The Colton Heir

by Colleen Thompson

  Trip was gaping like a fish as he tried to mouth words. When his purpling face gave away the fact that he was strangling, Dylan relaxed his grip but didn’t let him go.

  Coughing and choking and grabbing at his throat, Trip stammered, “Y-you won’t get away with this! With attacking a member of the Colton family! As soon as I tell my stepfather, you’ll be sent packing—”

  Maybe it was his threat to Hope, or the way he held up the name Colton—a name that Dylan refused to have forced on him—like a shield, or maybe it was only the result of years of contempt finally coming to a head, but this time, at long last, Dylan could hold back no longer. Drawing back his right arm, he threw one punch, a single punch that struck Trip—already squealing in terror—right beneath the eye and sent him flying backward and crashing to the floor.

  Dylan heard footsteps behind him, followed by the gasps of those drawn by the sound of Lowden’s cry. Shaking with fury, Dylan didn’t turn to see who had come. Instead, he kept his gaze locked on Trip, who was sitting up, holding his hand over his injured eye and bleating, “You’re finished, Frick! You’re done here! You may as well go pack your bags!”

  Finished. Done here. The words sliced through the remnants of Dylan’s rage, leaving a blast of cold reality in their wake as he realized that for the first time in his worthless life, Lowden might be right.

  After warning Trip one last time, “I damned well meant what I said. Bother the women here again, and I’ll blacken the other eye—or worse,” Dylan stormed away and out the back door, into the chill morning.

  Relieved when no one tried to follow, he started toward the stable first, where he thought he might run the mare, Chica, through her paces before her owner came to pick her up this afternoon. But in his current mood, he would set back the sensitive horse’s progress, and neither his own buckskin nor even Jethro’s stallion—a powerful black beast he’d been exercising since the old man fell ill—was up for the kind of gallop Dylan needed to get this out of his system. Instead, he headed out for his personal pickup, since that key was the only one that he had on him.

  Revving the engine, he backed away from the trees, then peeled out in a spray of flying gravel. First, he headed out to check on the cowboys he’d sent to repair fence line during the quiet weeks when the cattle required little handling. Sure enough, he caught a couple of the hands loafing, but rather than stopping to lecture them about it, he drove straight past, barely registering the way they hustled back to their assigned task when they spotted him. Instead, he kept on going, jouncing over the rutted dirt road toward the pasture where they had been adding supplemental feed to the hay and forage given to the new weanlings, telling himself it made sense to make notes on estimated weights for his report to Jethro, who had always cared deeply about the cattle and the horses even though they comprised only a tiny percentage of his income.

  Guess my father really did pass down his love of large livestock, just the way my mother—my true mother—always claimed....

  Had Amanda given the old man the news yet? Assuming he was coherent enough to understand it, how had he reacted? Was there shock, regret, fury, to learn that the governess he’d entrusted with his daughters had duped him on such a grand scale?

  Or was Jethro disgusted, imagining, as he’d implied before, that now some half-assed cowboy was going to bear his name and claim his fortune, or as big a chunk of it as he could wheedle?

  “The hell I will,” Dylan murmured, peppering the air with curses as he realized that in all these years, Jethro hadn’t put in the money or the effort to find his missing firstborn. Oh, he might have made a few lame attempts during those first harrowing days or hired a private investigator to make things look good, but surely, he could have found a kid parked under his damned nose for thirty years.

  Instead, the old SOB had clearly written off the lost child of his desperately unhappy first wife and gotten busy working on breeding some replacements. Had he been disappointed to have gotten three girls and no legitimate sons? Knowing Jethro, it was possible, just as it was possible he’d made those daughters pay.

  Even so, Dylan seriously doubted the old man had lost much sleep over his firstborn’s absence during the past three decades. Certainly, he was never known to speak of what had happened. Which was why Dylan wouldn’t lose much sleep over what he planned to do.

  Because leaving was his only chance to be the man he wanted. Not the prodigal heir, to be prodded and examined and squeezed into the mold of what was expected of a firstborn Colton. Not the eternal “victim” of a decades-old crime or a man to be envied or resented for his newfound fortune.

  As he slowed in front of the gate, he climbed out of the vehicle. Chilly as he was without the jacket he’d forgotten in Amanda’s sunroom, he was nonetheless glad of the fresh air and the wide expanse around him. The weanlings hurried his way, mooing eagerly in the hope he’d brought more of the supplemental grain, which he sometimes sweetened with a little molasses. They were looking more like healthy yearlings than calves these days, their bodies filling out with the rations that replaced their mother’s rich milk and their red-and-white hair growing wooly in advance of the winter’s cold.

  In spite of all the turmoil crashing through his brain, he found himself smiling at their approach, at the eager swish of their tails, thinking that everything made sense out here among the animals, who didn’t give a damn about name or social status, who had always known who he was nonetheless. But instead of coming all the way to the gate, the herd veered suddenly, bawling in distress.

  Turning to see what had spooked them, he heard an engine’s roar and saw a blur of motion—a white F-250 pickup with a huge brush guard on the front end speeding directly toward him. Dylan recognized it as one of the ranch vehicles—but whoever was behind the wheel was moving way too fast.

  For a split second, he thought it might be one of the hands, or Amanda, coming to insist that he return to face the truth. But an instant later, he realized the well-maintained vehicle careening toward him must have somehow lost its brakes.

  Either that, or the driver was mashing down on the accelerator, aiming straight at him on purpose.

  As quickly as the thoughts ran through his mind, his body was moving behind the bulk of his own pickup, then placing a palm atop a fence post and vaulting the top string so he wouldn’t be caught between the truck and enough barbed wire to slice himself to pieces.

  Strong and agile as he was, Dylan’s earlier distraction had cost him valuable seconds—only this time Betsy and Bingo weren’t around to bark him a reprieve. As he jumped, the heel of his boot caught the top wire, and he pitched forward, falling so hard on his chest that the blow knocked the air from his lungs and he felt something on the left side—maybe ribs—crack.

  Before he could draw breath, a tremendous crash echoed with the shock waves of twisting, ripping metal. Metal sliding toward him all too fast.

  T-boned by the brush guard on the big Ford, Dylan’s pickup snapped fence posts like matchsticks as it was shoved sideways. With no way to escape, Dylan flattened himself as best he could, covered his head with his arms and scrunched his eyes shut, thinking, This is it.

  The sound was all consuming, a thunderclap that enveloped him before it shuddered to a stop. It took him several stunned moments—and a shallow breath that sent pain flaring through his injured ribs—to realize that his heart still galloped in his chest.

  Opening his eyes, he looked up at the twisted undercarriage of his pickup only inches from his face and breathed the words “Ho-lee hell.”

  An eerie silence followed, broken only by the ticking of a cooling engine, the dripping of some liquid. Water from the radiator and not gas, he hoped, before hearing the clunk of a truck door closing, then the sound of footsteps crunching over gravel. Crunching closer.

  Tilting his head, he saw a pair of feet, not wearing cowboy boots but work boots: scuffed, dark brown and enormous—at least a size thirteen. The same boots Hope had described the assassins/electric
ians wearing.

  Before he could think of what to do, someone grabbed his legs and roughly hauled him out.

  Dylan had broken bones before. More than once, on the rodeo circuit and in his work with livestock. But this pain went far deeper, setting off fireworks as agony exploded in his ribs and his right forearm—which, in protecting his face, had been painfully scraped by part of his truck. His mouth opened but no scream would come; however, the fireworks kept exploding...

  Until one of those huge boots came flying toward his head.

  Chapter 16

  Though the two men both wore sport jackets that covered their badges and kept their weapons concealed, their short haircuts and watchful gazes marked them as law enforcement as surely as a uniform. With one walking on either side of Aurora in her hijab and abaya, the trio attracted far too much attention.

  Shivering beneath the dark robe, she thought at first their plan had backfired. She was attracting glares, along with murmured insults that included words like terrorist as some of her fellow passengers jumped to the wrong conclusion. Anyone who ventured too close was warned by one of the deputies, politely but firmly, “Back off and give us some space,” but that only underscored the impression that she was in their custody.

  The majority of those in the terminal, however, were content to avert their eyes, and even the rudest seemed focused on the “foreign” garb rather than her face. As uncomfortable as she felt, she realized the deputies might have been right about this being safer. Still, she didn’t want to board their flight to Newark, didn’t ever want to set foot back in New Jersey again, where she was half-convinced that Joey Santorini and his cohorts would be waiting for her.

  As they cleared security and headed for her gate, her feeling of foreboding grew more and more intense. She pictured herself ducking between the two big men and running...running back to Dylan, who she imagined must need her now as badly as she needed him.

  Or was that only panic talking?

  Leaning her head toward the friendlier Deputy Smithfield, she murmured, “I think this is a really bad idea. My stomach’s flipping around, and I think I might be—”

  “You’ll be fine. We’re seeing to it,” he assured her, just as his partner, a fit, young red-haired guy named Vanak, reached for his buzzing phone again.

  “Yes, sir?” he asked. He listened for several minutes before saying gravely, “I’ll inform her and my partner right away, sir.”

  Aurora stopped short, her feet freezing at his tone. Something had gone wrong; she knew it. She saw it in his pained expression as he looked from her to his partner and gestured toward an unoccupied bank of chairs.

  Smithfield glanced down at his watch, then nodded, and the three of them sat down, the two deputies flanking Aurora.

  “What is it?” she blurted as he slipped the cell phone into his pocket.

  “It’s your husband,” Vanak told her.

  “Ex-husband,” she automatically corrected.

  “Well, now he’s your late husband,” Vanak said irritably. “Renzo Calabretta’s dead, murdered in the federal holding facility. Apparently, he knew too much about too many people, and they somehow found a way to—”

  “He’s gone?” she blurted. “He’s— He can’t be.” Tough and virile, despite his graying hair, Renzo was a purveyor of death, not its victim.

  Anger pulsed over Smithfield’s amiable features. “How’d they get to him?”

  “I don’t know how they pulled it off, but Inspector Kinney said the Feds are mad as hell about it. Found Calabretta hanged with a homemade noose. Pretty sure it was meant to look like suicide, but there were too many signs of a struggle for anybody to buy it.”

  Shock drained the strength from her body. She could not believe her ears. “It has to be a trick,” she said, “to bring me out of hiding.”

  “No trick,” Smithfield said more gently. “We wouldn’t lie to you about this.”

  She blinked back tears, remembering the man she’d married. The man she’d thought so kind and noble, so handsome with his dark brows and lightly silvered hair. A man mourned and feared and hated.

  “Do I still have to go back?” she asked the deputies. For without Renzo, who was there for her to testify against, since she had no direct knowledge of anyone else’s crimes?

  “Obviously, this changes things,” said Vanak, “but I’d strongly advise you to come with us. We’ll put together a new relocation packet for you. For your safety.”

  “I—I appreciate it, but I can’t go,” she said, her mind flashing to Dylan.

  “You’re in shock,” Smithfield interjected. “You can’t possibly think they’ll let you go back to your own life. To any life.”

  “I’m no threat any longer. Why would they bother to hunt me down if I can’t hurt them?”

  “You already have. Badly. Trust me, whoever’s in charge would like nothing more than seeing you killed—as painfully, as horribly as possible. Sends a message to the other wives and family about how disloyalty’s ‘rewarded.’”

  The world tilted drunkenly, and she covered her face with her hands. “I—I need to use the restroom. Need to splash some water on my face and pull myself together. Please.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Vanak complained. “She needs to get on the damned plane and let us do our job.”

  “There’s a little time,” Smithfield insisted, glancing at his watch again, “as long as you don’t take long. We’ll walk you to the ladies’ and wait outside for you.”

  She was still shaky as she went inside, her vision hazed by a shimmering cloud of disbelief. The restroom was busy, packed with female travelers moving at what seemed like warp speed, none of them seeming to pay her any heed in spite of her attire. Some juggled purses, laptop bags and rolling carry-ons while others herded children or tried to navigate while checking their phones.

  So it shouldn’t have come as a shock to her, as she bent her face to the sink, when she spotted the corner of a sparkly pink case peeping out from beneath a wad of paper towels. A forgotten cell phone, she quickly realized, palming it without thinking.

  She should run back out after that last woman, the harried-looking young blonde who’d been struggling to wash two squirmy toddlers’ hands here moments earlier. But after a moment’s hesitation, temptation overwhelmed her, and Aurora retreated to a relatively quiet corner instead.

  Promising herself she’d turn in the phone to the lost and found once she was finished, she started punching numbers before she could overthink the impulse. Because this minor miracle was the chance she had been looking for, the one chance she would ever get to hear Dylan’s voice again.

  And how she needed to hear him now, to listen to him tell her, in his strong and caring tones, that leaving was the right thing, the only thing she could do. That, rich or poor, he would be just fine without her. Would bring the mastermind to justice and then move on with his life.

  She heard a slight click as the call connected, but not a single word of greeting. “Dylan?” she blurted, turning her back to a woman who was looking at her strangely. “It’s me. I had to tell you—”

  “You’re one lucky bitch.” Waves of lethal menace rode on every word, a menace far too cold to be Dylan’s. “Or I should say your boy toy here is.”

  Aurora’s stomach plunged at the remembered voice, shock loosening her knees. “J-Joey?” she asked, her heart pounding so hard, she thought it might explode. “Where’s Dylan? What’ve you done with him?”

  He answered with cruel laughter, then: “More than I meant to, maybe. Got a little carried away, thinking you might be sitting in that truck.”

  Cupping her hand over the receiver, she whispered, “Please don’t hurt him! It’s me you’re after, not him!”

  “Too late,” he chuckled. “He’s already hurting plenty, or will be, once he comes to. But I’ll tell you what. You get back here by one o’clock, and I won’t mess him up any worse. Probably.”

  “You have to let me talk to him!
I have to know that he’s alive.”

  “If you think you’re in any position to tell me what I have to do, you’re even dumber than I thought. And you’re wasting time.”

  “Listen, Joey. I’ll come. I’ll come, and we can talk this thing through. Did you know Renzo’s dead, murdered in the federal holding facility this morning?”

  On the other end, she heard the big thug breathing. But nothing more.

  “So there’s no more reason for you to do this, Joey,” she pleaded. “One of your own guys took him out.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I swear I’m not. You can look it up.”

  After another hesitation, his voice vibrated in a low growl. “So you went and got him killed, too, did you? Of all the— What d’ya think? That Renzo’s death absolves you? That we’ll turn our back on a traitor to the family just because he’s gone?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean you have to hurt innocents. Let Dylan go, please. He has nothing to do with this. I haven’t told him anything—haven’t told a soul.”

  “Won’t be the first innocent whose blood’s on your hands, will it? That idiot at the grocery store, your own daddy—you can stop it here today, if I don’t get too impatient waiting. Or too pissed off, rememberin’ how I lost somebody, too. You remember my cousin Luca, don’tcha? We practically grew up together, and then we were partners for a lot of years—before we blew up the wrong guy in Iowa.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” she forced herself to tell him. Because she would say anything, do anything to stop this. “But I’m coming back. I swear it. Just don’t hurt Dylan anymore.”

  A scoffing sound came back to her. “You’re cuttin’ it awful close, sweetheart. If you want to make it here before I do to him what got done to your father.”

  Panic zinging through her, she looked around wildly for a clock to check the time. 10:45 a.m., which left her barely enough time to get away from the detectives and find her way back to...where, exactly?

  “Are you on the ranch itself?” she asked. “Where is it I’ll be heading?”