Colton's Lethal Reunion (Coltons of Mustang Valley)

They were the last years he could remember shedding tears...

He felt for her pulse as soon as he reached her. Let out a breath as he felt the strong beat.

“Okay, I’m going to lift you, sweetie. I hope it doesn’t hurt, but I have to get you off this mountain.”

Her lashes fluttered once more, but she didn’t open her eyes again.

Rafe wasn’t going to worry about that yet. He’d seen a small stain of blood on the ground as he lifted Kerry’s head. There was a gash on the back of her skull. With all her hair, he couldn’t tell how bad it was, but figured that the man up above had dropped something down on her. Probably a rock. He didn’t take the time to find out which one of the many ones around them could have been the one. Taking off his belt to tie her to him, he wrapped one arm around her and used the other to balance them both as he half climbed, half slid down the mountain.

Chapter 10

Her head hurt. Kerry turned, easing the pain, and opened her eyes to see Rafe sitting in a chair, leaning in close, watching her.

She’d been in the emergency room for hours, having to wait until the tests came back that would tell them that, other than the surface pain which was completely manageable, she was as fine as she’d said she was. She wasn’t feeling drunk. Her thinking was clear and quick. She was bristling at the inactivity while Odin Rogers’s thug had a chance to get away.

And was pretending to doze, too, so that she didn’t have to converse with the man who’d just risked his own life to save hers. Didn’t trust herself to speak to him while the intense emotions his actions had raised in her were still so raw. Didn’t want him to see how much he meant to her. Not when she didn’t trust him to always be there for her. Not when his being there for her that day made those times when he wasn’t hurt so much more. He had a scrape on the side of his chin. And some blistered knuckles, too, she’d noticed when he’d thought she was resting and had been talking to one of the technicians who’d come into their little white-curtained cubicle.

She’d heard Rafe’s voice, and then the scuffle above her on the mountain, had just wanted to be able to sleep for a few minutes, until her head stopped hurting, but had known, too, that she had to fight to stay conscious. So she’d lain completely still, praying the pain would subside so she could be sure she wouldn’t pass out if she stood up.

And then Rafe had been there and she’d focused on the soft tones of his voice, rested against him as he’d carried her off the mountain. She’d looked at him and smiled a thank-you when he strapped her into the front seat of his truck and then kept her eyes closed the rest of the way to the hospital.

“If he’d been just an inch over, he’d have caught you on the back of the skull and could have killed you.” His voice in that small cubicle was low, but didn’t hide the intensity behind the words as he noticed her watching him.

She gave a very small nod. “The guy who did the CT scan said that the full weight of the boulder just skimmed the back point of my skull.” It had been enough to stun her, knock her over. They weren’t sure if it was the fall or the rock that knocked her out. She hadn’t even needed stitches. Or to have her hair shaved, thank goodness.

She’d only lost consciousness for a few seconds, a minute at most, they figured, based on how soon Rafe came upon the guy and her ability to hear him up there beating the guy to a pulp.

“I’m just pissed he got away,” she said. The chief had been in to see her. And to tell her that by the time Dane got to the mountain, the black car was gone and there was no sign of any man, dead or alive, up above the car. He’d collected the rock that was used to hit her. It was close to where the small pool of her blood had been and had a tiny bit of blood on it. Probably hers. If they were lucky, they’d get prints from it.

They’d brought her Jeep back to the station and put out a notice on the black car, which had so far netted nothing. Kerry had written down the license a

nd they’d done a search to find the car was reported totaled two years before and sent to a scrap yard.

Rafe hadn’t gotten a good look at the man’s face and neither had Kerry. But she remembered he was big. Had a beard, which he could easily shave, and dark hair. Chief Barco had asked, and no one matching that description had come into the hospital, or any of the clinics in town, seeking medical attention for a pummeling, but anyone could have taken him into Tucson. Or even up to Phoenix.

And Dane had gone to the house where she’d seen the car pull out of the driveway, but the woman who answered the door said she didn’t know anyone by the man’s description, that she’d been at the house alone with her elderly mother all day and that she didn’t recognize the car. She suggested it could have been turning around in her driveway. She showed the detective the green hatchback she had parked in her garage and the plates came back registered to her.

Whether she was covering for the thug, or had been telling the truth, they were no closer to finding out who the man was, why he’d met with Odin, and what he was doing up on that mountain.

“I’m going back up there,” she told Rafe.

“I know.” He looked so serious, sitting there in his stained shirt, with his tie still knotted at his throat, and jeans and tennis shoes.

He looked approachable. More like a guy who’d hang out in the same general world she inhabited, rather than a member of the privileged wealthy.

Leaning forward again, his elbows on his knees and his bruised hands clasped, he glanced at her. “I need you to promise me that you won’t go back up there alone,” he said, frowning as though preparing for an argument.

Leading her to want to say, “Make me,” like the kid she’d once been would have said to the kid he’d once been when a dare had been issued.

But the truth was, he probably could make her. He could hire someone to watch her, to follow her. Hell, he could probably have her boss put her on permanent leave, forcing her to move out of Mustang Valley if she wanted to work.

Recognizing the ridiculousness of the thought, Kerry also knew there was truth in it. The Coltons really were that powerful in Mustang Valley.

Still...

“I have to, Rafe,” she told him. Because she couldn’t afford to hire her own goon. “If the chief knows I’m going, he’ll order me not to do so.”

“I know.”