Loe raamatut: «The Coltons of Red Ridge»

Chapter 1

Everything happens for a reason...

Mama had told Juliette that so many times over the years and so often during the long months of her terminal illness. Not wanting to argue with or upset an invalid, Juliette had just nodded as if she’d agreed with her. But she hadn’t really. She had seen no reason for Mama getting sick and dying, no reason to work two jobs to pay off Mama’s medical bills and her own community college tuition.

But as she stared up at the little blond-haired angel sitting atop the playground slide, her heart swelled with love, and she knew Mama had been right. Everything happens for a reason, and Pandora was that reason.

Her daughter was Juliette’s reason for everything that had happened in the past and for everything that she did in the present.

“Is it too high?” she called up to the little girl who’d convinced Juliette that since turning four, she was old enough to go down the big kid slide. She was small for her age, though, and looked so tiny sitting up so high that a twinge of panic struck Juliette’s heart.

Maybe she was just uneasy because it looked as though it might start storming at any moment. The afternoon sky had turned dark, making it look more like dusk than five thirty. Since July in Red Ridge, South Dakota, was usually hot and dry, rain would be a welcome relief—as long as it came without lightning and thunder, which always scared Pandora.

Juliette probably shouldn’t have stopped at the park that apparently everyone else had deserted for fear of the impending storm. But when she’d finished her shift as a Red Ridge K9 officer, and had picked up her daughter from day care, the little girl had been so excited to try the slide that she hadn’t been able to refuse.

“Come on, honey,” she encouraged Pandora as she pushed back a strand of her own blond hair that had slipped free of her ponytail. “I’m right here. I’ll catch you when you reach the bottom.” She wouldn’t let her fall onto the wood chips at the foot of the slide.

“I’m not scared, Mommy,” Pandora assured her. “It’s supercool up here. I can see all around...” She trailed off as she stared into the distance. Maybe she could see the storm moving in on them.

As if she sensed it, too, Sasha—Juliette’s K9 partner—leaped up from the grass on which she’d been snoozing. Her nose in the air, the beagle strained against her leash that Juliette had tethered around a light pole. Sniffing the air, she emitted a low growl.

Despite the heat, a chill passed through Juliette. Sasha had been trained for narcotics detection. But what was she detecting and from where? Nobody else was in the park right now. Maybe the scent of drugs had carried on the wind from someplace else, someplace nearby.

“Mommy!” Pandora called out, drawing Juliette’s attention back to where she was now half standing, precariously, at the top of the slide.

“Honey, sit down,” Juliette said, her heart thumping hard with fear.

Pandora ignored her as she pointed across the park. “Why did that man shoot that lady with the purple hair?”

Juliette gasped. “What?”

Pandora pointed again, and her tiny hand shook. “Over there, Mommy. The lady fell down in the parking lot and she’s not getting back up.”

Like her daughter, Juliette was quite small, so she couldn’t see beyond the trees and playground equipment to where her daughter gestured. She hurried toward the slide and vaulted up the steps to the top. Then she looked in the direction Pandora was staring, and she sucked in a sharp breath. About two hundred feet away, in the parking lot behind the playground area, a woman lay on the ground, a red stain spreading across her white shirt while something red pooled on the asphalt beneath her.

“Oh, no...” Juliette murmured. She needed to get to the woman, needed to get her help...but before she could reach for her cell to call for it, a car door slammed and an engine revved. That car headed over the grass, coming across the playground.

The shooter must have noticed Pandora watching him and figured she’d witnessed him shooting—maybe killing—someone.

Juliette’s heart pounded as fear overwhelmed her. She wrapped her arms around Pandora and propelled them both down the slide. Ordinarily her daughter would have squealed in glee, but now she trembled with the same fear that gripped Juliette.

The car’s engine revved again as it jumped the curb and careened toward them. Juliette drew her gun from her holster as she gently pushed Pandora into the tunnel beneath the slide. The side of the thick plastic tunnel faced the car, which had braked to an abrupt stop. A door creaked open.

Juliette raised her finger to her lips, gesturing at Pandora to stay quiet. The little girl stared up at her, her green eyes wide with fear. But she nodded.

Sasha was not quiet. She barked and growled, straining against her leash. Instinctively she knew Juliette and Pandora were in danger. But with the man between them now, Juliette could not release her partner to help. And maybe that was a good thing. She had no doubt that Sasha would put her life in danger for Juliette’s and especially for Pandora’s.

Juliette would put herself in danger for Pandora, too.

Crouched on the other side of the tunnel so he wouldn’t see her, Juliette studied the man who’d stepped out of the sedan. He’d pulled the hood of his light jacket up over his head, and despite the overcast sky, he wore sunglasses. He was trying hard to disguise himself. But was it already too late? Had Pandora seen him without the hood and the glasses?

Who was he?

A killer.

She had no doubt that the young woman he’d shot was bleeding out in the parking lot. Frustration and guilt churned inside her, but she couldn’t call for help now and alert him to where she’d hidden her daughter. If not for Pandora, the cop part of Juliette would have been trying to take him down—even without backup. But because Pandora was in danger, the mother part of her overruled the cop.

Especially since he was heading straight toward the slide. But Pandora was no longer perched atop it. So he looked around, and he tensed as he noticed the tunnel beneath it. He raised his gun, pointing the long barrel toward that tunnel.

Toward Juliette’s daughter...

Her heart pounding so hard it felt as if it might burst out of her chest, she raised her gun and shouted, “Police. Drop your weapon! You’re under arrest!”

Instead he swung the gun toward her, and his glasses slid down his nose, revealing eyes so dark and so cold that a shiver passed through Juliette.

He shook his head and yelled, “Give me the damn kid!”

And she knew—Pandora had seen him without the hat, without the glasses. Then the wind kicked up again and blew his hood back, and Juliette saw his dark curly hair. And something pinged in her mind. He looked familiar to her, but she wasn’t sure where she’d seen him before.

“Put down the gun!” she yelled back at him.

But he moved his finger toward his trigger, so she squeezed hers. When the bullet struck his shoulder, his face contorted into a grimace of pain. He cursed—loudly.

“Stop!” she yelled. “Drop the gun!”

Despite his wounded shoulder, he held tightly to his weapon. Before she could fire again, he turned and ran back toward his car. Over his shoulder, he called out, “That kid is dead and so are you, lady cop!”

Juliette started after him. But a scream drew her attention. And a little voice called out urgently, “Mommy!”

The car peeled out of the lot, tires squealing against the asphalt. Juliette stared after it, trying to read the license plate number, but it was smeared with mud. From where? The weather here had been so dry.

He’d planned to obscure that plate. He’d planned to kill that woman.

Now he planned to kill her and Pandora. She moved toward the end of the tunnel and leaned over to peer inside at her daughter. “Sweetheart, are you okay?”

The little girl’s head bobbed up and down in a jerky nod. “Are you dead, Mommy?”

A twinge struck Juliette’s heart. “No, I’m fine, honey.” But that woman was not. She pulled out her cell phone and punched 911. After identifying herself as a police officer, she ordered an ambulance for the shooting victim, an APB on the killer’s car and her K9 team to help.

But she knew they would arrive too late. She doubted that woman could be saved, and she was worried that the killer might not be caught. At least not until he killed again...

And he’d made it clear who his next targets would be. Her and her daughter...

Pandora began to cry, her soft voice rising and cracking with hysteria as her tiny body shook inside the tunnel. Juliette’s legs began to shake, too, then gave out so that she dropped to her knees. She crawled inside the small space with her daughter and pulled her tightly into her arms.

Pandora was Juliette’s life. She could not lose her. She had to do whatever necessary to protect her.

* * *

What the hell am I doing back here?

There was nothing in Red Ridge for Blake Colton. He’d built his life in London and Hong Kong and Singapore—because his life was his business. And those were the cities in which he’d built Blake Colton International into the multibillion-dollar operation that it was.

That was undoubtedly why Patience had called him—because of his money—since he and his sister had never been close. He wasn’t close to any of his other sisters, either, or to his father or mother. Maybe that was partially his fault, though, because he’d left home so young and had been gone so long now. But Patience hadn’t called to see how he was doing; she’d called to ask him to help.

He didn’t know how he could provide the kind of help his family needed, though. In addition to their father’s business problems, she’d told him about a murderer on the loose. A murderer everyone believed to be a Colton, too—one of Blake’s cousins.

Blake pulled his rental vehicle into an empty parking spot outside the long one-story brick building on Main Street—the Red Ridge Police Department. Maybe his cousin Finn, who was the police chief, could explain to him just what the hell was really going on in Red Ridge.

But only Blake could answer the question of what had compelled him to hop on his private plane and head back to Red Ridge. And he had no damn idea...

With a sigh, he pushed open the driver’s door and stepped out. The sky was dark with the threat of a storm that hadn’t come. Blake felt the weight of those clouds hanging over him like guilt.

He knew what Patience wanted—what she expected him to do. Bail out their father so that their sister Layla wasn’t forced to marry some old billionaire to save Colton Energy. How like their father to care more about his company than his kids...

That was the Fenwick Colton whom Blake knew and had spent most of his life resenting. But he could understand his father a little better now. Blake didn’t have any kids, but his company was like his child. If he withdrew the kind of money required to save Colton Energy, he could cripple his own business and put thousands out of work.

He couldn’t do that—not for his father and not even for Layla. There had to be another way. Finn probably wouldn’t have any answers to that, but he would know all there was to know about this crazy “Groom Killer” targeting men about to be married. At least the threat of dying had caused Layla’s fiancé to end their engagement. But according to Patience, that threat was hurting her sister Beatrix’s bridal shop business. It was also affecting their youngest sister Gemma’s personal life because her boyfriend would not get as serious with her as she would have liked.

With a rumble of thunder sounding ominously in the distance, Blake hurried toward the doors of the police department. He didn’t want to get caught in a deluge. A woman rushed toward the building, as well. She had one arm wrapped around a child on her hip and the other hand holding the leash of the beagle running ahead of her. He stepped forward and reached around her to open the door, and as he did, he caught a familiar scent.

He hadn’t smelled it in years. Nearly five years...

But he’d never forgotten the sweet fragrance and the woman who’d worn it. It hadn’t been perfume, though. She’d said it had been her shampoo, so it had been light, smelling like rain and honeysuckle.

The scent wafted from the woman, whose pale shade of long hair was the same as the woman who’d haunted him the past five years. But it couldn’t be her...

He’d looked for her—after that night—and hadn’t been able to find her anywhere. She must have checked out of the hotel and left town.

She certainly hadn’t been a Red Ridge police officer like this woman. She wore the distinctive uniform of a K9 cop and held the leash of her partner. But when she turned back toward him, her gaze caught his and held. And he recognized those beautiful blue eyes...

Remembered her staring up at him as he’d lowered his head to kiss her...

But no, it could not be her. Being back in Red Ridge, staying at the Colton Plaza Hotel, had brought up so many memories of her, of that night, that he was starting to imagine her everywhere.

* * *

He’d found her easily enough. But he couldn’t take out her or her daughter here—outside the damn Red Ridge Police Department. Hell, after that bitch had shot him, he could barely raise his arm.

Blood trickled yet from the wound, soaking into his already saturated sleeve. He needed medical attention. But he’d have to find it somewhere other than a hospital or doctor’s office. RRPD would have someone watching those places, waiting for him.

Damn the timing...

The park had looked deserted. He hadn’t noticed anyone else around—until he’d heard the dog bark. Then he’d seen the little girl—but not before she had watched him fire those shots into that thieving dealer’s chest. Did she understand what she’d witnessed?

She was old enough that she probably did. And because he hadn’t known anyone else was around, he hadn’t had his hood up or glasses on then. So she would be able to identify and testify against him. And so would her damn cop mama.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

She and her mother were not going to live long enough to bring him down.