The Coltons of Mustang Valley

A light was on in her front window, though it was only four in the afternoon. The garage door was shut. There were no vehicles in the driveway. He didn’t pull in. Leaving his parked truck at the curb, he approached the front door. She could still refuse to talk to him. He wouldn’t blame her.

She could threaten him with a restraining order if he didn’t leave her alone. It wasn’t like she’d have to call the cops. She was the cop.

And still, he lifted his hand to knock.

She’d been over the files again and again. Had a wall in her dining room covered with a huge ten-year calendar, chronicling her brother’s life from the time he’d graduated high school until his death. All of the jobs he’d had were marked with color-coded dots for the months or years he’d worked them. The bills he’d paid, banking transactions, times when she’d found nothing to account for his whereabouts. No credit card charges because he hadn’t had any cards. And she only had phone calls from logging into his account because she hadn’t had a warrant.

Next to the calendar was a smaller one, covering the two-year span before Tyler’s death. It showed what she could find of the activity of Odin Rogers, a slick local criminal who had his hands in many dirty dealings—seriously dirty, Kerry suspected, like drug running and maybe weapons, too. Yet he managed to always skate free of any charges against him. Also, in color-coded dots, she’d marked the phone calls and known meetings between her brother and the slimeball. Odin had had some kind of hold on Tyler. She figured it had to do with Tyler’s earlier, druggie days.

Those phone calls and meetings lasted several months, before Tyler had supposedly committed suicide by falling off a cliff. The calendar showed only two colored marks. One the same week that Tyler had sworn to her that he was straightening out his life, and the other one early in the morning on the day he’d died.

The day Odin Rogers had had him murdered. She was sure of the truth. Just could not find the evidence to prove it. To get justice for Tyler…

A loud rapping interrupted her focus. She’d thought she’d heard a knock, but had ignored the summons. She was on her own time now, and as much as she loved her town, her job, there were times when the well-meaning citizens of Mustang Valley needed to get along without her. After seeing Rafe earlier in the day, that evening was definitely one of those times.

While she hadn’t changed out of the jeans and oxford she’d worn to work, she’d pulled the elastic out of her hair on her way to an eventual hot soak with lavender-scented candles and bath beads before dinner. Pouring on the calm. She’d gotten distracted on her way through the dining room, though.

Still, whoever was out there was being persistent, so of course she had to take a peek. The chief would have called her if there was anything urgent. As would anyone else from the department. An intruder wouldn’t announce themselves so boldly…

Rafe. Still in the clothes he’d been wearing when he’d descended upon her that morning.

Shaking, hating the sudden feeling of being afraid of herself, she froze there by the window, able to see him without him knowing she was looking. If she waited long enough, he’d go away. He’d have no other option. And no way of knowing for sure that she was in the house.

He frowned. Shook his head. Glanced at his watch. Stared at her front door. Then looked toward the sky.

No. It had to be coincidence. Or something that had just become habit without any correlation to anything that had once meant something.

He did not just implore their mothers to help them.

He’d looked up. That was all. Had certainly long forgotten the ritual they’d made up together when they were six or seven and meeting on the other side of the hill that backed up to the RRR barns. They and Tyler—who was five years younger, still a baby when Kerry’s mom had taken off—were the only motherless kids on the ranch. They were best friends. And a year or two earlier, Payne and Tessa had adopted Rafe. Since the day he was adopted at five, Payne had forbidden Rafe to have anything to do with Kerry. But they’d sneaked away anyway. Knowing that if their birth moms were still alive, like the rest of the kids, the mothers would have made sure they still got to play together. They’d look to the sky and ask their moms to not let them get caught by Payne. And for eight years, their pleas had been answered.

Of course, that was back before Rafe knew the value of the Colton dollar. And before she’d known that her mom was in Phoenix, more interested in drugs and men than any children she’d birthed.

When Rafe’s chin lowered, he glanced at the window. For a second she was afraid he saw her. And then saw herself. Saw how ridiculous she was being.

She was a thirty-six-year-old police detective, not a thirteen-year-old virgin having her first kiss. And had long since rid her heart of Rafe Colton. She had nothing to hide. Not even from herself.

With that thought in mind, she pulled open the front door.

Kerry didn’t look happy to see him. He didn’t blame her. Hadn’t expected any different.

“Can I come in?”

“No.”

He nodded. “I’m more ashamed than I can say that it took Payne’s attempted murder to bring me to the point of seeking you out,” he said. She wasn’t likely to give him a second chance to explain. Or much time, either. “I’ve known for years, ever since you got back, that I had to speak to you, to explain…”

Her brows rose, her long, auburn hair trailing down around her shoulders, just as he remembered it. When he was twelve, he’d worked up the guts to tell her he liked it that way. That had been a tough year for him—noticing her as a girl, not just a friend. Wanting to be more than just friends, but having no clue what that even meant in any practical sense.

“I didn’t expect you’d have noticed,” she said. He paid close attention to the words. They didn’t say a whole lot—and yet, they said so much more than he deserved.

There were chinks in her armor. He’d hoped, for a second that morning, that he’d witnessed one of those chinks, but she’d recovered so quickly he hadn’t been sure.

“I have always noticed everything about you,” he said. Like the fact that she’d just looked past his shoulder toward the street. He’d heard a car go by. Someone she knew?

“You shouldn’t have parked that fancy truck of yours out front,” she said. “People will talk.”

“More so if we’re standing out here on your porch,” he told her, a weak attempt to get into her house. To see her space, to be able to picture it, to have a real conversation with her.

Nodding, she stood back, held open the door. “But you aren’t staying, Rafe,” she told him. “You can say whatever it is you feel compelled to say, but then you go. And you don’t come back.”

“You’re the one with the weapon, Detective,” he said. “I left my rifle in its case on the floor of my truck…” He was pretty sure there’d been some pithy follow-up on the tip of his tongue, but all thought vanished as he caught his first scent of her space. His first view.

And felt like he’d come home.

“I’d apologize for furniture that comes from a discount home store, and rugs that are polyester blend, instead of the real wool you’re used to,” Kerry said, standing on the four-by-six area of tile that led from the front door into her living room. “But I’m sure you knew what to expect when you came slumming.” Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

She felt like a gutter rat, standing there with him consuming her house just by stepping in the door.

“And hey, I give you credit…you didn’t waste much time seeking me out once Payne was safely in a coma and so unlikely to catch you mixing with the help.”

The Help. She imagined it with a capital H. Like it was a name. God, she hated those words. The Help. Had heard it far too many times, in her own head, as she’d cried herself to sleep, night after night. Year after year. Not every night. Not all year. But far too often.

She’d hadn’t been on the ranch to help anyone. She’d been a kid. Growing up, like any other kid had a right to do.

She hated him for abiding by those social rules, letting those words destroy the most valuable thing in her life.

“If I was going to stop hanging out with you because I thought you were beneath me, I’d have done it when I was five,” he said. “Or six, or seven, or eight.”

Did he think she hadn’t already tried to give him that benefit of the doubt? That she hadn’t spent years trying to understand?

“You didn’t yet know what Colton money could buy you.”

“Of course I did,” he said. “I knew that the first night I slept in the mansion. Even at five, my pajamas were silk and the sheets were softer than anything I’d ever felt before. I had a huge bed, and a room full of new toys waiting for me.”

He’d never told her that. “You said the pajamas were cold.”

“They were. But I liked how they felt. I never felt like you were beneath me, Kerry. Not ever. To the contrary, I felt like I was a lowlife, ditching you like I did.”

She might have believed that ten—twenty—years before. Back when she’d still been foolish enough to hope that adulthood would free them to be together.

But if telling her his fanciful version of the truth got him out of her house, of her life, quicker, then she was all ears. “So why did you? Ditch me?”

“Because I was madly in love with you. And thirteen. When Payne caught us kissing… I was…hard…and embarrassed and I freaked out. How could I be in love? I was only thirteen. But you…you were like a siren or something, calling me to you. The strength of those feelings scared me. It wasn’t like I had anyone to talk to about it. But Payne had plenty to say about the kinds of boys who fooled around with the help. And what that did to the girls they fooled around with, too…”

She couldn’t let his words sink inside her, couldn’t let them get to that deep private place she no longer accessed. Didn’t even want them in her head. But there they were. Before she saw their danger, they’d already made their way between her ears. Couldn’t allow herself to feel anything for that thirteen-year-old boy who’d been so lonely in that big house with all the important people.

And so alone in the world.

She’d had Tyler. And her dad, who, while drunk most evenings, had always been clear in his love for his children. And in his desire to be there for them. He’d been a kind drunk. A strong worker. And a weak man.

Rafe had been made to act like a man at five.

Not that it changed anything. He’d been grown for a long time since then. Had had more than a decade with her back in town and not once had he made any attempt to seek her out. Not to apologize. Explain. Give any indication to her that she’d mattered at all. Not even when Tyler had died…

“What is all this?”

He’d seen “the wall.” When she’d let him in, she hadn’t even thought about the small part of the L-shaped living/dining area in her home. She’d only thought about not wanting anyone who knew her seeing her talking to Rafe Colton on her doorstep.

Hadn’t been able to bear the thought of having to answer questions.

Hadn’t wanted to bear the shame, even secretly inside, of knowing that she’d once ranked Rafe Colton at the very top of her list of loved ones. Ahead even of Tyler and her dad. Only to be cast off because she was “the help.”

The truck outside, she could find a way to explain. If she had to. The Coltons weren’t the only guys in Arizona who drove cool trucks. Expensive trucks.

“So, can you tell me what this is about?” Rafe was frowning as he moved along the wall, reading, she assumed.

“A case I’m working on,” she told him. “A cold case.”

Tyler wasn’t named on the wall.

Neither was Odin.

Rafe studied details anyway. And then turned around to see the folders on the table. Tyler’s name was big and bold right on top.

“I was told his death was an accident.”

Or a suicide. Both theories had spread through town. Officially it had been ruled an accident.

“He was murdered,” she told him, feeling like a traitor for even sharing that much with Rafe. She wasn’t the only one who’d suffered when Rafe deserted them. Tyler had idolized his older sister’s friend. Had been bereft without Rafe’s support, and what he’d viewed as Rafe’s protection.

“The school year after that last…summer, he was starting fourth grade,” she said aloud. Maybe for Tyler. Maybe because it just had to be said. “Being little for his age hadn’t been an issue in third grade. A lot of guys were still small. But by fourth grade, kids started picking on him. He came home all bloodied up one day and just kept saying, ‘I gotta tell Rafe, he’ll make ’em stop.’”

She could hear the words as clearly that night as the day they’d been said. “I had to physically hold him back from running up to the mansion to find you.”

She’d never been sure what Tyler thought Rafe could have done, even if he’d still been their friend. Since Rafe was older, it wasn’t like he was ever on Tyler’s elementary school campus.

But that had been the year that changed her little brother. He might not have been as big as the other boys, but he’d been smart. And he’d toughened up. By seventh grade he’d been running with the troublemakers who’d once made fun of him. Running them.

By the time she’d come home from college in Phoenix, he’d been running drugs, too, though she never got him to admit that. And he’d never been caught. She saw the money in his room, though.

And saw him getting high and drunk every night.

She’d been away getting an education, attending the police academy to make their little world a safer place for people without Rafes to protect them, and while she’d been gone, he’d turned into her father.

“He fell off a cliff, right?” Rafe was going through photos, having opened the folder without seeking permission first. So Colton-ish.

“He was driven up there and pushed off.”

He looked at her—studied her, more like it. “You sound sure about that.”

“I am sure. I just don’t have the evidence to prove it. Yet.”

“He was pulled off the mountain drunk more than once,” Rafe said softly, compassion in his gaze.

“How do you know that?”

“Because while you were gone…he was in high school…I made sure that he got back to the ranch, to your cabin, without Payne ever hearing about it.”

She’d wondered how Tyler had been so wild without being kicked off the ranch. He’d left on his own. After he’d graduated from high school.

“I made sure he stayed until he graduated,” Rafe added.

“I don’t believe that. Tyler would have said something…”

“He didn’t know. I…had a talk with one of the guys in your department, Spencer… The police made a deal with Tyler that he wouldn’t be charged with underage drinking as long as he stayed in school. And they watched over him, just happening to show up wherever he might be getting himself into trouble.”

Wow. Just… Wow.

What did you do with that piece of information?

How did you hate a guy who…

Not that you liked him, again, too much else had happened…

He’d looked after Tyler while she’d been gone. Had made sure her brother got his education.

She just couldn’t believe it.

Wished she’d known. And it still wasn’t enough. Didn’t make up for ditching them in the first place. For choosing wealth over love.

Because even if, as a kid, he’d felt he had no choice, five years after that last ultimatum, he’d been an adult. And yet he’d waited twenty-three years…

Seriously, what did you do with something like that?

Chapter 3

Rafe studied the information about Tyler’s death so he didn’t have to look at Kerry. Or feel her home around him, reminding him of everything he’d once had and never found again. Not the room. Or the furnishings. It was a sense of being fully and completely alive.

She hadn’t said a word since he’d broken his promise to himself and told her what he’d done for Tyler while she’d been at the police academy. He’d gone away to college, too, but he’d had a helicopter that brought him home for three days every weekend. Payne’s insistence. His way to keep control, Rafe had figured. “Why are you so certain that this wasn’t an accident?” he finally asked, closing the folder when he couldn’t bear to look at the pictures any longer. The cliff face. The tire tracks and footprints in the dust.

The funeral he’d missed because he’d been at an international oil summit in Washington with a couple of his siblings—or the biological Colton heirs, as he sometimes thought of them. Although, why she had a picture of the people gathered at the grave site…

He glanced again. Noticed the man standing in the back of the small gathering. And then looked at the wall again. And through another file. “You think Odin Rogers had something to do with this?”

The man was little more than a scumbag with no morals, no class, who lived like a member of royalty—thinking his word and desires carried the weight of a king. He’d tried to take on Rafe once—when Rafe had been looking out for Tyler. Not face-to-face, of course. But word got around that the Coltons couldn’t save Tyler if the punk didn’t finish some job for which he’d been paid. No job that was on any record, of course. It hadn’t ended well for Rogers. And yet, the hefty white man continued to live well. And free.

Rogers’s one success was that he had enough minions willing to do his dirty work so that his hands were clean when it came to actual proof of dealing drugs.

“I know he’s behind it,” Kerry said, standing to join him by the wall. “I know Tyler got into trouble, that he made some horrible choices there for a while…” She paused and Rafe felt the sting of guilt, whether she’d intended it or not. “But he was on the straight and narrow for almost a year before he was murdered. I know that he’d been running with some of Odin’s people. I saw him downtown, talking to Odin once, but when I asked him about it, he denied knowing the guy. Kept trying to convince me that I’d seen it wrong. Then something went down that either scared him, or opened his eyes to what he was becoming, because he came to me and apologized for all the worry and trouble he’d brought me over the years. He told me that he knew how much I’d done for him, that I was always there for him. Told me how much that meant to him. And he swore that he was going to make it all up to me…”

She’d been sounding all police-like…until she didn’t. Her voice didn’t break, it just trailed off. And she stared unmoving at the wall.

Collecting herself, Rafe knew. Not because it was anything she’d ever done around him before; on the contrary, she’d always shown him everything she was feeling, when they were kids. But he knew she wasn’t going to let herself show him anything, anymore.

The practical adult man he’d grown into was glad about that. Because if Payne lived, and Rafe truly hoped he did, the old man would likely still carry through on his threats to a thirteen-year-old Rafe. Back then all he’d have had to do was fire her father. Which would have been akin to sending Kerry and Tyler straight into hell. With Tyler Sr.’s drinking, the kids would likely have been left to fend for themselves. Or become wards of the state, and risk being split up. At least on the ranch they were always looked after by the other cowboys’ wives. And Tyler was looked after, too, by the men who trusted him to work hard come morning. At the RRR they could be together as a family. And one thing Rafe had always known was how much Kerry loved her little brother. And her father, too.

But even now that Rafe and Kerry were adults, Payne could wield his power. Have Kerry pressured out of the Mustang Valley Police department, forcing her to leave the town that had been her home her entire life to seek out other employment. The man meant well—he was fiercely loyal and loved his family—but he also believed that he knew best and used his power to see that his will was done.

And he believed that where Kerry Wilder was concerned, Rafe was weak. Or he just held a grudge because Rafe had managed to carry on a secret friendship with her for eight years before the man found out.

Either way, Rafe wasn’t going to be the cause of that power being unleashed on Kerry.

“There has to be a reason that he was up on that mountain.” Kerry’s words, calm and professional again, broke into his thoughts. “That’s not where he ever climbed, or hung out. There’s nothing up there. Not even a good view. And the tire tracks don’t match his car,” she added. “They’re bigger, the tread is wider.”

“So what’s the official explanation for that?”

She shrugged. “There’s no proof that those tire tracks had anything to do with Tyler’s death. Someone could have been up there before, or after he went over. As dry as it was, they could have been there for a couple of days. And there’s no proof that anyone else was with him. You see the footprints…there are several partials, different shoes…so we know people were up there, but not necessarily when he was. The theory is that it was a new hangout spot, but no one has come forward saying so. Or admitting to having been up there. And it’s not like there’s a surveillance camera…

“If it hadn’t been for a hiker finding his body down below, we would likely never have known what happened to him…”

“How long was he down there?”

“A couple of days.” She shook her head. Studied the wall as though the answer was there for her to see.

And maybe it was. She seemed so certain. He followed her gaze.

“It could be that the prints in the photo were from people who heard about his death and went up to look,” she continued, “but there’s got to be evidence there, too. He was up there. We know that. I need to know why. Because I am certain he didn’t climb a mountain and jump. Or go hiking and fall off. There was no evidence of him having slid off, no ground broken away, no sign of a body hitting the sides, or sliding, on the way down.”

“So let’s go back and take another look.” Rafe didn’t think before he spoke. But didn’t regret the words.

Kerry stared at him. “What?”

He looked her straight in the eye. “Look, I know some of the responsibility for this lies on me. I knew he looked up to me, and I just quit his life. Let me at least do this. Let me help. I’ve got an analytical mind. And fresh eyes. I’ve never been up there. So take me up. Show me. Maybe I’ll notice something that wouldn’t appear significant to someone trained to assess a crime scene.”

“It’s been two years…”

“But maybe something up there will trigger an idea…a possibility you haven’t yet thought of. I really want to help, Kerry. If you never speak to me again after this, fine, I deserve that. But let me at least help you find justice for Tyler.”

He knew he had her before she opened her mouth. He recognized the look in her eyes before she glanced away.

If he’d needed proof that what had once been sacred between them wasn’t dead yet, he’d just had it.

And knew, just as he had twenty-three years before, that he was going to have to walk away from it.

Because sometimes the heart didn’t win.

“It’s still going to be light for another hour. Can you go now?” Kerry knew better than to let Rafe Colton back into her personal sphere—knew he’d be heading right back out again—but if he was willing to help her find justice for Tyler, she wanted to use him quickly and be done.