Colton Family Rescue

And then he’d looked at Jolie. Standing there, watching them. There were tears streaking down her face, but the glow in her beautiful gray eyes was pure joy. He’d known in that moment that it was right, righter than anything had ever been in his life. They were his, and they would build a life that would be rock-solid and Texas strong.

A month later, they were both gone.

She’d thrown them away and, as his mother so coldly put it, taken the money and run. Just as she’d predicted when she first realized her son had taken an interest in the lowly cook’s assistant.

“She’s a gold digger, Thomas. All she wants is Colton money,” Whitney Colton had said, after storming into his rooms on the second floor of the ranch house. Which he’d always thought was a singularly inaccurate name for a place that looked more like a mansion of the antebellum South.

“You know people said the same thing about you, don’t you?” he’d snapped back at her. He’d scored with that one; he knew it by the color that rose in her cheeks and the anger that flared in green eyes so like his own.

“And I’ve proven them wrong for twenty-five years now,” she retorted sharply.

Yes, he’d scored, but in the end he’d lost, because she’d been proven right. Jolie had jumped at the first chance at a chunk of cash. A big Colton payday must have been her goal all along. He’d fought the knowledge, right up until his mother had shown him the cashed check, with Jolie’s signature unmistakably on the back.

It had been the most painful learning moment of his life. He never, ever wanted to go through something like that again. And it only got worse when he started to wonder if it had been only the money, or if it had been him, too—if he had somehow failed her. So he kept things light, dating occasionally but never seriously, throwing himself into his work with a new energy, and in the process helping create the smooth-running machine that was now Colton Inc.

Which was a damned good thing, he told himself now, since everything else was in chaos. And the last thing he should have been doing was sitting here dwelling on useless, painful memories. And it irritated him that they were still painful, after all this time. He’d assumed he’d be well past it now. Maybe you never forgot the first time you really crashed and burned.

With ruthless determination, he shoved it all back into the compartment it had escaped. His father was missing, his nasty half sister Marceline wanted him declared dead so she could get her grubby hands on her inheritance. That had been a family fight he didn’t ever want to revisit, ending with Marceline putting forth the question he reluctantly had to admit had merit; if their father had been kidnapped and was still alive, why wasn’t there a ransom demand?

And then there was the very real possibility that not only might Eldridge be dead, but someone in the family had killed him.

A tap on the door spun him away from the view he’d no longer been focused on. His assistant, Hannah Alcott, stepped into the office when he called out an okay. Holding a sheaf of papers in her hand, she strode briskly toward him, her energetic stride belying her age, which T.C. knew to be nearly sixty. Once his father’s executive assistant—and, T.C. suspected, at least partly responsible for his father’s steering away from his more unethical turns—she had nearly quit when Fowler took over the reins of Colton Inc., saying bluntly that she wouldn’t deal with his methods. T.C. had tried to intercede, and been unexpectedly flattered when Hannah said, “You’re the only one in this place now that I could work for.”

And so she was here, and his life had instantly become easier. She was efficient, smart and utterly trustworthy.

“Are you happy over here?” he asked as he took the papers she held out. His office was—purposely—on the other side of the building from his brother’s, and smaller, and the adjacent office for his assistant was also smaller.

“Yes, Mr. Colton.” Her tone was formal, but there was a note of respect that had been lacking when she spoke to Fowler. His brother would have been surprised at how much that meant to him. Respect of underlings, as Fowler put it, didn’t matter as long as they followed orders.

“Thank you for accepting the offer. You’ve made my life easier.”

“Thank you for making it. I didn’t really want to leave.”

They were still feeling their way, and although it felt odd to T.C. that he was referred to deferentially as Mr. Colton by a woman a generation his senior, she seemed to prefer it that way. And what Hannah Alcott wanted, she also seemed to generally get.

“I don’t think I’ve ever said that I admire you for standing up to Fowler the way you did.”

She looked at him for a moment, quietly, steadily. “Someone needs to. And I’m here because you are the only other one who has.”

T.C. supposed Fowler would say he was ridiculous for being so pleased at words from a “mere executive assistant,” but nevertheless, he was.

“May I ask you something?” she said when he smiled.

“Only if you promise to stop asking if you can ask.”

She returned his smile. “Why didn’t you have an assistant before?”

He gave a half shrug. “I figured I needed to know how to do it all before I asked somebody else to do it.”

“And that, Mr. Colton, is another reason I’m here.” Briskly turning back to business, she gestured at the papers she’d handed him. “The Wainwright papers are on top, and the analysis you asked for is in the folder.”

“Already? You are a gem, Mrs. Alcott.”

“I am.”

He couldn’t help smiling again, rare enough in these days of worry and mystery that he appreciated it. “I should give you a raise.”

“You already did. I’m quite sufficiently compensated, Mr. Colton.” But she was smiling as she left the office.

He realized after she’d left that one of the reasons he liked her was that she imposed a sense of order on things, and amid the current chaos, that was no small accomplishment. She—

The door opened once more, and Hannah leaned in. “Hurricane Fowler headed this way,” she said.

He grimaced. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

“Five minutes?”

He gave her a grateful look. “Ten. I’m feeling strong today.”

She nodded and backed out once more.

His brother at full force was not how he’d wanted to spend this afternoon. He needed a back door, T.C. thought, not for the first time. He even considered a dive into the adjoining bathroom, but knowing Fowler he’d barge in anyway. He smothered a sigh and braced himself. It was easier, knowing that in ten minutes Hannah would remind him of some urgent piece of business that had to be attended to immediately. It felt cowardly to him, but sometimes it was the only way to deal with the steamroller that was his half brother.

There was a thud as the door was shoved open; the formality of a knock was usually absent when Fowler was involved. He felt—and acted—as if he owned not only the entire building but everyone in it.

“I know who killed Dad!”

T.C. stood up; he’d expected some business-related demand, or another lecture on his lack of bloodthirstiness on the Wainwright deal. T.C. believed in healthy competition, and the occasional solid partnership; Fowler believed in wiping the competition off the field.

“We don’t know,” T.C. reminded his brother, “that Dad’s dead.”

“Never mind that. I know who did it.”

T.C. groaned inwardly. Great, he thought. Here we go again. It’s not enough that Mother accused Alanna of all people. Now Fowler’s got some other crackbrained theory?

“I presume your glee means you’ve found another suspect for them to chase after besides yourself and Tiffany?”

“Oh, yes.”

Foreboding sparked in T.C.’s chest. Fowler was too gleeful. This was more than just some harebrained idea to throw suspicion off him and his self-absorbed, money-conscious girlfriend. T.C. waited silently, refusing to rise to the bait, denying Fowler some of the pleasure he seemed to get out of making people jump to his tune. Irritation flickered in his eyes.

“You’re so cool now, but you won’t be. Not when I tell you who it is, who I saw right here in town, not an hour ago.”

He’d been right. This was more. And it was aimed at him. “Just get it over with, Fowler. I have a busy schedule.”

Fowler folded his arms across his chest and smirked. “I’ve already called the sheriff, so don’t think you can stop that.”

T.C. frowned. “Why would you think I would want to stop you?” He wanted his father found, and while he doubted whatever wild claim Fowler was making now would prove true, he also felt every avenue should be explored.

“Because you’re a pushover and always have been when it comes to her,” Fowler said, in that nasty tone T.C. had learned meant he was about to spring his trap.

The foreboding exploded into full-blown apprehension. “Her?”

Fowler’s smirk widened. He was clearly taking great pleasure in this.

“Jolie Peters.”

Chapter 3

Jolie clutched her still-weeping daughter close, rocking her, cooing at her, trying to soothe her. The police were being kind, but as grim as she would have expected them to be, dealing with a cold-blooded murder. The Central Business District had its own dedicated police. They knew the area inside out and were coolly, briskly efficient. If she wasn’t in such shock, Jolie would have been impressed.

And if it wasn’t for Emma, she might feel safe.

“It’s all right, honey,” said the uniformed woman kneeling before them as they sat on the edge of the police unit’s front seat. Jolie had purposely put their backs to the bloody scene. The sight of a woman who just a couple of hours ago had been alive being put in a cold, dark bag and loaded in the back of a van was not something she wanted added to Emma’s already horrible images.

The woman’s voice was soft, gentle, and Jolie liked the way she looked at her for permission before she reached up and brushed her fingers over the child’s tearstained cheek. “Maybe you’ll remember more later when it’s not quite so scary.”

“I’m sorry,” Jolie said, “but she’s too upset.”

“Of course she is. Who wouldn’t be? And just knowing we’re looking for a woman helps a lot.”

“You believe her?”

The other officers had seemed to doubt Emma’s account, which Jolie understood, given that the girl had been practically hysterical. Although she seemed to be calming down now. As if the quiet, adult conversation going on over her head was soothing her. Jolie’s gaze flicked to the woman’s face and saw she knew that and was doing this intentionally. She glanced at the name tag over her left pocket, which read T. Wilcox.

“I have a three-year-old boy, Tyler,” she said, “and I know when he’s making things up. I trust you do, too.”

Jolie gave her a grateful smile. “I do.” She glanced at the people both in uniform and civilian clothes clustered around where the body was, at last, being removed. “But I’m not sure they believe her.”

“It’s not that they don’t believe her, it’s that she’s able to give so little to go on. And no one else saw a woman in the area. Plus, a crime like this isn’t usually the way a woman would go about a murder. But I heard John Eckhart caught the case. He’s a good detective, one of the best. He’ll—”

“Liddy,” Emma said suddenly.

Jolie looked at the child on her lap. “What, honey?”

“Her eyes were like Liddy’s.”

Officer Wilcox looked at Jolie, clearly puzzled.

“Lydia,” Jolie explained. “She’s an anime character Emma loves.” Her brow furrowed, and then she smoothed back Emma’s tousled hair. “Do you mean the color, honey?”

“Green.”

“Well, now,” Officer Wilcox said with a wide smile. “That’s brilliant, Emma.”

The flicker of a smile curved Emma’s mouth. Wilcox was obviously a very kind woman. Jolie gave a brief, silent thanks, as she always did, to Art Reagan, the beat cop who’d pulled her out of a morass of trouble and helped set her on a better path. And who had kept her from forever being wary of anyone who wore the uniform and badge. It was he who’d gotten her the job at the Colton Valley Ranch. He was distantly related to Bettina Morely, the cook there, and she’d given Jolie the chance on his say-so.

She felt a sudden burst of longing, something she hadn’t felt—hadn’t allowed herself to feel—in a very long time. A longing for the safety and happiness and hope she’d felt for that idyllic and painfully short time. Right now especially for the safety. And for the man who’d made her feel that way, that she—and her little girl—would be safe. She wanted more than anything to feel that way again.

She yanked her frazzled brain off that fruitless path.

“Do you know who she is?” Jolie asked. Was, she amended silently, grimly.

“Can’t say yet.” Officer Wilcox looked up, assessing her.

“What?”

“Just thinking...”

“What?” Jolie asked again. When the woman hesitated, she added, “My little girl has witnessed an awful crime, and was threatened herself.”

“Might have been worse, if you hadn’t gotten there so quickly.”

Jolie didn’t need the woman to remind her the killer could have broken a car window and gotten to Emma. That her little girl could have been killed right then. She suppressed a shudder and went on.

“You know what witnessing something like this could do to her,” Jolie said. Probably leave her with an indelible, lifetime, horrible memory long term, and likely nightmares and skittishness or worse short term. None of which she wanted to say aloud in front of Emma, for fear it might plant the ideas. But she was guessing this officer would understand that; she seemed a very perceptive and insightful sort. And she was a mom. “If she can deal with that, I can deal with whatever you’re thinking.”

Officer Wilcox glanced over her shoulder to where the van was finally pulling away. Then she looked back at Jolie, rather intently. “She was about five foot eight, I’d say a hundred and twenty-five pounds. Long dark hair. Gray eyes.”

Jolie’s breath caught as it registered. She went very still as her gaze shifted to the departing van. Her arms tightened around Emma, enough so the girl made a little sound of protest. She made herself ease up, tried to suppress the shiver that went through her.

Five-eight. A hundred twenty-five pounds. Long dark hair. Gray eyes.

Wilcox could have been describing her.

* * *

“She came back for more money, of course.”

T.C. barely heard his brother’s gloating words. He was staring out at the city he loved, the city he’d thought Jolie long gone from. In truth, he’d half suspected she was long gone from Texas altogether. But perhaps he should have known better; he’d been Texas born and bred just as she had, and the blood of Texians ran in her veins just as it did in his. They might succeed elsewhere, might even flourish, but there would always be a part of them that longed for this unique, amazing place.

“I told the cops she has a huge motive. I’ll bet the old man turned her down when she came at him for more money, and she killed him.”

T.C. knew Fowler wanted him to react, so he kept his mouth shut.

“As if what Mom and Dad gave her back then to stay away from you wasn’t enough. Greedy little bi—”

“Shut the hell up, Fowler.”

He knew the instant he said it, it was a mistake. And Fowler proved him right by practically crowing. “Ha! I knew it, you fool. I knew you’d never gotten over that little slut!”

T.C. spun around to stare at his brother. When he spoke, his voice was as cold as a rare Texas snow. “It’s going to take you longer to get over the bones I’m going to break if you don’t get your ass out of here.”

They were nearly the same height, but T.C. was younger, stronger, and tougher—those parties Fowler tended toward, not to mention the overindulgences, softened a man—and they both knew it. They’d been involved in enough brawls growing up, and a few after that, that there was little doubt who would be left standing. Besides, Fowler no longer got his own hands dirty. He paid others to do his dirty work for him.

Like someone to kidnap, or even kill, his own father?

T.C. tried to quash the thought, but at this point he had few illusions about his family, in particular his ruthless brother.

“Really?” Fowler said in that superior tone he adopted when someone called him on his obnoxiousness. “Resorting to physical abuse now?”

“It’s more honest than your kind of abuse,” T.C. said, knowing he’d won the instant he heard the shift in attitude. In a moment Fowler would raise his nose and sniff, as if of course he was far above such tactics. When it happened, T.C. nearly laughed aloud. His brother was nothing if not predictable.

Fowler left without another word. T.C. sat back down, and the sound of the desk chair shifting seemed abnormally loud in the quiet after their outburst.

In typical Fowler fashion, he left the office door standing open. T.C. stared at it, thinking he should get up and close it, but in that moment even that simple action was beyond him. And then Hannah was there at the doorway, glancing in only long enough to roll her eyes expressively before pulling it shut for him. A thought jabbed at him; given Fowler’s penchant for revenge, the passive-aggressive kind, he wondered how he was treating Hannah. He’d have to ask, because he doubted the assistant would complain. He was going to give her that raise, whether or not she wanted or needed it, T.C. thought.

He turned back to the windows, to the view he’d been contemplating before his brother burst in. It looked no different. There had been no change in the buildings, the reflections of the Texas sun on the glass edifices, the orb on the tower was still there.

And yet it felt entirely different.

How could the knowledge of the presence of one person among the million-plus that populated Dallas proper change everything? How could the thought that Jolie was here now make even the bright Texas sun seem different?

Why was she here? Had she ever even left at all? Could she have been within reach, even, as he went about his life, went about Colton business? Fowler said he’d seen her, and he rarely left the Central Business District unless it was for some party or function, and T.C. would have known about that. No, his brother liked to stay where he could tell himself he was an uncrowned prince of industry, with frequent jaunts to Austin to walk the halls of power, as if he needed to prove to himself just how much weight the Colton name carried. But he hadn’t made one of those trips for a couple of weeks, and he’d obviously seen Jolie recently.

Maybe even today.

Damn, he should have asked him where. But that would have given Fowler more satisfaction than he was willing to provide.

Besides, what did it matter where he’d seen her? It wasn’t like suddenly finding out she was still here changed anything. Fowler might as well have seen her in Antarctica. She’d still taken money to abandon him and what they’d built together. She’d destroyed their future. In the end, to take the money and run had been her choice. She hadn’t even loved him enough to tell him face-to-face.

And she’d taken sweet, precious little Emma with her.

Emma.

She’d be...four years old now. Halfway to five. He tried to picture the sunny little girl who had so captured his heart. What was she like? He had little contact with small children, so his only measure was trying to remember what his little sister Piper had been like then, when he was seven and she four. She had chattered, made wild leaps of imagination and pestered him with the question “why?” about seemingly everything, but that was about all he remembered.

“The old man turned her down when she came at him for more money, and she killed him.”

No. Not Jolie. Not the woman whose laugh could light up an entire room. Sure, she’d had a rough start in life and had gotten tangled up with some unsavory people, but she’d changed all that. For Emma, she’d remade her life. She would never intentionally hurt anyone. She just wouldn’t.

Would she? Could he really say this when she’d done just that, and for the most venal of reasons—money?

He spun the chair around, turning his back on the city that held the one woman he’d never been able to let go of.

* * *

“Don’t wanna go sleepy time.”

Emma mumbled it against Jolie’s side as she sat on the wide window seat in the study alcove that served as the girl’s bedroom in the small apartment. The nearly full moon shone in through the large window, something the girl normally enjoyed, but not tonight.

“I know,” Jolie said. She could only imagine what kind of nightmares the girl might be afraid of, and rightfully so. She’d thought of keeping Emma with her, but had had second thoughts that that might plant the idea of her having bad dreams, or worse, not being safe in her own bed.

“What if I see her?”

“Then I’ll be right here.”

“You won’t let her get me?”

“Never ever.”

That seemed to comfort the girl. She snuggled closer. “I don’t like her. She looked at me mean.”

“It’s all right,” Jolie began, automatically soothing before the sense of the child’s words sank in. Until now, it had always been the woman was mean-looking. But this...

“She looked at you?”

“When she saw me. In the car.”

The killer had seen Emma? Knew Emma had seen her? Jolie had to steady herself. “Did she come toward you? Toward the car?”

Emma nodded. “But I wasn’t scared, Mommy. ’Cuz you locked the door. She couldn’t get me. She ran away and you came.”

Jolie hugged the girl even closer, her mind racing but her heart outpacing it.

“Did she ever actually touch the car?” she asked, some vague idea of fingerprints stirring in the tiny portion of her brain that wasn’t flooded with panic.

Emma shook her head. “She ran away,” the girl repeated.

She could have killed my baby! She had a gun...why didn’t she just shoot...thank God, but why didn’t she... Emma is small. Maybe she couldn’t see her...that’s why she came toward the car...if I hadn’t come back when I did...why on earth did I leave her alone, even for seconds...? Never, ever again...

The horror was building rapidly inside her, and mixed with a healthy dose of self-condemnation, she knew the child would sense it at any moment. She already seemed to be waking up rather than winding down for sleep. Jolie fought down the roiling emotions. “Put your head on the pillow, sweetie.”

Reluctantly the child did so. “Sing me the song,” she said.

Jolie’s breath caught. She hadn’t asked for it in a while. How odd—or perhaps not—that she asked for it today, the same day her own foolish brain had been so full of the man who had first sung it to her, surprising Jolie with his deep, beautiful voice gone soft and sweet as he sang—wonderfully, she thought—the song of all the pretty little horses to the babe in his arms.

She often wondered if Emma remembered, too. If she remembered him. Or if somehow the song had just lodged in her memory and she didn’t associate it with anyone in particular; she just liked it.

Her own voice wasn’t nearly as good, or as strong, as T. C. Colton’s, and she hated the way singing it brought him so close in her mind, but tonight she wasn’t surprised it was what Emma wanted.

She tried, although she was shaken. She managed enough that her daughter relaxed into sleep. Grateful, both that Emma had gone to sleep and Jolie was able to stop the song that brought such painful memories, she stayed put for a long time. Finally she stood, but she knew her focus would be on Emma all night, in case the child did have those nightmares she herself feared.

She called the police, getting a weary-sounding woman who was nevertheless polite, and if not comforting, at least reassuring. The woman would forward along the information—that the killer had seen the only witness—to the people handling the murder case first thing. She also took down Jolie’s address, assuring her they would keep her location on close patrol check.