The Missing Colton

by Loreth Anne White

  Jagger stilled. “Kidnapping?” He feigned a frown. “You don’t mean...the Cole kidnapping you were telling me about?”

  She sighed heavily. “No. A recent one.”

  “What?”

  “You should eat.”

  “I can eat and listen.”

  Mia seated herself in the wingback chair under the window, looking suddenly drained. Compassion slid through Jagger. She’d been through a lot this morning, too.

  “See?” He said lowering himself to the edge of the bed and picking up the spoon. “Eating. Listening.”

  She gave a soft snort, but he could detect a smile teasing her lips.

  “Is that my stuff?” He jerked his chin to the pile of clothes on the chair as he scooped up a spoonful of soup.

  She nodded. “I kept them in case the police want to take a look, for evidence or something.”

  Great. He hoped it wasn’t going to be Hank Drucker from the diner.

  “Tell me about the recent kidnapping,” Jagger said, taking a mouthful of soup. If he was going to keep up this amnesia ruse, he needed someone to present him with information he’d otherwise have no way of knowing.

  “About nine weeks ago, someone anonymously offered one of the ranch hands—Duke Johnson—cash to kidnap Jethro Colton’s granddaughter for ransom. Duke broke into the nursery when most of the family and staff were away at the annual rodeo. But Faye was in the nursery, surprising him. Duke shot her dead in a panic before taking the baby in the crib.”

  Jagger swallowed his soup, staring at her. “So they did arrest him?”

  Mia nodded. “But he claims he doesn’t know who sent him the note offering him money for the kidnapping.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Well, that’s his story and he appears to be sticking to it. And that’s all the cops have to date, as far as we know. The irony is that Duke took the wrong baby. Jethro Colton’s youngest daughter, Gabby, had offered to babysit Avery, the infant daughter of Trevor Garth—he’s the head of security here. Avery is the same age as Cheyenne and Gabby had put her to sleep in Cheyenne’s crib. When Duke broke in, he assumed Avery was Cheyenne, and took her instead. This fact was kept from the media to keep Avery safe.”

  Jagger whistled softly. This was good. Already he had something he could use. He spooned up some more soup, careful not to rush Mia, to rouse suspicion.

  She leaned forward, resting her arms on her knees. Her braid swung forward over her shoulder. “You know what’s weird? Cole Colton was kidnapped from this very same house, also right out of the crib in his nursery.”

  He swallowed another mouthful, his mind racing. “So you think there’s a connection between the two kidnappings, then?”

  “I have no idea—it’s what some people think, although I can’t imagine what the connection would be. In Cheyenne’s case, the motive appears to have been ransom. In Cole’s case, there was no ransom note at all.”

  “Could someone have been trying to hurt Jethro personally by taking his son, then?”

  Mia studied him in silence as she entertained this possibility. “Could be,” she said very quietly. “Levi seems to think Jethro knows more than he’s letting on about what happened thirty years ago.”

  Jagger’s pulse quickened. “How so?”

  But Mia clammed up suddenly. She got to her feet. “They’re my employers, Cole. And you could be his son. Or... I really shouldn’t be speaking about them at all.” She went to the closet and took out a small flashlight.

  “You’re talking to me as if I am Cole.”

  She shrugged, her back to him. “Better than calling you John Doe, no?’

  “Mia?”

  She turned to face him.

  “I guess I need to thank you for saving my life,” he said.

  She looked momentarily ruffled. “That’s my job, Cole.”

  “Not necessarily—”

  “It is,” she said, coming up to him with the flashlight. “I worked as an E.R. nurse before coming here. And I volunteered for Search and Rescue. I went into nursing precisely because I wanted to save lives. I felt I could make a real difference there. Patients come into emergency broken, dying, desperate, and sometimes you can put them back together. You go home at the end of each day feeling you did something meaningful.”

  Jagger stared at her. She was beautiful to him, in more ways than one.

  She sat on the bed beside him. “I need to check your pupillary response again, do you mind”?

  He turned to face her. He could smell her shampoo again, and it hit Jagger—he’d been imagining someone just like Mia back in the diner when he’d thought of sunshine and shampoo. Happy mornings. The thought sent a weird chill down his spine.

  “What is it?” she said. “You look like you just saw a ghost—did you remember something?”

  “I...I don’t know. It was just a feeling.”

  “What kind of feeling?”

  “Nothing, it was nothing.”

  She eyed him, then nodded. “Look up to your right.”

  He did and she shone the light into his eyes. “Follow the light.”

  He blinked against the brightness and followed the small beam as she moved across his field of vision. Her lips were close. Her chest was rising and falling softly as she breathed. Jagger felt a warmth stir deep in his groin. He might have been hit on the head, but he was still all male, and he was responding to this woman so close to him. He wondered what it would be like to kiss that mouth, part her soft lips.

  She paused suddenly, and Jagger knew she’d seen his sexual interest in the widening of his pupils. Her breathing quickened, and she stood up, clearing her throat.

  “Looks good,” she said crisply. But Jagger noticed her cheeks had gone pink. She was physically attracted to him, too.

  “Do you think you’re up to visiting Jethro Colton now?” she said. “He’s asked to see you—he says he recognizes the baby blanket.”

  “He does?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  She hesitated. “That’s a long time ago to recognize a blanket.”

  “It is,” he replied, wondering who in hell had planted it on him, and where it had been all these years. If Cole Colton was abducted while swaddled in that same blanket, and his attacker had been in possession of it, he probably also knew what had happened to the baby all those years ago.

  Or he could be the kidnapper himself.

  “And the photo?” Jagger asked. “Did Jethro recognize that, too?”

  She snorted. “We all did. It’s identical to one he has framed in his sitting room.”

  That meant any number of people in the diner could have recognized that photo, too, especially if they were connected to the ranch, or had been here.

  Perhaps they remembered the photo from old newspaper reports about the Cole Colton kidnapping. Jagger had, after all, copied the photo from one of those old news files that had been digitized, and he’d had it printed onto photographic paper.

  “Why do you think Jethro stopped looking for his son?”

  Her gaze shot to him and a slight frown furrowed into her brow. “I don’t know that he did—I don’t know all the details. It was a long time ago.”

  Jagger was quiet awhile. “If it was my son, I’d never give up.”

  She studied him, as if seeing him anew. “You know this about yourself?”

  “I know this about myself,” he said quietly. “I don’t know how, but I just do.”

  Mia was silent, something shifting through her eyes and features. And Jagger could tell she liked this about him.

  “You ready to go up now?”

  He got to his feet. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Take my arm if you feel wobbl
y, okay?” She paused, looking him intently in his eyes. “And Cole, please, you have got to tell me if you feel nauseous. You took a bad knock to the skull. Bleeding on the brain is silent, it can happen fast and it can kill you. Got that?”

  He inhaled deeply. “Yeah,” he said. “I got that.”

  But as they were about to move, a knock sounded on the door and it swung open wide.

  Police Chief Hank Drucker filled the doorway with his burly frame.

  “Chief Drucker?” Mia said, startled.

  The chief ignored her, his narrow-set eyes locked solely on Jagger.

  “Trevor Garth said we’d find you in here.” The chief stepped into the room and it seemed to shrink around him. The man was not tall, but he was wide and he had a way of sucking up space.

  Jagger remained silent as he met the chief’s stare.

  A slender male officer with blond hair entered behind Drucker

  “Officer Deluca,” Mia said. “Good to see you again.” She sounded facetious, but her tone was lost on the blond cop who shot her a happy grin before quickly returning his attention to his boss.

  “So,” Drucker said, standing in the center of the infirmary, thumbs hooked into the belt. “We meet again.”

  * * *

  “You said he was dead,” the voice on the phone said.

  “I thought he was—I couldn’t feel a pulse!”

  “What kind of person can’t feel a pulse on a live man?”

  “It was cold, my fingers were numb.”

  The person on the other end of the line swore. “It was supposed to look like Cole had returned, but was mugged and killed in the field, dammit. Then all these questions, this interest in what happened thirty years ago would have stopped. For good.”

  “What about forensics? A pathologist would have discovered the body wasn’t Cole’s.”

  “I had a way of dealing with that.”

  “How? Getting rid of the body? After everyone had seen it? I don’t see how th—”

  “That’s not your concern! I’m not paying you think, understand?”

  Silence.

  “You screwed up. And you’re just damn lucky he lost his memory in the process. Now you need to finish the job and kill him before his memory can return, and before they figure out he’s not Cole. If not, we’re screwed. Got it?”

  Silence.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Are you sure he’s not the real Cole Colton? I mean—”

  “He’s not.”

  “How do you know?”

  But the phone went dead.

  Chapter 4

  “What do you mean, ‘we meet again’?” Jagger said, his gaze going to the portable fingerprint case in the blond cop’s hand. His mouth went dry.

  The last time he’d had prints taken was prior to shipping out to Afghanistan where he was to be embedded with a military unit. He wondered if Drucker would have access to the military record of his prints. His juvie record was sealed, but Jagger had also been fingerprinted while he was a journalism student. He’d been outside the United Nations in New York, protesting the Iranian government’s imprisoning of a female journalist. When police tried to move him, he’d resisted and was arrested.

  It was a just a matter of time until Hank Drucker learned from his prints that he was Jagger McKnight, that the Montana license was fake and his cover as amnesiac Cole Colton would be blown.

  Ticktock. The clock had started.

  Outwardly, Jagger remained calm, a blank look on his face.

  “We met at the Dead River Diner,” Chief Drucker said, his eyes dissecting Jagger. “You were in around six, having a burger and beer. You claimed you’d come looking for work at Dead River Ranch.”

  Claimed. The chief obviously hadn’t bought that story. Jagger gave no reaction.

  The chief took a step closer to Jagger. Mistake, because it forced the man to look up at him, which gave Jagger a psychological advantage.

  “You were asking a lot of pointed questions about the Coltons and the kidnappings,” the chief said.

  Mia’s eyes flashed to Jagger and she frowned.

  But Jagger continued his blank stare. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”

  Mia stepped forward. “Look, Chief Drucker, my patient has no memory of who he is. The injury to his head has caused amnesia.”

  My patient.

  She was taking this personally, aligning herself with him in a subtle way, standing up for him against this cop. Jagger warmed further to her. He could use Mia on his side. She was not part of the Colton clan, and as both the family and ranch nurse she was in a unique position. She could be a good intermediary for him if he could keep her trust.

  “Levi Colton has informed me what happened, Miss Sanders,” the chief said coolly, not bothering to glance Mia’s way. In his peripheral vision Jagger saw Mia bristle visibly at the chief’s pointed use of the word “Miss.” He also noticed Mia immediately raising her left hand to waist level where she began to worry an empty ring finger with her thumb. A nervous tick? Or something more?

  Jagger was an acute observer—it was part of the reason he’d become one of the top foreign correspondents and investigative journalists out there. Until last year.

  Until he’d been unable to break professional rules he’d once lived by.

  “You don’t recall anything about the diner?”

  Jagger cleared his throat, pulling his mind out of the past. “No, I don’t remember anything prior to waking up in this infirmary.”

  “Chief Drucker,” Mia said, her voice strident and tight now, her thumb still urgently worrying her empty ring finger. “I don’t know how to be more clear—my patient has suffered a serious blow to the head that left him in a coma for several hours. He does not recall his name or where he comes from. This is not entirely unusual. His amnesia could be short term, or it could take longer for his memory to return. There’s a remote chance it might even be permanent—he has evidence of a prior head injury, which could have complicated things. We’ll know more after tests tomorrow.”

  Still ignoring Mia the chief said, “And you had no ID on your person?”

  “Obviously you’ve already been briefed by the Coltons,” Mia said crisply. “In that case you already know about this man’s lack of ID. Besides, I was the one who found him, not Levi Colton. I was the one who searched his pockets. And there was nothing in them apart from a strip of blue baby blanket and an old photograph. I presume Levi and Jethro have told you this already?”

  Chief Drucker turned to Mia now, his thick neck flushing with the redness of irritation.

  “We’ll take your statement separately, Miss Sanders. Outside.”

  She inhaled and her mouth flattened as if to bite back a retort. Her eyes glittered and her cheeks turned pink. Jagger liked her fire—this woman might appear soft and gentle on the outside, but inside she had spine and a temper. He found this heat in her sexy. He imagined she’d be good in bed, and the errant thought shocked him. But it was there now, lodged in his brain, coloring everything when he looked at her. And as he stared at her, his vision swirled. The room started to spin... Jagger’s knees buckled slightly under him and he staggered sideways, reaching out to balance himself on the back of a chair.

  He bent over. His heart was racing, his skin hot. A thread of fear stabbed through him. He might be feigning amnesia, but his head was spinning like a fairground top.

  Mia rushed forward, taking his arm. She hooked it over her shoulders and using her body to take the brunt of his weight, she eased him toward the bed and helped him lower into a sitting position.

  Jagger put his head between his knees, defeat washing through his body—his injury was real. He was weak. How much damage had that horse and rider actually done to him?

  Bleedi
ng on the brain is silent, it can happen fast and it can kill you, got that...

  Mia spun to face the police. “You need to leave. Now.”

  The cops remained unmoving, watching. She ignored them, bending toward Jagger, her fingers feeling for his pulse. “Tell me what’s happening,” she said softly, near his ear, her ponytail falling forward over her shoulder. He could smell pine, lemons. He could hear ocean surf, feel sunshine. He could see his old home in the Florida trailer park, then the face his biological mother in California. Confusion spiraled through him as time and memories twisted in on themselves again.

  “Just...dizzy,” he said. “Confused.”

  “Nausea?”

  He shook his head. She looked worried.

  “You shouldn’t stand for too long or move too fast yet—you lost a fair bit of blood, Cole.” She checked her watch as she counted the beats of his heart. Her fingers were soft, cool. He could see the small charm affixed to the gold chain around her neck. The charm nestled between her breasts, pulsing slightly with the beat of her own heart. Jagger fought a desire to just lean into her breasts, her scent, let her envelop him, yield his months of fatigue and mental pain into her care. His eyes burned with the thought. The need. And he hated himself for it.

  Jagger had not allowed anyone to care for him—truly comfort and hold him—since he was nine years old. He had not allowed himself to open his heart to love after the P.I. found him in the Florida trailer park he’d once called home. The cops had brought a social worker with them to tell him that he was not Chase Smithers, as he’d always believed. And that the woman who’d raised him was not his biological mother, but a wanted criminal. She’d been part of a carjacking ring that had taken his real parents’ sedan before the thieves had realized he was inside, strapped into a baby seat in back.

  His little life had been ripped apart that day the cops came, and he’d never really figured how to put certain pieces together again. And this sudden, raw need overpowering Jagger now tilted his world dangerously off-kilter. It was as if he’d arrived at some kind of tipping point, and he’d exhausted all mental and physical resources. He hadn’t lost his memory, but he might as well have—because right now he did not know himself at all. He felt suddenly, oddly, lost.