Younger and apparently more agile, the stranger twisted around like a trapped animal and dove for the loose weapon. But before his hand closed on the pistol’s grip, Ace’s booted foot caught his jaw.
The kick snapped the intruder’s head backward with a loud Oomph! As he recoiled from the blow, Ace, now seeing a clear path, leaped, his arm stretching toward the gun. His first desperate grab, though, only sent it spinning another two feet farther. It took another leap onto his stomach—and what felt like a few popped stitches from the chest wound Ice Veins had given him—before Ace finally had the weapon in his hand...
A weapon that he swung around to aim at the empty air and the fast-fading sound of running footsteps down the hall outside the room.
Ten minutes earlier
Though Sierra had managed to dress in the now-rumpled outfit from the previous evening and had even found her keys and wallet still zipped inside her jacket’s pocket, she hadn’t gotten far before someone must have figured out that she was missing. Or at least that was what she figured when flashing lights and an unfamiliar code announcement—both of which made her head swim—sent hospital personnel scurrying into the hallways so quickly that Sierra had no choice but to duck into the first doorway she encountered.
It turned out to be a break room, with a couple of round table and chair groupings, a countertop microwave, sink, a small refrigerator and a half-full coffeepot, along with a number of insulated mugs, which sat on open shelving. But what immediately caught Sierra’s eye was a white lab coat some careless employee had left draped over one of the chairs. Sierra decided on the spot it would make a good start on a disguise.
She was even more excited to see a hospital ID had been left clipped to the lapel. Though she had zero chance of passing as Dr. Jonathan Wong from the radiology department, the white coat fit her well, at least, and by flipping around the ID backward, donning a pair of tortoiseshell-framed reading glasses she discovered in a cubby, and winding her hair into a messy bun style, she decided she could pull off “harried medical professional” if spotted from a distance.
Or if there weren’t an entire floor full of very real employees of this hospital, along with the very capable Callum Colton, looking for her specifically. The thought made Sierra’s heartbeat quicken, as did the realization that a good number of those people might have seen Sergeant Colton on the television news last night or read about her so-called “murder” in the newspaper first thing this morning. In a community the size of Mustang Valley, such an event would be widely shared by friends and neighbors on social media, as well.
Fear splashed through her with the thought. Had photos of her—one of those photos—run with the coverage? Cringing at the thought, she remembered how her father had convinced her it would be great for business for her to do some feature with a glossy Las Vegas-area magazine last year and how they’d insisted on photographing her badass-babe style, holding various weapons, wearing a pair of outsized boxing gloves, and even straddling some chromed-out motorcycle she wouldn’t have ridden on the job in a million years. If she weren’t already supposedly dead, she’d keel over from humiliation to imagine those ridiculous pictures circulating widely.
Or would she be risking blowing the even better cover of her murder by allowing herself to be seen?
Realizing that she had little time for indecision, she peered out into the hallway to make sure the coast was clear before hurrying toward where she spotted a sign for the staircase—probably her best shot at getting outside the building undetected.
Voices around a corner alerted her someone was coming. Sierra caught the words room by room search, and ducked into what turned out to be a utility closet, mostly occupied by a large bin half-full of bags of soiled linens to be laundered. By the time someone came to check that closet, less than a minute later, Sierra was deep inside the bin, with several of the floppy cloth bags strategically arranged above her.
Holding her breath as the searcher rattled brooms, mops, buckets and other items around her, she strained her ears until she heard the male voice call, “Closet’s cleared,” an instant before the door slammed shut behind him.
Still, she stayed in her hiding place a while longer in case someone else came, her heart pounding in time with the aching of her head and injured ribs. When no one else arrived, she climbed out again, a painstakingly slow operation because of the room’s near-total darkness and her fear of knocking over anything that would bring another searcher running. By the time she was peering through the door again, she was sticky with perspiration and feeling more than slightly claustrophobic.
But she reminded herself that, during her professional efforts to get the drop on fugitives, she’d hidden in far tighter spaces. Sure, she wasn’t in peak form now, considering her injuries, but she was an athlete and a competitor—and absolutely determined to once more take charge of her own future. A future where she would never again have to be tempted by Ace Colton’s all-too-handsome face into imagining she was something more than the same Sierra Madden whose own mother hadn’t seen fit to hang around, whose father hadn’t paid enough attention to protect her from...
She closed her eyes, pushing back against the pain of wounds she hadn’t thought about in years, wounds that had more to do with her reaction to being forcibly corralled here than she would ever admit. Taking a deep breath, she let go of her angst for the time being, finally cautiously cracking the door open.
Peering through the narrow gap, she spotted the marked stairway door where she’d been heading when the commotion had broken out. She gave a low growl of frustration, seeing a woman she recognized as a nurse’s assistant stationed near that exit, her glossy, high-set ponytail swinging back and forth as she looked up and down the hallway.
A moment later a muted male voice called out from farther down the corridor. Sierra didn’t make out the words, but judging from the swing of the black ponytail and the way the nurse’s assistant went sprinting off in that direction, it might’ve been a call for help.
Though the coast was clear, Sierra hesitated a moment longer, carefully opening the closet door wide enough to hear a series of short, sharp shouts and the slap of running feet.
Had someone thought they’d spotted her—or was another patient suffering a medical emergency? Either way, she seized on the distraction and broke from her hiding place, bolting toward the stairway as fast as she could run.
She had nearly made it when she heard the steps pounding and the sound of someone breathing hard coming up behind her—too fast for her to hide, to run, even to change course. All she could do was brace herself, turn her head just enough to make out the blur of a smallish, slim male, his head topped in a cap of messy, dark brown curls—and about to mow her down.
At the last instant he reached out, hooked her right shoulder with a hand. “Out of the way, bitch!” he yelled before giving her a hard shove sideways.
“Hey, jerk, watch it!” was all Sierra had time to shout as she toppled to the floor, the reading glasses flying. Mad as hell, she scrambled back up in time to see him disappearing through the stairwell door—
And Ace Colton barreling down the hallway, his face a mask of fury and a drawn gun in his hand.
Tough as Sierra liked to consider herself, she shrank back reflexively as the sight of Ace waving around the weapon.
“Get back to your room now!” he shouted at her, his brown eyes wide and his face flushed. “I found my father’s shooter in his room! He was about to stage a murder-suicide with Dad and me when I grabbed his gun, but he’s still dangerous.”
Recovering her wits, she answered, “Let me help you catch him. And please point that barrel down, will you? You’re giving me palpitations here—and not the good kind!”
“I said get back in your room. You have a head injury, and—”
“And you don’t have nearly enough zip ties to keep me in this place.” She glared a warning that she w
asn’t above demonstrating another left cross if he tried such a stunt again. “So unless you mean to shoot me with that thing, why not bring along someone with some experience at apprehending violent criminals?”
“There’s no time to argue. He’s getting away.”
“Well, that’s at least one thing we’re agreed on,” she said, hurrying to open the stairwell door and waving him in ahead of her. “So how about we call a temporary truce—just until we catch this guy and I can be on my way?”
* * *
Ace knew Sierra was right about one thing. They couldn’t afford to waste time, not with his father’s shooter getting farther out of reach with every passing second.
Nodding, he forced himself to slow his breathing, manage his panicked thoughts and sort his priorities. “Just a second. I need to make sure Callum’s watching my dad.”
Though he’d flagged down a nurse who had called others to help deal with the bleeding and unconscious guard, there was no way his father could be left without security, in case the shooter had an accomplice...or somehow managed to double back for another attempt on the senior Colton’s life.
Fortunately, the phone he’d picked up off the floor before sprinting down the hallway still worked, though the screen had been cracked when it had been knocked from his hand. After sending a terse message to his brother, Ace looked up to spot Sierra donning a pair of reading glasses, her hair wound up into a precarious-looking updo. Along with the white coat she was wearing, it made for a reasonable disguise—one that convinced him that the confusion he’d witnessed in her this morning had cleared up.
Raising his brows in appreciation of her quick thinking, he nodded his approval before once more pulling out the gun and starting for the stairs. Sierra ran after him, lagging behind only a little as he pounded down the steps.
They were still too late, just as he’d suspected they would be, considering the delay. Or at least he was certain they were as the two of them emerged into the long, slanting rays of the late-afternoon sunshine, where they looked around the parking lot frantically.
Seeing no one except a white-haired couple, a man using a walker, and a young woman pushing her child in a stroller toward the hospital’s main entrance, Ace turned on Sierra. “If I hadn’t been held up arguing with you, I might’ve caught him! I might have finally had the man that my father told me shot him—”
Sierra gaped at him. “Your father—he’s talking?”
Ace nodded. “He’s just starting to, yes.”
“I’m glad to hear that, but if you could hold off on the jumping down my throat a second—”
Chagrin tightened his jaw. “You’re right. That was out of line. I’d already been slowed down getting help for the injured guard and grabbing my phone, not to mention making sure Callum’s back in the room with our dad—”
When she held up a hand for silence, he half expected her to tell him what he could do with his apology. Instead, she took the practical approach, rattling off priorities like the professional she was. “We need manpower—the cops and hospital security—to search the building, especially the first and second floors, in case he ducked out onto one of the lower floors and never left the building.”
“Agreed,” he said, reaching for his phone again, but before he could pull it out, her head turned abruptly toward the throaty revving of an engine. Following her gaze, he spotted a bright yellow coupe across the parking lot—some kind of muscle car—peeling out onto the road before squealing off down the street.
“That’s gotta be him,” Ace guessed, imagining that a young guy bold enough to commit the flagrant acts this shooter had would be drawn to the flash and power of such a vehicle—and too shaken by their physical altercation to make a quieter getaway. “Let’s go.”
He pointed out his silver Porsche, parked only a few rows away. “I’m over there.”
He beat her to the convertible and was strapped inside and had it started by the time she joined him.
“You okay?” he asked, noticing her grimace as she pulled the seat belt out and across her body. “You look kind of pale.”
Nodding impatiently, she explained, “That’s just my game face. Now if you’re done playing mother hen, try showing me what this fancy ride of yours can do. We don’t want to lose this guy again.”
Backing out, he wheeled around. Then the Porsche shot off like the finely tuned machine it was. But thanks to a school bus lumbering past to delay them from getting clear of the hospital exit, the yellow coupe’s rear bumper was nearly out of sight by the time he was able to safely get around the traffic slowdown.
“There, he’s turned off to the right! You see it? A canary yellow ’69 Camaro,” said Sierra, who had put her window down to crane her neck out the window. “Probably not another one in a town the size of this one.”
He cut her the briefest of looks. “You know your muscle cars.”
“Enough to know there could be some serious horsepower under that hood.” She shrugged. “My dad used to drag me to all the classic car shows back in Vegas as a kid.”
Though most of his attention was riveted on the tiny yellow dot ahead, he managed to pass her his phone. “Call Spencer, will you? Let him know you’re with me and tell him we’re in pursuit of a younger white male, midtwenties, slight build, with curly, dark hair and brown eyes. Tell him, too, about my father identifying him as the shooter.”
“Sure, I will, but—Ace,” Sierra said a moment later, as he watched the Camaro make a left into a residential neighborhood ahead. “Your phone just flashed twice, and now nothing. I think—yeah, it’s definitely dead. Broken, maybe? I see the glass is cracked.”
“Shooter knocked it out of my hand upstairs,” he said, knowing the battery had been fully charged when he’d arrived at the hospital. “Must’ve damaged it worse than it first looked like. Do you have your phone on you?”
She reached underneath the lab coat before shaking her head. “It’s not in any of my pockets. I don’t know what happened to it. You didn’t let the police take it last night, did you?”
“I didn’t let—It was probably lost somewhere in the ER or the parking lot, Sierra, while people were trying to save your life.” He tapped the brakes, slowing for a rangy black dog that ambled across the road as if it hadn’t a care in the world. “A life that you seem damned determined to toss aside, running off like some petulant teenager this afternoon.”
“I’d say you and Spencer and the rest have already done a fine job of tossing away the life I had,” she fired back, “so quit acting like I’m some ungrateful brat who needs to be corrected, or you can drop me off right here.”
“You’re the one who insisted on coming, helping me to find him.”
“I told you before I meant to earn that money Selina paid me. Earn it helping you to clear your name. I’m not welching on that promise—or a chance to score a little payback.”
“Payback?”
“Well, yeah,” she said. “You did just say this guy’s intent was to frame you and stage a murder-suicide, to kill both you and your father, right?”
“I don’t think I was his primary target, but he did say that’s what he meant to do,” Ace said, his stomach squirming as it hit him how close he and his father had come to dying in that room together. “When I think of my family, my daughter, you, tricked into believing that I’d been so consumed by guilt that I’d shot myself after finishing off my father—I could kill that son of a bitch myself, if I ever get ahold of him—”
“No, you absolutely can’t kill him,” she argued. “Not if you ever want any answers—or to truly prove your innocence. You have to use your head. And besides...”
“Besides what?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t have been tricked. I never would’ve bought you’d do anything like that—that you’d hurt your brothers and your sisters, and the daughter who believes in you, by doing something l
ike that.”
He swallowed past a lump, wanting to thank her but unable to find the words as he slowed to take the left turn where he’d spotted the Camaro disappearing. The neighborhood was older, with a mix of brick, stucco and adobe one-story homes, most landscaped with the rock and drought-resistant plantings common to the region. But many of the houses had walls that obscured backyards, and garages with their doors down that could hide a vehicle. “Where is he? Do you see the car anywhere?”
They stared at the long and empty street ahead. Running slightly downhill, it was intersected by three or four smaller cross streets before eventually curving off to the right.
“I don’t see him anywhere,” she started, craning her neck as she looked past a variety of vehicles parked along the street, none of which resembled the Camaro. “But keep driving. Maybe we’ll spot something, anything.”
“Not if he’s pulled behind one of those fences,” he said, trying not to sweat the telltale orange-pink glow splashed along the bottoms of the gauzy clouds to their west. Surely, they’d have his father’s shooter before sunset—or at least ahead of full dark. Ace vowed he wouldn’t let this chance slip through his fingers.
Their gazes traveled along the smaller lanes and between houses, desperately searching out the slightest glimpse of canary-yellow paint.
“This neighborhood looks familiar,” Sierra commented. “I think we’re only about a half a block from the apartment where Destiny Jones lived, just over there.”
She pointed partway down the street coming up on their left, where about a dozen school-aged kids, their skin tones ranging from dark reddish-brown to freckled ivory, were playing. Ace suspected the after-school game had started as touch football but appeared to be deteriorating as one of the larger boys sent a younger kid sprawling, causing an angry-looking pair of girls to get up in the aggressor’s face with their fists curled.
Hunting the Colton Fugitive Page 18
