Colton First Responder (The Coltons 0f Mustang Valley Book 4)

by Linda O. Johnston

  Her dad was gone now, but Savannah had not worried about her mother and brother after the earthquake. Neither would have been affected. Randy had moved to Phoenix to join a highly successful stock brokerage firm. Her mom was on an extended trip to Europe with some friends.

  Savannah had lived in the family mansion until she married Zane, partying and enjoying her life, including getting involved with all the charitable events she could. She’d continued to help throw fund-raising events, which wasn’t much of a career, she realized, but she’d enjoyed it.

  And she didn’t give a damn about what, if anything, was now left of the other mansion she’d lived in, her ex’s. While, apparently, he was enjoying multiple affairs.

  Well, she wasn’t going to talk about any of those things as she took her walk with Grayson.

  Still, she appreciated his company. And his apparent intention of helping her get through this and finding the truth so she would be exonerated. She didn’t know what she’d do with her life then, but she would definitely be out of prison.

  Or so she hoped.

  Since they had eaten everything she had prepared as their small lunch, she just checked to ensure that she had encased the remaining meat and salad fixings as well as possible in the plastic wrap Grayson had brought. She put them back with the rest of the food, knowing they wouldn’t last long with no power in the refrigerator, then turned back to him—only to find him right behind her.

  Or maybe she wasn’t so surprised after all. He certainly hadn’t startled her.

  “Are we ready to go?” she asked.

  “Absolutely.” He held out his right elbow, as if inviting her to latch onto it with her own arm, which she did—for the few seconds it took them to reach the front door.

  She opened it, but Grayson stepped in front of her. “Me first,” he said. Which she appreciated, especially when he began looking around, his head raised as if he was listening, too.

  He was undoubtedly checking for intruders to the area.

  “Okay,” he said after a few seconds. “No obvious problems, but we’ll stay alert.”

  “Of course,” she agreed. Without even thinking about it, she, too, stopped for a moment to listen for anything that didn’t belong there. But other than the breeze flowing through the leaves and branches of the fir trees around them, she heard nothing except for an occasional bird call, mostly crows.

  Nothing that sounded like people stalking her. No cops on her trail...but she knew she had better expect the worst eventually.

  Still, she also might as well enjoy her freedom for the moment and attempt to figure out a way to guarantee it in the future.

  Grayson didn’t offer to take her arm again as he walked slowly around the cabin on the narrow, uneven path. “Have you walked around this way before?” he asked.

  She nodded, staying at his side as they strolled along. “Yes, partly just to get out of the cabin, partly for a touch of exercise—and mostly just to think as I walked.”

  “I can guess what you were thinking about. Did you reach any conclusions?”

  She sucked in her lips as she considered the circumstances—as if she wasn’t thinking about them all the time anyway. “I want to get out of here. But as much as I’d like to find a way to flee the area, what would I do then? I’d need a new identity, and I’d always be looking over my shoulder for someone to recognize me and drag me back here to stand trial.”

  “Not if you could prove that the only crime committed was your ex framing you for his murder.”

  Savannah stopped abruptly and looked at Grayson. He’d described what she really wanted. And of course he knew that, since she hadn’t exactly kept it to herself.

  But his mentioning it here and now felt—well, as if he had somehow handed her a key to the future she really craved.

  Not that he’d offered any guidance about finding that proof.

  Still, she had an urge to hug him for his understanding.

  Heck, she had an urge to hug this kind man again for more than that.

  This amazingly handsome, sexy man who could have just obeyed the law and turned her over to the authorities.

  And as she looked straight into his intense blue eyes, even more striking beneath his thick, sculpted brows, she had an urge to do even more with him—like drag him back into the cabin and seduce him.

  Possibly the last passionate encounter she would ever experience if she was, in fact, recaptured and thrown back into prison.

  Instead, she turned and restarted their walk. She inhaled the fresh, April-cool air of the woodlands. “Yes, that’s the current goal of my life. I really want to dig up the truth. Find my ex and show the world what a horrible man he is. And find out for sure why he decided to frame me, although I think it’s just because I refused to stay married to him while he did what he wanted, like seeing other women.”

  “Okay, let’s start trying to figure out how to do that.”

  “How?” Savannah blurted. Since escaping and hiding in this place, she had been racking her brain for ideas—and hadn’t come up with any good ones.

  “Good question.” This time Grayson stopped, and Savannah immediately halted again, too. He looked down at her with an expression that suggested he was attempting to see into her mind.

  To judge whether she was actually innocent?

  She wasn’t about to ask.

  “I want to hear it all,” he said. “From the moment your ex disappeared and the world started to believe he was dead—but you didn’t. What happened? Maybe, if we brainstorm after we discuss it, we can come up with an idea or two.”

  Or hundreds, Savannah thought, since it might take that many to clear her. But she appreciated this man’s concept.

  She appreciated him.

  And if—when—she did get out of this, she would do what she could to repay him.

  At the moment, though, as they exited the path to walk farther into the woods, onto hard ground covered with clumps of leaves—and fortunately no visibly big cracks after the earthquake—she again tamped down any idea she still retained about having sex with him.

  That could lead to...well, caring.

  And she didn’t intend to care for any man again for a long time, if ever. Not even one as kind as this guy.

  “Okay,” she said. “Although if I get choked up—well, it’s a pretty emotional tale for me. And it’s one I’ve had to repeat multiple times after I was arrested. I told it to the cops, to my attorney and to nearly anyone who asked, but if anyone believed me it still didn’t help me get released.”

  “I get it.” And damned if, as they continued forward, Grayson didn’t reach over and take her hand—possibly for stability in their walking and possibly for emotional support.

  Tightening her grip slightly, Savannah forced herself not to let her eyes tear up—at least not much.

  “It was like this,” she said. She explained that the night Zane had disappeared, she had been out in the evening at a friend’s place near the Rattlesnake Ridge Ranch to talk about a fund-raiser for the Mustang Valley General Hospital’s children’s wing. “Nothing was decided that night, but the group I get together with for that kind of thing has put together that scale of an event before, so we were just touching base and getting the idea started for a new bash.”

  “Yeah, I think a couple of my sisters get involved now and then.”

  Savannah saw a thick tree limb lying on the ground in front of them, as did Grayson, who still held her hand. “Let’s go this way, rather than climbing over,” he said, and they turned to their right. “Okay,” Grayson said in a minute. “Please continue.”

  And Savannah did, hating to relive that night and the next day as she yet again described what had happened.

  “We had just finalized our divorce,” she told Grayson. “I didn’t want to move back in with my family, nor did I want to stay anywhere
near Zane, but I hadn’t yet figured out where to move. So I was living in a separate guesthouse on the grounds at the back of his house—our house—though he got it back as part of our divorce settlement. I avoided Zane for the most part, and he kept encouraging me to move out as soon as possible, which was fine with me. In fact, I already had someone helping me to look for a new place. Only in retrospect that turned out to be a mistake.”

  Savannah almost stumbled as she thought about that particular mistake, and what it had added to the horror of her situation.

  “Why was that a mistake?” Grayson prompted beside her.

  “The real estate guy’s name is Schuyler Wells,” she said. She tried to concentrate on the crunchy sounds of leaves beneath their shoes to distance herself from the anger and frustration of what came next.

  “I’ve heard of him,” said Grayson. “He’s a big-deal developer around here, right?”

  “Right. He had ideas and connections and—well, as things went south I was accused of having a long-term affair with him. He even hinted to the cops that we had planned to run away together once my divorce was final, that we’d decided to even before...before Zane disappeared.”

  “And you weren’t?” Grayson asked.

  Again Savannah stopped, this time just long enough to stomp her foot on the ground. “No way.” She remained quiet until they continued forward again. She hated the way this aspect of the horror etched its way through her mind.

  “Go on, please,” Grayson finally said.

  Savannah explained how, living in that small back house, she hadn’t kept track of Zane’s comings and goings, so of course she wasn’t aware of whether he’d been home at all the night he supposedly disappeared.

  Not that his absence would be a surprise. Even when they were married, he often wouldn’t come home at night, and Savannah assumed he was having an affair or several, although he’d always explained his absence the next day as somehow related to his business. Savannah had never bought that. Why would the owner of a highly successful investment bank need to conduct an all-night meeting? No, she’d heard rumors of his affairs and even caught him once, just before she filed for divorce, with another woman.

  Still, as their relationship had deteriorated, Savannah didn’t mind his absences. She’d been irritated, though, when he’d claimed she had been going out, as well—which she recognized afterward was probably his way of boosting the allegations of her affair with Schuyler. And of course Schuyler later claimed they spent a lot of time together looking for someplace for Savannah to move, but he implied there were other, sexier, reasons, too.

  “But then—well, that night was one Zane didn’t come home. The next day, late in the morning, I got a call from his office. He hadn’t shown up there, either—and that was unusual. Nor did he show up later that night or the next day. Not that I cared about him that way anymore, but I became concerned, and apparently his staff did, too. Someone called the cops, who showed up and began questioning me about what I knew about Zane and his disappearance, and why was I still living there, and what had our relationship been like recently. And then—and then—”

  She had to continue. She recognized that. And if Grayson was aware at all about Zane’s alleged murder, he’d probably heard it.

  “And then what?” he said.

  “And then—the cops found a knife in my closet, hidden under a box. It was bloody. Of course they grabbed it and took it in and had it tested.”

  “I assume the blood had Zane’s DNA in it,” Grayson said, stopping and turning to face Savannah, who also stopped but refused to look him in the face.

  “You assume right,” she answered with a sob.

  Chapter 8

  Grayson wanted yet again to take Savannah into his arms, to hold her tightly against him as she cried.

  Too bad the cops didn’t see this. Surely she wouldn’t be crying that way if she’d killed the SOB.

  On the other hand, she’d probably told this story before, and might have cried then, too. They hadn’t released her.

  And they could interpret this as her being sorry about getting caught, not about her ex’s apparent murder.

  Instead of hugging Savannah, Grayson took her hand, pulling her closer on the dirt beneath them. “Let’s go back inside,” he said, attempting to keep his tone light. “Did you notice? I brought you some wine, and I think this would be a good time for a sip or two.”

  Savannah, now facing him, swallowed and appeared to attempt a smile. “I saw that. A nice, not-too-expensive brand that no one would particularly notice when you bought it.”

  “Exactly.” He held onto her hand as she started leading them back to the cabin.

  Once they got inside, Grayson made sure the door was locked as Savannah picked up the wine from the back of the counter beside the refrigerator. And yes, it wasn’t especially expensive or high quality. It came in a screw-top bottle, since he’d doubted there was an opener here in the cabin and didn’t want to search for one to buy when he was on that outing. There were a few glasses without stems that the owner of the cabin had left in a cupboard, so they didn’t need to drink out of the bottle.

  Grayson offered a toast. “Here’s to getting all of this resolved quickly and well.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Savannah said solemnly, clinking his glass with her own.

  Grayson gestured toward the table. “Let’s sit down and—”

  “And talk about you for a change,” Savannah asserted. “I’m sure I’ll be the topic again soon, but I’d like to hear about you, Grayson. How did you happen to become a first responder in the first place, then start your own company?”

  The explanation had its good and bad points. In any case, Grayson didn’t want to talk about it now.

  But sitting across the table from Savannah as she sipped her wine and regarded him with an expectant expression on her face that was beautiful despite the redness around her eyes from crying, he didn’t want to tell her to mind her own business. She deserved answers, too. And he could keep things as light as possible.

  “Well,” he began, “I started out after high school in the military—the army. Did my duty but decided I didn’t want to make it my long-term career.” But it had been a good way to get out of town briefly and begin his own life, away from his clinging Colton family.

  “Wow,” Savannah said, taking another sip. Her short blond hair fell forward as she tipped her head to drink, and he resisted the urge to reach across the table and push it back. “I’m impressed. A Colton soldier.”

  “Exactly. Did my stint as a private in basic training and a bit more. I left, though, as soon as my enlistment ended and came back here. Then I became a wilderness guide, but only for a short while.” Though he had stayed in close touch with some fellow soldiers with whom he’d become good friends.

  One such pal had been Philip Prokol, formerly of Tucson, who’d been sent overseas to Iraq, where he was wounded in the military and had come back with PTSD. That hadn’t killed him directly, but his attempt to flee everything he had known before, including his hometown and family, had caused him to be out in the wilderness in northern Arizona in a major rainstorm. He’d died from being washed away in a flood.

  Could he have been saved? Apparently there hadn’t been enough first responders to deal with that disaster and the many people swept into the water.

  Hearing about it, first on the news and then from Phil’s family, had almost destroyed Grayson inside. He should have done more to help his friend. He’d already ended his own brief career as a wilderness guider and started college. He should have been with Phil when he’d run off to try to find himself again.

  Saved him.

  And remembering Phil’s fate in the wilderness during a disaster was one reason Grayson had headed out of town after the quake...to save people who might be in similar situations.

  “Are you okay, Grayson?�
� Savannah interrupted his thoughts, a good thing. It was probably better that he not dwell on why and how he had decided to become a first responder.

  “Sure,” he responded brightly. “Just thinking of what I did when I returned to the States. I’d decided first to become a wilderness guide, then ended that to go to college and major in business.”

  And when he’d dropped out, his family, especially his father, hadn’t been happy, and Payne had made that very clear. But Grayson had done what he wanted.

  “Sounds good. So did you get a corporate job when you got your degree?”

  He laughed. “What degree? I dumped it all when I decided to become a first responder. I left the university for a smaller school where I could learn what I needed to get my emergency medical technician credentials, and I learned more than enough to get my official certification, and there I was.”

  Savannah’s wine glass was nearly empty, and so was Grayson’s. He picked up the bottle from the table and poured them each a little more.

  “Thanks,” Savannah said. She’d furrowed her brow, which didn’t detract in the least from how pretty she was. “But why did you want to become an EMT? A first responder?”

  “I just did.” He had no desire to talk any more about it. “And you? Did you get a college degree?” From what he knew about Savannah, she didn’t have an official job, although her charitable efforts were admirable.

  “Yes, I had the fun of moving to Los Angeles for a few years to major in English at UCLA. I loved to read then, and still do, so that worked out well.”

  He wanted to ask her how she used her degree now, if she did, without a job. But before he decided how to phrase it, she said, “And in case you’re wondering, I never really got a job where I could use my degree, but I do go to the elementary schools in and around Mustang Valley a lot to work with kids who are reading challenged. It’s really a kick to see them improve and know I at least had a little to do with it.”

  So the wealthy socialite who was Savannah might not earn money to cover her own expenses now, but she certainly earned kudos by helping others.