by Dana Nussio
“Rafe isn’t like Payne. And no.”
Spencer blew out a breath. “Now that we have that settled, can we serve this warrant before Harley Watts comes out of his darkened computer room and tries to escape out his back door?”
“How do you know it’s dark?” she asked.
“Just a guess.”
A pretty good one, he figured. With as much time as Watts had been spending online to post his ramblings on social media, dotted a few times with references to Colton Oil, he couldn’t have been typing in a bright space. Too much glare would cause eye strain.
Officers Lizzie Manfred and James Donovan joined him next to his car. All checked their Kevlar vests and their weapons.
“Now, none of Watts’s convictions were for violent crimes, right?” James asked as he adjusted his duty belt.
Spencer shook his head. “Just financial. Identity theft and such with his techie skills, but still felonies.”
It was a good thing that he had those convictions, though. Without them and Watts’s parolee status, they never would have been able to get a warrant, based on his online comments alone. Free speech and all.
With weapons drawn, three of them carefully approached the front door. Lizzie and James covered the back. Kerry took the lead.
She pounded on the front door. “Mustang Valley Police. Open up.”
Nothing. They waited for several seconds, listening closely for movement inside. Still nothing.
“You think he isn’t home?” P.J. asked.
“Our research shows he’s online at various times throughout the day and night,” Kerry said. “Maybe he just isn’t answering.”
Just then, footsteps came from inside.
“What do you want?” a voice called from the other side of the door.
Kerry spoke in a tone just above a speaking voice. “Mustang Valley Police Department. Mr. Watts, we need you to open up.”
“Nah. I don’t think so. I know my rights. Not without a warrant.”
“Well, you’re in luck since that’s just what we have.”
A pasty-skinned, twentysomething, with brown hair in need of a trim and black, plastic-rimmed glasses, yanked open the door. “What the hell for? This is police harassment.”
Instead of addressing his accusation, Kerry held out the folded sheet to him so he could see for himself.
“You’re not going to find anything. I’m clean. I’m on parole. Do you think I would do anything to go back to prison?”
“We’ll see, sir.” She stepped past him into the house.
While James guarded the home’s occupant, the others executed the search warrant, hunting for any electronics and printed materials pertaining to Colton Oil.
Kerry stepped into the pitch-dark room where Watts had been working and flipped on the light. She exchanged a look with Spencer, who grinned over his prediction about the darkened computer area. He’d been at this job for a while.
Lizzie was already working her computer magic, invaluable to the department, at the desk. They moved to other rooms to continue the search, but she quickly called them back in.
“Here it is,” she said as they crowded around her.
From Watts’s “sent” box, she produced an email from “Classified” and with the subject line “Colton Oil CEO Ace Colton is not a real Colton.”
“You think it’s the real thing?” Kerry asked Spencer.
“I don’t know, but it’s enough for an arrest and to confiscate the laptop.”
They returned to the living room to cuff Watts and read him his Miranda warning. Kerry did the honors.
“You have nothing on me,” Watts spat.
“I’m sure the judge will want to see the email from ‘Classified,’” Spencer said.
“I was hired to send that email for a friend.”
“What friend?” Spencer thought it might be worth a try to ask. “Just tell me what you know, and I’ll try to get a deal for you from DA Karly Fitzpatrick.”
“No way. I’m no snitch. You know what they do to snitches inside?”
“But you’re going to spend years in prison this time.”
Watts shrugged despite his handcuffs. “If you really have on me what you think you do, I’m going back either way. Might as well stay loyal, don’t you think?”
At the man’s smile, Spencer ground his teeth.
Despite that they’d finally made an arrest in the case after four months, no one was ready to celebrate as they put the suspect in one of the cars and headed back to the station. Spencer squeezed the steering wheel tighter than was necessary as he drove. Four months and countless hours of work, and they were back to where they’d started from. With nothing.
* * *
On Harper’s second day at Tender Years, Asher rang the bell with a good fifteen minutes to spare before closing. And just like the day before, Candace answered, while Willow appeared to be conspicuously MIA. Sure, he’d seen the center’s owner in passing during both morning drop-offs, but she’d been too busy to acknowledge him. Or unwilling.
“Well, hello, Mr. Colton.”
“Hi, Candace. Remember, I told you yesterday that I’m just Asher.”
A grin split her round, pleasant face. “Oh, right, ‘just Asher.’ Forgot that. I’ll try to remember for tomorrow.”
She probably should since she would be the one answering the door again. Guess he couldn’t blame Willow for avoiding him after the proposal that never should have been.
“Would you like to come in out of the heat while I get your little darling?”
She pulled the door wide to let him in, quickly closing it behind him. “Stay here, and I’ll be right back.”
Candace disappeared into the back of the house. She hadn’t smirked when she’d spoken to him the day before or then, but he couldn’t help wondering how much Willow had shared with her about his lame offer.
Why had he suggested it anyway? That their steamy and far-too-brief session in the hospital parking lot had muddled his brain, along with sending several of his body’s systems into overdrive, wasn’t a good enough excuse. Had some part of that proposal been about more than only convenience?
Willow had still committed to keep Harper at the center, as agreed, but she would probably try to renegotiate and get as far away from him as she could after they received the results later that week.
Especially if they learned that the switch had been just another hoax and that she and her daughter were only collateral damage in a war that had nothing to do with them. Strange, how the thought of that left him numb. Did he want the babies to have been switched just so Willow Merrill was forced to continue dealing with him? What kind of swine was he?
Candace whisked back into the room so quickly that someone in the next room must have had his daughter ready with her diaper bag for a fast handoff. He had a good idea who was on the other end of that pass.
“Here’s your sweetheart.”
She tried to switch Harper into his arms, but his daughter had her fingers wound tightly in the woman’s black-and-silver ponytail.
“Guess she must like it here.”
The older woman laughed as she carefully unraveled her hair from the infant’s tight grasp. “Your daughter has a good grip.”
“I would think that hair like yours would be a liability in your business.”
“Nah. It’s not so bad. The babies love it, and sometimes they need something good to hold on to when their parents drop them off in the morning.”
She was finally sliding Harper from her arms into his when Willow hurried into that room, carrying a huge cardboard box with a photo of baby wipes on the outside of it.
“Are they gone?” she said before she caught sight of them. “Oh. Hi. Thought everyone would have left by now.”
He couldn’t help smiling as he settled his daughter
on his hip. “I gathered that.”
She lowered the box to the floor. “So, um, Harper seems to be settling in well here.”
“She’s used to a lot of different people taking care of her.”
Willow licked her lips, seeming unwilling to meet his gaze.
“That’s a good thing. She’s a flexible young lady.”
Alicia, a midtwenties brunette with rust-colored skin and short hair, entered the room from the opposite side of the house, carrying Luna. After glancing at the box on the floor, she handed the baby to Candace and then leaned close to whisper in her ear.
Candace glanced nervously after her as the other woman walked away. “Have a good evening Mr.—I mean Asher.”
With a quick wave, she followed the path the other woman had taken.
“What was that about?” Asher pointed to the empty doorway.
Willow shook her head and rolled her eyes. “They’re always a little odd when single dads are around.”
“You have a lot of those?”
“A couple.”
She shot a look over her shoulder in the direction her staff had gone.
“Are you going to stop avoiding me soon?”
“I haven’t been—”
She shifted her gaze to his face. He grinned back at her. She answered with a shrug.
“Look, I’ll pretend I didn’t ask, and you can pretend you didn’t shoot me down.”
She crossed her arms and shook her head. “It’s only a few more days now.”
He nodded, swallowing.
“Well, have a good night.” He headed toward the door.
“Are you going to visit your dad in the hospital again?” she asked from behind him.
Was she trying to delay his departure instead of rushing him out the door?
“After dinner. Mom said she would watch Harper.”
Neither mentioned what had happened when they’d visited Payne together, but that memory hung in the air between them, an uninvited presence in the room.
He’d just turned to the door again, when a sound behind him brought him back around. All of Willow’s employees stood in the doorway, odd expressions on their faces. Candace had passed off Luna to Tori and had a tablet and a stylus in her hands instead.
Willow’s gaze moved from her employees to the tablet and back. “What’s going on?”
Candace rolled her lips inward as she took a step forward. “We thought you’d want to see these.”
“A one-star review!”
Willow knew she would upset Luna if she didn’t keep her voice down, but she couldn’t help herself as she stared down at the Clamor app, open on the tablet. Her heart was beating fast enough to explode in her chest.
“Unfortunately, not just one,” Candace said.
The older woman reached over and slid a thumb up the side of the screen, bringing up a series of reviews, each with a clear dearth of stars.
“Oh my gosh. One-star, two-star, one-one-one? How did this happen? How did you even find this?”
Tori slid forward, bouncing and shushing a nervous Luna. “Little Derrick’s mom told me we should check it out. It didn’t seem right to her.”
“That’s because it isn’t.”
Willow blinked at the sound of Asher’s deep voice. For a second, she’d forgotten that he was still there, but relief filled her that he was.
“‘Unsanitary conditions’? ‘Uncaring staff’? ‘Questionable disciplinary practices’?” She glanced up at him over the screen. “It’s all garbage. None of it’s true.”
“I know that.” He crossed over to her and used his index finger to gesture from Harper to Alicia, who nodded and lifted the child from his arms.
He extended a hand toward the tablet that Willow held. “Do you mind if I look at it?”
She waited as he scrolled through the damning words. Was she hoping he would know how to fix this when she didn’t have a clue?
Asher glanced up again and pointed to the screen with the stylus. “Trolls. Good ones, too. Look. None of these reviews have the same date. A few appear to have been written last summer. Is that possible?”
Willow shook her head. “I don’t check it every day, but none of those were there last month. Or even last week.”
“Right. You said you had a four-and-a-half-star average.”
She leaned in close enough to see that the number had dropped to one and a half. “How can this be happening? Who would do something like this?”
“You said the letter you received warned you they would destroy your business. Well, they’re giving it their best shot.”
She gripped her head in her hands. “What can I do?”
Candace stepped forward and crossed her arms. “You mean what can we do?”
The other two women automatically nodded, and Asher did the same.
“First, I would contact the Clamor app’s customer service department and contest these reviews,” Asher said. “You can tell them that despite their varying dates, the posts were all added in the past...week?”
“That’s right,” Willow said.
Candace took another step forward. “Second, we need to draft a letter to give to all of our current parents, letting them know about the issue and that you’re challenging these allegations.”
Asher had begun to pace, but he stopped. “Right. That will help ensure that your other current clients stay with you.”
The look he shot Willow’s way seemed to say that he and Harper would stick around as long as she wanted them there.
“You should also have your webmaster or webmistress add a note on your website,” he continued.
Alicia lifted her free hand. “That’s me.”
Willow shook her head. It all seemed like such a bad idea.
“Not everyone even checks Clamor reviews. We could just report it to the company and not say anything to the clients until after it’s repaired.”
“You sure you want to do that?” Asher asked. “One of your clients already brought it up to your staff. You think there aren’t others or that they won’t talk to each other? If I were you, I would try to get ahead of the story.”
He returned the tablet to her and held his hands wide as if his suggestion was so simple that one of her day-care kids could have made it. Nothing was simple about this situation.
“Doesn’t sound like the Colton approach to handling negative news to me.”
“Because it’s not. But, just like now, I wasn’t the person in charge of making those decisions.”
This time she was. He was reminding her of that. She wasn’t the infant inside her mother’s belly this time, who’d become homeless because of others’ decisions. Nor was she the pregnant wife who’d just found out her cheating husband was leaving her, too.
Tender Years was both her home and how she supported her family. She might not be able to control what someone tried to do to it, but she was responsible for how she responded to it. She planned to fight back. And with this much support, she wouldn’t have to do it alone.
Chapter 16
Asher hurried through the living room in the mansion, his boots making entirely too much racket on the shining wood floor for someone so late to dinner. Why couldn’t his family be like others that never found time to share a meal together? No, not the Coltons. Even with their busy schedules and the chaos swirling around them, they still managed to eat together several times a week.
Tonight, though, he would have given anything just to eat macaroni and cheese upstairs in his third-floor suite with Harper.
“It’s about time you got in here,” Rafe called out as Asher rounded the corner into the formal dining room.
Most of his siblings and a few of their future spouses were sitting in chairs spaced along the ornate table, his mother in her usual place at one end. Their dad’s empty se
at, at the head of the table, served as a constant reminder of his absence. No one dared take that spot.
Asher slid into the empty chair between his mother and five-year-old Evelyn, better known as “Evie,” the soon-to-be stepdaughter of his brother Callum. Asher forced a smile and tugged on one of the child’s long pigtails, earning a giggle. Still, all he could think about was backing out of the room and returning to his suite.
He wasn’t ready to face all of them and the mysteries swirling among them. Particularly now that he was aware of another set of happenings at Tender Years that could be connected to those involving his family.
“Where’s my granddaughter?” Genevieve asked before he could unfold his napkin.
He unhooked the baby monitor he’d clipped to his waistband and held it out to display that the power was on. “Already bathed and already down for the night. She had a long day, so she’ll be easy for you.”
Callum held up his arm to look at his watch. “Well, we’re just glad we didn’t try to hold dinner for you. Otherwise, we’d all have been eating cold fried chicken.”
Grayson pointed to the bones on Callum’s plate. “Don’t worry, brother. He had more than his share while it was still hot. And Jace didn’t starve, either.”
Jace glanced up from his plate, littered with bones, and set aside his half-eaten chicken leg. He lifted his hand to lick his fingers but wiped them on his napkin instead.
“Sorry. I couldn’t help it. Every time I eat one of Dulcie’s delicious dinners, I’m convinced she can’t top it. Then she does.”
Asher couldn’t help chuckling. With praise like that, Jace was probably winning over staff along with the rest of the family.
“You still could have saved some for the rest of us.”
“You snooze, you lose,” Callum answered for Jace.
Laughter spread around the table. There hadn’t been much levity among them lately. Asher liked the sound of it.
Genevieve held up both hands to restore some semblance of the order she preferred at family dinners.
“Can we let Asher get something to eat so he can make it to the hospital before visiting hours are over?”
“That’s right,” Ainsley said as she lifted the still half-filled tray of Dulcie’s award-winning fried chicken. “I’d forgotten it was his turn.”
