Colton's Deadly Disguise

“Thank you, Marcie.” The pageant committee chair dismissed the second-to-last contestant to make it in by the deadline. Isabella Colton was the only one who remained.

He’d locked the front doors after scanning Isabella through security. All he had left to do today was observe as the last contestant hopefuls submitted their applications, and survived the board’s initial interview.

It wasn’t an easy task to remain focused. Isabella Colton’s appearance made his gut tighten and put his instincts on high alert. Until the minute she walked through Mustang Valley High’s doors he’d been hopeful that he’d be able to move on to the next Arizona pageant, scheduled for Scottsdale next month. He knew the serial killer he was after had only ever murdered redheads.

All hope that this pageant might be spared what two smaller towns in Northern Arizona had experienced—the brutal deaths of redheaded contestants—evaporated with the swoosh of the school’s front doors behind Isabella Colton.

Holden wished for the first time in his career that he wasn’t undercover. That he could snap his fingers and be the real Holden, for just one conversation with the woman who’d just walked into Mustang Valley High School’s theater. To warn her away, to tell her that she should find another way to pay for her college or whatever she wanted to do with the winner’s prize. But he was undercover, and since his guise was a security guard, his job was to stay quiet and observe. Isabella Colton still had to pass the scrutiny of the pageant review board, so at least there was a chance she’d be turned away either for her age or an incomplete application. She didn’t look older than the thirty-five-year limit, but she wasn’t too young, either.

“Isabella Colton?” Mimi Kingston, the pageant director, called out for the redhead and Colton couldn’t help but do his job thoroughly and make sure he had a good description of Ms. Colton in his mind. At the security checkpoint he’d been focused on the possibility of any of the contestants bringing in a weapon, checking to make sure they weren’t a potential suspect. He’d never investigated a female serial killer but the bureau had several over the years. It happened.

“Bella?” Mimi squeaked out the second syllable, clearly surprised to see the other woman.

“Surprises never cease in Mustang Valley. You know that, Mimi.” Bella placed her application packet on the table that was center stage before returning to the single chair, and sat. He didn’t see her bag; she must have left it in the theater seats. Since no one was left other than those onstage, all part of the pageant, it’d be secure. He was impressed. Bella Colton looked more put-together than the majority of the other contestants.

Her golden-red hair was tied up behind her head in one of those fancy styles he’d only ever noticed in the movies. What caught his attention was the creamy pale skin of her nape, where a few wispy tendrils curled. Her top bared her shoulders, revealing a prominent but not unhealthy collarbone. His mouth moistened as his tongue practically experienced how smooth it’d feel under it.

Holden bit down on said tongue and reminded himself he was on duty, and Bella Colton was most likely Spencer’s sister. Holden’s job was to protect the pageant, and if Bella was indeed his buddy’s sibling, it raised the stakes on this operation. Since Payne Colton had been targeted, no Colton was safe.

He watched Bella cross her long legs at the ankles and rest her hands in her lap, her shapely knees fitting perfectly together. Her ankle-length pants were form-fitting and brokered no complaints from him. He liked that her nails were short, though painted bright red. Holden wasn’t a fan of those long, fake nails, and he wondered what Bella did when she wasn’t trying to rustle up a scholarship to Mustang Valley Community College.

“Thank you for your application, Bella. We’re taking turns reviewing it.” Derek McDougal spoke up, the only male on the board. He rustled the second page. “I see you’re a Mustang Valley High graduate. So you’ve known about the pageant, as this is its thirtieth year.” He passed the application packet to the next board member. “While we’re reviewing everything to make sure you qualify, please tell us why you’re here.” Derek looked at Bella as though she were the canary and he the poised house cat.

Holden’s sense went on high alert, as while McDougal didn’t appear to have any connection with the previous pageants and murders, he was an anomaly. Two of the committee members, the Spanish teacher and Selina Barnes Colton, had been involved with at least one if not both of the ill-fated pageants and while they were automatic suspects, the outliers had to be examined, too.

“Certainly.” Bella beamed. If she noticed Derek’s leer she didn’t show it. “As most of you know, I’m a lifelong Mustang Valley resident. I’ve been lucky enough to go to college, where I received my bachelor’s in journalism. It’s there on my résumé.” She nodded at her application packet, which was being passed down the row of seven pageant board members. “I’ve fallen on hard financial times lately. I’d use the scholarship to MVCC to begin a new career that would have a more reliable income than freelance writing.”

“But you’re employed by the Mustang Valley Gabber, aren’t you?” another board member called out. Holden made a mental note to check up on Bella’s supposed dire straits, but all thoughts screeched to a halt. Wait—Bella Colton was a reporter? His gut twisted and he knew his mouth probably did, too.

Holden had nothing more than disgust for reporters. Not for the usual reasons he knew other agents detested the media. Holden’s distrust of reporters was very personal in origin, thanks to his last girlfriend, someone he’d thought might be with him for the long haul. Nicole, his ex, turned out to be dating him because she’d hoped to glean confidential information about the Coltons from him. This was last summer, when he’d investigated a crime in Roaring Springs, Colorado during its annual film festival. By the time the last film premiered, Nicole admitted her motive for wanting to wait all day in the hotel room for Holden. They were through. In the two years since, he’d dated on and off, but never anyone serious. And the bad taste in his mouth from being duped by a reporter had never washed away.

“I still work at the Gabber, but it’s a modest wage, supplemented by freelance work that’s also been drying up. It’s time for me to face facts—I’ve got to find another type of job or starve.” Bella smiled as she continued the interview. Her entire face lit up and dang it, it ignited something deep inside his chest. Holden’s breath caught at the exquisite shade of peach on her cheekbones, the bright hue of her irises. But her green eyes didn’t sparkle to match the dazzling of her white smile. Instead, Holden had the oddest sensation that Bella Colton was in the midst of a huge act. And the board was her audience. But why?

“With the scholarship to MVCC, I’d be able to become a nurse.”

“The medical industry? A Colton?” Maeve Murphy, who’d worked as the school nurse for decades, spoke up.

Bella’s foot began to shake at the end of her long, shapely leg, but her smile never faded, her chin remained uplifted. Holden gave her ten points for composure and the pageant had yet to begin, her application yet to be accepted.

“I’m not clear on what being a Colton has to do with a career choice.” He heard the challenge in her tone even as she delivered her response so sweetly. It only served to make him admire her more. He really didn’t need to admire anyone right now, though, and definitely not a journalist. He was here to find a serial killer.

You still have to live.

Maeve’s plump face turned red. “It’s just that, you’re from a family of lucrative businesspeople. Why medicine, why now?”

Bella leaned forward, never breaking eye contact with Maeve. “I’m sorry—I think you’re mistaking me for one of the other line of Coltons, the ones who own Rattlesnake Ridge Ranch and run Colton Oil. My brothers and I are from a different part of the family. In fact, I don’t even know most of my Colton cousins very well.” Her voice had turned to ice and Holden watched both her and the pageant committee’s expressions. Most of the people on the board were career educators, including Maeve, an RN. If Bella was in her late twenties, maybe early thirties, she, Spencer and Jarvis must have gone to school here while Maeve and the others were on staff. They had to know her and her brothers. He’d read that Mustang Valley had a population of ten thousand. In short, Maeve knew Bella and her brothers.

And for some inexplicable reason, he was relieved to receive confirmation she wasn’t familiar with the larger branch of her family.

A woman with pouffed-out brunette hair and large dangling earrings raised her heavily braceleted arm, waving at Maeve. “I can personally vouch for Bella and her desire to make something of herself. She’s a lifelong resident, as she’s stated, and her aunt raised her and her brothers after her parents’ deaths in an auto accident. Tragic, I tell you. Yet you’ve survived the odds and are here to present yourself as a contestant. And, may I add, Bella was the brightest student of her class when I had her. Brava.” Hannah Rosenstein nodded in encouragement toward Bella. Hannah was the school Spanish teacher and Holden had witnessed her vouch for exactly one other contestant, also a former student. If she said Bella was solid, he suspected the board would accept her application.

“Muchas gracias, Señora Rosenstein.” Bella responded in a decent accent.

Senora Rosenstein grinned. “De nada. It’s heartwarming to see you’ve remembered your Spanish.”

Holden sat still until Bella’s interview was finished and she was released to leave the building. Only after she exited the auditorium’s back door did he stand and head for the back of the stage to begin his last inspection of the building before he locked it up for the night. Until next week, when the contestants would be called in to start the pageant prep.

A movement on the other side of the stage caught his attention. A tall figure in dark clothing, his face covered with the shadow from the brim of a baseball cap, the man wasn’t anyone Holden had allowed in the building. Holden had memorized the exact number of people who should be here—board members, contestants, plus Bella, who had left the building by now—in the high school. This was a stranger, an interloper.

Holden drew his weapon from its hidden place in an ankle holster and deliberately made his way to the back passage behind the stage, to avoid detection by the suspect. No one was going to be hurt—not on his watch.

Chapter 2

Offstage, Bella quickly slipped out of the espadrilles and shoved them into her oversize tote. Her feet made no sound on the old, highly waxed corridor floor that had borne thousands of teenaged feet through the years.

Looking over her shoulder, she made sure that the way-too-intense security guard hadn’t followed her, but he’d been pretty settled in his chair on the stage, observing the pageant committee’s discussion. The members had been deep in conversation as she and the other contestants exited. Bella had made to leave with the group, then peeled off as the last of the women exited through the main door.

The memory of his gaze on her made her skin heat and her anger rise. Did he think she couldn’t see him as the pageant committee grilled her? And what was his job here, exactly? She thought security guards just manned doors and entrances.

Memories swiped at her focus as she ran to the teachers’ conference room. She’d been in several musicals during middle and high school, all performed in this very building, on the same stage where she was going to have to pretend to compete for Ms. Mustang Valley. Bella knew these corridors and rooms as well as the house she’d grown up in until their parents had died. Some buildings were imprinted on a heart as firmly as the memories that were created in them. She sighed. Even the not-so-great memories—the ones of Aunt Amelia, who had single-handedly raised Bella and her brothers after the accident—were here. Bella recalled Aunt Amelia at back-to-school nights, frazzled as she found getting to three different class sessions impossible. She’d taken it out on the triplets later, complaining about how her life could have been so much easier if Bella’s parents had lived.

Bella hoped that tomorrow she’d be asked to report back to participate in the pageant. She knew it depended on the interview, the personal essays, answers to a total of five written questions that covered her views on charity, community and personal excellence, and her “contestant resume.” The resume had to include current contributions to Mustang Valley, her service hours outside of work, and her place of employment. She’d cringed at the glamour portion of the submission package, which required a headshot as well as an “athletic pose.” Bella used her tripod to take the photo of herself in yoga pants and workout bra. But it’d all be worth it if she made the cut. She’d learn more about the selection process and any “advice” doled out by the committee that might include starving oneself. She was looking for this kind of evidence against the pageant, but Bella needed more proof that this pageant in particular encouraged the women to be as thin as possible, or any other trigger that would have set off Gio’s issues. Gio had mentioned Señora Rosenstein as being particularly snide in her comments about any plus-size contestants, forcing them to weigh in each day, sometimes twice per day. As the pageant’s self-appointed volunteer choreographer, Selina had made nasty, derogatory comments to Gio and other contestants more than once, and Gio told her there were transcripts of the actual pageants where Selina cut contestants for such subjective transgressions as not being “dancer-like.” Gio’s claims weren’t enough to write an investigative report with, however. Bella needed to establish a pattern of wrongdoing for as far back as it existed, if possible.

The records of the previous pageants were reportedly stored in a single, locked file cabinet in the corner of the teaching-staff room which doubled as a group dressing room. Gio had gone over all of it with her as she lay dying, her spent body nearing its end on the hospital bed.

Gio’s last smile to her had belied her wasted state, and Gio’s spirit buoyed her with each step closer to the staff room. Reaching the steel door, she peered through the small, high window, but it had been papered over from the inside. Probably a security move due to the ever-present threat of school shootings. It was a harsh reality Bella’s generation had only begun to come to grips with. She sucked in air as quietly as she could, listening for anyone else in the area. It was impossible to tell if someone was in the room until she entered, and she had no idea how much time she had to find what she wanted.

Holding her breath, Bella opened the door and pasted a smile on her face. If anyone was here, she’d make up a stupid excuse and skedaddle.

No one was in the room and she scanned it with her reporter’s-eye view. The worn furniture and wood-paneled walls had been replaced with contemporary ergonometric chairs, sofas and laptop desks. The walls were a pale shade of lime, the white trim of the huge picture windows creating a crisp, clean, calming effect. If she weren’t a Mustang Valley native, she’d be stunned by the unparalleled view of the Mustang Valley Mountains.

Bella would have plenty of time to appreciate aesthetics later, while running through the pageant. Right now she needed the files Gio had told her about. The files held the transcripts of previous pageants, priceless evidence. Her chest felt heavy as she remembered Gio’s insistence that the Ms. Mustang Valley pageant was the most tortuous, demeaning experience of all the pageants she regularly competed in. Sure, Ms. Mustang Valley held the highest prize—a full, four-year ride to the local college. But it came at such a high price. As part of her prep for going undercover, Bella had interviewed a couple dozen Ms. Mustang Valley pageant entrants from the past decade. She’d found their names in the archives of the local newspapers, as all contestants were announced before the final night.

While all described the competitive environment she’d expected, with the stakes so high, none gave her the specific details Gio had in those last months before she died. Bella needed the pageant’s written history, and if she was lucky, she’d find out what Selina Barnes Colton and Hannah Rosenstein had really said to Gio.

Acutely aware that she could be interrupted at any second, Bella searched the room for the file cabinet. Nothing resembling Gio’s description or her memory existed in the staff room. Tears of frustration and rage threatened and she blinked. She refused to have her attempt to find justice for Gio stymied this early into her efforts.

Calm down. Think.

Hands on hips, she took one more look around the room, beginning and ending with the stage door. Her mind’s eye saw the stage beyond the double doors, the dressing area to the left—

The dressing room! The space beyond the room divider where the cabinets had been placed. She recalled Gio’s offhand comment about how crowded it was in there, with twenty-four women changing for swimsuit and evening-gown competitions.

She slowly opened the double doors to the stage, aware of each tiny creak and squeak. The voices of the pageant board floated through along with the unmistakable scent of the stage. Pinewood, varnish, decades of sweat and joy that had been expended through performance after performance, tryouts and auditions. To her left the sun’s rays filtered through dust from the dressing room. Sweat beaded on her upper lip and trickled down her spine, even made her palms wet. Apparently air-conditioning wasn’t in the school’s weekend and evening budget.

As soon as she could close the doors without a sound, she made haste toward the side room. Before she reached the threshold, her gaze landed on her prize: the old, battered metal file cabinet sat in the far corner of the room, laden with props resting atop its rusty finish.

Yes.

She reached into her pocket for the key that she’d found in the box of treasures Gio had left for her. A favorite pair of earrings Bella had always admired, photographs going back to elementary school, the tickets from a summer concert series they’d scrimped and saved to afford. And a small, sealed envelope.

Gio’s mother brought the box over to Bella’s home two weeks after her daughter had passed. She expressed again how much Bella had meant to Gio and how much Bella’s support helped her during the awful grieving process.

Bella wasn’t surprised to find a small note in Gio’s unmistakable neat print addressed to her. Her bestie liked to have closure and loved writing letters. The surprise had been the file cabinet key tucked inside the exquisite stationery.

Bella had expected that she’d have to do a lot of digging and research before getting enough evidence to take to the police in the hopes of obtaining a search warrant, to get official access into the files. Gio’s claim that certain pageant officials had caused her eating and mental disorders needed to be substantiated.

The pageant files from years past would tell Bella not only who the judges had been, but bear witness to their thought processes and training methods. Methods that Gio thought still existed even today, with all the knowledge about eating disorders and mental illness.

Bella looked at her watch. She figured her time was running short, as the security guard was bound to get up and check the backstage area. Did she have enough time to finish her theft?

No time to worry about it.

The key was in her pocket and she wrestled it out, jiggled it into the lock. For one heart-stopping moment she feared the key might break before she was able to turn the lock as both were practically ancient, the metal spotted with rust.

Finally the lock turned and she grasped the handle, used her thumb to slide the drawer stop to the right.

The sound of fabric against fabric was her only warning before a strong hand clamped over her nose and mouth. She was pulled up against a person behind her. She fought to turn but her attacker was stronger and yanked her hair, hard.

“Don’t move or I’ll snap your neck.” The low, taut voice vibrated with menace and sounded like a horror-film villain’s. Spots started to float in front of her vision and she kicked backward with her heel, hoping that the blows against this maniac’s shins and feet would make him loosen his hold on her.

He tugged harder on her hair and she cried out in pain but with her air supply cut and in such agony it came out as a whimper.

“You’re not being very smart. You’ll never win this pageant. If you want to live, you’ll quit before you start.”

Focus. Observe. She tried every tool she’d ever read about to capture a solid description for the police. And most of all, she fought for her consciousness. Victims who passed out didn’t always fare well.

“Stop!” A loud, booming voice echoed through her rapidly fading awareness. Bella tried to hold on to that voice, its strength, its promise of safety.

But her world crashed into nothingness.

“Stop or I’ll shoot.” Holden had his weapon aimed on the man in black, whom he’d gone after when he saw him in the shadows. The creep held an unconscious, drooping Bella Colton with one arm, her head up next to his as protection from Holden’s bullets. At least, Holden hoped she was unconscious and not dead.

“Never.” The assailant turned and faced him. He wore a ski mask and sunglasses under the black ball cap. A mouthpiece revealed how he disguised his voice. “I will crush her throat if you don’t back off.”

Holden stood his ground, praying for extra time. For this suspect to make a mistake, to move enough so that he could get a clear shot without risking Bella’s life.

Unless the killer had already claimed his next victim. He risked a quick look at her face and its pink tinge assured him her heart was at least still pumping.

Moving his gaze back on the enemy, he slowly lowered his weapon. The other man had no visible weapon. But the serial killer had poisoned or shot each of the other two victims, so his comment about crushing her throat didn’t match. But it might be part of his thrill—using different MOs.

“You’ll never get out of here alive. Turn yourself in now and you live.” Holden had to be careful to not betray his real identity to this lowlife. The less the killer knew, the better. It wouldn’t matter if he could apprehend him right here, right now, but Holden had been in this situation before. Bella’s safety came first. He watched the man’s hands for any sign of movement toward Bella’s throat. Right now his arm held her neck up against him.

“You don’t own me, you pathetic excuse for security.” The killer’s voice sounded like a space alien and that added an extra creepiness to his words. Holden itched to cuff him, to get him to confess to what he’d done.

“What do you have against this woman? Drop her.”

“Everyone is not what they seem.” He was backing toward the exit, dragging the still unresponsive Bella with him. “If you were doing your job, I wouldn’t have been able to get to her. She’s mine.”

Not on Holden’s life.

Holden took one step toward the assailant and allowed himself to fall forward, as if he’d tripped. The man jerked, saw the clear line Holden had to shoot him and let go of Bella, then ran out the exit. Holden took off after the man, but when he entered the large corridor he was gone. Holden pulled out his cell and called 9-1-1, identifying himself as pageant security to keep his cover. He requested police backup, informed them of Bella’s unconscious state and asked for EMT support ASAP. He continued to run through the school in all directions the man could have gone but it was fruitless. And he had to turn back to protect Bella until the other LEA arrived on scene.