“One thing I want to do on the way,” he said as they headed out to deal with the paperwork.
“What?”
“Stop and vote for your boss.”
She smiled widely. “I’ll be more than happy to get you there.”
She meant it. If there was any sense at all in this county, it would be a landslide.
Chapter 31
“Hard to believe this case is actually over except for the paperwork,” Daria said as she slowed to go over the last speed bump in the hospital parking lot.
“Little matter of a trial,” Stefan pointed out, stifling a wince as the bump, even as slowly as she was going, caused a tug on his wounded side. He knew they’d only let him out because he’d told them he was leaving today whether they discharged him or not. He had a small stack of papers stuffed into a pocket of the bag Daria had brought, including detailed instructions on how to care for the wound. He’d read them. Eventually. As soon as he could stop thinking about Daria truly wanting him—and his son—to come home with her.
“That, too,” she agreed, “but that’ll take a while.”
“But Shruggs confessed to you. Not quite a deathbed confession, but still.”
“Only because he survived.” She halted at the driveway, scanning traffic. “But he couldn’t resist the need to brag, just in case. Which reminds me...”
She checked her rearview mirror, he noticed, to make sure they weren’t blocking anyone in the driveway. Then she pulled out her phone and called up what she wanted, explaining as she did, “Trey called me this morning. He said he mentioned what Shruggs said about Sabrina Gilford not being his type to his fiancée, Aisha—you met her, didn’t you?”
“Yes. The clinical psychologist”
Daria nodded. “She’s wicked smart. And an ace kickboxer, I might add.”
He blinked; he hadn’t expected that. “Kickboxer?”
“Yep. She’s going to teach me.”
He studied her for a moment, remembering with vivid clarity how her trim, strong body had felt in his arms, beneath him, atop him. “That,” he said fervently, “I want to see. You’ll be brilliant.”
Daria flashed him a smile that told him he’d said exactly the right thing.
“Thank you,” she said warmly. “Anyway, Aisha’s the one who figured out his election opponent’s brother was behind that attempt on his life.”
“The one we thought was a hate crime at first?”
She nodded. “Anyway, she did a little research of her own and came up with this.”
She held out her phone to him. He looked at the image on the screen. His brow furrowed. The woman looked familiar somehow, yet he was fairly sure he’d never seen her before. He’d seen a string of photos that resembled her, though, tacked to a crime board.
“Someone else missing?” he asked grimly. “Shruggs has another victim buried somewhere we haven’t found yet?”
Daria looked oddly satisfied at his question. “It’s his mother.”
Stefan looked up to meet her gaze. He nearly rolled his eyes. “So he’s not only a vicious killer, he’s a walking cliché?”
“So it seems.”
“I guess things become clichés for a reason,” he muttered, handing back her phone.
They found his polling place, and the voting itself didn’t take too long, but he was still glad when he got back in the car. He had the niggling thought that maybe he’d pushed a little too hard too soon, but once he was sitting down again, he felt better.
“Lots of talk going on in there,” he told her. “Most of it good, about your boss. Word that we got Shruggs spread fast.”
“Good,” she said. “Although they should have voted for him anyway.”
“You’re very...loyal.”
“He’s earned it.”
He studied her as she pulled back out onto the street and they headed for Sam’s school. Realized with a bone-deep certainty that Daria would be that loyal to anyone who earned it. Had he? If he hadn’t, what did he need to do now to make sure? Maybe he’d ask his father, when they arrived. Winning the trust, loyalty and above all the love of a woman like his mother couldn’t have been an easy thing. His mother was a force of nature, by turns as fierce as she was gentle. In fact, Daria reminded him a lot of her in many ways.
He found himself mulling over men and their mothers, the thoughts about his own coming so soon on the heels of the discovery about their serial killer’s seeming a bit ironic. But if nothing else, it reminded him how fortunate he’d been to have his mother, with her steady, unwavering devotion to her family. Daria would be like that, he was certain. Once she decided, she would never falter.
They reached Sam’s school, and she pulled into the parking lot and to a stop where there were other vehicles with people waiting for children. She parked neatly, glanced at the clock—they were nearly half an hour early—then looked at him. Caught him avidly soaking in her presence. “I was wrong,” he said softly.
“Wrong?”
“You’re not just memorable. You’re unforgettable.”
She lowered her gaze almost shyly. He leaned toward her, wanting a kiss from that luscious mouth more than anything just now. He felt the sharp twinge from his side but hid it. A little pain was a small price to pay for this. And the moment he touched her lips, the pain seemed to vanish, swept aside by the heat he’d only ever felt with her. He deepened the kiss, tasted her, knowing with a strange sense of utter certainty that it would ever and always be like this, with her.
The honk of a car horn broke the moment. He straightened a little too quickly and winced.
“You shouldn’t move like that.”
“The day I can’t lean over and kiss my woman,” he began but stopped when he saw her eyes. She had that look that told him that mind he admired was working. Well, admired most of the time; at her expression he was a bit wary.
“There’s something you need to know. And I should have told you before we...”
She gave a vague wave of her hand that irritated him.
“Spontaneously combusted?” he suggested, his own voice a little tight.
She nodded, and he saw the faint color in her cheeks again. “But more importantly, before I invited you both to stay at my place now.”
“Retracting the invitation?” He didn’t want to think about how that would hurt Sam. He didn’t want to think about how it would hurt him.
“No!” She said it so fervently it soothed his annoyance. “I just mean...there’s something you should know before we go any further.”
He kept his tone mild. “I don’t recall that the invitation was to move in permanently.” That he almost wished it had been was something he kept to himself just now.
She lowered her gaze again, and something about the way her lips tightened slightly made him wonder if she did, too. But he knew full well he was no expert in reading the female mind, so he kept his mouth shut. Another wise lesson from his father.
After a long enough moment that he wondered if she’d changed her mind about telling him whatever it was, she said, “It’s about...who I am. Really am, I mean.”
His puzzlement cleared, and the annoyance vanished. In fact, he felt a jolt of relief that this was all it was. “A Colton, you mean?”
Her head snapped up and she stared at him. “You knew?”
“Well...yeah.”
“Have you always known?”
He frowned. “Only since I ran the DNA for Fox and Kelsey.”
Now she looked utterly flummoxed. “What?”
“You know, for the baby. You came up as a possible relative.”
She was gaping at him now. “I...what?”
Puzzlement returned. “You’re in the system, as law enforcement, right?”
“Of course. To be eliminated in case of evidence contamination.”
“So that’s why you came up when we did the genetic markers for the baby.” She still looked bewildered, and he hastened to assure her, “It’s confidential information, and since I knew you weren’t the baby’s mother, it was irrelevant to the case. I’d never say anything.”
“I wasn’t... I didn’t think you...”
She seemed way too baffled for what was a fairly simple thing. He knew how smart she was, how together she was, so this made no sense.
“Daria?”
He saw a slight shudder go through her, had the feeling she’d given herself a sharp mental shake. When she spoke, she was enunciating so carefully it made his focus zero in on her like a case about to break open.
“Are you saying,” she said, each word spoken with careful precision, “that I am a biological Colton?”
“Not me, the DNA,” he said. “And not closely related to the baby, but...”
Her expression practically screamed the truth.
She hadn’t known. She hadn’t known she was genetically connected to the Coltons. But she’d been going to tell him she was a Colton? Now he was confused.
“Daria...”
The moment he said her name out loud, it belatedly hit him. Daria. Daria Colton.
He swore, low and harsh. He felt as if the entire world had tilted on its axis. Her words came back to him vividly. I’ve had enough of living with a lot of people around all the time. He’d just bet she had, because she’d once lived in the biggest goldfish bowl in the world.
No wonder she had seemed familiar from the first time he’d seen her. Because she was. He’d even seen her photograph years ago, in FBI informational reports put out when the Secret Service was in town, although she was always in the background.
Daria Bloom...or was it Colton?
Of the California Coltons. Headed up by Joe Colton.
The former president of the United States.
Chapter 32
Stefan was on his phone. She had no idea to whom—she couldn’t focus on a single thing beyond the internal turmoil that had erupted the instant she’d realized what he’d meant. That the DNA tests he’d pushed through for Fox Colton had turned up an unexpected connection. A possible relative to that tiny baby that he and Kelsey were adopting.
Her.
She was a biological Colton.
She felt a hand on her arm. Slowly, as if moving underwater, she looked over at Stefan. “Maybe there was a mistake,” he said quietly. “Maybe because of...of your adoptive name something got crossed.”
“My adoptive name,” she said, very slowly. And for the first time thought of a very unpleasant possibility. “Did they know?” she asked, barely aware of saying it out loud. “Dear God, did they know and never tell me? Did my father—the freaking president—lie to me all these years?”
“Whoa, now, don’t jump the gun here. Let’s make sure of this. I’m no expert on reading DNA reports, and there could have been a glitch somewhere.”
She thought, as if from a distance, that it was nice he was so worried. And that he’d set aside what she’d told him—or rather, what she’d meant to tell him—in favor of addressing her more pressing concern, touched her to the core.
“Here’s the plan,” he said briskly. “We head for the Crooked C. Now, because Fox and Kelsey are both there, but they have to leave soon. They’ve got the reports. Can you access yours?”
She nodded, rather vaguely. She’d filed a copy in a cloud storage service, just in case, during her long search for her mother.
“Sam,” she said, not even sure why.
“We’ll pick him up first. He’ll have fun—he’s never been to anything like a working ranch. He’ll have plenty of distraction while we find out what we need. I don’t think he’s ever even seen a cow up close.”
“Duck pond...there’s a duck pond behind the main house.” Somewhere in the back of her mind, a faint alarm bell was ringing. It took her a moment to find the words for it. “Can he swim?”
She heard an odd sound, as if Stefan’s breath had caught in his throat. Then she felt his big, warm hand over hers, which was cold for reasons that had nothing to do with the temperature outside.
“I can’t tell you what it means to me that you’re worried about that now, in the middle of what you just learned.”
“Of course I am. He doesn’t need any more trauma in his life.”
“You’ve just had a bit in yours.”
She tried a smile, managed only a brief, slightly lopsided one. “Here I thought I’d be shocking you.”
“Oh, you did.” He gave her a rather wondering look. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you.”
“That was years ago.” I’m older now. Too old for you.
She tried to quash the thought, because he was right; if it were reversed, no one would think a thing of it. She had the feeling that would be one of the last inequities to fall in this world. If it ever did.
“I saw you once. When President Colton made a stop at the capitol in Springfield. I remember thinking how amazing it was that someone who looked like you lived in the White House.”
“You mean because I’m Black?”
“No. Because even then I thought you were beautiful. I thought you should be modeling, or maybe out in Hollywood.”
She made a face. “Please,” she muttered.
“But now I know better. You wouldn’t settle for doing anything you didn’t think was important.”
“I got that from Dad,” she said. “He told me he didn’t care what I did as long as it was something that made me eager to get up and get at it every morning.”
“Sounds like my dad.”
She realized suddenly that she was calmer. Much calmer. She’d even managed to speak of her adoptive father with the admiration she’d always felt for him. And on the heels of that, she realized that had been Stefan’s intention all along, he who rarely indulged in small talk but just had. To get her through the sudden chaos of this unexpected discovery.
She met his gaze, held it. “Thank you,” she said softly.
He lifted a brow at her as if he had no idea what she meant. But she knew better.
* * *
“Is this the way to Daria’s house?”
“No,” Stefan said. “We have to make a stop first.”
“Oh.”
His son sounded so downcast it almost made Daria smile. Or rather, smile again, because she had smiled broadly and happily when Sam had first emerged from the school and worriedly asked his father if he was all right now.
“I’ll be okay, buddy, but I have to take it easy for a while,” Stefan had said. “Rest a lot.”
“You mean stay in bed?” Sam asked innocently.
Daria had had to look away then, and she felt her cheeks heat yet again when Stefan said with all seriousness, “I think that’s an excellent, excellent prescription, Dr. Roberts.”
She had had the feeling Sam had no idea what a prescription was, but being addressed as Dr. Roberts set off a gale of laughter. The boy had come a very long way in a short time. And if she’d had some little bit to do with that, she was both happy and proud.
“We’re going someplace very cool, though,” she said as she made a turn.
“Where?” Sam asked, wide-eyed.
“It’s a ranch,” Stefan answered.
“You mean with horses and cows and stuff?”
“Exactly that.”
“Cool!” the boy exclaimed.
She knew too well where the Crooked C was, because it was where all this had started for her, when Wyatt Colton had found the first body. It had also been the first direct experience she’d had with the kind of pressure the Colton name could bring to bear.
The Colton name.
She felt a little stab of the guilt she’d been carrying since Trey had turned this case over to her.
He’d done it to avoid any appearance of favoritism, given he was a Colton himself. She’d rationalized it with the fact—she’d thought—that she wasn’t really a Colton, it was only by adoption.
But now...
She was going to have to tell him. And she had no idea how he would react. She had no idea how she herself would react, once she knew exactly what the connection was.
She made herself focus on her driving. She noticed the last bits of snow were disappearing, with the occasional trickle of water from the melt crossing the roadway. It was a near-balmy sixty-one degrees today, and Sam had already shed his jacket. She hoped the good weather made people get out and vote. And hoped the news of Shruggs’s capture reassured any who had doubts about their current sheriff.
The Crooked C was a sprawling ranch of hundreds of acres, and Daria smiled anew as Stefan pointed out to Sam the weather vane on the roof of the main house, which was a rearing horse made of copper. But they kept going, past the promised duck pond, southward until they reached a large red barn that looked a bit weather-beaten on the outside. But when she’d first been here—when they’d found the first body—Daria had noticed there were several features that didn’t fit, including glass windows that looked fairly new and double paned, both on the upper level and below.
“Fox is really dedicated to breeding healthy, long-lived horses. So he took this barn over and converted it to living quarters upstairs, with his office and work space below. Guess which is bigger,” Stefan added to Sam with a grin.
Daria smiled. She liked seeing anyone with a passion following it.
Sam was looking around wide-eyed. He immediately fixated on the corral beside the barn, where a couple of horses that looked young to her inexperienced eye were watching them in turn.
“Can I go see ’em?” Sam asked, practically dancing with eagerness.
Fox Colton and his new wife, Kelsey, a petite woman with lively hazel eyes and strawberry blond hair, had come out the door in time to hear this.
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