The Colton Ransom

by Marie Ferrarella

  “You do have a point,” Gabby conceded.

  “I usually do,” he told her.

  Silently, Gabby agreed. No use giving the man a swelled head, she reasoned with a smile.

  Her smile did not go unnoticed. Trevor could feel his stomach muscles contracting, even as he tried to ignore the woman in the truck’s cab and the eroding effect she had on his defenses. It was beginning to feel like a losing battle.

  Chapter 12

  “How dare you,” Darla railed when Trevor began to question her. The almost anorexic-looking woman looked as if she wanted to rake her long, scarlet-tipped fingernails down his face. “How dare you suggest that I had anything to do with killing that poor woman, Faith—”

  “Faye,” Gabby corrected tersely. Leave it to Darla not to even know the name of a woman who was far more of a fixture in the Colton household than she ever was. “Her name was Faye.”

  Darla’s eyes narrowed and a scowl turned her attractive, carefully made-up face into a mask of hatred that sent the lesser household staff cowering as they hurried away.

  “Her name was mud as far as I was concerned. That woman was always looking down her nose at me, like that nothing of a nanny thought she was better than I was,” Darla fumed angrily, pacing around the sitting room of her living quarters at the far side of the mansion. There was no mistaking the fact that she resented being questioned about something so trivial as the murder of a lowly staff member.

  Trevor’s intense, dark blue eyes pinned her in place. Gabby was confident that had Darla had a lesser inflated sense of self, she would have been squirming beneath his scrutiny. “You realize that so far, you’re painting yourself into a corner, don’t you?” Trevor pointed out, his voice a harsh whisper.

  If anything, Darla’s haughty tone increased, reinforced by defensiveness. “I hated her guts and I’m not shedding any tears that she’s dead—but I didn’t murder the woman,” she declared, enunciating every syllable carefully, as if she were dealing with someone with a limited IQ. “I was at the rodeo. Hundreds of people saw me,” she maintained with confidence.

  Her father’s latest ex was either innocent or exceedingly brazen, Gabby thought. At the moment, she wasn’t quite sure which it was.

  “That’s because you were throwing yourself at that bronco buster,” Tawny taunted her mother. Physically, the young woman was almost a carbon copy of her mother, albeit younger, a fact that both amused and annoyed Darla, depending on the situation.

  “I was flirting with Travis—” Darla’s lofty tone was tinged with annoyance—it was obvious that she didn’t care to be judged, least of all by her own offspring “—not ‘throwing myself’ at him. If you had any successful relationships of your own, you would have known the difference.”

  Tawny frowned. “Oh, and what kind of ‘successful relationships’ have you had, Mother dear?” Tawny sneered at her mother.

  Trevor got in between the two women. “Okay, ladies, sheathe those claws of yours, please. I don’t need to witness a cat fight.” He turned toward Darla. “These ‘hundreds’ of people who saw you, did you get any of their names?”

  Her smile turned wicked. “I’ve got Travis,” she volunteered triumphantly.

  Travis was a common enough name in this area. “What’s his last name?” Trevor asked, taking out a well-worn, tiny notebook. He turned to an empty page, then looked at her, waiting.

  “Well, you’ve got me there,” Darla confessed with a dismissive laugh that clearly said her word for it should have been enough for him. “But he told me he was riding tomorrow, so you can catch him then.”

  “I can be her alibi,” Tawny volunteered. “And she can be mine,” she added, pleased with herself that she had brilliantly thwarted any need to question her regarding the murder of the woman she disliked simply because she disliked everyone within the Colton household she believed regarded her as an outsider. “We were together most of the time,” she added.

  Given a choice, Trevor wouldn’t have believed either one of the women, but the law didn’t work that way, allowing him to pick what he wanted to believe and turn down what he didn’t. Until proven otherwise, he had to believe that mother and daughter were out in plain sight. Of course, that didn’t automatically mean that they hadn’t prevailed on someone else to kidnap what they believed to be the infant heiress.

  However, if they, or anyone else connected to the Colton household, were involved in the homicide and abduction, then perforce they knew they had the wrong baby. That would explain why there still had been no ransom demand—and could also mean that his daughter was already a casualty—or would be one very soon.

  He couldn’t allow himself to think about that. Gabby was right. To believe that would be to invite total paralysis to set in. He’d be no good to Avery or to himself that way.

  Trevor cleared his throat. “How about Trip?” he wanted to know.

  “What about him?” Darla asked suspiciously.

  His patience clearly on the wane, Trevor asked, “What’s his alibi?”

  “Why, he was with us the entire time, of course,” Darla informed him. Her implication was that he had to be a mental midget to think otherwise. “That boy wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  Flies, no, Gabby thought. But people, well, that’s another story. As far as she was concerned, her former stepbrother had a mean streak to go along with his all-consuming laziness. Trip was actively working at not being employed in any capacity. So far, he’d been successful in his efforts.

  Thinking along the same lines brought Trevor to the logical question of where did Trip get his money? The so-called allowance Jethro grudgingly gave the woman he had married in haste only went so far. A kidnapping plot didn’t seem all that far-fetched for someone who seemed to be allergic to work, yet had expensive tastes.

  Trevor was fairly certain that “Mama” was only indulgent to a minor degree—as long as it didn’t cut into her own funds, funds she’d made clear more than once did not begin to cover what Darla felt constituted her basic needs.

  “The entire time?” Gabby echoed, the expression on her face challenging the other woman’s assertion.

  Darla’s eyes narrowed in response to what she obviously felt was her ex-stepdaughter’s hostile, probing question. “That’s what I said.”

  “Even the time you were flirting with the bronco buster?” Gabby pressed.

  Rather than answer, Darla resorted to what she perceived was a threat. “Am I going to have to have my lawyer speak to you on my behalf?” She directed the question to Trevor, deliberately ignoring her former stepdaughter.

  If it was meant to snub her, Gabby took no notice—or offense. “You have a divorce lawyer, Darla,” Gabby pointedly reminded the woman. “He doesn’t handle criminal cases.”

  “Then you are actually accusing me of having something to do with that horrible business?” she demanded, her amber eyes sweeping from Gabby to Trevor.

  “No one’s accusing anyone of anything—yet,” Gabby couldn’t resist saying, realizing that she was cutting in on Trevor’s territory but unable to stop herself. Darla literally made her angry enough to see red at times. In the best of times, she didn’t get along with the woman—and these were not the best of times. “But if either of you—or Trip—heard or saw anything that could help recover the missing baby, it might go a long way in smoothing out possible future—let’s say problems,” she added euphemistically.

  “You mean like a get-out-of-jail-free card,” Tawny suggested.

  “Something like that,” Gabby agreed vaguely. If life was like a Monopoly game, she added silently—which it wasn’t.

  Tawny paused, as though rolling something over in her mind. Then she announced, “I saw Duke Johnson talking to someone on his phone and then he just up and left real quick-like. He looked pretty tense. Does that count?” the young woman asked.

  “What time was this?” Trevor asked pointedly, deliberately not answering Tawny’s question.

  “About noon,” the youn
g woman estimated after another lengthy pause. “I remember because it was just before the bronco buster Mother’s been hanging all over went to compete.”

  That was within the window of time when Avery had gone missing, Trevor thought. There was, however, just one little thing that was wrong with this scenario. “We already talked to Duke yesterday and he’d got someone to verify his alibi. When he took off like that, he told us he was going to meet up with one of the maids, Clara Peterson.”

  Tawny appeared completely unfazed and shrugged one indifferent shoulder. “Well, that’s the only thing I noticed that looked odd. Duke had this look on his face that said he was afraid of something, and if you ask me, it had nothing to do with Clara. That woman’s about as scary as a church mouse.”

  They’d already checked with Clara, and she had backed up Duke’s claim that he was with her during the time that Faye was murdered and Avery was kidnapped. The maid had appeared a little nervous at the time, but that could easily be attributed to her reaction—along with everyone else’s—to Faye’s murder and to being a momentary suspect.

  “We could always check her out again,” Gabby suggested to Trevor once they left Darla and her daughter’s quarters.

  “Probably a waste of time,” he speculated, dismissing the idea.

  But Gabby wasn’t so quick to do the same. “What does your gut tell you?” she asked. When he looked at her quizzically, she elaborated her choice of words. “You were a cop in Cheyenne. Cops are supposed to develop a kind of sixth sense about things after they’ve been on the job awhile.”

  That, he’d always felt, was based on part fact, part myth. At least in his case. “Right now, my gut and I aren’t on speaking terms,” he told her.

  That was because he was blocking it, she surmised. Concern about his daughter’s fate was undoubtedly getting in the way of the way he normally conducted his investigations. It was understandable since he had such a vested, personal interest in the ultimate outcome of this scenario.

  “Maybe you should try listening a little harder,” Gabby suggested.

  His normal reaction to that kind of input would have been to become defensive, but he knew that she was only trying to help.

  “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to talk to Johnson again,” he allowed. “Although this could just be something that your stepsister made up to throw attention and suspicion off her mother and the rest of her family.”

  “There is that,” Gabby willingly agreed. “And just for the record,” she went on to correct him, “Tawny is my ex-stepsister.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He was quite clear on the family dynamics—and also on the fact that the family proper—meaning her two sisters and Gabby—had absolutely no use for the scheming woman and her like-minded adult children.

  “Sorry.” He saw the surprised look that came over her features. “What?”

  She was genuinely surprised—and pleased. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you apologize before.”

  “Maybe I’ve never been wrong before,” he pointed out drolly.

  She laughed and shook her head. “Being wrong and knowing it would make you human—and we all know you’re superhuman. What was I thinking?”

  “My guess is that you weren’t thinking,” he deadpanned, then grew serious. “Listen, I’m going to go talk to Duke again, just to be sure.”

  She read her own interpretation to what was implied between the lines. “I get the feeling that I’m being ‘uninvited’ to the party.”

  “No need for both of us to go. I figure you’d want to go to the hospital and look in on your father, see how he’s doing.” He refrained from saying anything specific, such as whether or not the old man was still in a coma or if he was deteriorating.

  A shaft of guilt swooped through her. She had got so caught up in the investigation and trying to locate Avery, as well as Faye’s killer, she had almost forgotten that her father wasn’t home but still in the hospital. God willing, he was conscious, but neither one of her sisters had called to say that he’d taken a turn for the better. Had it been for the worse, she knew her sisters. As long as their father wasn’t on the cusp of having his health take a nosedive, they wouldn’t call to tell her to come. They felt she worried too much as it was.

  “Good idea,” she agreed. She needed to see for herself how her father was doing and to corner a doctor about his prognosis—if that was possible. “We’ll hook up again in a couple of hours,” she told Trevor—then suddenly realized that she’d slipped and used a phrase that implied a great deal more than just meeting up with the man again. She struggled not to turn red. “I mean—”

  He pretended not to hear her attempt at backtracking, just as he pretended not to know what the phrase she’d unintentionally used meant.

  Ignoring the rather cute, endearing hue that was struggling to take over her face was a bit more difficult. Not that he liked seeing her uncomfortable, but the fact that something so negligible could embarrass her to this extent struck him as rather innocent and sweet. Women like that—he’d believed up until yesterday—didn’t exist anymore.

  Again he caught himself thinking that Gabby was rather unique as well as sensually attractive.

  “I’ll see you later,” he agreed, his tone leaving no room for any further verbal exchange.

  He didn’t have time for the thoughts that kept trying to break in, thoughts that took Gabby’s misspoken words and elaborated on them, creating images of what an actual “hookup” with her would have involved.

  Hookups by definition implied casual encounters, and he was getting the very distinct feeling that there was nothing casual about that sort of an encounter if it occurred with Gabby. He’d initially labeled her a bleeding-heart airhead, but he was willing—at least privately—to admit that he’d misjudged her. She didn’t possess a bleeding heart, she had a big heart and she was most definitely not an airhead. Contrarily, she had a good head on her shoulders.

  She was most definitely not the type to engage in casual or whimsical sex. He rather liked that. When she played, he had the feeling it was for keeps. But, whether he liked that or not, whether he admired that or not, she deserved someone who felt the same way, who could commit to her. A man who wasn’t damaged goods and didn’t come with a truckload of baggage.

  You’ve got no time for this, remember? he reminded himself. His daughter needed him and she needed him to be clear thinking.

  There’d be time for the rest of it—if there was a rest of it, Trevor promised himself, after he brought Avery home.

  * * *

  Gabby’s visit with her father at the hospital was relatively brief, but still fairly upsetting. He’d regained consciousness but he hadn’t changed his mind concerning his future. He was just as staunchly determined not to have any treatment for his condition as he had been before he’d relapsed into a coma.

  When she’d tried to reason with him and tried to get him to tell her just why he was refusing to seek treatment, her father had said something that she thought wasn’t like him at all. He’d told her that maybe he didn’t deserve to go on living and that it was time he “checked out.”

  Gabby tried to get him to be more specific and explain why he felt he deserved a death sentence. He refused to say any more on the subject other than it was his life to do with as he wished and that she and her sisters had absolutely no say in the matter.

  Since she couldn’t get him to change his mind and arguing with him was not only frustrating but emotionally taxing, Gabby left the hospital before she broke down in tears. She knew that her father had no use for tears, that he thought women who cried were emotional lightweights and that tears were meant to be manipulative. He’d made it abundantly clear that he was not about to be manipulated by her or anyone.

  Desperation had Gabby making a detour before returning to the ranch. She went to seek help from a doctor.

  Specifically, she went to see Levi.

  Levi was her older half brother, a product of an affair her father had had wh
en he was still married to his first wife, Brittany. Jethro had never married Levi’s mother, but that didn’t change the fact that he was her half brother and she considered him family—at times, hostile family due to the way her father had treated him, but still family.

  Her father certainly had got around in years past, Gabby thought as she pulled her car up before the hospital where Levi was currently doing his residency. Unlike her ne’er-do-well ex-stepsiblings, her half brother had made something of himself despite the disadvantages that faced him and the fact that his birth father felt his obligation to the child he’d sired was limited to a specified sum of money that was sent at regular intervals while Levi was an adolescent.

  Levi and she, along with her sisters, knew one another and enjoyed a cordial, if somewhat distant, relationship.

  Right now, however, Gabby was determined to get Levi to be something other than distant. Her father needed to receive treatment for his condition if he wanted to prolong his life. She couldn’t accept that he wouldn’t want to live longer. She was pinning all her hopes of getting her father to come around and act sensibly on Levi. Maybe if a physician who was also his son pointed out how foolish he was being, her father would finally listen and change his mind.

  What she hadn’t counted on was the fact that her father wasn’t the only one who needed convincing when it came to this matter.

  “You want me to do what?” Levi asked after she’d all but burst her way into the office he shared with several other doctors. His hazel eyes narrowed beneath a wayward thatch of dirty-blond hair. Was she serious?

  “I want you to talk to Dad and make him get those chemo treatments. Convince him that if he doesn’t, he’s going to die. I don’t think he really understands that or how serious the situation is. I know the disease has progressed, but at least this way, there might be some tiny bit of hope that maybe he can live longer than the doctor he’d consulted had predicted. If Dad refuses to get any treatment, then there is no hope at all.”

  Gabby was all but pleading with the man sitting at the desk before her. But even though every fiber of her being was involved in this supplication, she had a feeling that her words were falling on fairly deaf ears, just the way they did when she tried to reason with her father. Levi’s expression hadn’t changed any since she’d begun talking. If anything, it looked as if it had actually hardened.