Colton's Secret Investigation

by Justine Davis

  “Then we’ll work out the details,” he said, as if the big decision was already made. She felt a tiny spark of...something. Speaking of assumptions, he seemed to be making a big one, since all she’d agreed to was that she didn’t regret what they’d done. And she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that. All the reasons against it still existed—they just didn’t seem to matter anymore.

  When they arrived at The Lodge, they parked the car themselves in the lot rather than leave it under the portico, because this time they were going to be here as long as it took to get something, anything, that would tell them where Curtis Shruggs might be. And if that entailed talking to every one of the hundreds on staff, so be it.

  “Great tennis weather,” Stefan remarked as they got a glimpse of the courts and saw two people out playing. There was still a bit of snow lingering around the edges and in shady spots, so it did look a bit odd.

  “Helps when the courts are heated,” she said.

  He turned his head to look at her. “Seriously?”

  “Of course. This is the crown jewel of The Colton Empire. Unless you’re talking to Mara Colton, of course, then The Chateau is the crown jewel and The Lodge merely the adjunct.”

  “No wonder she and her husband are having problems,” Stefan muttered.

  “Not to mention that little affair of the nephew who’s really his son,” Daria said dryly.

  Stefan had facilitated the DNA testing that had revealed that bit of news that shocked the Coltons. And he’d done the same for her, although instead of finding out that she had a living parent, as Fox Colton had, she’d found out what she’d suspected was true—her mother had died years ago, after giving her up when she became so seriously ill. But she owed this man for the closure.

  And a few other things.

  “And speak of the devil,” Daria said, suddenly realizing who was coming out of The Lodge’s front doors.

  Stefan looked. She heard him make a sound and knew he’d spotted Russ Colton approaching. A tall, broad-shouldered man, with once dark brown hair now mostly gray, the head of The Colton Empire had clearly passed his good looks on to his sons. He thankfully hadn’t passed on his rather overbearing manner to any of them she’d spoken to.

  “Wonder what he’s doing here?” Stefan asked.

  “Down from the Manor?” she said rather dryly, using the grand name for the building in the mountains that looked like what it was—some very wealthy family’s home base. She knew it had been built ten years ago, and that before they had lived down by The Chateau. She had always had a suspicion the Manor existed so the Coltons didn’t have to mingle quite so much with the regular folks. “He’s pretty hands-on. He must work about twenty hours a day.”

  “I have no problem with people who work hard to get to where they are,” Stefan replied. “But speaking of the Colton home, he’s got a bit of that lord-of-the-manor thing going on, and that I find annoying.”

  “The business is his baby. More than his children ever were, I think. It’s amazing most of them came out pretty decent people.”

  Stefan murmured as Russ spotted them and headed their way, “I wonder how he’s going to feel about someone so high up in his company being a serial killer?”

  “I vote we don’t find out just yet,” she whispered back.

  “You win.”

  “Deputy Bloom!”

  “Mr. Colton,” she said. “You remember Agent Roberts?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. What are you doing back here? Shouldn’t you be out hunting down this maniac?”

  “We have bloodhounds for that,” Stefan said smoothly. Daria shot him a look, both appreciative of the joke and startled that he’d risk it with the powerful tycoon.

  Russ looked a bit taken aback. But he recovered quickly. “This just has everyone so on edge. It’s very difficult to do business, which is in a horrible state with all this going on.”

  “Nothing like a serial killer to shake things up,” Stefan said. Again Daria blinked. She supposed being an FBI agent gave Stefan the freedom to say things she only thought, since she was a lot more likely to encounter the Coltons on a regular basis.

  “Yes, yes, it’s awful, but I’m very tired of my family being blamed for any part of this when we’re victims. Accusing us of getting special treatment when we’ve only tried to help. You have no idea what it’s like, having people judge you for something as simple as your name!”

  Daria and Stefan exchanged a pointed glance.

  “Oh, really?” Stefan drawled.

  They had no idea? She, even with her skin tone being lighter than Stefan’s rich, deep brown, had had her share of being judged by something even simpler than a name.

  “You know what I mean,” Russ said, a little defensively.

  “Yes,” Daria said; this was not the time or place. “Now if you’ll excuse us, we have work to do.”

  “Chasing after that maniac,” Stefan added with a too-charming smile.

  After Russ had hurried away, they continued inside. “He really does rub you wrong, doesn’t he?” she asked.

  Stefan shrugged dismissively. And then, with a slow smile, he said in a voice rich with the husky undertone she’d heard when she’d been in his arms and he’d been murmuring her name, “You, on the other hand, rub me very, very right.”

  She felt a frisson of sensation shoot down her spine, as if he’d touched her. And she wondered yet again what would happen between them when this case that had seemed endless just two days ago finally did wrap up.

  Chapter 23

  They started at the top.

  The office of the director of operations of The Lodge quite suited the rest of the place, elegant yet fitting the majestic mountain setting. Since Daria had dealt with this side of things practically from the beginning, Stefan let her explain what they wanted.

  Perhaps because they’d just encountered the senior Colton, Stefan thought he could tolerate Decker Colton a lot better. He’d not interacted with him much on this case, but when he had, he’d noted the guy had the air of someone who had learned there was more to life than business, a lesson it appeared his father had never learned—and likely would never learn.

  He’d mentioned that once to Daria.

  And he learned it by falling in love. With a whip-smart woman.

  She’d said it with a wide smile. Obviously she approved of the idea, he thought now. So why was she so wary with him?

  He suddenly went still as he realized the path of his own thoughts. Falling in love? Was that what he’d done? What he wanted her to do? Was that why it bothered him that she seemed so...cautious?

  A tangle of emotions jammed up in him. Didn’t he have enough on his plate with Sam and a serial killer? Shouldn’t he resolve at least one of those before he added something new and all consuming? Did he even want to add the complication a serious relationship would bring?

  But it was only because of Daria that he was where he was with Sam. If not for her, they’d likely still be at each other, with him searching for patience and constantly reminding himself his son was only five, and Sam giving him those angry looks and throwing out those hateful words. She had changed that, had set them on a path that he hoped would lead to a genuine bond with his son.

  Not to mention he was not about to give up what they’d discovered together yesterday. That had been no casual encounter, no simple onetime hookup. He’d had enough of that to know the difference.

  He wondered if he and Daria gave off the same sizzle Decker Colton and his wife, Kendall, did. The pretty blonde had been leaving just as they arrived and had stopped to greet Daria enthusiastically—Daria’s boss had been instrumental in finding the kidnapper who had grabbed her, and in discovering it had been orchestrated by someone her family owed money—and Stefan more decorously. But her face glowed with happiness, along with that sizzle.

  Of course,
she and Decker were newly married. That put them in a different category. Didn’t it?

  The smile Kendall had left on Decker’s face faded when he realized why they were here. Since Shruggs again hadn’t shown up at work today, they’d decided there was little to gain by trying to hide that he was a suspect, although they refrained from confirming he was the only suspect. Decker looked shocked but thoughtful. Shruggs had been here since before Decker had taken over, and since they had relatively few personnel problems, he’d never had reason to question his effectiveness or look into his methods.

  It was Daria who quietly made the suggestion that Shruggs might have used his office to hunt for victims among the job applicants. Decker went pale, but Stefan could sense the change as he went from shock to anger that a Colton executive would use his position in such a hideous way. He offered them his full assistance before they had to ask and quickly set them up in his spacious meeting room and began to personally send employees in to them.

  From there it became an extensive string of interviews, some short, some longer. They began with all the people who worked in Shruggs’s department. Including his assistant, whom they had now concluded Shruggs had chosen because she was the most uncurious being he could find. The only thing this interview with her accomplished was to have Daria say sourly, after Shelly Bates had left, “If I ever start uptalking like that, shut me up, fast.”

  “Well, now you’ve got me hoping you do,” Stefan said, thinking of the ways he’d like to quiet her in that very unlikely event, most of which involved keeping her mouth otherwise occupied.

  And for a moment it was there in the room, alive between them, what they’d discovered together. The power of it took his breath away, and that rattled him. He’d never felt this way, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with the roiling emotions she caused in him. All he knew for sure was that if she asked him for a replay, he’d do it, right here, right now on this expensive Colton table.

  Sex is the easy part, son.

  His father’s words from long ago echoed in his head even as he had the arousing thought. And they were followed by the rest of what his father had said, which surprised him a little, because he would have sworn back then he hadn’t been paying much attention.

  When you find yourself wanting to make her life easier, even if you have to go out of your way to do it, when you put what you want on hold for something she wants, not begrudgingly but happily—and when she does the same for you—well, then you’ve got something.

  He’d ignored that wise, fatherly advice with Leah, who had never put anything she wanted on hold. And look where it had gotten him.

  But it did get him Sam. And for the first time, he had hope that it would work out, that he could do for his son what his father had done for him. And that truly was thanks to Daria. And somehow no amount of mental orders not to get ahead of himself seemed to stop his mind from racing wildly in the direction of forever with this woman.

  Forever.

  He had a sudden image flash through his mind, of them years—hell, decades—from now, still together, as solid and unbreakable as his parents. He’d spent so long thinking he wasn’t capable of that kind of bond that it was beyond startling to realize that he was thinking about it now, easily, with Daria. And he felt both thrilled and scared about it.

  He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know how Daria felt. Because if she hadn’t had the same kind of thoughts...

  He made an effort to yank his wandering mind back, which in itself was a warning. He never had trouble focusing on a case. That alone told him how much deeper Daria had dug into him, and without even trying.

  If she ever did try...

  This time he slammed the door on his thoughts and issued a stern order to his unruly mind to focus. He didn’t want to be the reason they missed some hint or clue, not now that the end was nearly in sight.

  They moved on to the managers at Shruggs’s level, people he would have felt were worth his time, if they were judging his character correctly. Most of them recalled the man attending various social functions, but always alone. A couple of the women even admitted to offering to set Shruggs up with a friend, but he had always declined. They’d finally written him off as a confirmed bachelor who didn’t want any change to that status.

  And when they realized what this interview meant, that Shruggs was suspected of being the Avalanche Killer, even the most composed of them were completely shaken.

  But once they got over that, every one of them made an obvious effort to remember anything about the man that could offer a clue to where he might be now. And as they’d expected, once they realized what was up, everybody seemed to have a memory of some creepy thing Shruggs had done or said. Stefan and Daria were both familiar with this Monday-morning-quarterbacking aspect of an investigation, so they dismissed the more general observations, but made note of everything anyway and highlighted the ones that seemed more solid.

  But one stuck out to them, from the head of housekeeping, who had mentioned how, whenever she encountered the personnel director on a Monday, she would politely asked him how his weekend had been.

  “He always said something like ‘Beautiful,’ or ‘Wondrous,’ but he said it with the creepiest expression I’ve ever seen. A hundred times worse than my ex-husband when he thought I didn’t know he was cheating again.” She’d paused then before adding, “He did say something once about there being lots of fish in the pond. I remember that because my mother used to say that, but it was fish in the sea, not pond.”

  Her words had made Stefan think of their discovery this morning, just before their meeting with Trey, that Shruggs had once had a fishing license but it had not been renewed in the last decade.

  “Which proves nothing, really,” Daria had said, sounding frustrated.

  “Except that he might know some remote places to hide.”

  She’d brightened slightly. “True. And it’s not likely a killer’s going to worry about something as mundane as keeping his fishing license up to date.”

  “You might be surprised, some of the things serial killers obsess about. They can go either way.”

  “But still twisted.”

  He nodded in agreement.

  They plowed on now. Swearing they’d talk to every employee if they had to had sounded good enough back at the office, but they hadn’t really factored in the time the interviewees’ shock would eat up, and they weren’t moving as fast as they wanted, not when the chances of Shruggs’s latest victim still being alive were shrinking rapidly.

  They were down to the last couple of managers on the list when the door to Decker’s conference room flew open. A woman burst in without knocking, making them both tense. Stefan rose out of his chair, but took no action as he recognized her as the director of guest services here at The Lodge.

  “Is it true?” the woman demanded. “You know who the monster who killed my sister is?”

  “I think,” Daria said quietly, also getting to her feet, “you’d better sit down, Molly.”

  Chapter 24

  “It’s...really Curtis? The Avalanche Killer is Curtis Shruggs?”

  Molly Gilford trembled slightly as she sat across the table from them. Daria saw the tremor in her fingers as she brushed a strand of blond hair back from blue eyes that were suspiciously bright. She could only imagine how she must be feeling right now.

  And Daria quickly decided that this woman had been through enough—the murder of her sister, that terrifying incident on the gondola and then being kidnapped herself by her half-crazed sister-in-law who wanted her then unborn baby. True, she was now married to the baby’s father—Max Hollick of K-9 Cadets—apparently happily, but nothing could change the fact that she had been terrorized and her sister had been viciously murdered. And she deserved every bit of the truth Daria was able to give to her.

  “I’m afraid it’s true,” Daria said gently. “We foun
d definitive evidence in his house.” She left it at that—no need for the woman to know about the hidden, soundproofed room, the cage where he apparently tormented his victims before he killed them.

  “But... I’ve worked with him for years. And he’s always been...very vocally pro-women. Supportive. In his hiring, too. I never...he never...”

  She stopped, took a deep breath.

  “I know it’s hard, feels impossible to believe,” Daria murmured.

  Molly took another breath, then looked Daria in the eye. “My sister and I weren’t as close as some, because of the seven years’ difference between us. I used to wish she would—” Her voice broke, but after a moment she went on. “I used to wish she would hurry and grow up, get through the partying stage. And now...”

  She never will.

  The words echoed in the room as clearly as if she’d spoken them. And Daria had no idea what to say, because deep down she knew nothing she said could adequately ease what the woman was feeling.

  Even as Daria thought it, Molly drew herself up and said with remarkable steadiness, “But she was my sister and I loved her. I named my baby after her.” She looked at both of them. “I want the truth.”

  Daria knew the woman meant it, but since she had little but a gut feeling to go on that Sabrina Gilford hadn’t been one of the Avalanche Killer victims, she kept her own theories to herself. Right now she needed to focus on the facts at hand, the evidence they had and the man they knew had a woman in his clutches right now. And if Molly could help them with that, they had to push to find out anything she might know. If it turned out that she’d been right about Sabrina, they’d deal with it then.

  “How closely did you deal with him?” Stefan interjected, his tone very gentle, and Daria knew he, too, realized what this woman had been through in the past few months.

  “Sometimes very, sometimes not,” she answered, her voice hanging on to that new steadiness. “I always check with guests during their stay to make sure everything’s to their satisfaction. If I came across an employee who handled a guest’s problem or a request well enough that the guest mentioned it to me, I made sure he knew.”