Colton's Killer Pursuit

“She took him, Everleigh. With reason that was sound to her, with good intentions, maybe, but without permission.”

“Why don’t we just wait and see what happens?” she said, getting increasingly agitated and not wanting to make a fool of herself. Who did he think he was, sitting as judge and jury on her grandmother before there’d even been a trial?

Even if he was right in the end, she was right to hold on to hope. He could not to take that from her.

“She needs to take a plea,” he said again. Not letting it go. “You’re trying to justify vigilante justice and we can’t live together in society with that kind of thinking,” he said, almost as though lecturing a class, and she wondered if he was trying to piss her off on purpose.

Or maybe he’d had enough of her. It couldn’t be easy for a guy like him to have a constant companion around his neck, invading his home, twenty-four hours a day.

She’d tried to stay out of his way...

“I’m not saying we can take matters in our own hands just because we don’t like the way the system is working, or not working, in a particular instance,” she said, trying not to grit her teeth. She bit back a string of words best left unsaid. “What I am saying—” pain made her voice a bit stronger than it should have been “—is that I’m hoping something neither one of us can see right now will present itself and the situation will be resolved. There are still protests going on downtown. You have to have seen them when you went to the station this morning...” She’d seen them on the news she’d watched on her tablet. Had cried a little at the sight of so much support for her gram.

“We can’t rule by popular opinion, either,” he said. “We’ve got laws for a reason. Without them we all live in chaos...”

He just wasn’t able to get it. Didn’t seem to comprehend what hope was all about. And she kind of understood. He was the oldest of his generation in a large successful family and hadn’t had to grow up dreaming of a better life as she had. And the law-and-order part—she got that, too. But he might want to take note... The townspeople weren’t real happy with the way the GGPD was being run as of late.

Still, she needed Clarke’s help. And Gram had taught her a long time before not to bite the hand that fed her. She wanted to stand up for hope. To show him there was more than just thought and facts. But when she realized why, realized she was taking his attitude personally, she stopped. “I respect the law, Clarke,” was all she said.

And set about searching cupboards for any sign of her deceased husband’s lovers.

Or any other reason someone would want them both dead.

* * *

What in the hell was the matter with him, picking a fight with Everleigh just so she’d see reality and not get hurt again? His job was to protect her person, not her heart. If she wanted to believe that someone could wave a magic wand and set her grandmother free, then she had that right.

This lesson, that Everleigh’s heart was not his to protect, had been a good one. Timely. Considering that in just a couple of hours they’d be on their way to her parents’ house for a party that was bound to be emotionally stressful for Everleigh on so many levels.

And he didn’t need to worry about how she felt, just keep her safe. He was there to investigate every single person who walked through the door. To make casual conversation all over the place. And see if he could figure out whom Fritz Emerson had been seeing. Either most recently or further back. Yeah, they were going to see her family, but she and Fritz had been married eighteen years; it stood to reason that Fritz would have developed relationships there. Maybe said too much during guys’ poker night. And while Fritz and Everleigh had grown up in different neighborhoods, Grave Gulch wasn’t all that large. And Fritz had supposedly chosen his women from the gym right there in town. Anyone could have seen him with any of those women. If his current mistress had been upset with Fritz for not filing divorce papers, that could be motive. And a jilted lover was always a prime suspect.

Feeling more like himself than he had since he’d run to the grocery store for a gallon of milk the morning before, Clarke was fine to ride in silence back to his place, where, he figured, Everleigh would return to her room, and he’d have another couple of hours to work. The lack of any apparent si

milarities between the cases Bowe had tampered with was bothering him. A lot. Why had the man manipulated evidence in only those instances?

Had the deed just been a compulsion that would come over him, like a sexual thrill? One he couldn’t control?

The theory just didn’t ring true with the scientist he’d known Bowe to be. He was meticulous about everything he did. Which meant he must have had specific reason for blowing those cases. For framing particular people. Or, conversely, as with Len Davison, the criminals he’d set free.

“Bowe didn’t just get innocent people locked up,” he said as they waited at a light several miles from his condo. Everleigh’s silence had been starting to nag at him. He could tell she was upset, and he wanted to help. And Melissa had said, as she’d walked with him to the door of the station that morning, that he could tell Everleigh what he knew. As one of Bowe’s victims, and a woman fighting for her life, she had the right to information.

“He didn’t?” She’d turned to look at him, and with one brief glance, as their gazes connected there in that private front seat, his sense of balance flipped again.

There it was. That feeling that he could help her in more ways than one.

That she was calling out to him somehow.

That it was a call he needed to answer.

“He manipulated other cases where guilty people went free,” he continued, steering himself with the course he’d chosen, trusting that the professional path was the best one. Working the case. Leaving the heart alone. Maybe when he was younger, women were more prone to just having fun, but hurting Aubrey as he had...not even knowing that she’d been starting to think they were going somewhere more than enjoying each other...she’d been devastated and he hadn’t even seen it coming.

“There’s one in particular...” He couldn’t go into those details; they had nothing to do with her, and Melissa didn’t want it to get out that there could be a serial killer in Grave Gulch. Not yet. She was hoping to catch the bastard before he had a chance to kill again. She didn’t want to tip him off that they had him dead to rights.

“In fact, from what I’ve seen so far, they all had to do with murders...”

So, what was it that made Bowe lock up innocent people and let murderers go free?

“Do you know a guy named Len Davison?” he asked her. “Or Drew Orr? Maybe they were customers at Howlin’ Eddie’s?”