Colton's Lethal Reunion (Coltons of Mustang Valley)

Chapter 19

By nine that morning, Kerry could no longer convince herself that she wasn’t watching her phone. Rafe had said that he’d be checking the trunk in the attic before coming back into town. Lizzie had been back for an hour and a half, so she knew he’d arrived home safely. And he’d have called with the trunk news, wouldn’t he? Did that mean something had happened to him? Either at the ranch or on his way back into town?

She wasn’t going to do this, be this woman. She was practical. Levelheaded. She could handle whatever came her way. She was not a weak, worrying, slightly obsessive ninny who sent dozens of text messages a day or checked her phone every five seconds just in case. Just because you had a struggle didn’t mean you gave in to it. Or became it.

So, yeah, she was still in love with Rafe Colton. Admitting that was the first step in getting over it. Every time she thought about lying in bed the night before, crying, it scared her. That wasn’t her. And she wasn’t going to lose herself now.

So, thinking, she left the station to conduct her morning interview. She’d spoken with Joanne Bates, a cleaner who’d been at Colton Oil when Payne was shot. On the night of the shooting, the woman had been so rattled she’d been barely coherent. Kerry had given her a couple of days to calm down and process and was heading out to reinterview. She had chosen to interview the woman in her own home, in the hopes that she’d be more comfortable and might remember more of that night.

On her way, she passed Colton Oil. She did not drive out of her way. She did, however, look over to see if Rafe’s truck was parked in what she knew now to be his reserved spot.

It was. Thank God. Relief felt good.

And it was quickly followed by more negativity. Since he hadn’t called her, either he’d failed to look in the trunk or hadn’t bothered to let her know what he’d found. Either way, she had to calm down. Focus on her job, not on him. So he’d chosen not to make letting her know a priority. He had other things on his mind, as well.

The cases they were working together were her whole life. They were only a by-product of his.

He knew everyone she worked with. Had been to her office and slept in her home. He’d infiltrated her entire world, while he had a full life as CFO of Colton Oil, a whole sphere of friends and business peers with whom to associate, none of whom she even knew. A separate life.

She’d never even seen his home. And the only reason she’d been inside Colton Oil was to visit the crime scene in Payne’s office. She was almost a paid employee who’d been assigned to a job.

The help.

The reminder was pertinent. Timely.

She’d just been thrown for a loop the night before with his confession. It had done her heart a world of good to know that he hadn’t just abandoned her because Payne told him to, but that he’d loved her enough to put her and her family first.

But that confession had been deadly, too. First, it had opened up her heart to him—let the love and longing she’d felt all those years out of the box she’d shoved them in.

And it had shown her the truth of their current situation. The boy who’d been forced to let her go had done just that. He’d let her go. She didn’t blame him, was pretty sure that he’d never have chosen to move on. He’d done what he had to do to survive.

While she’d held on to their love and kept it a part of her, he’d grown past it into someone else.

It was done.

And hopefully now she could be, too. With a little time.

Joanne Bates, a forty-two-year-old divorcée, lived in a small, two-bedroom home in a quiet neighborhood with similar homes. They were clean, stucco look-alikes with two-car garages and front landscaping. The roads were clear of parked cars and potholes.

She opened her door before Kerry was close enough to knock.

“Come in, Detective,” she said, her smile kind and her lips a bit tremulous. “I was just finishing the dishes. My kids are grown, but came over for breakfast,” she said, leading the way into a small, square living room with matching blue couch and love seat. “They’re worried about me.”

Kerry waited until the woman sat on one end of the couch, and then took the other. Joanne’s short blond hair seemed to bob as she spoke, as though she was hearing a beat in her head. She could have been nervously hiding something, but Kerry didn’t think so. The woman was truly traumatized.

Which meant she’d probably witnessed more than she knew.

Kerry asked her about her kids, first, distracting her from what she feared. And then a little bit about her job at Colton Oil, to put the woman on the scene before delving into the bad stuff.

“I’ve been there over five years,” she said. “I was a stay-at-home mom, and when my husband left... I didn’t have many marketable skills. The Coltons have been really good to me. When my kids were home I could work my hours around their schedule. They offer benefits and I’m making more than I would waitressing or working a retail job.”

“So tell me what you remember of that night,” she said, leaning toward the woman, speaking softly. Letting her know she wasn’t alone in dealing with the horror. That people cared and were working to solve the problem.

At first Joanne reiterated what she’d said the night of the shooting. She’d heard a gunshot, then footsteps and a stairwell door banging against the wall. She’d run toward the sound of the gunshot and found Payne on his back on the floor of his office.

The rocking grew worse and tears flooded her eyes as she mentioned the body. She’d never witnessed a gunshot wound firsthand and the sight of it had disarmed her, for sure. Moving closer, Kerry rubbed her back, hating that she had to ask Joanne to relive something that was clearly upsetting to her, but she had to find out who had wanted Payne dead.

“Is there anything else, anything that you might have remembered in the past couple of days, as you work through it all?” she asked, gently, while Joanne was still deeply inside the trauma.