Colton's Killer Pursuit

The police have already been over it, sweeping for DNA, Clarke texted her, but I’d like to go back and see if you and I together can find anything that might tell us where to look for any of the women he’d been sleeping with.

He was working the case. And because that felt good and right to her, she sent back immediate agreement, hitting Send as she left the lovely room she’d been allotted.

Nervous about venturing out. About being in Fritz’s space—somewhere she’d never been, but maybe his killer had. And most nervous of all about spending the afternoon, as well as the evening, with a man who sent way too many vibes for her to avoid.

* * *

Clarke was driving a loaner vehicle, a black town car with tinted windows that looked like something a mobster would drive, while the back passenger door of his SUV was being repaired. He’d paid extra for the rental car, having it delivered late that morning. After that shot had been fired at them, he couldn’t contemplate driving Everleigh around in a car that left them both sitting ducks. He knew she wouldn’t agree to be a total prisoner. He’d suggested as much the day before to no avail. She was going to visit her gram. And they needed to go to the party that night. She wanted her life back. And she was going to do whatever she had to do to make that happen...with him at her side.

So he took her to Fritz’s apartment, and out they were, but at least anyone outside the car wouldn’t be able to see her head through the window to properly take aim...

He had to assume that whoever was after her was everywhere she was. It was the only way to keep her safe.

And while he also knew that luring the person out was the quickest and best way to find the perp, using Everleigh as bait went against every single instinct in his body.

Everleigh had the key to the apartment on her ring, and as cold as it was, no one was outside in the quiet neighborhood when she let them inside. Looking around the place itself proved as uneventful as the trip over had been. Furnished with nondescript pieces, the three rooms looked more like a middle-line hotel suite than anything else. Other than clothes in the closet and a few of the drawers, a phone charger and toiletries, there was nothing else there.

“He came home every day I worked,” Everleigh reminded him. Whil

e she watched silently, he turned the place over pretty thoroughly anyway.

Just because there was nothing of him there didn’t mean a woman hadn’t lost something along the way. Happened during affairs in hotel rooms all the time.

“An earring back, even, could be a clue,” he said, pulling the sheets down off the bed. As though she’d only been waiting for direction, Everleigh started pulling out drawers, in the bedroom and the adjoining bath. Looking in the shower, on the floor by the toilet...anyplace anything small could have dropped.

And as much as Clarke wanted to be immune to Everleigh, the way she took all of this on—without what would have been perfectly understandable histrionics, or even the edge being in that place should have given her—had him admiring the hell out of her instead.

* * *

She wanted out. Of the apartment. Of the need for protection. Of any talk of murder. So Everleigh went to work. Trying not to think about the fact that Fritz had traded eighteen years of marriage to her for the boring little generic apartment and affairs with someone else.

So yeah, Clarke Colton might find her intriguing, but he’d known her only a day. She couldn’t let herself make anything of it. Everleigh refused to risk ever being in a vulnerable position like the current one again. She’d get through the moments ahead, one at a time, and she was going to build a good life that depended only on herself and never look back. She’d seen enough of the past.

“I talked to Melissa about your grandmother,” Clarke said as they went through kitchen drawers—him on one end of the little kitchen, her on the other.

She looked over at him, hands frozen. “And?”

A shake of his head had her going back to work. “It’s like she told you—it’s with the DA. There’s nothing more she can do. You have to convince her to take a plea, Everleigh. It’s the only way she’s got a hope of getting out in a reasonable amount of time.”

His words got her ire up. Didn’t matter if they were accurate or not. Didn’t even matter the guise in which they were offered. She didn’t care if he was trying to be kind, to help. She was not going to just accept that her gram might die in prison.

And because of her...

“I’m holding out hope,” she said, her strong tone driven by the tension inside her. She shut one drawer a little harder than necessary and moved on to silverware. “It worked for me. My case was a slam dunk. Everyone was certain I was guilty. And I got out. I’ve got faith that something will come up for Gram, too.”

“There’s a major difference here.” He’d stopped at a utensil drawer, his head turned toward her. She saw him with peripheral vision but didn’t face him.

“What’s that?”

“Hannah’s guilty, and she admitted it,” he said. “You weren’t and didn’t.”

She couldn’t let him build doubt to the point of giving up. If Gram had given up on her when all seemed lost, Everleigh would be spending her life in prison.

“I know she’s eighty years old,” he said softly. “And I know she had good reason for what she did. Her cause was right. The police were wrong, and she had to prove that. All of those mitigating factors will help her, certainly, but she’s still a kidnapper...”

“She wasn’t stealing him. She was just getting your family’s attention in the only way left to her. None of you would listen to her. You were all so certain that I was a murderer...”

Yeah, she was still a bit bothered by that. She understood that the evidence concocted by Bowe had looked bad, but once they’d seen what he’d presented, they’d stopped looking. In spite of the fact that a crime-scene investigator had relayed the evidence differently.