The Colton Heir

by Colleen Thompson

  Not just conscience. Duty, she told herself, pressing *67—the code that would block the outgoing caller ID—before tapping in the number she had committed to memory months before. Her mind flashed to a memory of her WITSEC liaison, Inspector Ryan Kinney of the U.S. Marshals Service, drilling her on it, along with details about her “background,” his hard gray eyes and gruff efficiency refusing to allow her to give in to emotion.

  When he answered on the first ring, she said, “Hi. It’s me. Your problem child.”

  She heard the sharp intake of breath before he all but shouted, “Where on earth have you been? Do you have any idea how many man-hours have been wasted looking— But never mind that right now. Let me have you picked up. We need to get you back in protective custody, right away, before the judge throws out the FBI’s case.”

  “Throws it out?” she echoed, her heart pounding. “I thought they had enough evidence to dismantle the organization on the racketeering charges alone.”

  “Let’s just say you weren’t the only witness to go missing, and without their help corroborating the forensic-accounting evidence we’ve gathered, it’s touch-and-go. Which is why it’s imperative to make the murder charges stick—and to bring you in as soon as possible. Today, if I have anything to say about it.”

  “I’m fine, thanks for asking,” she spat out. “Other than the shell shock from watching my car go up in—”

  “There’s no need to get sarcastic. We can talk later about why you ran off instead of going straight to the police, then calling this number. We must’ve gone over the protocol at least a dozen times.”

  She’d been braced for his anger but hadn’t expected the answering lash of her own. Did he really think she’d run for no other reason than to inconvenience him? “I know. Believe me, I do, but at that moment, all I could think to do was run and hide before I ended up dead, too.”

  “At least you must’ve picked a good spot,” he conceded, “seeing as how you’re still breathing. Now give me your address, and I’ll get in a car, a plane, whatever it takes to get you to an FBI safe house with round-the-clock security. The WITSEC pretrial placement experiment is over. You won’t be left on your own again until your husband’s trial.”

  Glancing toward the mountains, she breathed in air so crisp and pure, so dazzling in the brilliant wash of morning sunshine that she wanted nothing so much as to leave Dylan’s cell phone in the truck and head into the wilds, forgetting she had ever met Renzo Calabretta. Within hours of telling Inspector Kinney her location, she knew she would be whisked off to some airless compound, as fortified as a prison—and as inescapable.

  “I’ll come in on my own. I swear it,” she told him.

  “How do I know you won’t flake out again?”

  “I didn’t flake out,” she said irritably. “I was running for my life.”

  “You have no idea what’s at stake here, how many years of hard work, how many lives—”

  “You think I don’t know?” she said, rising from the bench to pace along the walkway. “I watched a man die, for no other reason than offering to pull my car up in the rain. And my poor father, too...”

  When her voice broke, he said somberly, “So you heard about him, did you? Heard that they got to him, too?”

  A cold queasiness gripped her stomach. “So it was murder, wasn’t it? The arson was just there as a cover-up.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kinney said. “The way I figure it, they must have tried to extract your location from him when they couldn’t find you. He was—”

  “Tortured? Is that what you’re saying?” Her strained voice shook through the questions. How could the husband who’d once sworn he would always love her, the man who’d gotten along so well with her parents, who’d generously supported all of her pet charities, have ordered such a thing? “They tortured him to death because I—”

  “Blaming yourself won’t bring him back. Or put any of those responsible in prison.”

  Barely noticing the tone that indicated another incoming call, she said, “But he didn’t know! He never knew where I was! I only—only wanted him to know I was all right. So he wouldn’t be so worried.”

  “We’d already done that for you,” Kinney quietly informed her. “You see, your father had an inkling. He contacted us and begged us to let him know if you were alive.”

  Because he loved me...

  She ignored the passing cars and the white panel van with darkened windows crawling through the parking lot, her glazed eyes registering next to nothing. “It was all my fault. My fault.”

  “There’s nothing you can do about it now—except start listening to me, okay? That’s what he would want,” Kinney said, his gruffness giving way to unexpected sympathy. “We’ll make this right. I swear it. We’ll get you through this. You’ll see.”

  “I can’t talk any more right now,” she said, undone by his kindness. “I’ll call you back and tell you when I’m heading your way.”

  “You can’t!” he said, the words so sharp with urgency she imagined her ears bleeding. “This is no game. If you’re really serious about surviving, give me your location. Because Joey Santorini’s out there hunting—him and heaven knows how many others.”

  “I’ll have to call you back,” she said, her head throbbing.

  “Please. Don’t hang up.”

  But Hope disconnected, her attention drawn to a flash of sunlight reflected off the restaurant’s door as it swung open. Dylan stepped outside, putting his hat back as he scanned the area. Tall, intense and impossibly handsome as he looked for her.

  Wiping away tears, she raised a hand to catch his attention.

  An instant later, the white panel van she’d noticed earlier made a U-turn to pull up in front of her, blocking her sight of him. When the unmarked side door slid open, adrenaline blasted through her body....

  A split second later, the phone clattered to the concrete as she dropped it, her free hand darting for her gun.

  Chapter 13

  The sight of Hope across the parking lot kicked Dylan’s instincts into overdrive. Reeling as he was from his conversation with Marnie Sayers, he immediately noticed that Hope’s face was red and blotchy, her skin shining with tears.

  Hurrying his steps, he started toward her, only to have an unmarked white van with tinted windows turn to block his path. Adrenaline blasted through him and he broke into a run. He rounded the rear of the van just in time to see Hope braced in a shooter’s stance, staring down the barrel of her revolver.

  At the other end, two slightly built, dark-haired men in coveralls jabbered excitedly in what sounded like Spanish. Though he didn’t speak the language, there was no mistaking their pleading tone or the terror in their eyes.

  “I’m so sorry,” Hope told the two of them, as she stepped back and raised the muzzle. “I thought— It was a mistake, that’s all. An honest mis—”

  Before she could finish, the van sped away, tires squealing and the side door slamming shut.

  “Oh, my—oh, no.” Trembling from head to toe, Hope cast a pleading look toward Dylan.

  “Better let me take that,” he said, peeling her fingers from the gun to claim it and swallowing back his own shock. “Now let’s get out of here, before somebody calls the cops.”

  After stooping to retrieve his cell phone from the walkway, he led her to his pickup and helped her inside. With her gaze wide and unfocused, he took an extra moment to pull the seat-belt harness across her, then snap her in securely.

  Though his heart was pounding, he forced himself to slow down, to drive with extra care as they pulled out of the lot. As they turned, he checked his mirrors, looking for bystanders checking out his license plate too carefully or phoning 9-1-1.

  Spotting no one, he headed for the highway that would lead them back to the ranch. When no pursuit materialized over the next ten minutes, he eased his death grip on the wheel.

  “I think we’re in the clear,” he told Hope, “but I’m glad we packed up our things and chec
ked out of the lodge this morning.”

  “I’m such an idiot,” she murmured. “I thought those guys were— I’d been talking to—”

  “When I saw that van, I thought the same thing you did. And I’m still not entirely sure that they weren’t up to no good. It’s possible they weren’t expecting to find you armed and ready for them.”

  “I know fear when I see it. They were definitely afraid, not angling for a way to grab me.”

  Still unconvinced, Dylan let the subject drop to ask, “Who were you talking to?”

  “I called my WITSEC liaison, to let him know I’d be returning for the trial. And he—he said...” She trailed off, then wiped at her face.

  Passing her a bandanna, he asked, “You told him where you were?”

  “Not yet. And I blocked the caller ID so he wouldn’t be able to track your number.”

  “Does that even work with law enforcement?”

  She nodded and then frowned. “I thought it did, but who knows? I hung up on him when I saw you coming, and then that van pulled up. They’d been circling the parking lot, and I—I’m so sorry. I think I dropped your cell phone.”

  “No problem. I’ve got it,” he said, pulling it from his pocket and seeing it was no worse for wear, thanks to the protective case. He noticed it showed a couple of missed calls and a voice mail—both from Amanda Colton.

  A ripple of unease gripped him. Had something else gone wrong at the ranch? Noticing Hope’s shivering, he put the phone down on the seat between them. “Are you cold? I can turn the heat up.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look it. I don’t mean— You know what I mean.”

  “My heart’s still pounding. I could’ve killed two innocent people.”

  “You stopped yourself in time,” he reminded her. “You didn’t pull the trigger.”

  “I’m sure that comes as an incredible relief to the two men who are probably on their way home right now to change their boxers.” Shaking her head, she added, “I thought for sure it was The Jawbreaker—that’s the guy who came to the ranch disguised as an electrician. My WITSEC inspector’s warned me he’s still out looking....”

  He hesitated for a moment before saying, “So that’s why you were crying?”

  She shook her head, eyes closing.

  “What is it?” he asked quietly. “Tell me.”

  “He said if I don’t come back, they’ll get away with what they did. T-to my father. They t-tortured him, Dylan, tortured my poor dad to give up information I’d never even shared.”

  After that, he could get no more from her as she drew into herself, pulling up her knees and hugging them as she turned her beautiful, bruised face toward the window.

  “I’m sorry,” he found himself telling her, again and again. As if that would change a damned thing, any more than all his friends’ words had consoled him after the shooting that took his mother’s life.

  My mother, he thought, painfully reminded of what Marnie had told him. Was it true? Had his mother been unable to bear children? Could the doctor have been mistaken?

  He’d heard of such things before, heard of couples who, long after giving up on ever having a child of their own, had found themselves expecting. Had it been that way for his mother, in the wake of some brief affair? Or had she, as Hope had suggested before, adopted someone’s unwanted infant?

  Or stolen a kidnapped child, one she’d meant to return to his parents?

  For the first time, he let the thought lie, rather than shoving it aside. He already knew that his mother had lied to him about his father, that she’d withheld the truth for decades about killing another woman in self-defense.

  Why, then, was it so impossible to accept the idea she was not his biological mother, either? To imagine the possibility that he was the son of a man who, at their last meeting, had treated him like dirt to be scraped off the bottom of his boot? Plenty of people survived having jackasses for fathers—along with drunken mothers who’d abandoned them.

  But not me, he prayed. Not me.

  The sight of a cell-phone tower reminded him that they would soon be out of range. Unwilling to spend the next eight hours wondering what Amanda had wanted, he said, “I’m pulling over for just a minute. Need to check a voice mail.”

  She didn’t respond, and he didn’t try to force it, his mind on the recorded message as it played.

  “I hope everything’s okay there,” Amanda said, the strain in her voice unmistakable. “But that’s not why I called. I wanted to let you know I signed for a piece of mail for you this morning....”

  His heart bumped and his breath hitched, for he knew there was only one piece of mail she would have called about.

  “I haven’t opened it,” the voice mail went on. “I wouldn’t, without your permission. But it’s—it’s from Rapidsure Labs. It’s the results, Dylan. The results from your testing....”

  He forced himself to breathe, his finger poised over the “call back” button. But Amanda’s message didn’t end there.

  “I know you agreed to all this, Dylan,” she went on, “but if it’s what you want, we can forget this. I’ll burn the envelope or shred it, or I’ll leave it for you to do. Just let me know.”

  He thought about it for a moment, tempted by the idea of letting things go back to the way they’d always been. Letting himself pretend he was the miraculous sole son of a barren woman so he could go back to the life that he’d had planned.

  Instead of calling her back, he put the truck back into gear and headed over a hill. Headed out of phone range, his heart too heavy to bear more.

  * * *

  “I told that idiot of an electrician’s helper I’d only get involved if you never knew my name, never had my number,” said the woman who had been only too happy to take Joey Santorini’s money in exchange for rigging the explosion in the basement.

  “Well, I’ve got both now.” Feeding on her fear, Joey leered as he spoke into the telephone. “And unless you want everybody else to know, too, you’re gonna answer my damned questions.”

  A brittle silence crackled in the static of a bad connection. But finally, she broke it with a wheedling: “So what’s in it for me—if I decide to help you again?”

  “Depends on the results. But if I get what I’m after, you can rest assured there’ll be something in it for you. Something very valuable.” Such as your ability to continue breathing. In reality, he wasn’t certain he could allow a loose end such as her—especially one so amenable to bribery—to live under any circumstances. Or the electrician, either.

  “As it happens,” she said with a slyness that reminded him it could be dangerous to underestimate her, “I do have information. Information I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear. But first, you’re going to have to name a figure.”

  He did, making it a generous amount, but not so extravagant that she would realize that the only payoff he intended to deliver was a bullet.

  She had the guts to dicker with him, to try bargaining for more. He argued for a while before conceding a few thousand dollars—grumbling just enough to let her think she’d pulled something over on him.

  “All right, then,” she agreed, dropping the question and telling him that she had overheard Amanda Colton telling her half brother that Hope was coming back this very evening—coming back with the wrangler, Dylan Frick.

  “He imagined we’re all idiots, believing they’d gone their separate ways. But I heard from a very reliable source that they were seen together...in a very compromising situation.”

  He nearly told her to shut up, that he didn’t give a damn about her stupid gossip. But he listened anyway, telling himself he couldn’t care less about the salacious nature of the details, only whatever advantage they might offer.

  And reasoning that if he couldn’t get to little Miss New Jersey, he could always grab her boy toy and use him for leverage. For if there was one thing he knew about Aurora, it was that the do-gooder in her would never long stay hidden while he m
ethodically dismembered someone she cared about.

  * * *

  About an hour into their drive, Hope couldn’t take the silence any longer. It gave her too much time to think of what had happened and what might have, and far too much to worry over what came next.

  Desperate for distraction, she asked, “So what happened at the restaurant? Did the waitress have any new information about your mother?”

  His forehead creasing, he shared what Marnie Sayers had told him about Desiree Beal’s death and the events that followed.

  “Do you believe it?” Hope asked.

  “Considering the way I had to drag it out of her, I do,” he said. “She had no reason to lie to me and every reason to want to keep it to herself. So it seems, my mother really was a murderer.”

  “Self-defense isn’t murder.”

  “And Faye might not’ve been my mother. At least not if her doctor was right about her being barren.”

  She hesitated, uncertain what to say that might make him feel better. Or if trying to give him another ticket to denial was even the right thing to do.

  “Whatever the truth is,” he said, “I’ll find out soon enough. Amanda left a message saying there’s a letter waiting for me at the mansion. A letter that’ll tell me the DNA results.”

  “It’s time for you to find out once and for all,” she said, “so you can move on with your life. But meanwhile, what could it hurt to talk about the good memories? They’re part of what you had with your mom, too, and no one—not this mastermind and not whatever secrets your mom kept to protect you—has the power to take them from you.”

  “Is that what you do?” he asked. “Remember the good times you had with your parents?”

  “It’s a process, but I’m trying. Trying not to wall off the good memories along with the bad,” she told him, wondering if there would ever be a time she could think about the past without pain jabbing at her stomach and tears coming to her eyes.

  “From what you’ve told me about your mom,” she managed, “I’m sure she wouldn’t want you to forget the special times you had together, all the things that she did just to make you smile.”