Colton's Lethal Reunion (Coltons of Mustang Valley)

She wasn’t going to let that happen to her. Wasn’t going to let romantic love, partnering, matter that much to her.

Especially not with her genes. Her mother, her father, brother...

“I’m not going to be like them, Rafe.” She couldn’t help the fear in her voice. Was pretty sure he could see it in her eyes, too.

“Of course you aren’t.” He sat back, sounding all Colton, and completely sure of himself. “If you were, you’d have been there long ago,” he added. “Look at all you’ve been through, and here you are, completely sober, spending your life finding justice for people you don’t even know because that’s who you are.”

He made her sound...admirable.

Like some kind of celebrity.

And that was a dangerous road for her to get on. Because, as far as the Coltons were concerned, she was, and always would be “the help.”

* * *

He slept

on the couch, waking every two hours to walk down the hall and peek into Kerry’s open door and make sure that she’d awoken with her alarm. It was probably overkill. He didn’t care. He wasn’t taking any chances.

His world without Kerry in it was one thing. The entire world without her... That was just wrong. Funny how he’d never realized that before. Had never acknowledged how good he felt, knowing that Kerry was only a few miles away from him.

Just like, as a kid, he’d liked knowing she was just a couple of acres away.

At the 3:00 a.m. alarm he was already awake. They’d gone over the aerial photos. Had a plan of search for the next day, assuming Kerry woke without a headache. She also wanted to head back to the hospital to talk to employees—find out if any of them knew of anyone who’d worked in the maternity ward forty years before. Or if they knew anything about the fire that had destroyed all of the nursery records.

He’d told her he’d already been planning to talk to people at the hospital in the hopes of finding some information on the ob-gyn who’d been working the night Ace was born, on behalf of the Colton Oil board, and she’d agreed that they could do so together. Payne’s shooting had happened at the same time that the family had been reeling from the email that had outed Ace Colton. The timing was too coincidental for Kerry. She needed to know if the two incidents were connected somehow. They knew, from Callum and Marlowe’s search that the records had all been destroyed, but that didn’t mean someone wouldn’t remember a doctor or nurse who’d worked there.

All the unanswered questions in his life had him awake. Making mental columns. Figuring.

Financial wizardry was easy compared to life. Numbers always followed a pattern. There were no exceptions. But all this—babies switched at birth, bodies thrown over mountains, attempted murder—just didn’t compute.

How did he solve it all?

Kerry was sitting up in bed when he made it down the hall to check on her. The top half of the T-shirt she’d had on all night was visible above the covers. Even in the dark shadows he could see the unfettered mounds of her breasts. The shapes of her nipples...

She’d taken off her bra. What else had she removed?

“Let’s take Odin Rogers out of the mix for a minute,” she said. “It’s telling that I’ve had two attempts on my life on that mountain, but in town, I just get a brick thrown through my window. A warning to stay off the mountain...”

He could see her frown in the darkness, moved forward to sit on the end corner of the bed. Clearly, her mind was working just fine. And keeping her awake, just like his was.

“What does that tell you?” he asked. He had his own theories, but wanted to hear hers.

“That they think I don’t know anything, yet,” she said. “I’m only a threat to them up on that mountain. Which means, as we thought, there’s still something up there they don’t want me to find. But it also tells me that the mountain is the only place they think we’ll find anything. And that maybe who’s doing whatever they’re doing up there isn’t from Mustang Valley, or hanging out here. When Dane and I talked to Rogers yesterday morning, he was almost laughing at us, he was so pleasant. He didn’t care at all that we were looking at him. Because he was confident we wouldn’t find anything.”

“So what if Rogers isn’t involved?” He had to put the thought out there, regardless of what she thought she knew. Because the possibility existed. “Could be both deaths up there, Tyler’s and the rangers, had nothing to do with Rogers. Maybe your thought about guns and drugs is right, but maybe Odin isn’t involved.”

She shrugged. “Could be. I don’t really care if it’s him or not. I just want to get whoever it is.”

Because she wasn’t carrying a vendetta. She truly wanted justice. That’s all she’d ever wanted out of life, he knew. Things to be done right. Fairly.

And when had that ever happened for her? Certainly not in her personal life. He’d suffered, as well. He’d lost her, his only true friend in the world. His deepest love. But he’d gained one hell of a lot, too.

“I’m wondering if maybe the ranger, this Grant Alvin, stumbled onto whatever it is no one wants us to find. Maybe he was afraid we’d suspect him because he hadn’t notified anyone. Or maybe he wanted us out of there because he was up there trying to cash in for himself. Robbing from the robbers,” she said. “That would explain why he was threatening us, but then ended up dead.

“We know Odin runs a drug gang in the county,” she continued. “We just can’t pin anything on him. I’m not sure about weapons, but with the amount of money he has, it makes sense. And if it was just drugs they were hiding up there, they could move them pretty easily. Ammunition, not so much.”

When she said it like that, building a mental picture of a stockpile of explosives, he wanted her nowhere near the place.