Hunting the Colton Fugitive

by Colleen Thompson

  “Your cat’s going to be fine. I headed off your neighbor this morning when I stopped by your townhouse, told her you’d asked me to take him back to my place. Took a little doing, but we got him rounded up, along with his worldly possessions.”

  “Thanks. That’s really—”

  “It’s no big deal,” Brie said, blowing off the favor as if Rocky hadn’t yowled and hissed and clawed in protest, as Sierra was certain that he must have. “And now I won’t have to worry about your poor neighbor accidentally walking into who knows what.”

  “Thanks, but—but you think those guys know where I live?” Owing to her line of work, Sierra had always taken great care to keep her personal information private.

  “You’ve never given me your home address, remember? And it took me all of ten minutes to track you down,” Brie reminded her. “So let’s assume they know already—and that walking through the door of your townhouse could be the last mistake you’d ever make.”

  “So where am I supposed to go?” Sierra asked, thinking of her damaged car, which had begun making some alarming noises when she’d driven it here from the hospital. “And how long do you think this might take to blow over?”

  “Honestly,” Brie told her, “it’s probably better that you don’t tell me where you’re going. And as for how long...as someone who truly cares about your welfare, I’m thinking that a permanent relocation, and a change of profession to go with it, might offer you the best chance of surviving to a ripe old age.”

  * * *

  Still half out of it from the painkillers he’d been given following last night’s surgery to close the slash wound to his upper chest, Ace cracked open his eyes to see Spencer escort Sierra into the hospital room. Sierra, who had featured so prominently in the disjointed dreams that kept punching through his drugged sleep, nightmares where Ice Veins sliced her beautiful face to bloody ribbons before ordering his bald thug into a black limo to run over her legs.

  Anytime Ace had awakened, the new reality he’d encountered felt almost as horrific. He would never forget the sick feeling that had hit him when Spencer had read him his rights early this morning before informing him he was officially in custody for his father’s shooting. Under arrest and forbidden from seeing anyone except his lawyer until after he was transferred to the jail.

  But the knot inside Ace loosened at the sight of Sierra, looking healthy and far better rested. In the filtered late afternoon sunlight, slanting through the room’s window, the red-blond waves of her hair were full and shiny, and she’d changed into jeans and a soft-looking, blue-green top that skimmed her slender curves.

  Full of questions, he fumbled for the button to raise the head of his bed, only to be stopped short by the handcuffs connecting his right wrist to the frame. His heart sank at the reminder that he would soon be in the county lockup, the only place he would be permitted to see his family members—and meet his pregnant daughter for the first time, to his shame. How Sierra had wrangled an exception to get in here today, he had no idea, but seeing her was a balm for his battered soul.

  Gesturing toward his shackled wrist, she swung an accusing look up at the sandy-haired sergeant. “Is that really necessary? Look at that black eye, and he’s just out of surgery, for heaven’s sake. He’s not about to go dashing past the uniform you have posted at the door.”

  But Spencer only shook his head, proving once again to Ace that despite his blue eyes and baby face, his distant cousin was one hundred percent serious when it came to police work. “This is for his safety as well as ours at this point.”

  “His safety?” she challenged. “Or are you more worried he’ll embarrass you and the department by giving you the slip again?”

  “Listen, Ms. Madden,” Spencer warned, his gaze stern, “I only let you in here to talk to him for a few minutes as a professional courtesy to the Vegas Metro PD buddy who vouched for you. Don’t make me regret it. Or ask you to leave right now.”

  Forcing his eyes farther open, Ace spoke up, his voice still raspy from the anesthesia. “Hey, you two. I’m right here. So there’s no need to talk around me like I’m the furniture. What’s happening?”

  “About twenty stitches, the way I heard it,” Spencer told him, “but I understand the knife wound wasn’t as serious as it looked. Just nicked an artery, but once they got that closed off and gave you a unit of blood—”

  “Thanks, but they told me all that in recovery,” Ace said, the memory returning as he struggled to sit up. “Is—is my father in this hospital? Is he somewhere nearby? Could I—”

  “Calm down,” Spencer advised. “You’ll open up your stitches.”

  “Ace, please,” Sierra urged him.

  Ace sagged back against the mattress, his mind still teeming with questions.

  Before he could ask another, Spencer’s cell buzzed in the pocket of his blue uniform.

  Spencer frowned down at the screen. “Sorry, but I’ve got to call back my captain.” With a warning look at Sierra, he added. “Fifteen minutes, twenty, tops, and remember my conditions.”

  An impudent smile made her green eyes sparkle. “Do I look like the kind of girl inclined to break the rules?”

  Spencer frowned and left the room, muttering about this whole idea being against his better judgment.

  Sierra snorted. “Your cop cousin doesn’t much care for bounty hunters. Especially the kind who leave a mess like we did back at The Cactus Flower for his crowd to clean up.”

  “So what exactly happened back there?” Ace asked. “There were so many people and so much confusion.”

  “By the time I was able to check on you, you’d blacked out.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “When I saw all that blood, I thought for sure I’d gotten you killed, dragging you into an ambush with my enemies as if you don’t have troubles enough of your own.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known they’d follow you across state lines,” he said honestly.

  “I should have, Ace. I should’ve guessed I’d made it personal with Ice Veins over bringing in his nephew when he was about to skip the country. What I didn’t know, though, was that Eddie had gotten himself shanked at the county lockup.”

  “And Ice Veins blames you.”

  “Blamed, you mean. Because the man is definitely past tense, thanks to you.”

  “What do you mean?” Ace shook his head, struggling to remember.

  “He was lunging for the K-9 when you slammed into him. Except somehow, the sergeant tells me, in that pileup with you, him and Boris—that’s the dog’s name—Ice Veins ended up with his own knife jutting from his throat.”

  Ace winced at the memory of that same blade slicing through his flesh like butter. “That had to hurt.”

  “Not for long.” Sierra touched her side where she had been kicked. “And as far as I’m concerned, it couldn’t’ve happened to a more deserving person.”

  “I’m with you on that,” he said, his every movement pulling at his stitches, though the pain was muted by the anesthetic he’d been given. “How’re the ribs, by the way?”

  “Couple of hairline fractures, the ER doctors told me.” She shrugged, her mouth set in a grim line. “I’ve had worse in the ring.”

  “You don’t have to do that, you know,” he said, reaching out to enfold her wrist with his free hand.

  “Do what?” Her arm stiffened with his touch, but she didn’t pull away. At least, not yet.

  “Play the tough girl all the time, not around me.”

  “I’m not a girl. I’m a woman, and make no mistake, I am tough.”

  “From what little I know of you, I’m guessing that you’ve had to be. That for a long time now you’ve had no other choice, and no space at all to let your guard down.” Though he, a man whose future and freedom hung in limbo, had no right to do so, he ran the pad of his thumb along her narrow wrist, feeling the ve
lvety softness of her skin over the firm framework beneath it.

  Her eyes slid closed, her sigh shaky. It was only then he knew for certain that she’d sensed what he had, that shuddering rush of air and ions between them, the way the sky seemed to gather itself in the high country with a big storm rushing in. The way he’d always felt waiting for the dark clouds to split open and the rains to bring a desert bloom.

  “So your debt’s cleared and your nightmare’s over,” he said. “And you can go back to your life without Ice Veins’s threats hanging over you. You’ll head home and be all right now.” No matter what happened in his own life, he could content himself with that, with thinking of her from time to time, moving forward, happy.

  She stepped away, turning her face from him, but not before he spotted her grimace and felt the tension rippling through her.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I’m worried about you. That’s all.” Her gaze shuttered when she looked his way once more. “Worried that I did the wrong thing, accepting your stepmother’s offer and that bounty.”

  “I’d just as soon you didn’t refer to that woman as my stepmother,” he said, caring for more about that detail than the money. “Selina Barnes Colton is no family of mine.”

  Sierra nodded. “She did seem awfully pleased to hear you were in custody.”

  “So you’ve spoken to her?”

  “As briefly as I could manage.” Sierra wrinkled her nose in obvious distaste. “Especially when her reaction to learning that you had a knife wound was to ask me how I wanted the check made out for your capture.”

  “Capture?” If he’d ever harbored any illusions that Selina might have acted out of genuine concern for him, they certainly would have died there. The real question was: Why did it matter so much to her, seeing him imprisoned? Was she trying to hide her own involvement in his father’s shooting, or did she need to keep the police from looking in her direction for some other reason?

  “I almost told her where she could stick that check, and damn the paper cuts,” Sierra said with a sly wink at that last part, “but then I decided I’d be better off pretending I’m not onto her, and using the money to pay you back for what you sent Ice Veins. Or a down payment on it, anyway.”

  “Never happened, so there’s no need.” Ace went on to explain that authorities had frozen his accounts, most likely in order to hinder his flight from justice. “So you go ahead and keep it.”

  She shook her head, her forehead crinkling. “But I don’t feel right about—”

  “I insist, Sierra,” he said, thinking of how, since she’d been struggling to pay her father’s debts, she must have little left to live on. And warmed by the fact that whatever happened to him, she would be okay now, safe from the danger that had followed her here. “Keep it.”

  She nodded, her eyes gleaming. “All right, then, but I mean to earn that money, from you. Really earn it, helping the police realize they’ve got the wrong man and getting you back to your family—and your daughter.”

  He stared at Sierra, his mouth going dry. “You believe me, then? Because that bank teller who came forward, who told the cops that I’d confessed to her that I’d hidden the murder weapon in my condo—was lying. That’s where they found the gun, but I didn’t put it there.”

  “You asked about your father right away, with me,” Sierra said, looking directly into his eyes. “And with Spencer, too, here. You cared more about his well-being than you did about your own. That tells me everything I need to know about you.”

  Relieved as he was with her assessment, he couldn’t stop himself from pressing. “Have you heard anything about him? Anything at all?”

  She hesitated before nodding. “I spoke to Ainsley briefly last night. She told me he’s alive. And here, somewhere, but don’t even think of asking to see him.”

  “Alive,” he echoed, gratitude pushing aside his pain. “Thank you. And it means everything that you believe me. Getting to know you, even for a few short hours—If things were different, Sierra... You’re the first woman in a long, long time I can ever remember making me feel—”

  He clenched his jaw, frustration surging through him. Because he had no right to be saying these things to her, no right to be feeling anything for her when his life was hell on earth. Only the most selfish of bastards would drag a woman that he cared for into this mess.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m talking like a crazy man. You should probably leave now, go back home to Las Vegas.”

  She moved closer and leaned over him, brushing an errant clump of hair from his eyes. “If you’ve lost your mind, Ace, I’m afraid I’ve taken the same wrong turn. Which means right now you’re stuck with me, for better or for worse.”

  Chapter 6

  Sierra brushed aside Ace’s light brown hair and ducked her head, fully intending to drop a peck onto his care-lined forehead to seal the promise she had made to help him find his way to freedom. What she didn’t count on was him fumbling for—and this time finding—the control to elevate the head of his bed. Or the feelings that cascaded through her when he raised his chin to press his lips to her mouth. Gently, tenderly, as if he sensed, just as she did, that if they didn’t dare to take this stolen moment, they might never get another.

  You should run from here now, her survival instincts warned as he reached up to gently run his fingertips along the side of her face. Run from this before it traps you. Trade your dented car for some jalopy and drive across the southern border with Selina’s money in your pocket.

  But she didn’t move, could barely breathe, as within the span of that single kiss, so many possibilities unfolded. Of joyful days sharing each other’s company, of nights spent coaxing each other’s bodies to the peaks of pleasure. Of having someone she could finally trust enough to share the secrets weighing down her every step.

  Thoughts like these, they’re just mirages, she tried to warn herself as the kiss deepened, her hands reaching to frame his face, his drawing her nearer. This close to the desert, they’re beautiful, but cruel.

  Still, when she heard someone at the door, she could barely pull herself away. And when she spotted Spencer Colton frowning at the two of them, his disapproval was blurred by the unshed tears in her eyes.

  Grasping her by the arm, the sergeant hustled her toward the door.

  “Wait,” she blurted, twisting to turn back. “We’re not finished talking.” She needed to ask Ace more about the evidence against him, evidence of a conspiracy she meant to unravel.

  “What I just saw wasn’t talking.” The sergeant frowned at her. “And I specifically warned you earlier, no physical contact. Though I should have my head examined for trusting the kind of woman who’s responsible for a shootout at a local motel and three dead Vegas wise guys in my jurisdiction.”

  “Please, Sergeant Colton, as Detective Stratford from the Las Vegas Metropolitan PD has already explained, I’m a legitimate professional with no ties to organized crime. It’s just in my line of work, I sometimes end up crossing paths with—”

  “You’ve had the time I promised, bounty hunter,” he said firmly. “Now let’s go.”

  Ace protested, “I needed to give her some information related to my case. Please, Spencer.”

  Sierra wondered if Ace’s use of his first name was meant to remind the sergeant the two were somehow related and not just random strangers.

  Scowling, Spencer proved he was a cop first, saying, “Tell it to your lawyer, Ace. You’ve forfeited your right to ask for any favors, or for any other visitors until you’re processed into jail.”

  “You’re seriously still doing this?” Ace demanded. “Come on, you know this is a setup, that it couldn’t have been me in either of those videos.”

  “Then why’d you run, man? And how’d the weapon used in your father’s shooting get inside your condo?”

&nbs
p; “Why don’t you ask your so-called witness? I’m sure that Destiny Jones—as if I’d go babbling secrets to some bank teller I barely know—” Ace’s gaze flicked toward Sierra, connecting for a moment before returning to Spencer “—could lead you in the right direction.”

  Catching Ace’s drift, Sierra nodded, reminded of the witness’s name and her position.

  “That’s something else we’re going to need to talk about,” said Spencer, his frown deepening as his gaze bored into Ace’s. “What’s happened to Ms. Jones, because she hasn’t been seen in weeks. And the one person who stood to profit from her disappearance took off and went into hiding right around the time of her last sighting...”

  “You’re not suggesting,” Ace began, the color draining from his bruised face, “that I would—that I know anything about what might’ve happened to her? Because if that’s the case, Sergeant, I’m going to need my attorney present before I say another word.”

  As Spencer escorted Sierra to the elevator, she said, “You can’t honestly believe that Ace would harm this witness, do you? I’ve only known him for a couple of days, and it’s obvious to me that he’s no killer.”

  “And yet you’ve told me yourself he was involved in the death of that goon we found in the brush.”

  After waiting for a woman wearing a set of scrubs and a stethoscope to pass by, Sierra whispered furiously, “That happened during a struggle for a weapon. The man meant to kill us. And you should have seen how upset Ace was about it afterward, going on about how he’d never shot anyone before.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Pretty clearly, don’t you think?” she asked, her cheeks burning at the thought of the eyeful she and Ace had given him when he’d first walked into the room.

  Once they arrived at the elevator, Spencer reached for the down button but hesitated before looking at her, his serious expression giving gravity to his boyish face. “You need to understand something, Ms. Madden. I may be a shirttail relation from a poorer branch of the family, but that doesn’t mean I’m looking to take down the former CEO of Colton Oil. I’m here to find the truth, that’s all, as well as justice for any and all victims.”