Colton squeezed his eyes tighter.
Then he banged his head lightly against the table.
My chest squeezed in panic, and even though it hurt, I rasped, “You look at me, Colton Marbray. Don’t you dare do it again. Don’t you deny that you have feelings for me. You wouldn’t have made love to me if you didn’t. You ain’t that kind of man. You never were.”
He still wouldn’t look at me, but he took my hand, and pressed my palm to his lips. And for a moment I thought everything was gonna be alright. Then he said, “You’re right. I never was that kind of man before. But I am now.”
Then he rolled off the pool table. Got dressed.
And walked out the door.
Part Two
Chapter One
COLTON
We don’t know who we are until we’re strained to the breaking point. We never know if we’re gonna break good or bad.
That’s what Miss Annabelle said, and Colton hadn’t paid it much mind. But in the week since he’d seduced Shelby Baker in her father’s bar, he’d had to live with the knowledge that he’d broken.
He’d broken bad.
Only a corrupt lawman used a woman to get at a target. Only a lowlife took his stepsister’s virginity—without protection—and broke her heart. Colton had done that. He was lower than dirt. Lower than pond scum. Not worthy to be in the same room with a woman like Shelby, much less make love to her.
Because make no mistake, they’d both shown their true colors on that pool table. His motives had been all dark, confused, and twisted. But hers had been pure. She’d given herself over to him in complete love and trust. The things she’d said after, with love glowing in her eyes, and hope for a better future…
That took courage. That took strength. That took honor. All three things he didn’t seem to have anymore. Shelby might be the daughter of a criminal, but Colton wasn’t worthy of her. He never had been. He had nothing to give her.
All he did have was the job. The case. And the certainty that he could bring Buford Baker down. He was just the man to do it. So why couldn’t his boss see it?
“Leave it alone, Marbray,” his boss said, after giving him one of her motherly scoldings.
Colt bit down on a toothpick. “C’mon, chief. You don’t see Buford Baker’s fingerprints all over this case? Two dead men in a stolen vehicle expensive enough that it should never be rattling up these hills? They were taking it to a chop shop.”
The chief tapped her sensibly beige-laquered fingernails on his desk. “The police already searched Buford’s mechanic shop and found nothing amiss.”
Colton snorted. “My stepfather’s too smart to do his dirty business in his mechanic’s shop. Which I told the police and I told you. He’s got a place, somewhere up in the hills, and we could find it if we looked. All we’d need is a helicopter.”
The chief didn’t look convinced. “So why didn’t they?”
“Why didn’t they what?”
“Why didn’t the two dead men sell that Silverado to Buford for parts?” the chief asked. “Why was that fancy truck just sitting there by the side of the road, completely in tact?”
Colt didn’t have an answer for that. Not yet. “Maybe they asked too much for it. Maybe Buford didn’t want to pay their asking price. So they drove off with it.”
“And it was easier to shoot ‘em both dead than to take the car?”
Colt scratched the back of his head, because that was a puzzle. “Well, criminals don’t generally become criminals because they were too smart to get real jobs.”
“Yet, to hear you tell it, Buford Baker’s a criminal mastermind.”
“Compared to the other folks in Shiloh, sure,” Colt allowed. “Look, I don’t have it all worked out yet. But the murder victims were in Buford’s bar and their visit there had something to do with their grisly end…”
The chief straightened her neatly tailored jacket. “I’m sure that’s what the local police are gonna conclude, agent Marbray. So let them do their jobs and you do yours.”
Colton seethed, sliding his fucking desk chair away from his fucking desk at this fucking desk job. “They ain’t gonna do their jobs, because nobody in Shiloh will ever take a shot at Buford Baker. They’re too scared.”
“Maybe so,” said the chief. “But as a wise man once said: Not our circus, not our monkeys.”
Colton bit the toothpick he was chewing in half. “What kind of bullshit answer is that? There’s a nexus for our agency, chief. There was traces of explosives in that vehicle!”
The chief leaned in over Colton’s desk. “I’ll tell you what the nexus is, agent Marbray. The nexus is that you’ve got a personal connection. You aren’t objective when it comes to Buford Baker. Or his daughter for that matter.”
Colton felt the blood drain away from his face.
“That’s right,” said the chief, seemingly satisfied to have caught Colton off-guard. “I heard tell that you were seen dancing with Shelby Baker in her father’s bar. And there wasn’t no music.”
How in the hell did his boss know about that? The drunk, Colton remembered. So he was an informant. Goddamn it, was Colt always going to be the last to know everything now?
As if to confirm his fears, the chief said, “Listen, son, I’m a little scared of the way you just can’t let a thing go. That’s what got you in all that trouble down in New Mexico. I was once young and cocky like you. So listen to me. Don’t throw your career away because you’re too goddamned stubborn to let things happen the way they’re supposed to happen, in their own good time.”
Colton wasn’t gonna listen to this. Didn’t have time for this. Not when two men were dead and the local cops were gonna do abso-fucking-lutely nothing about it. He stood up. Grabbed the file. Grabbed his holster. Started for the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the chief called.
“Not feeling well,” Colt said, with an exaggerated sniffle. “Good hike up in the mountains might do me some good. Might trip and fall over a chop shop while I’m out there.”
“You go ahead and use up your sick time if you want,” the chief called after him. “But stay away from this case and away from that girl, Marbray.”
Good advice on both counts. But advice he was going to have to ignore. After all, he might be able to trip over a chop shop in the hills, but if anyone could lead him to it, it’d be Shelby.
Chapter Two
SHELBY
I knew just when my father realized the money was missing, because I heard him bellow my name from the back room. “Shelby!”
Though his bellow usually me shaking in my shoes, I somehow mustered my courage and meandered back there without even a tremble. Because whatever my father might say or do to me, it couldn’t hurt worse than I was already hurting.
I’d never regret giving myself to Colton Marbray—wouldn’t trade a moment of this agony in exchange for never knowing the bliss of his mouth, hands, and body all over me. But it was agony to have been taken and left by the man I loved. To have offered my heart to him when he’d only wanted my body. That was a kind of agony of the spirit that I didn’t know even existed.
The kind that made me dig my nails into my palms to the bleeding point, just to give me some other kind of pain to focus on.
“You let someone back here?” my father demanded when I slid into a chair by his desk, all irritation and insolence.
“Nope.”
Raising an eyebrow at my sullen mood, my father said, “There’s some money missing.”
“Ten thousand dollars?” I asked, feeling strangely fearless. “I know. I took it.”
My father did a double-take. “You took it? Why? D’you make a mistake in the ledgers and need to recount?”
It was a good excuse. I should’ve thought of it. My father trusted me with his money. Trusted me so much that he just handed it over for me to count and launder, stacks of it at a time. But if I’d wanted an excuse, I’d have put the money back and he’d have never been the
wiser. “I took it because I was gonna use it to run away.”
My father was a big man. A hard man. A man who didn’t tolerate nonsense and was seldom surprised. Certainly, I’d never done a thing in my life that didn’t conform to his expectations of me. Not until now. And I could see from the way he slumped in his chair that I’d shocked him to the core. When he recovered, he’d probably hit me. Maybe even use his belt like he did when I was a girl. I didn’t care one bit. Because, like I said, I didn’t think I could hurt worse than I already hurt.
But my father didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he asked, “Why?”
“Because I never thought you were capable of killing a man.”
My father just sat there, his big hands twitching as if he couldn’t decide whether to clench them into fists or slam them down on his desk. “And now you think I am?”
Hot tears welled in my eyes. I hadn’t expected them and I didn’t dare wipe them away. “I don’t know, Daddy. I just don’t know!”
“If you don’t know, it’s because somebody’s been putting doubts about me in your pretty little head,” my father said, bitterly. “I can guess who. I told you to stay away from Colton Marbray. Did you think it was just for spite?”
Well, I did think it was for spite, so I just sat there in misery.
“That boy has been an angry arrogant little cuss almost since the day I married his Momma,” my father continued. “I didn’t blame him none—that’s what happens when you have to grow up without a father in these parts. I tried my best to be a daddy to him, but he wouldn’t let me. That boy has figured me as the target for all his unspent rage. So trust me when I say he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt you just to hurt me, Shelby.”
I wanted to tell him that he was wrong. That Colton was good and strong and honorable—the things I’d always believed him to be. But my eyes drifted to the pool table where Colt had told me he was the kind of man who could make love to a woman without any feelings at all. Where he’d taken my virginity and left me in tears for the second time in my life, walking away without a drop of remorse.
How many times in my life was I going to let Colt make a fool of me? Well, I was done being made a fool of by any man. “Either way, you need a new accountant, Daddy. Because I can’t do it anymore. I won’t.”
“Shelby,” my father snapped, leaning towards me with a look on his face I’d never seen there before. Something akin to a plea. “I need you to hear me. I’m gonna say this once, and only once. Then we’ll never speak of it again. I’ve always done what needed to be done to provide for me and mine. I bend the law. Sometimes I break it. Ain’t no different than generations of our family going back. But I’ve got a code—and murder is a line I don’t cross. I did not kill those men.”
I gasped. Truly, gasped. Not just because I was relieved to hear him say it, but because I believed him. And I was suddenly shamed to have suspected him in the first place. “Oh, Daddy,” I said with a little sob into my hand.
He reached over to pat my arm, trying to comfort me, even if he didn’t quite know how. “It’s alright. I know that your stepbrother’s got you all turned upside down and inside out.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. In fact, he didn’t even know the half of it. But I wasn’t sure there was a way to get myself turned back the right way. Or at least, whoever I was before I had sex with Colton—well, I didn’t want to be that person anymore. “I need to give you back your money, but I can’t be your accountant anymore. I just can’t.”
“Keep the money,” my father said, surprising me. “Maybe get yourself a proper education. I can find another accountant—what we really need in this family is a lawyer. You got one or two black sheep in the family who need a get-out-of-jail-free card.”
We laughed together at my father’s joke. I hadn’t ever thought about becoming a lawyer, but he did have me thinking. “In the autumn, I might move to Madison when the university opens there.”
Madison wasn’t too far away, but maybe it was far enough. I wouldn’t know anybody there and they wouldn’t know me. Maybe I could find some nice guy to date. Some guy who wasn’t my stepbrother and wasn’t in a blood feud with my family. I was sure I’d never love any man the way I loved Colton Marbray, but I thought I at least ought to try.
Any guy but Colton. That would have to be my new motto.
“Well, if that’s what you want,” my father said. And though we Bakers were never the touchy-feely type, I rose from my chair and wrapped my arms tight around my father’s neck.
“I love you, baby girl,” he said. “I know I don’t show it, but everything I do is for you.”
I believed him. God help me, I did. So I hugged him harder.
Until I heard a click behind my head that made my blood run cold.
“Well, isn’t dis a cozy family moment,” someone said, pressing something hard and cold to the back of my skull that felt suspiciously like the muzzle of a gun. When I saw the look of horror and fury on my father’s face, I was sure of it.
“Hands up,” the stranger said, pulling me backwards by the belt loop of my jeans. And I shrieked and stumbled a bit, because my knees were too weak from fear to hold me upright.
“Get your hands off my daughter,” my father said, one hand slipping beneath his desk where I knew he kept a gun of his own.
Which made the stranger shake me like a rag doll. “Don’t make me put a hole in dis sweet piece of ass. I said hands up, and I’m not going to say it again.”
I didn’t recognize the stranger’s voice. His accent was slurred but city-slick, with a slight nasal quality. He wasn’t from around these parts for sure. Otherwise he’d never have dared break into my father’s office—and my father wouldn’t have looked so frightened.
Who was the stranger and how had he come into the back so stealthily? He hadn’t even made the door jingle. Should I scream? Was there anybody in the bar? My father slowly raised his hands in surrender, so I stayed silent.
And the man shoved me back down into my chair.
“Now I’ve got a few questions for you, Buford Baker,” said the man with the gun aimed at my head. “Give me da answers I’m looking for and we’ll be on our way.”
We? My eyes darted to the door where I saw another man lingering by the bar. Young. Scarcely older than a teenager. But also not from around here. And then I remembered that I’d seen him before at the Scarecrow festival. How long had they been in town?
“What do you want?” my father asked, his voice low and furious.
“You took something dat isn’t yours,” the stranger said. “We’re just here to get it back.”
“I ain’t in the business of taking things,” my father said, which wasn’t strictly true, but true enough. He was in the business of selling things that other people took.
“Maybe not,” the stranger said. “But you made an exception for those two morons who tried to sell you a mint condition Silverado with all the bells and whistles.”
A sweat broke out over my father’s brow. “Now see here—the minute I ran those plates and realized who the truck belonged to, I turned those bumblers away. You tell your boss back in Chicago that it’s not my fault two careless car thieves had the temerity to try and rip him off. But I did right by him. I turned those boys away. Advised ‘em to put the truck back where they found it. But I’m guessing you got to them before they could return the truck, and that you put two bullets in their brains.”
I had no idea what any of them were talking about. But a clearer picture was starting to form in my mind. My father hadn’t murdered the men whose pictures Colton showed me. The man holding a gun on me had done it. He’d killed them both, execution style, and now he was here possibly to do the same to us!
My breath came faster, in terror, and my muscles went so rigid I thought I might snap if I moved an inch. I was aware of every little sound—even the shuffling of the stranger’s feet as he backed up a pace to train his gun on the two of us. “That execution was a message for you, M
r. Baker. Because when we found the back of the truck empty, we knew a message had to be sent.”
I was so scared that I was having trouble making my mind work. So I retreated to numbers. $70,000. That’s about what a Silverado cost. It could even get more expensive than that if it was tricked out right. What the hell had been in the back of that truck that’d be worth more than that? What could be worth more than two men’s lives? I remembered Colton saying something about traces of gunpowder or explosives or something in the back of the truck…did they think we had whatever was back there?
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” my father said, red staining his cheeks and jowls. A sure sign that he was enraged, or guilty, or both.
“We know you took da cargo,” the stranger said. “Nobody else would have da balls to do it. So you can give it back or we can start putting holes in your daughter. One by one. First a toe, I think—dat won’t screw up her beauty too much.”
The stranger aimed his gun at my feet and in spite of my determination not to scream, I cried out, “Daddy, please!”
“Don’t you do it, you bastard,” my father said, tremors of rage shaking him from head to toe. “Or you’ll never leave Boone County alive. I swear I’ll see you as fish food at the bottom of the quarry.”
“Big threat for a man with so much to lose,” the stranger said with a cruel laugh.
Then we all heard a little jingle.
Someone had come into the bar. And the stranger pressed his finger to his lips, threatening certain death if we made a sound.
Chapter Three
COLTON
The bar was quiet when Colton entered it. The kind of quiet that sent every hair up on the back of his neck. There, on the stool where the town drunk should’ve been, was a kid he didn’t recognize, wearing his pants slung low enough to get him beat down in these parts.
Stepbrother Breaks Bad: The Complete Series Page 5
