Colton Nursery Hideout

by Dana Nussio

  As if he couldn’t wait any longer to get started, Bryce stepped around Travis.

  “Miss Davison, you might not be aware, but local police have been attempting to reach you for weeks concerning the whereabouts of your father. He is wanted for questioning in the case involving the murders of Vincent Gully and Jonathan Manelli,” Bryce said. “We would like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Vincent Gully? But my father was cleared—”

  Troy made a sound in his throat. “Well, not cleared, exactly. Released because of missing evidence.”

  Bryce picked up the story for him. “Randall Bowe, former forensic scientist for the GGPD, is wanted in connection with alleged evidence tampering in several cases, including your father’s. Bowe is currently at large.”

  “There has to be a mistake.”

  The expressions on the three men’s faces told her otherwise. “I’m sorry, Officers, but I didn’t know anything about a second murder until earlier today, and this is the first I’ve heard about evidence tampering.”

  Tatiana had learned some other things that morning as well, though the test in the restroom seemed so long ago now. She hugged herself tighter until her chest ached from the pressure.

  Troy crossed his powerful arms. “You would have if you’d returned any of the messages I left on your cell while you were overseas. The same number where we were able to reach you for an interview regarding the earlier charges. Clarke Colton left several messages as well.”

  “I didn’t receive any messages.” It wasn’t technically lying to police if she never listened to them, right?

  “And is this the same phone number you are using now that you have returned to Michigan?” Troy pressed.

  “She said she didn’t receive them.”

  Tatiana turned her head away from the officers, blinking. Had Travis lied for her, even if it was only a small point in their enormous investigation?

  He gestured toward his office door. “Now if you two will excuse us, we were just settling into a budget meeting. Tatiana will have a lot of work to do to shorten the learning curve at CP. Maybe you could schedule this interview at the police department later—”

  “That’s not going to work out,” Bryce said, pulling his notebook and pen out of his suit jacket pocket. “We have to speak to Miss Davison right now. We’ve already had to wait too long.”

  “This is an active murder investigation,” Troy reminded him. “Impeding a witness falls under obstruction of justice, you know. It’s a crime. So, unless you want to be taken into custody yourself—”

  “Fine.” Tatiana slashed both hands through the air. “I’ll answer your questions now. But you’re wasting your time talking to me when you could be following other leads. I have no idea where my father is, so I won’t be able to help you.”

  The two law enforcement officers exchanged a dubious look. Bryce spoke for them both.

  “Thank you, Miss Davison. Do you have an office where we can speak alone?”

  “We have a conference room where you can spread out a little more,” Travis answered instead. “And, if Tatiana doesn’t mind, I would like to sit in on the interview.”

  Bryce shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “I agree.” Troy was staring at Travis, his brow lifted.

  His cousins weren’t the only ones surprised by that suggestion. Travis had shifted backward so that he stood shoulder to shoulder with her, except his was higher. Was he trying to present a united corporate front or something? It was probably a practical decision. Whatever she said in the interview might affect Colton Plastics, after all. So why did she get the sense that he’d made the offer for her?

  “Guess that’s up to her, isn’t it?” Travis said.

  All three men turned back to her.

  “I’d like my co-CEO to stay,” she said. Their relationship was more complicated than that, more than he even knew, but that descriptor was enough for now. No matter what his reason for offering, she appreciated not having to face two officers alone. “That is, if you want to talk to me during my workday. If you’d prefer a private interview, I’d be happy to stop by the police station after work.”

  Again, their visitors communicated silently. Troy shrugged first, and Bryce did the same.

  Troy gave Travis the kind of stare that would have cowed a lesser man, but Travis didn’t even blink.

  “Do you think you can keep your mouth shut during the whole interview?” Troy asked.

  Travis pressed his index finger to his lips. “I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse.”

  “Those aren’t necessarily all that quiet,” Bryce chimed.

  “Quieter,” Travis clarified.

  “Good,” Troy said. “If you cause us trouble, we won’t have any problem arresting you. Family or no family.”

  “We might have to do Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide who gets to cuff you.”

  Bryce’s words were light, but his smile was a tight one. All was not sunshiny in Colton family land, and the fact that Travis was defending her had brought on some of those clouds.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Travis gestured to Tatiana. “Now if you’d like to show these gentlemen to the conference room, I’ll ask Jan to bring some coffee and be right behind you.”

  At that, he slid behind his desk and bent to tap a few keys on his laptop. First, he’d stood up to his own family members on her behalf, signaling he wouldn’t let them push her around. Now, he was stepping back, offering her the power position with their guests, when he would have been a far better guide through the building than she was. She couldn’t have appreciated both gestures more. As strange as it was to admit it, Colton Plastics was the one place lately where she felt safe.

  “Right this way,” she said.

  As Travis’s relatives, Bryce and Troy might have been more familiar with CP than she was, but she guided them with authority down the hall around the corner to the conference room. Good thing she’d spent several hours in that room when she’d visited the company, or she might have had them walking around the building, hunting for it.

  “Take a seat, gentlemen.”

  She indicated two chairs near the window, and then, instead of taking the spot at the head of the table, she rested her folio on the position facing them and lowered into that seat. As memories from her last police interview washed over her, she straightened in the suddenly too-hard chair, her silk blouse sticking to her sweaty back. Something seemed to have a vise grip on her lungs, refusing to allow her to take more than shallow breaths. During that first meeting with police, she’d worried that something she said might hurt her father’s case, and he would be wrongfully convicted. Now, she was torn between protecting a man who’d become a stranger to her and sharing her own suspicions.

  Bryce pushed the button on his pen.

  “This won’t take long. We just need you to tell us—”

  The door clicked then, and Travis hurried through it, carrying his own notebook.

  “What did I miss?”

  “Not much in the forty-five seconds we’ve been in this room,” Troy grumbled.

  “Oh, good.”

  Travis’s gaze moved from the head of the table and to Tatiana’s position at the side, and he sat next to her, as she’d hoped he would.

  “Now, Special Agent Colton, what were you saying you needed from me?”

  At her side, Travis gave a tiny nod. The hold on her lungs decreased by tiny increments. Despite still having to face police questioning, she wouldn’t have to do it by herself this time. Someone else was on her team. She wasn’t alone. This was the first time she hadn’t felt abandoned since her father’s arrest. Well, other than when she’d been in Travis’s arms.

  Just as her traitorous mind needed to forget his tender touch and his kind words from that night, she also needed to drop this naive beli
ef that he was on her side. That his concern for her went beyond his interest in the company he’d built. Of course, he would feel obligated to support her now and help mitigate damage to the business that the news about her father would bring. He’d already been aware of the first case involving her dad, and he’d taken the risk of recommending her to his board, anyway.

  She couldn’t fool herself into believing that he would continue to stand behind her position with Colton Plastics once he knew about the baby. Was that why she’d been relieved that the officers had arrived to interrupt her announcement? So that she could delay the disbelief on his face when she told him? He might be angry, too, that their protection hadn’t worked. But the most difficult thing for her to watch would be his troubled realization that the blood of an accused serial killer would flow through his own child’s veins.

  No, Travis wouldn’t want her anywhere around the company after he learned the news. Sure, he would do the right thing by her and the child. He would probably pay her off for the next eighteen years. And then he would show her to the door.

  After twenty minutes of questioning, Tatiana slumped back into the chair and crossed her arms. So much for the interview being a short one.

  “Now, Miss Davison, you’ve said you haven’t spoken with your father.” Bryce paused, tapping his pen on the paper as he checked his notes. “Since his release. But we need to know more. Tell us about the places that hold special relevance for Mr. Davison. Places he might have gone if he didn’t want to be found.”

  “Come on, Bryce.” Travis clasped the arms of his chair. “How many times are you going to ask her the same question in different ways?”

  “Until she answers it,” Troy grumbled. “And, anyway, didn’t we agree you would be a silent witness? The emphasis on silent.”

  “Right. Don’t mind me. I’ll just be over here twiddling my thumbs.”

  Unlike Travis’s cousins, Tatiana appreciated his interruption. It gave her a break from having the detective and the FBI agent treating her as if she were the suspect, not her father.

  She rested her hands, palms up, on the table. “I’ve already told you that I don’t know where he is.”

  This time Troy spoke up instead. “We’re not asking where he is, though we’d be happy to take that information as well if you’re offering. What we want to know is where he would be.”

  That was the question that she didn’t want to answer. Not with so many happy memories flooding her thoughts. The escapes to Florida for spring break, during the waning winter months when Michigan was still frozen solid. The stops her dad made on every trip at roadside flea markets, just because her mom loved them. She didn’t want to think about the ice-fishing cabin they’d rented near Ludington or the few summers they’d spent at the lake cottage rental up north. Shadows eclipsed every sunny memory now.

  “I don’t know.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

  “In the file, it says he worked at least for a while at a West Michigan furniture manufacturer until your mother’s death early last year.” Troy paused and glanced at his notes. “That would be a Marcia Davison. Did he travel for work or any of his hobbies?”

  “Yeah, like golf?” Bryce added. “Everybody in Michigan golfs, right?”

  “Or is he a Civil War reenactor?” Troy chimed.

  She shook her head in answers to all their questions. Didn’t they get it? She didn’t want to tell them anything.

  After a long pause, Troy leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “We will find your father. Covering for him won’t change that.”

  Tatiana shoved her chair back and stood, immediately resting her hands on the table as her head swam and stomach acid backed up in her throat. Was it the baby or the situation? Or both? She stared at the table instead of meeting their gazes.

  “Sorry. I can’t do this.”

  She rushed to the door.

  “Miss Davison, wait.”

  Her hand on the latch, she turned back to find Bryce standing behind the table but making no effort to follow her.

  “Look, I get it. This is your dad.”

  He smiled as though he really could relate to a situation that an average person couldn’t begin to understand.

  “You love your father. Most children love their parents.” He pressed his lips into a line, shook his head and then spoke again. “But the sad truth is that same man who brought your mother flowers every Friday after work and took care of her until she died of cancer also murdered two men in cold blood. If the pattern holds, in another two months, he’ll kill again.”

  Troy came to his feet as well. “You wouldn’t want to feel responsible if someone else were to be killed because you didn’t help us stop him, would you?”

  As a sharp sound escaped her throat, Tatiana yanked open the door and ran out. She didn’t know where she was going. She barely knew the Colton Plastics facility, and all the closed doors looked the same. But there was one thing she did know: she couldn’t stay there.

  Chapter 3

  “That went well.” Travis glared at his cousins across the conference room table.

  Troy frowned back at him. “I thought we said—”

  “You might not have noticed, but the subject of your interview has left the room. So, I’m guessing your interrogation is over.”

  “Any idea where she could have taken off to?” Bryce asked.

  “She’s probably still trying to find her way out of the building.” He couldn’t blame her if she ran all the way to the parking lot without ever stopping at human resources to complete her benefits paperwork. “She only had the basic tour during her visit in January. I’ll have Jan try to find her and ask if she’ll come back. I’m guessing no.”

  He pulled out his phone and tapped out a quick email.

  Bryce swiveled his head to look at his partner in the investigation. “What was that all about, anyway? ‘Wouldn’t want to feel responsible’? Did you really think that would help get answers? I had it under control.”

  “Did you?” Troy crossed his arms. “Your good-cop tactic wasn’t working any better than my bad-cop one.”

  “You both did a lousy job, if you ask me.”

  His cousins looked back to Travis and said in unison, “No one asked you.”

  “Why the hell were you pressing her so hard, anyway? She said she doesn’t know anything.”

  Troy chuckled. “Good thing suspects—and witnesses—never lie to police.”

  Bryce shook his head. “There was a reason we didn’t want you to hang out during the interview.”

  “So that you two could push her around? I don’t think so.”

  Troy tilted his head to the side, studying Travis the way the officers had Tatiana earlier.

  “Why are you so protective of her, anyway?”

  “I would be for any colleague being badgered by police.” Then why had his whole body tightened over that question? And why had he been tempted to throw himself on the conference table between law enforcement and his colleague?

  Both men stared down at their notes rather than look at him. They didn’t buy his story, either.

  “I’d hardly call that ‘badgering,’” Bryce said. “You might want to witness a real interview with a suspect.” His head lifted. “On second thought, don’t.”

  “Tatiana is our brand-new co-CEO. I couldn’t have her being harassed at work on her first day.” Travis rubbed his sweaty hands on his suit slacks. Why couldn’t he stop babbling? He might as well announce that he’d slept with her.

  Troy cleared his throat. “About that. Have you considered what impact Miss Davison’s presence might have on Colton Plastics?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but of course I have.”

  In fact, he’d thought about it constantly since learning about her father’s alleged involvement in the second murder. He could just he
ar his own dad’s I-told-you-so over that one. Nothing like having Frank Colton as his own personal doomsday predictor to provide helpful information like the statistic that forty-five percent of all new businesses failed in the first five years. Or that growing too fast could be the death knell for those few companies that had survived. What helpful tidbit would his dad offer now about the impact of negative publicity in tanking a growing company, even one like CP that was already ten years old? So much for him proving to his dad that he could blaze his own trail outside of law enforcement like so many relatives or even the shipping business like Frank.

  Travis shoved those thoughts to the back of his mind, where they belonged. “Why are you asking about her impact now?”

  Bryce pointed to the conference room’s four windows, all shielded from the morning sun with slatted blinds. “You might want to look outside.”

  Foreboding settling in his gut, Travis rushed over to the window. News vans from every regional TV station he could name were parked in the Colton Plastics lot one floor beneath them, mobile communications satellites mounted on top, antennae poking into the sky. A dozen reporters and camera operators milled around and through the painted parking spots. They appeared to be setting up cameras for remote feeds.

  “What the—” He whirled and faced his cousins. “You brought them all here?”

  Troy scoffed. “No, we didn’t bring them. They just showed up.”

  Bryce stepped to one of the other windows, out of Travis’s reach. “They’re obviously following the investigation. Two murders in Grave Gulch? A potential serial killer? There hasn’t been news like that around here in thirty years.”

  “But Melissa, I mean, Chief Colton, said police hadn’t released—”

  Troy waved his pen to interrupt him. “Two murders. One city. They’re sniffing out a bigger story. That’s kind of their job. And if they’re able to get anyone to speak on the record about this suspect, they’ll have their lead stories at five, ten, and eleven.”

  Travis braced his hand on the wall and stared out the window again. One outlet was already taping, its reporter standing in front of the custom stone-and-brick sign Colton Plastics had added to the campus last year. “What about this morning? How did they know you were coming here today?”