by Debra Webb
Bodyguard at heart. Cowboy to the core.
Colby agent Russell St. James knew the exact moment Olivia Westfield discovered she was the daughter of the infamous “Princess Killer.” Ever since, being her bodyguard had become twice as hard. Each day, he shadowed her; each night, he held her through her tormenting nightmares. But was her father guilty? Her mother his accomplice? The answers lay deep in Olivia’s memories, and the closer she got to the scene of the crime, the more she remembered. Russ had a job to do: safeguard Olivia and give her the future she deserved. Even if that future didn’t include him.
He liked watching her like this, all soft and vulnerable.
That she trusted him enough to sleep under his watch shifted something in his chest. He’d never met a woman like Olivia. Whatever he was feeling toward her, he wanted it to last.
The urge to climb into that bed with her and make love was powerful. No sooner than he settled in next to her did she start to flail and cry out. She was having another nightmare.
“Olivia.” He shook her gently, but she fought him off. “Olivia, wake up.”
Her eyes flew open and she screamed.
“Olivia, it’s me. It’s okay. You were dreaming.”
She blinked, inhaled a ragged breath and scrambled away from him. Her eyes looked crazed when she looked at him. “Bad things happened there, Russ. Things we don’t even know yet.”
Dear Reader,
The first Colby Agency book, Safe by His Side, was released by Harlequin Intrigue in September 2000. Time has flown and the stories featuring Victoria Colby and her esteemed team of private investigators have stolen my heart.
You journeyed with Victoria through the painful memories of having lost her first husband and her son. You held your breath as her son returned a broken man determined to take his life back. You cheered for Victoria when she allowed herself to put the past behind her and love Lucas Camp, the man who had been there for her through it all. You have shared the danger as evil has tried repeatedly to destroy the Colbys and the triumphs of new love and the birth of children and grandchildren.
Most important, you have taken this journey with me every step of the way. I cannot thank you enough for helping me to make the Colby family a great success. As I faced my own personal challenges, your outpouring of support and concern has helped me rise above the pain and defeat it to write that next story and to keep believing in myself and the work. Please know that I read every letter and email that you sent. I look forward to many, many more years of writing the stories I love and sharing those journeys with you. I hope you enjoy this fiftieth Colby Agency story. Never fear, more Colbys are on the way!
Very best!
Debra Webb
Debra Webb
Colby Roundup
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Debra Webb wrote her first story at age nine and her first romance at thirteen. It wasn’t until she spent three years working for the military behind the Iron Curtain and within the confining political walls of Berlin, Germany, that she realized her true calling. A five-year stint with NASA on the space-shuttle program reinforced her love of the endless possibilities within her grasp as a storyteller. A collision course between suspense and romance was set. Debra has been writing romance, suspense and action-packed romance thrillers since. Visit her at www.debrawebb.com or write to her at P.O. Box 4889, Huntsville, AL 35815.
Books by Debra Webb
HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE
934—THE HIDDEN HEIR*
951—A COLBY CHRISTMAS*
983—A SOLDIER’S OATH***
989—HOSTAGE SITUATION***
995—COLBY VS. COLBY***
1023—COLBY REBUILT*
1042—GUARDIAN ANGEL*
1071—IDENTITY UNKNOWN*
1092—MOTIVE: SECRET BABY
1108—SECRETS IN FOUR CORNERS
1145—SMALL-TOWN SECRETS†††
1151—THE BRIDE’S SECRETS†††
1157—HIS SECRET LIFE†††
1173—FIRST NIGHT*
1188—COLBY LOCKDOWN**
1194—COLBY JUSTICE**
1216—COLBY CONTROL‡
1222—COLBY VELOCITY‡
1241—COLBY BRASS‡‡
1247—COLBY CORE‡‡
1270—MISSING†
1277—DAMAGED†
1283—BROKEN†
1307—CLASSIFIED††
1313—DECODED††
1347—COLBY LAW‡‡‡
1354—HIGH NOON‡‡‡
1359—COLBY ROUNDUP‡‡‡
*Colby Agency
***The Equalizers
†††Colby Agency: Elite Reconnaissance Division
**Colby Agency: Under Siege
‡Colby Agency: Merger
‡‡Colby Agency: Christmas Miracles
†Colby Agency: The New Equalizers
††Colby Agency: Secrets
‡‡‡Colby, TX
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Russell St. James—As a former cop, Russ knows his way around an investigation, but everything about this case is different. How do you protect a woman who doesn’t realize she’s in danger?
Olivia Westfield—Olivia has just learned she was adopted and that her biological parents are convicted serial killers. But what if one or both is innocent? With her legal background, Olivia intends to find the truth.
Rafe and Clare Barker—The Princess Killers. Which of them is really the cold-blooded murderer? The one on death row or the one recently released?
Tony Weeden—Who is he loyal to? Rafe? Clare? Or himself?
Janet Tolliver—She held the key to many dark, dangerous secrets….
Victoria Colby-Camp—She and Lucas are supposed to be retired, but there is something about this case that just won’t let them go. After Lucas almost lost his life to this heinous case, Victoria is even more determined that they retire.
Lucas Camp—He fears Victoria is being drawn into an emotional war that will tear her apart.
Simon Ruhl—The head of the new Colby, Texas, agency.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Dear Reader
Colby Agency Companion Guide
Excerpt
Chapter One
Polunsky Prison, Polk County Texas,
Monday, June 3, 3:00 p.m.
Olivia Westfield paced the stark interview room to which she had been sequestered. She paused long enough to take a breath and reminded herself that she needed to remain calm. Any visible sign of anticipation or anxiety would be a mistake. Though she was not an attorney, she had sat in enough courtrooms with her boss, who was the best criminal attorney in San Antonio, to know how to lead a witness, especially a potential hostile witness. During the next few minutes, it was immensely important that she lead.
It had taken her a week to get this interview, and then the warden had only been persuaded by her boss’s connection to an esteemed Texas senator with the right amount of clout. The prisoner Olivia was here to see was the most infamous death row inmate in Texas’s history. Since she was not his attorn
ey, the interview had been extremely difficult to secure. The opportunity both terrified and exhilarated her.
Raymond Rafe Barker had spent twenty-two years in prison, seventeen on death row. In all those years he had not provided the locations of all the missing bodies of his many alleged victims, including those of his three young daughters. In a mere seventeen days he would be executed by lethal injection for his alleged heinous crimes. Olivia wanted his story—the whole story.
But what if he was innocent?
The tangle of nerves that had been twisting inside her for days tightened to a hard knot. Was she making a mistake doing this? Revealing herself to the man who could very well change the course of the rest of her life? Only her boss knew the reason for her need to meet the convicted murderer and learn the real story of what happened all those years ago in a small Texas community. Eventually the world would know; it was inevitable. The ramifications were immense, the impact potentially widespread.
Mistake or not, ultimately she had to do this. Whatever the consequences, living the rest of her life without knowing the truth was something she simply could not do. The past twenty-plus years of her life had been built on too many deceptions. From this moment forward she wanted the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. Want didn’t begin to describe what Olivia felt. She needed the truth; she needed answers.
The door of the interview room opened. Olivia snapped from her disturbing thoughts. She mentally and physically braced for the impact of meeting the man who was a convicted serial murderer, a coldhearted sociopath according to the law. An inmate who had maintained his silence all this time as to what really happened so many years ago. This man, who held the key to those answers, was also her biological father.
That reality stole her breath yet again.
Two prison guards escorted Rafe Barker into the room. The leg irons around his ankles and the belly chain coiled about his waist rattled as he was ushered to a chair at the table in the center of the small interview room. One of the two chairs stationed around the table was drawn back.
“Sit,” one of the guards ordered.
Unable to drag in a gulp of air even now, Olivia watched the prisoner’s every move. He hadn’t looked at her yet. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that or the possibility of whether or not he would recognize her, for that matter.
It had been twenty-two years since he’d last seen her.
For God’s sake, what had she been thinking coming here?
Barker glanced at the guard on his left, then followed the instruction to be seated. He settled into the molded plastic chair. The second guard secured the leg irons to the floor and the ones binding Barker’s hands to his waist to the underside of the sturdy table.
“We’ll be just outside, Ms. Westfield,” the first guard said to Olivia. “Just knock on the door when you’re finished here.” He shot a glance at the man he obviously considered a monster before meeting her gaze once more.
“Thank you.” Her voice was a little shaky and she regretted that outward demonstration of apprehension. Be strong, Liv.
When the door had closed behind the guards, Olivia drew in a deep, steadying breath and crossed to the table. She sat down and met the gaze of the man now studying her intently. From what she understood he spent twenty-three hours per day confined to his cell and it showed in the pale skin stretched across his gaunt face; a face that narrowed down to slumped shoulders and a rail-thin body covered by generic prison garb. But the most startling aspect of his appearance was the faded brown eyes. Eyes that perhaps had once been the more vivid chocolate color of hers. The high cheekbones and slim nose were as familiar as the reflection she considered in the mirror each morning.
Genetically speaking, this was her father. No question. No doubts. Her heart pounded with the rush of emotions she couldn’t quite define. Anger, defeat, regret…one, or all, maybe.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
The rustiness of his voice made her flinch. His speech croaked with disuse and age that belied his true years. The warden had told her that Barker rarely spoke to anyone. He had refused to grant a single interview with reporters or cold-case investigators or to cooperate with the doctors who’d attempted to analyze him during the past two decades.
His question—four little words—churned those already turbulent emotions, making her quake inside with a vulnerability she wanted desperately to deny. “That’s a good question.” She cleared the rasp of uncertainty from her own voice. “I suppose I felt compelled to see you before it was too late.”
In seventeen days he would be dead. More of those troubling emotions stirred deep in her belly. Emotions she shouldn’t feel for a stranger…a convicted killer. The faint idea that he might not be guilty toyed with her desire for justice…for hope that he was not that heinous monster.
“Do you know who I am?” he ventured, his eyes searching hers for any indication of what she was thinking beyond her vague response. Obviously he felt something, curiosity maybe. Was it even possible for him to feel anything else?
This man who had been labeled pure evil was her father. Dear God. He was her father. Sitting face-to-face with him, she could not deny that glaring fact. Part of her had wanted to latch onto the idea that it could be a mistake. The photos she had seen from the trial more than twenty years ago had not adequately prepared her for this. She hadn’t seen him like this, in person, since she was five years old. Basically, she remembered nothing from that time…except in her dreams.
As far back as she could recall, the nightmares had haunted her sleep. The screaming…the blood. The darkness and then the soothing humming—a tune she hadn’t been able to identify. Not that she’d really tried. She shook off the images and sounds that tried to intrude even now. Her adoptive parents had blamed the images and sounds on a scary movie she’d watched with a cousin. Another of their well-meant deceptions.
So many, many lies.
“I know who you are.” She clasped her hands in her lap to prevent him from seeing the shaking that had overtaken her body. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t make it stop. Good thing she wasn’t in a courtroom right now. Prosecutors ate nervous defense attorneys and their assistants for breakfast.
Raymond Barker was the Princess Killer. The man charged and convicted of the murders of more than a dozen young girls. The man who had been charged with murdering his own daughters. That was the real reason Olivia was here. She’d had no choice in the matter. The media had gotten it wrong. The police who investigated the murders had gotten it wrong.
Olivia was this man’s daughter. If Rafe Barker hadn’t killed her, was it possible he hadn’t killed anyone? Made sense that if she was alive, her sisters would be, too. She needed an answer to that, as well. Olivia had studied the case. She knew the details, at least the ones that had played out in the media. She had interviewed the detectives who investigated the case, but she had not been allowed to see the actual case files. The detective who’d been in charge, Marcus Whitt, had told her straight up that he didn’t appreciate her nosing around.
Giving herself grace, she had only just learned the identity of her biological parents two weeks ago. Before she’d gotten to the point of actually moving forward, Clare Barker had been released from prison—her conviction overturned—and that had changed everything in her opinion. Olivia had tried unsuccessfully to find her.
Her mother. The woman who had professed her innocence for more than two decades. If she was innocent, why hadn’t she come to Olivia? Had she contacted the other two women? Sarah, who had been named Sadie by her adoptive parents, and Lisa, named Laney by the folks who adopted her? Olivia had no idea where her sisters were but she intended to find them. The three of them needed to face this challenge together. Time was running out and desperation had lodged deep in her soul.
But what if her sisters didn’t know? Olivia’s adoptive parents had kept their secret for twenty-two years. As much as she loved the people who had raised her, that decision had been the wron
g one. She should have known the truth long ago. What if her sisters didn’t want to know? Was it fair for her to impose her personal quest upon their lives?
Rafe cleared his throat, the saggy muscles there working as if the words he intended to utter were difficult to impart. “Whatever you believe about me, I’m thankful you came.”
The air she struggled to draw in trapped beneath her breastbone. The ache it generated made speaking as hard for her as it appeared to have been for him. “I need you to tell me the truth about what happened when I was a child.”
The prospect carried monumental implications even beyond the potential added pain to the families of the victims. Her chest tightened at the conceivability of what his long-awaited words might mean for all those damaged hearts…what they might mean for her. For her sisters…women she didn’t even know.
He had refused to talk from the moment he and his wife—Clare, her mother—were arrested. Today, he had just over two weeks to live. Why not tell the world the truth? Unless, of course, the truth was that he, in fact, was the heinous killer society thought him to be.
Clare Barker had relentlessly stood by her story that she was innocent. According to what Olivia had gleaned, as the investigation of the case had progressed, the bodies of eight young girls, ranging in age from twelve to seventeen, had been recovered but several others remained unaccounted for. Clare insisted that she knew nothing about any of the abductions or the murders. Both Clare and Rafe had been respected members of the community of Granger. No one had suspected either of the slightest legal infraction…yet numerous sets of remains had been exhumed from the woods just beyond their own backyard. A backyard where their daughters, including Olivia, had played.
The reality of that fact made her sick to her stomach. But who was the killer and who was the oblivious bystander? Someone was lying, because Olivia was alive. That had to mean one story or the other was wrong, at least to a degree.
He studied her for a long moment with those too-familiar brown eyes. “The truth you seek will not ease the torment your soul suffers, I fear.” He looked down as if he also feared his eyes would give away his true thoughts.
