Colton's Secret Investigation

by Justine Davis

  He hit upon the one thing powerful enough to match his flooding thoughts of Daria. Sam. But even he was no longer the distraction he’d once been, and that, too, was thanks to Daria. They were tentatively finding their way to the kind of relationship he wanted with his son. And as for Daria, Sam adored her, and she clearly liked him.

  Enough to want both of us?

  And suddenly that future image in his mind shifted, altered. Sam would be...damn, he’d be thirty then. And what kind of thirty he’d be would depend on what kind of father Stefan was now. Just as the man he was now was because of his own father.

  Tell your father word for word what you just said.

  Daria’s words echoed in his mind, as they so often did. And he added the thought he’d just had to the list of things he was saving up to do exactly as she’d suggested. Tell the man who deserved to hear it.

  And suddenly he was looking forward even more than before to his parents’ trip out here. Not only for the help they’d be, but...he wanted them to meet Daria. He was as certain as he could be of anything in this life that they would see her for the amazing woman she was. He could even picture his father taking him aside, as he never had with Leah, and telling him to hang on to this one. And—

  “You want me to drive?”

  His head snapped around, and he stared at her. “What?”

  “You look a bit white-knuckled. I’ve driven on roads like these quite a bit, if you’d rather not.”

  “Oh. No. I’m fine.”

  “We’re going to get him, Stefan.”

  Of course she thought that was what had him all wound up. Why wouldn’t she? It was probably the only thing she was thinking about. She certainly wasn’t sitting there fantasizing about them growing old together.

  And he was coward enough to seize on the out she’d unknowingly given him. “I know we are.”

  “I wish we’d gotten to him sooner, but—”

  “We’ve got him now. It’s just a matter of reeling him in.” His cell rang, and on this road he pulled over before he tugged it out.

  “At least the call got through,” Daria murmured. “Service is particularly spotty up here.”

  “It’s my office,” he said as he answered. “Lisa? What do you have?”

  “Two names and locations,” the woman replied. Stefan saw Daria was already prepared with her own phone to take notes. “Go.”

  He quoted back the names and addresses Lisa gave him, and Daria keyed them into her notes app.

  “I’d tell them to text as backup,” she suggested. “Sometimes texts get through up here when calls won’t.” He relayed that info, all the while watching her as she switched to a map and did two quick searches. “One’s on the left fork we’ll hit another half mile or so ahead. The other’s that gray house we passed on the way up.”

  “Gray one seems too close to civilization,” he said.

  “Agreed.”

  He drove on as she did something else with the image on her screen. The track that branched off to the left from the one they were on looked little more than something a mountain goat would use. He wasn’t even sure the SUV would make it. Yet if Shruggs was up there, he had to have gotten there somehow. So he kept going, at a pace that would lose to the proverbial snail.

  The track veered slightly more left, and the surface was even rougher.

  “Maybe we should stop here.” Daria indicated a very small space to her right where they could pull over at least halfway. “And go in on foot.”

  “Maybe,” Stefan said neutrally, “we should wait for the troops to go in at all.”

  “I don’t mean go up and knock on the door,” she retorted. “Just to get a closer look.”

  He smothered a sigh. He supposed there wasn’t any harm in that, if they were careful to stay under cover. “Let me get some gear out of the back. We’ll need binoculars and communications at least.”

  She nodded, back to looking at her phone. “I’ll enlarge the satellite view, see if we can tell anything from that.”

  His brow furrowed. He pulled out his own phone, to see the “No Service” warning. She glanced at him, and he turned it toward her.

  “I know,” she said. “I figured that would happen, so I took a screenshot of it back there where we had a signal.”

  He stared at her. “You never miss a trick, do ya?”

  She gave him a smile then that nearly sent his pulse into overdrive. And suddenly he wanted that future he’d imagined, growing old with her by his side, more than he’d wanted anything. Ever.

  “Here,” she murmured, holding her phone out to him. “It looks like there’s a footpath here that goes up around the back.”

  He silently questioned what she considered a footpath. Decided he was definitely still too much of a city boy and said only, “The house looks smaller than the gray one, but it’s bigger than what I’d call a fishing cabin.”

  “True. So maybe it’s not the one. Maybe when we get closer, we’ll see a family with the traditional two-point-three kids and a dog, and we’ll know.”

  He’d never thought himself that bound by tradition, but somehow that sounded...wonderful. Even the dog. Sam would love a dog—she’d obviously been right about that. And maybe more, later. Adoption was fine with him, although he would have liked to have seen what kind of child he and Daria would have produced.

  And the realization he was thinking in those terms barely rattled him anymore. But they had to get through this first.

  They slipped their earpieces on and verified they were working and that they could hear each other clearly. Then he let her take the lead, staying close enough behind her to grab her if she slipped, which looked uncomfortably possible on this very narrow path. Branches brushed him as they passed, and once a bird chattered at him crankily as they disturbed him.

  “So much for stealth,” he muttered.

  “I don’t think it matters,” Daria said. She’d come to a stop, the binoculars to her eyes. He came up behind her, and she handed them to him.

  He looked. It wasn’t the two-point-three kids—more like four, with three adults, all bundled against the chill, a Japanese couple and a single Caucasian female. The adults were watching the four kids, an equal mix of the same races, playing in what was left of the snow. All smiling happily. As they watched, another male exited the house, carrying a tray with cups of something steaming that made Stefan suddenly crave that hot chocolate Daria had once mentioned.

  “If I have to believe that group knowingly has anything to do with the likes of Shruggs, I’m going to quit and become a hermit,” she whispered.

  “You won’t be a hermit, because I’ll be right there with you,” he said.

  “Promise?”

  She said it teasingly, but he got the feeling there was more behind it. He put a hand on her shoulder, and she looked back at him.

  “Yes,” he replied quietly.

  Something flashed between them, something vivid and alive, and he knew she’d understood. And when she looked away, he didn’t feel slighted, because he realized the intensity was too much right now, when they had no choice but to be focused on the matter at hand. The details—for in his mind that was all that was left—could wait.

  Had to wait. Because they were close, he could feel it.

  Although he agreed with her completely about the innocence of this group, he watched them for a moment longer. The biggest child had raced off toward a small outbuilding, a shed of some sort, likely to gather the snow that lingered on the side still in shade.

  And Daria went suddenly still. She pulled out her phone and swiped it on. He could see from where he stood behind her that the satellite image was still there. She enlarged it, then moved it slightly.

  “See it?” she asked softly.

  He frowned, scanning the screen. It took him a moment to orient himself, to place the
edge of the clearing they stood a few yards away from now, but then he had it. In a thick stand of trees, east of where they were, was another roof. He looked that direction and saw nothing but trees. So hidden. Then he glanced back at the screen, the nearly hidden roof in the image. Definitely smaller than this house.

  Just about the right size to be called a cabin.

  Chapter 27

  “It’s a bit far, but it could still be on the same property if they have acreage,” Daria said as she studied the phone, glad she’d thought to screenshot the image. They’d moved away from the happy group at the big house; the last thing she wanted was such obviously innocent bystanders getting caught up in anything. When the backup teams got here, they’d either corral them safely in the house or evacuate them, depending on how the situation looked.

  “And thus be under the same name in the records,” Stefan agreed. “It looks pretty basic—just a rectangle with a simple roofline.”

  She nodded. “I don’t see any path from here to there,” she said, enlarging the area around that second roof.

  “Trees are thick enough over there it might not be visible on that,” he told her. “We might have to—” He stopped as her phone signaled a text. “I see what you mean,” he said as she switched over to read the message that had gotten through.

  Her breath caught as she read. And when she looked up at him, she knew the triumph had to be glowing in her eyes.

  “I had my office call Molly Gilford.” Daria gestured back toward the house they’d just left. “I thought the owner of that place might have tried the area out first, to see if he liked it enough to buy. She just called back. Mr. Nakamura was a guest at The Lodge several times before he bought this place.”

  Stefan’s eyes widened. “And thus had multiple chances to encounter Shruggs.”

  “Yes.”

  He looked back the way they had come, although they could no longer see the house with the families. “That place looked fairly new.”

  She nodded. “Maybe when they bought the property, the cabin was the only thing on it. Then they built the house and let people rent or borrow the cabin. I know it’s guesswork—”

  “But it’s good guesswork,” Stefan said. “It makes sense, and it fits with everything we know.”

  “We could go back and ask him,” she suggested. “Assuming he’s the guy who’s there now.”

  Stefan thought for a moment. “Let’s not risk it yet. Just in case Shruggs is here and watching.” He checked his own phone for texts. “Nothing,” he muttered. “I want an ETA on backup.”

  “They’ll get here when they do,” she said, far too antsy to think about how long that might be. She knew she didn’t have to remind him Shruggs had a new captive, who just might still have a fighting chance. “In the meantime, let’s see if we can get the lay of the land around the cabin, and any sign that he’s been here.”

  “We should wait. If he’s there now—”

  “We should at least be where we can see if he leaves.”

  She saw him take in a deep breath, then he nodded. “Point taken.”

  She thought she saw a flicker in his eyes, as if he were remembering what had become a private joke between them. She’d knit him that scarf, she thought, when this was over.

  They made their way with as much stealth as they could manage in the general direction of the small cabin. And he’d been right—there were paths, of a sort. Just narrow tracks that meant walking single file, one foot directly in front of the other, and brushing branches both bare and evergreen as they passed.

  “Animal paths,” she murmured as they left the big house with the happy gathering behind them.

  “And the city guy in me is a bit edgy about that,” Stefan, who was ahead of her, muttered.

  “I’ll take these animals over city animals any day,” Daria said.

  It was a moment before she heard him say rather wryly, “Once again, point taken.”

  They fell into silence then as they got closer to where they were guessing the hidden cabin was. Stefan stopped in the same moment she spotted a straight, man-made angle through the trees, although the color was nearly the same brown as the winter-bare trees.

  “Not quite as isolated as I expected,” she said.

  Stefan looked back toward the house where the families were playing. “No. I’d think someone down there could easily hear someone scream from here.”

  The possibility that they were completely wrong about this place shook her, threatened her with a burst of despair.

  “It’s still the best lead we’ve got,” Stefan uttered firmly. “Let’s go.”

  She nodded and they went forward even more carefully, until Stefan stopped again. Although this time he was looking down.

  “The animal-track path dies out,” he whispered.

  “Odd,” she murmured back. “I wonder why.”

  “Maybe they know.”

  If he’d been facing her, he would have seen her practically gaping at him. That was such a fanciful, if very dark, thing for this man in particular to say. He seemed utterly grounded in reality to her, and she wouldn’t have guessed him capable of it. But were the circumstances different, she thought it would have charmed her. Not that he needed any help in that arena.

  But the idea was now vivid in her mind—that even the wild creatures knew there was something abnormal here. Something to avoid. Something dangerous.

  “They don’t call us the apex predator for nothing,” Stefan muttered, as if he felt the need to explain away what he’d said. Later, she thought, she would tell him how unnecessary that was.

  “And we’re the ones who take out the predators.”

  He looked back at her then. Gave her a quick, flashing smile that took her breath away and nearly blasted all sense of focus out of her.

  “Yes, we are,” he said.

  And in that moment Daria knew he was as determined as she was, that they shared this goal, that it was why they were who—and where—they were. A sudden, crazy image shot through her mind, of her and Stefan sitting in her living room some unknown amount of time from now, discussing their respective current cases as Sam played his favorite game on the floor in front of the fire. And she was seized with a fierce ache inside to make that come true, to have that, for all three of them. Because they all needed it. And each other.

  She felt the sudden need to say so, to say yes to the question he hadn’t yet asked but had hinted at when he said he wanted more. And it seemed important to say it now, despite her common sense telling her this was hardly the place or the time. Then again, maybe that was what made it seem so important right now. Maybe it was the same sort of instinct that had stopped the animals from getting closer than they were now. She didn’t know what might happen next, and—

  Before she could even begin to find any words, a sound from the direction of the cabin snapped both their heads around. In an instant Stefan had the binoculars up to his eyes. Daria held her breath, waiting.

  “Nothing moving,” he whispered after a few tense moments. “Except there’s a squirrel or something by that trash can out to the left from the building.”

  She leaned forward and spotted the large metal can. Even as she looked, the small creature vanished into the trees. She wondered if it had given up the task of trying to loosen the lid or if something had scared it off. Perhaps it had belatedly sensed whatever the other creatures who had gone no farther had sensed.

  “I think we could get there,” she said softly, gesturing through a gap in the trees.

  “Want to go trash picking?”

  “No, but yes.”

  That smile again. They should make him get a permit for that, because it was more lethal than any firearm.

  “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt,” he said. “As long as we can do it without getting spotted.”

  It took them a little longe
r to get there than she’d expected, because of the effort to hold down the noise. Luckily for their purpose, the trash can was set against a row of trees that marked the end of the small clearing behind the cabin, masking anything—or anyone—behind them. Unluckily, the trees were so close together that it would be nearly impossible to get to the can without either making noise or visibly moving the branches. If no one happened to be looking this way at that moment they’d be fine, but...

  “I’ll try,” she whispered. “I’m smaller.” And then some.

  Another of those flashes hit her, of just how much bigger and stronger he was. Cliché though it might be, it was true in his case. But then she veered into how he used that size and strength, that amazing body, when he’d been driving her mad with a sexual heat she’d never felt before—

  Stop it!

  He was looking at her, and she knew by the set of his jaw he wanted to say no. Was probably weighing what would happen if he did. His protection elsewhere might be needed, even welcomed, but if she couldn’t do her job, there was no point in having it.

  “Not on the job,” she said to him, very quietly.

  For an instant he looked surprised, but then rueful, as if he’d realized how well she’d read him. “Just—”

  “Be careful. Got it.”

  “And if I touch you, freeze.”

  Not likely.

  “Not a sound or a move,” he went on.

  “Copy,” she said.

  She got down on her hands and knees and crawled ever so slowly through the lower branches of the trees. Using the large trash can itself for cover, she reached up and released one of the latches that held the lid on, a frequently seen protection against bears and other animals that might be scavenging around. She fleetingly wondered if Shruggs was even aware of such things as she edged the lid partially off. Half afraid of what she’d find, she raised the lid slightly and straightened just enough to look into the can.

  She had to move the lid a bit more to let in more light, for the contents were in the shadowy bottom of the can. But it only took her a quick look and a reading of a single torn wrapping to have her closing it back up and working her way backward. When she was clear of the low branches, and they had slipped back into place, masking them from the cabin, she rose into a crouch. Stefan came down to her level quickly, with that easy grace of his.