The Colton Marine

by Lisa Childs

  “Of course,” she said as if it meant nothing to her that she’d given her own child a concussion. “Who else did you think would have?”

  “I didn’t know if you had help...”

  “I told you my children are no help to me at all.” She uttered a self-pitying sigh. “They are more a hindrance. A nuisance. A betrayal.”

  “I meant a man,” Edith clarified. “You’ve been known to use them.”

  Livia smiled. “Yes, I have. That’s another way you’ve disappointed me, Edith. A woman as beautiful as you are should be using men, not the other way around.”

  Edith tensed and the ropes tightened around her torso. “You know River was using me.”

  “I know he was searching for something down here,” Livia remarked. “That was why I hit him. I should have killed him...” She clicked her tongue against her teeth, making a tsk sound. “And your boss, the new owner of La Bonne Vie, he’s been using you, as well.”

  Now the woman was just trying to upset her. She was tormenting her. But Edith had to know. “What has River been searching for?”

  Livia shrugged. “I don’t know for certain—except that it wasn’t money. He wouldn’t have become a Marine if he were at all interested in money.”

  A pang struck Edith’s heart as she realized how wrong she’d been to accuse River of that. He was no mercenary. He was a hero. “So what was he looking for...?”

  “Since weak old Wes Kingston fessed up to not being River’s father, I imagine he’s been looking for his identity.”

  “What?” she asked, shocked at the revelation. Claudia had just found out she wasn’t a Colton at all. Was anyone whom Edith thought they were? And why hadn’t River told her?

  Livia stepped closer and pressed the barrel of her gun against Edith’s temple. She was, unfortunately, everything she was rumored to be—a cold-blooded, psychotic killer.

  Edith sucked in a breath as fear overwhelmed her. She tried to wriggle free of her bindings but the restraints were too tight for her to escape. She could only close her eyes as Livia pulled the trigger.

  But nothing happened. There was no blast of gunfire. No pain. Just Livia’s soft chuckle. “You’re not worth the bullet, honey.”

  Edith gasped at the woman’s cruelty and opened her eyes to stare up into the beautiful face of such madness.

  “I’ll just leave you here to die of dehydration. No one will ever find you.”

  But Edith could see around Livia’s slender frame. One of the monitors showed motion as two men rushed in the front door. Livia turned and saw the monitors and cursed.

  “That damn son of mine can’t stop playing hero...”

  River. River had come to rescue her.

  Livia lifted her gun. “Guess I will have to make him stop...permanently.”

  “No!” Edith shouted.

  But it was too late. Livia was already pushing a button that opened the wall onto another room. The one where she’d struck her son. Would she shoot him there, as well?

  * * *

  Fury gripped Livia. She was tired of running. But she found herself rushing along the passageway that would lead out of La Bonne Vie to the acres surrounding it. River had nearly caught her out there one night—when he’d been riding.

  But she’d eluded him then, just like she would elude him now. He had found some of the secret rooms but he knew nothing about the tunnels. No one did.

  “Stop!” a male voice shouted.

  Livia stopped—in shock. She must not have slipped through the door quickly enough. The one leading to the tunnels was at the back of the furnace room. He must have seen her heading to it when he’d opened the basement door.

  It wasn’t River calling after her, though. But the voice was eerily similar and familiar. She could have started running again, but she was too intrigued. She had to turn back and face the man who’d bought her home. This was the voice she’d heard on the speakers when Edith had talked to her boss—to Declan. And she’d recognized it because he’d sounded so much like her former lawyer.

  His appearance jarred her—for just a moment. It was as if she were looking at a ghost. “You look so much like your father,” she murmured. Matthew Sinclair had been a handsome man; that was why she’d had to have him. It hadn’t mattered to her that he was married.

  It had mattered to him, though. He’d had a conscience. That had been a surprise and a disappointment. Lawyers didn’t often have consciences, especially the ones who’d worked for her.

  “You must be smart like him, too,” she mused—to have acquired the wealth it had taken to buy La Bonne Vie.

  The son was probably about the age the man had been when she’d seduced him. There would be no seducing Declan Sinclair, though.

  He stared at her with hatred hardening his green eyes. There was something else on his handsome face, as well—something very akin to what she’d told Edith she’d been feeling: disappointment.

  She chuckled. “Am I not the monster you thought I’d be?” she asked him.

  He shook his head. “Not at all,” he said. “In fact, you’re rather pathetic.”

  Fury coursed through her. Nobody called Livia Colton pathetic. She raised her gun and squeezed the trigger. Unfortunately for Declan Sinclair, she’d only had one empty chamber.

  Chapter 23

  The gunshots echoed throughout the basement. River flinched, thinking of them striking Edith. He couldn’t tell from where the shots emanated. Declan had headed to one end of the basement by the utility room, while he had headed toward the wine cellar. The shots reverberated, sounding as if they came from every direction.

  He flashed back—for just a moment—to all those missions he’d carried out. And to all the casualties he’d carried off the battlefield. He closed his eye. But he didn’t see the faces of fallen comrades. He saw Edith’s beautiful face, her brown eyes staring lifelessly up at him.

  He shuddered and shook off the thought. He wasn’t going to lose her. He focused on the gunfire. It almost seemed to be coming from behind the wall of that room where he’d been struck. He’d found one room off that—but that one was empty. He realized now that he’d missed a hidden door. He touched the stone wall and felt it vibrate beneath his hands.

  His heart pounded in his chest, it beat so violently. Was Edith being shot to death right now?

  Where the hell had Declan gone? Not that River needed his help. He only needed Edith—needed to make sure she was all right. He clawed at the wall until he found the latch and the door propelled open, scraping across the concrete floor.

  Edith lay on the floor, slamming the chair to which she was tied against the concrete. She’d broken off a chair leg while scraping up her own skin.

  He dropped to the ground next to her and reached out to her with shaking hands. “Are you all right?”

  Her hair had tangled around her face. He pushed it off, finding it damp with the tears that streamed from her brown eyes.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. “No. I thought—I thought she was shooting you.”

  “Who?” he asked. But he knew...

  The gunfire had stopped, leaving an eerie silence. Edith broke it with the name she uttered. “Livia...”

  “She was in here, with you?” That was where he’d heard the shots.

  Edith shook her head again.

  It was all she could move, River realized. He reached for the ropes binding her. When the knots wouldn’t give, he pulled out a pocketknife and used the short blade to saw through them and free her. The skin of her wrists and ankles was raw where the ropes had scraped her. He imagined her stomach was, too, from the rope that had been wound around her and the chair. He gently moved his fingers across her wrists, trying to restore the circulation in her hands.

 
Her fingers moved, as she reached up and ran them across his face. “I thought she killed you,” she said.

  He’d thought the same. That he’d lost her. Knowing that he hadn’t, that she was alive, he had to kiss her. He brushed his mouth across hers.

  But her lips trembled beneath his and a sob slipped out. “When I knocked my chair over,” she said, “I couldn’t see the monitors anymore. I could only hear the shots.”

  River noticed the screens now and the speakers. That was why the shots had sounded as if they were coming from this room. But Edith was alone in it.

  “She wasn’t shooting at me,” he assured her. “I didn’t even see her.”

  “Then who...”

  “Me,” a deep voice murmured as Declan Sinclair walked into the secret panic room.

  Edith jumped to her feet and ran to her boss, throwing her arms around him. River’s heart broke at the look of concern on her face.

  “Are you all right?” she anxiously asked him.

  “Yes,” Declan assured her. “She missed...” His brow furrowed as if he wondered how.

  River did, too. His mother was a damn good shot. But why would she have spared Declan Sinclair?

  “I didn’t even know you were here,” Edith said.

  “She must have,” Declan said as he drew back and took in the room they’d found.

  River felt sick at the thought of his mother watching him and Edith all this time. But there was no screen in the master bedroom at least.

  “I was here earlier but couldn’t find you,” he said. “So I went over to your uncle’s ranch.”

  River focused on those monitors and noticed movement in one—as a blond-haired woman slipped out of the end of a tunnel. “She’s getting away!” When he moved to run after her, Edith caught him.

  Her hands grasped his arm. “Don’t go,” she warned him. “She’ll shoot you.”

  She would kill her son but spare a stranger? River doubted that. Actually, he doubted that Livia would spare anyone. And he doubted Declan Sinclair was a stranger.

  “I already called the FBI,” Declan told them. “I want her caught, too.”

  “Why?” River asked.

  “She’s a fugitive,” Declan said as if that answered everything. But it answered nothing at all.

  And it was clear from the look on his face that he was keeping a secret. Studying that face again, River suddenly realized why Declan looked so damn familiar to him. His was the face River used to see—before the explosion, before he’d lost his eye.

  He’d been tearing the house apart looking for answers, and the secret he’d sought stood right in front of him. “Oh, my God,” he murmured. He’d been looking for a father. But he’d found a brother instead.

  * * *

  Edith stared from one man to the other, trying to understand what was happening right before her eyes. River had doubled over as if Declan had struck him. But her boss and foster brother hadn’t laid a hand on him.

  Declan looked as if he’d been struck, too, even though he claimed no bullet had hit him. Had he been telling the truth?

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. She’d been afraid before—when Livia had pressed that barrel to her head and pulled the trigger. But she was nearly as fearful now.

  What was happening?

  Then she saw it, too—the resemblance she hadn’t noticed until now—when they stood nearly side by side. And she shivered as a chill chased down her spine.

  Suddenly she knew exactly what River had been looking for in La Bonne Vie. Money had had nothing to do with it. For River...

  But now she realized why Declan had been so driven. She understood what he’d wanted with La Bonne Vie, too. And like Livia had said, he’d been using her just like River had. She shivered again.

  River straightened up and reached out for her. “You’re going into shock, Edith.” He glanced at the other man. “Did you call an ambulance, too?”

  Declan shook his head. “I didn’t know that she’d been hurt. Where are you hurt, Edith?”

  Both men seemed full of concern for her. But Edith backed away from them. “Stop!” she shouted. “Stop with your damn secrets. Just admit it.”

  “What?” They uttered the word in perfect unison. Even their voices were similar.

  “You’re related.”

  Declan shook his head. “No, that’s not...”

  But he didn’t finish his denial.

  “Clearly it’s possible,” River said. “How?”

  Declan snorted. “How is anything possible with your mother? She seduced my father, like she has so many other men. He was a smart man—a shrewd lawyer—and he should have realized he wasn’t special to her. But he thought he was different. Livia made him think he was different.”

  And Declan obviously hated her for it.

  His voice deepened with resentment and pain when he continued, “He abandoned my mother and me for the life he thought he’d have with her. But when Livia tired of him, as she has every man in her life, he killed himself.”

  Edith gasped.

  “That’s how I wound up in the foster home with you,” Declan told her. “My mother wasn’t any more capable of raising a child alone than yours. She abandoned me on a street corner in New Orleans.”

  Edith understood his pain. But she was hurting herself. “Was that why you were nice to me?” she asked. “Because I mentioned the Coltons, that my uncle couldn’t help me because he was too busy with them?”

  Declan didn’t deny it.

  “You used her to get back at us?” River asked. “You used a little girl?”

  “I commiserated with her,” Declan said. “I didn’t use her. You’re the one who did that.”

  They had both used her, and Edith had been foolish enough to let them. She was furious with them but even angrier with herself. Livia had been right to berate her.

  “Neither of you was honest with me,” she said, her voice shaking with her fury.

  “Edith—” Again they spoke in unison, then turned to glare at each other.

  Edith had had enough of them. Together, they were too much for her to handle. Her feelings—of love and betrayal—overwhelmed her. She couldn’t deal with any of it, with them or her feelings.

  “Shut up!” she yelled at them both. “It’s too late now. You should have been honest with me from the beginning.” Because now she would never be able to trust either of them again.

  And even worse, she wouldn’t be able to trust herself again, either.

  * * *

  “So you want my job?” Jeffries asked as he walked the grounds next to Knox.

  Knox turned toward the shorter man. Despite everything he’d done to Knox’s family, he almost felt sorry for him. He was in way over his head. “We both know this town has gotten to be more than you can handle.”

  The FBI was in charge of the search for the fugitive Livia. But they’d been happy to put all available Shadow Creek resources to work searching the acres surrounding the estate. Livia was long gone by now, though.

  She had to be. The estate was overrun with authorities searching for her.

  Still, Jeffries looked scared. He clutched his weapon tightly while he breathed so hard, his chest nearly popped the already strained buttons on his uniform.

  “You think because you were some hotshot Texas Ranger that you can handle this job,” Jeffries said resentfully. “But it’s tougher than you think—thanks to you Coltons.”

  Knox didn’t doubt that. A hell of a lot had happened recently in Shadow Creek.

  “You and this damn town think I can’t do my job because I haven’t caught her,” Bud continued as sweat trickled down his fleshy face. “But your Texas Rangers and the whole freaking FBI can’t catch her, either.”

  Knox had had a text ea
rlier from Joshua Howard. The former Fed had coerced some former colleagues to talk about the investigation. Nobody had a clue where Livia might turn up next, nor did they have a hope in hell of figuring out how to catch her.

  They were worried, like Sheriff Jeffries, that she might remain a fugitive forever.

  That was why Knox had to run for sheriff. To protect his town and his family from the sociopath that was his mother.

  If she was never caught, Livia would pose a constant danger.

  Chapter 24

  River leaned against the fence of one of the several riding arenas on Jade’s ranch, Hill Country Farms. A teenager sat in the saddle on Shadow, nudging him into a gallop around the ring. Despite the kid being the size of a linebacker, tension gripped River as he worried about him and the stallion.

  “Are you sure about this?” he anxiously asked Jade.

  The horsewoman nodded. “I taught Andy how to ride years ago. He’s an excellent rider.”

  “Andy isn’t the problem.”

  Jade squeezed his arm. “Thanks to you, neither is Shadow.”

  “Thanks to me?”

  “You fixed him, River.”

  He had been working with the horse for a while. And despite how skittish the stallion had been, it had never thrown him or anyone else. He realized that the horse had never been the danger everyone else had believed him to be.

  Relaxing, he chuckled and shook his head. “All I did was ride him.” And everyone had thought it was dangerous to risk that. They should have known he’d taken far greater risks than riding a skittish stallion.

  He’d fallen for a skittish woman.

  “You were patient and kind to him,” Jade said. “You made him trust again.”

  If only he could have accomplished that with the skittish woman...

  Instead he had made certain Edith Beaulieu would never trust again. At least not him.

  Declan Sinclair would probably have better luck. They had obviously known each other longer—since they were kids.

  “You should work here,” Jade said. “With me.”