Colton's Lethal Reunion

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  And for one brief second he looked at something else, too.

  The first number programmed in Kerry’s speed dial was his.

  * * *

  Kerry was almost in position when all hell broke loose. She could hear two voices, Odin and his thug, she knew, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Their anger, however, was evident. They were getting desperate, and disagreeing. Not a good combination.

  Because she’d done her job and put pressure on them.

  Everyone made a mistake eventually. She’d heard it said often enough, in law enforcement circles, when talking about criminals who were hard to bring in.

  Feeling a bit of a rush, knowing that she was at least somewhat complicit in Odin Rogers’s making his error, she came around the edge of the cliff closest to them, her gun drawn, ready to announce herself and demand that they put the guns down. She didn’t glance up at the cliff where she’d been. Didn’t make certain that Rafe had her back with bullets that would travel the distance between them. She wasn’t planning to give him a need to shoot.

  She glanced again, just quickly, finalizing her plan, based on where the two were standing and obstructions in her path, just in case they didn’t do as she demanded and drop their weapons.

  “What was that?” She heard the words quite clearly. “You—you couldn’t just get your ass in the hole like I told you...”

  “I’m not goin’ down there and I’m not goin’ down for you, neither,” the deep gruff voice came back.

  A gunshot pierced the early morning air. And a split second later, another.

  Pulse drumming through her, Kerry peeked around her ledge and saw Odin Rogers standing over his thug. And then, almost casually, the man turned and shot again, straight at her. She backed up, waited. Listened. Another shot rang out, from up above.

  The cliff. Rafe.

  He’d provided the second’s worth of distraction she needed. Rounding the corner in that second, gun pointed, she saw that Odin had approached, was nearly upon her. But had turned to look up at the cliff.

  And that’s when she got him. Holding her gun to his neck, she grabbed one arm and twisted it back up behind him in a way that didn’t take superior strength, just a knowledge of how to twist an arm so that any movement brought excruciating pain.

  He fought her. She took an elbow to the chin. Scraped her shoulder on the side of the mountain. And delivered a knee to the small of his back, never letting go of the arm, or her gun at his neck.

  “Drop your gun,” she said through gritted teeth. And prayed that he did it. She didn’t want to kill a man that day. And she wasn’t going to lose this fight, either.

  “You think you’re so smart.” Odin’s breath stank as he turned his head to the side, as though trying to see her. “You don’t know nothin’, lady.”

  “I know you’ve got drugs and guns down in that mine. I know you killed Lavinia Alvin on my front porch this morning.”

  “I didn’t kill that woman and whatever’s in that mine, assuming somethin’s there, ain’t mine. I can’t help it if Cane over there found ’em and told me about ’em. I ain’t even seen ’em. I was just convincing him to call the cops when he pulled a gun on me.”

  She gave his arm another twist, for Tyler, ready to crunch the slimy man’s instep with the heel of her cowboy boot if he made any move at all.

  “My brother said he wasn’t going down for you and you shot him.”

  “You got no proof a that. And even if I did know about stuff down there, it ain’t mine. Goods move in and out. That’s how it works.”

  “I’ve got you, Rogers. Do yourself a favor and give it up.”

  “Don’t matter even if I did. You ain’t stoppin’ nothin’. If it ain’t one guy moving the goods, another will.”

  She moved again. Driving the pain she was inflicting deeper. She wasn’t going to kill him, but if she broke his arm...

  A car came barreling toward them. Chief Barco. Dane.

  And as though on cue, Rafe came sliding down the hill, too. He had to have taken his shot and run, or had already been partially down before he shot.

  “Drop the gun, Rogers,” the chief said while he and Dane approached, both pointing their nine millimeters right at the criminal’s head.

  “You ain’t gonna shoot with her right there behind me,” he said. “But I might.”

  Odin lifted his gun and pulled the trigger just as another shot rang out. Kerry felt the power of the blast of shrapnel hitting Odin’s gun, taking at least one of his fingers with it and exploding against the side of the mountain. A shot taken legally, in self-defense.

  As Odin swore loudly, gruffly, Rafe stood there, looking at his rifle like he didn’t know what it had done. Or how it had done it.

  Something else that had changed about him over the years. He’d improved his aim.

  Dane and the chief moved in, Barco having to forcibly unbend Kerry’s fingers from around Rogers’s bent arm.

  Odin Rogers stood there, his shot-up hand dripping blood while Dane slapped cuffs on him, and the chief wrapped a handkerchief around his wound.

  “Good shot, Colton, but next time, leave the shooting to us. Got it?” Chief Barco said as he started to lead the greasy murderer away from her.

  “Ha, I’ve still got the last laugh,” Rogers spit out, turning to look at her. “Cane might’ve done most of the dirty work, thinkin’ there at the end that he could squeeze me, but I’m the one who pushed your weak-assed weasel of a brother off that cliff. Him and the ranger, too.”

  The idiot had just confessed. In front of three law enforcement officers and a mostly innocent bystander.

  Like she’d known the second she’d seen Odin standing at the opening to that mine—she had him, at long last.

  * * *

  Rafe asked for his keys and was glad when Kerry handed them over to him without an argument as one of the chief’s officers arrived and drove them back to his truck. Dane had taken their prisoner into jail in the back of James’s patrol car, as the chief was staying at the mine until ATF could get there and take possession of the drugs and weapons stashed inside it.

  “I have to go into the station” were her first words to him once they were alone. Her first words to him period, other than asking him if he was all right.

  He got it. She was working the scene. Had a job to do. Protocol to follow.

  And she was avoiding...them.

  It wasn’t up to her to understand, or care, that he was still shaking from having shot at someone for the first time in his life. If he’d gone right, even a fraction...

  “I’ve got reports to write.”

  “You can shower first. Clean up.”

  “I already showered this morning and I’m fine,” she told him.

  “Your Jeep is at your place.”

  “Lizzie can run me home at lunch. Seriously, Rafe, I get that this morning was out of the norm for you and it’s not like I’m facing down guns on a regular basis, but this is my job. This is what I do. And now I have to go write it up. Besides, if you think I’m going to miss one second of Odin Rogers’s interrogation...”

  She was fired up. And covering up, too. She wouldn’t look at him. Didn’t even seem to see him, other than as the body that had helped get his truck out of the mud and was now driving the vehicle them both back to town.

  While he was needing her. And he needed to say things to her.

  “You’ll need to come in, too,” she said. “Long enough to give a statement. Not to me. You’ll need to speak with Dane. I’ll make sure he gets to you first so you can get on to your day.”

  So saying, she picked up her phone, dialed and was clearly speaking to her fellow detective as she gave her location and arranged to have Rafe present and ready for questioning in twenty minutes. About the time it was going to take for them to get to the station, park and ge
t inside.

  Not a minute to spare.

  Without speaking to him first about it. As though she was the boss.

  Which, he had to acknowledge, she probably was. He’d jumped into the investigation. He’d shot a man’s finger off. Realizing that Kerry was taking care of him as well as doing her job, he sat back and drove her into town.

  Mustang Valley Boulevard was coming to life as he pulled into town and it was odd to think that a lot of people were just having breakfast. He felt as though he’d lived a day and a half, at least, since he’d rolled out of bed that morning.

  When he parked in a visitor’s slot at the police station, Kerry reached for the door handle immediately, but he held her back with a hand on her arm. She stilled, sitting there, staring toward the dash.

  He waited until she looked him in the eye.

  “We aren’t done yet,” he said. “If nothing else we have to figure out how we go back to coexisting in the same town and stay away from each other.” If nothing else. But there was something else. He just needed a minute to figure out what it was. And what to do with it.

  She pursed her lips, her chin tight. But, still looking at him, finally nodded.

  He couldn’t stop staring at her. Couldn’t stop the flood of gratitude that she’d made it off the mountain without injury.

  “Congratulations, Ker, you got him,” he said, all the love he felt for the woman pouring out in his voice.

  Her lower lip started to tremble and she bit it. Nodded, and got out of the truck.

  Rafe followed her inside.

  * * *

  On an adrenaline high, Kerry managed to stay focused on work the rest of that morning. Two years’ worth of investigating—of sometimes being the only one believing there might be a case in her brother’s death, of pressing forward when everything pointed against her success, of spending evenings and weekends sticking things to her dining room wall and staring at them—had finally come to fruition. Everyone, from the mayor who stopped in, the chief and all of her coworkers, congratulated her. Invited her out for drinks. People in town who’d lived under the shadow of Odin Rogers, whose kids had been sucked in by the drugs he peddled, and those who’d feared their kids would be sucked in—including the high school principal—stopped in or called as the news quickly spread about the police action out on Mustang Mountain early that morning.

  She sat and listened as Odin Rogers was questioned, and tried to make a deal in exchange for turning in his suppliers. And she nodded as the chief got names out of him, without any deal on the table. Rogers had been a menace to their small town for too long to be allowed to walk free.

  She’d seen Rafe in with Dane. And she’d seen him leave.

  And she discovered that Grayson Colton had a rock-solid alibi for the night of Payne’s shooting. The first responder Colton had been on a call—a car wreck with a fatality involved. The report was already in the police database and came up as soon as she typed in his name.

  At lunchtime, after Lizzie took her to get her car, she went to the cemetery with a take-out piece of carrot cake and a chocolate chip cookie from the diner. She set the first on Tyler Sr.’s grave and the second on Tyler Jr.’s.

  Yeah, wildlife would eat them, sooner rather than later, but she delivered anyway. Whispered her love. And went back to her Jeep.

  That was when she fell apart. Sobbing, aching all over, inside and out, she cried. For her father’s broken heart, her mother’s broken dreams, her brother’s broken life. She cried because she hadn’t been able to save any of them.

  And she cried because it was over. She’d gotten what she so badly needed, what she’d spent two years of her life to get, and in so doing, had just lost the last reason for Rafe to be in her life. He’d atoned for any wrong he’d done Tyler

  Atoned and then some.

  Thinking of his last act on the mountaintop that morning, she smiled through her tears. The man was one hell of a shot. A hotshot, too. Dane had been about to deliver the bullet that would have disarmed Odin, but it probably wouldn’t have been so impressive.

  The Colton heir had also been there for her, risking his life to see that she got the justice she needed. How did a girl walk away from that?

  She’d have to be pretty dumb to do so, wouldn’t she?

  He’d said they weren’t done yet.

  She’d wanted to say, “Yes, we are,” that morning in his truck, but the words wouldn’t come.

  He wanted to be friends. To stay in touch.

  He was offering her what he had to give now. So how would she be any different than he’d been twenty-three years before, or when they both returned from college and he never got in touch, if she ignored his efforts to find a way to make them work?

  So they wouldn’t be married and live together for happily-ever-after. They could still have each other’s backs. Fight injustices.

  Maybe they could even make love once in a while. Unless that got too complicated.

  Or she could go back to just being a cop. It would hurt a lot less.

  The idea wasn’t all bad.

  Was actually kind of tempting.

  Wiping her tears away, Kerry blew her nose and started the Jeep. She had a good life. A stable one, which was something she hadn’t known growing up.

  She didn’t live with insecurity anymore. Or with anyone who worshipped substances more than the people they loved.

  And she didn’t live with the fear or worry of ever losing a loved one again. She just wasn’t sure she could do that again.

  It had taken twenty-three years for her to be in a place where she was content. Where pain and loss weren’t constant companions.

  She’d been grieving since she was a little kid. Ever since she could remember.

  She’d lost everyone. First her mom, right after Tyler was born. Rafe, at thirteen. Then her dad. And, two years before, Tyler. Add to that dealing with her Dad’s drinking and Tyler’s drugs in between—it was enough agony for a lifetime.

  Chapter 25

  As soon as he’d finished with Dane, Rafe phoned Genevieve to say he’d be late for his shift and went home to shower again. His five-hundred-dollar pants went in the trash. The cheap tennis shoes, he tucked away on the top shelf in a corner of his walk-in closet.

  He had some coffee, made a couple of business calls and then headed back into town. To the hospital, first. Up to Payne’s room.

  Callum was there, with Genevieve. Grayson had just left—Rafe had passed him in the hall downstairs. “Hey,” his lone wolf brother said as he stopped him. “What’s going on, man? You okay? I heard something come through on the radio. A call for a bus on standby...”

  As the owner of his own first responder agency that aided police, firefighters and EMTs, Grayson was privy to anything that went out on police radio communications.

  “I shot a guy’s finger off this morning,” Rafe said, when his normal inclination would have been to brush the whole thing off and move on. He wasn’t one to spill his beans to the rest of the family. His role was to be responsible, to help them, not to bring them his problems.

  “You’re the one who fired the shot that knocked the gun out of that bastard’s hand?”

  One thing about Mustang Valley: word traveled fast. Of course, Grayson was on the pipeline pretty much 24-7. The man didn’t seem to give a hoot about Colton Oil, but he cared deeply about helping others.

  “All that shooting at the range,” he said, referring to days when Payne would cart off the boys and make them stand at targets and shoot until he was satisfied that they could all defend themselves, or each other, if the need ever arose.

  Having money made them targets, he’d told them.

  Could have had something to do with the reason Callum had become a Navy SEAL and then an elite bodyguard, Grayson a first responder. They might not be following in Payne’s footsteps or choosing
the path he’d have chosen for them. But they were products of his teachings, just the same.

  “Just glad you’re okay, man,” Grayson said. “I’m on my way out, but I want to hear about how you ended up on the mountain in the first place,” he called back as he headed down the hall.

  He was going to have to answer to the family. He knew that.

  But first things first. Genevieve and Callum were waiting for him.

  “Can I have a few minutes alone with him?” he asked after hearing the night’s report. No change. Again.

  Callum offered to take his mother out to breakfast and home to shower and rest. Ainsley was due in shortly.

  And then he was alone with the man who’d shaped pretty much his entire life.

  Pulling a chair up close, Rafe leaned his elbows on his knees and looked at the craggy, weathered features that he’d at times both revered and feared.

  “We need to talk,” he said. “And before you start to take control of the conversation, I have to tell you that I’m just not open to that this time around.”

  The doctor had said there was every chance the man could hear them. He wasn’t going to coddle him because he was lying in a bed.

  Chances were, knowing Payne Colton, he’d rejoin them only when he was ready.

  And would not only remember all the conversations that went on around him, but would hold others accountable for them, too.

  “When I was eight years old, you brought me into your study to tell me that I had to call you something. That it wasn’t right that I never referred to you by a name, or called you a name. That you had to be someone to me. At the time, you told me that you wanted me to call you Dad, like the rest of the Colton children under your roof. But you gave me the option not to do so,” he said, remembering those moments so clearly.

  “It was one of the few times you actually gave me a choice, about anything, in my life. You know, my memories of my own father have faded some over the years, but one thing I remember clearly is that he always involved me in the decisions that affected our little family. So, yeah, looking back, maybe he was posing the situation to me in a way that would lead me to the decision he wanted me to make, but the point was, I always felt like I was consulted. That I had choices. And then, once made, I had to be accountable for them.”