Colton's Lethal Reunion (Coltons of Mustang Valley)

She and Dane were just leaving the man on his porch when Kerry noticed a pair of boots sitting under a bench by the door. Not freshly shined fancy ones like Odin was currently wearing, but a used pair with the same worn-down heel on the right boot as the pair he currently wore. Because Odin walked with a slight limp.

It wasn’t the slight tilt to the heel that interested her, however. It was the cactus needle sticking out slightly from the back of it. An agave needle. Distinctive not only for their poisonous properties, and for the tequila that came from the plant they protected, those needles were also sharp enough to puncture a throat. Or a boot heel.

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There’d been a broken agave arm right by where the ranger had gone off the cliff the night before. The break hadn’t been brand-new, clearly hadn’t been a casualty of the ranger’s death, but she’d sidestepped it to avoid being pricked by one of those needles...

Odin Rogers had been up on that mountain.

She couldn’t prove it. Odin would say he’d stepped on the needle elsewhere. Agave plants could be from all over. She sure wouldn’t be given a warrant to confiscate the boot based on a needle when she had no other proof that Odin Rogers was involved.

Her fellow officers might think, again, that she was too close to the case, was stretching reality to avenge her brother’s death.

But she knew. Odin might not have killed her brother, but he was involved in whatever was going on up on that mountain. He was involved in having her brother killed.

For the moment, it was information she was going to keep to herself.

* * *

Rafe made it to his house and into the shower without anyone knowing he hadn’t been home. And his privacy was one of the reasons he’d insisted on moving out of the mansion and into his own home. He’d never learned to be comfortable living with so many people coming and going and knowing who was coming and going.

In dark pants that had been hanging in his closetful of similar clothing—all bagged from the cleaners—a freshly laundered and pressed white shirt, and black-and-white tie, he arrived at Colton Oil fifteen minutes before the board meeting scheduled for ten that morning.

He’d hoped to have more to give the family regarding Payne’s attempted murder. He also had a list of financials to go over with those of his siblings who were fellow board members and their ex-stepmother, Selina Barnes Colton, the firm’s Vice President and Public Relations Director. Why Payne kept his ex-wife on the board, he had no idea, especially since Selina was a bit bitchy most of the time, but as with most things Payne Colton, it wasn’t his job to question.

Still, he was dreading the meeting, when, generally, he got a bit of a kick out of them. Rafe, a foreman’s son, sitting on the board of a billion-dollar company. Such an unlikely event. Just like him, the unlikely heir. He’d seen Payne’s will. He wasn’t set to inherit an amount equal to the rest of Payne’s biological children, but he’d one day be a very rich man.

Richie Rich. Did whoever had thrown that brick in Kerry’s window that morning have something to do with shooting Payne?

The thought sickened him. As did the idea of having to sit through a Selina presentation that would be passing out edicts to them all regarding the presentation of Payne’s shooting to whoever asked, in whatever manner she’d deemed best for the company. She was decent at her job. She just took far too much delight in ordering Payne’s kids around.

He wasn’t in the mood to take orders from anyone. Except Kerry Wilder.

All he really wanted to do was lie in the hammock he’d strung by the house, right in the place where he’d kissed Kerry the one and only time before last night, and relive the night he’d just spent in her bed. Going over and over every movement of her body, and his, every sensation. Cataloging them so he wouldn’t ever lose one single second of those memories.

“Hey, Rafe.” Marlowe, in all her petite, whitish-blond-haired beauty had arrived. The consummate professional. And one of his favorite siblings. He’d had a rough time the month before, when her life had been threatened. There’d been nothing he could do but watch out for her and trust that the guy would be caught. He’d always felt closer to Marlowe. As a kid, she’d been the one to seek his opinion at the dinner table. Offer him more potatoes. She’d not only supported him when he’d gone to Payne with his request to build his own place on RRR property, but she’d helped with some of the interior design choices, and getting things set up, too.

She’d visited his place the most over the years. He couldn’t be happier for her now that she was engaged to be married to a man she loved, and expecting her first child.

“Hey,” he said, wanting to tell her that his entire world had changed. And at the same time not wanting anyone else to know.

She’d barely poured herself a cup of coffee before the others came in, each one bursting into the space with their own brand of arrival, and all with an eye to getting down to business.

It was Marlowe’s first board meeting as CEO, but she handled the call to order as though she’d done it a million times before—nothing about her demeanor that morning would clue anyone in to the fact she was newly pregnant and newly engaged. She was all Colton.

The first order of business had been one they’d all been waiting for—a report from Colton Oil’s IT specialist and department director, Daniel Okowski—about the mysterious email that had outed Ace to the board.

Rafe knew it wasn’t going to be good when the man stood up and said, “I need to give you all a brief dark web rundown.”

His fellow board members clearly shared his dread when they all looked at each other and then back at the tall, thin, black-spectacled man, who at thirty-eight was older than both Rafe and Marlowe.

“The dark web runs similar to the web with which you’re all familiar, but using a specially encrypted software. One example is called Tor—which stands for The Onion Router—and is aptly named because what this software does is route everything that comes through it through different layers all over the world, making things virtually impossible to trace.”

Rafe knew the news wasn’t going to be good. Daniel went on to tell them that the email that had come into all of the board member’s inboxes, telling them that Ace was not a biological Colton, had been sent through the dark web and had therefore been untraceable.

“Damn.” He wasn’t sure who, of the four seated board members, had whispered the word. Maybe Ainsley, second-oldest heir and Colton Oil’s lead legal counsel. Could have been Marlowe or Selina, for all Rafe could tell. He just knew he seconded the sentiment.

And wished Ace was in the room. The man had his moments, but he was honest in his business dealings. And always knew how to keep things on an even keel. No matter what—at least in Rafe’s opinion.