, was sitting in prison facing felony charges, and there was nothing Everleigh could do to get her out.
Because while Everleigh hadn’t been guilty, Gram was...
Placing her groceries back in the ripped bag, Everleigh blinked through her tears to be able to see well enough to find two ends of plastic to tie together and get the bag back up to her cart, then lodged it securely among the dozen or so other packages still there. Frozen fingers having made the task that much more difficult, she pushed her cart as quickly as she could toward her sorry old car.
Murder or not, Everleigh would rather be the one facing another night in a cell than her grandma. Prison was no place for an eighty-year-old woman with frail bones and a heart filled with love.
She’d thought maybe, with the fault lying in the police department, and the boy’s mother being willing to not press charges, Gram would be free. But the DA still charged her.
And it wasn’t like Everleigh had any sway with the upper-echelon politicians in town.
Still...she was almost at her car, thank God...there were always silver linings if you looked for them, as Gram had always said. She might not have any pull in town, but Gram did. There’d been Free Granny posters going up all over town. There’d even been a formal protest going on when Everleigh had been released from prison two days before.
And they were still going on downtown every day, outside the police station.
Maybe... Oommfff. Someone—or something—slammed into her.
Hands ripped from the basket of her cart with the force that hit her, Everleigh seemed to fly, her feet off the ground, for a brief second before she landed with a thump on top of a heavily coated body much larger than hers. The gloved hands caught her around the waist like a football, held her in place for a brief second and then, just as quickly, let her go.
She looked up just in time to see the back of her car swiped by the front bumper of an old vehicle that hadn’t even bothered to stop.
What the hell!
Scrambling to her feet, heart pounding and her breath blowing out steam in large poofs, she saw her basket of groceries rolling off in the distance. And saw the man who’d just tackled her to the ground running after them. Almost starting to cry again as he caught the basket just before it bashed into a light post and pulled it safely back to her.
“We need to call the police,” he said, steam vaporizing around his face as he pulled out his phone.
And she recognized him. Had seen him around the police station and in court, too, as she’d arrived for the third day of her trial and found herself released instead. Clarke Colton. And of course, he’d want to call the police, being the big brother to the chief and all.
Plus, he worked for them. As a contracted private investigator.
The thought of police anywhere in her vicinity made her shake worse than the frigid temperatures.
“Someone just tried to run you down,” he said, phone to his ear.
Yeah, she’d gotten that. Just hadn’t processed it yet.
Clarke Colton spoke into the phone without introducing himself, reporting what he’d just seen happen to her, giving way more of a description of the car than she’d been able to make out, along with the fact that there’d been no license plate on it. His description of the driver followed but wasn’t nearly as detailed. With the bulky coat, big gloves and ski mask the person had been wearing, he hadn’t even been able to tell if it was male or female. Or any kind of hair color, skin color or body build.
So great, a phantom was after her now? She started to load her groceries with muscles weakened by shock. Fear hadn’t set in yet, but she knew it was on its way. She could feel it coming. As soon as she thawed out a bit more.
Why would anyone want to hurt her?
But...someone already had. The missing police-department forensic guy, something-or-other Bowe, who’d tampered with the evidence in her case to make her look guilty. She’d never even met the guy. Had no idea why he’d be out to get her.
But apparently, he still was and...
Clarke dropped his phone in his coat pocket and picked up a couple of her bags of groceries, depositing them in her slightly more dented trunk. The car sure didn’t show her in her best light, but from what she understood, Clarke already knew way more about her than she ever cared to know about him. He’d been the one to take another look at her case when Gram kidnapped his cousin.
He’d also been the one who’d found the discrepancy in evidence that had ulti
mately proved her innocence.
Everleigh might be from the wrong side of the tracks, but Gram had made certain she had her manners. “I owe you a debt of gratitude,” she told him. Just get the bags in the trunk.
Then she could lock herself in her car and cry. Or drive somewhere safe.
Somewhere she could hide until she could figure out what to do next.
No place that fit that description was coming to her.
She sure as heck wasn’t going to her parents’ house. They’d believed she was a murderer...
“You don’t owe me anything.” He loaded the last three bags.
“First you help find the evidence that gets me out of jail, and now this...” She nodded toward the dent in her trunk. “If you hadn’t moved when you did, I’d have been smashed between my car and the one...”
Her teeth chattered. She wanted it to be a result of the cold. But it wasn’t.
Oh, God. She’d almost been smashed to death!
Suddenly, standing out there on the pavement, in broad daylight, visible to anyone, didn’t seem prudent.
Ducking her head, she made her way to the driver’s door of her car. Thankfully didn’t have to bother unlocking it. The lock had busted a couple of months before. Once inside, she squinted up at her rescuer veiled in the sunshine. Standing between her and the door as he was, he’d left her little choice.
“I’m going to follow you home,” he told her. Didn’t ask. Told. “Just to make certain you get there safely.”
With a nod, she agreed to wait until he came around in his SUV before driving off. Only because he was fulfilling her goal. To get her somewhere safely.
And maybe because, after months of being afraid and alone, falsely accused and powerless, it felt good to have someone at her back.
Not that she’d trust a Colton. Or anyone but Gram. She’d learned that lesson hard and clear.
Just as she knew that the idea of being safe was only a mirage. Home, the scene of a murder two months before, definitely wasn’t it. But at the moment, it was all she had.
