Colby Law

“You’re right, there is a lot you don’t know. I explained that I’m not at liberty to give you all the details at this time. I have my—”

“I don’t care about your orders.” She grabbed him by the shirtfront and tried shaking him, maybe to make him see she wasn’t taking no for an answer.

All she succeeded in doing was sending him teetering closer to the edge. “Tell me the truth, Lyle.”

There was no time to develop an intelligent strategy to outmaneuver this precarious situation. No evasive explanation that would satisfy her. His only alternative was distraction.

His fingers dove into her hair. He pulled her mouth up to his and kissed her, hard at first out of sheer desperation, and then softer … because the taste of her melted him from the inside out. To his surprise, she didn’t resist.

About the Author

DEBRA WEBB wrote her first story at age nine and her first romance at thirteen. It wasn’t until she spent three years working for the military behind the Iron Curtain and within the confining political walls of Berlin, Germany, that she realized her true calling. A five-year stint with NASA on the space shuttle program reinforced her love of the endless possibilities within her grasp as a storyteller. A collision course between suspense and romance was set. Debra has been writing romance suspense and action-packed romance thrillers since. Visit her at www.debrawebb.com or write to her at PO Box 4889, Huntsville, AL 35815, USA.

I want to thank the readers for their love and support of the Colby Agency through all these years!

It’s hard to believe that the third book in this trilogy heralds the 50th installment of the Colby Agency!

Enjoy!

Colby Law

Debra Webb

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Chapter One

May 20, 9:30 a.m., Polunsky Prison,

Polk County, Texas

Victoria Colby-Camp waited in the cold, sterile room for the man who had requested her presence. Considerable persuasion from the right source had been required to sway the warden of Polunsky Prison to allow this meeting. Lucas, Victoria’s husband, though fully retired from his lifelong career with the CIA, still wielded a great deal of influence. One call to the esteemed governor of Texas and Victoria had almost immediate approval to meet with the prison’s most infamous death-row inmate.

Raymond Rafe Barker had spent twenty-two years in prison, seventeen on death row, quite an extended period for Texas, where the punishment of heinous criminals was generally carried out in a swift and efficient manner. Many had hoped that the delays would provide the necessary time for him to grow a conscience and give up the locations of the bodies of his victims that were never recovered. But that hadn’t happened, and now his time on this earth was coming to a close. In thirty days he would be executed by lethal injection.

Victoria was torn by what she had read in the file provided by the warden and what she might be about to learn. No one wanted to be used as a conduit for an evil man’s purposes. Yet, after due consideration of the letter Barker had written, she could not refuse the request.

The door of the interview room opened. Victoria jerked from her troubling thoughts and mentally fortified for the impact of meeting the man whose stunning invitation had brought her here. Two prison guards escorted Barker into the room. The leg irons around his ankles and belly chain coiled about his waist rattled as he was ushered to the chair directly across the table from her. The nylon glides whispered across the tile floor as the chair was drawn back.

“Sit,” one of the guards ordered.

Barker glanced at the man on his left, then followed the instruction given. He settled into the molded plastic chair and faced Victoria. His gaze, however, remained lowered, as if his reflection in the steel tabletop had garnered his undivided attention. The second guard secured the leg irons to a hook on the floor and the ones binding Barker’s hands to his waist to the underside of the sturdy table that spanned some three feet between the prisoner and his visitor.

“We’ll be right outside, ma’am,” the first guard said to Victoria, “if you need anything.”

“Thank you. We’ll be fine.”

When the door had closed behind the guards, Barker finally looked up. The move was slow, cautious, as if he too were braced on some level for what was to come. The twenty-three hours per day confined to his cell showed in the pale skin stretched across his gaunt face; a face that narrowed down to slumped shoulders and rail-thin arms covered by colorless prison garb. But the most glaring aspect of his appearance was the faded brown eyes, dull and listless. There was nothing about this man’s presence that exhibited the compassion and desperation of the letter he had written to Victoria. Had she made a mistake in coming?

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

The rustiness of his voice had her resisting the urge to flinch. His voice croaked with disuse and age far beyond his true years. According to the warden, this was the first time he had broken his silence in more than two decades. Reporters, men of God, bestselling authors, all had urged him to tell his story. He had refused. The measure of restraint required to maintain that vigil in spite of so very many reasons not to was nothing short of astonishing.

“Guess you’re wishing you hadn’t,” he offered before Victoria completed her visual inventory of the man labeled as a heinous monster.

“Your letter was quite compelling.” Only two pages, but every word had been carefully chosen to convey the worry and outright fear he professed haunted him. Victoria had no choice but to look into the matter. His assertions, though somewhat vague, carried far too much potential for even greater devastation for all concerned in the Princess Killer case. The idea that the man watching her so intently had been arrested and charged with the murders of more than a dozen young girls held her breath hostage as she waited for his next move.

His throat worked as if the words he intended to utter were difficult to summon. “It’s true. All of it.”

Victoria kept her hands folded in her lap to ensure there was no perception of superiority. She wanted Barker relaxed and open. Even more, she wanted his full attention on her face, not on her unshackled hands. The eyes were the windows to the soul. If she left this room with nothing else gained, she needed to gauge if there was any possibility whatsoever that he was telling the truth about those horrific murders.

The prospect carried monumental ramifications even beyond the added pain to the families of the victims. Her chest tightened at the conceivability of what his long-awaited words might mean. “Why haven’t you come forward with this before now?” Having told the truth at or before trial, for instance. Instead, he had refused to talk from the moment he and his wife were arrested.

Clare Barker, on the other hand, had steadfastly stood by her story that she was innocent. As the investigation of the case had progressed, the bodies of eight young girls, ranging in age from twelve to seventeen, had been recovered, but several others remained missing. Clare insisted that she knew nothing about any of the murders. Her husband, a pillar of the small Texas community rocked by the news, had executed all the heinous murders, at least twelve, without her knowledge, and that gruesome number didn’t include those of their three young daughters the morning of the arrest. This would not be the first time a community and even a spouse were totally blindsided. Since the evidence had incriminated both Clare and Rafe, there was the remote chance his sudden claims were, in part, the truth.

But why now? There were only two possibilities. First, and most probable, after numerous appeals, his wife had just been released, exonerated legally if not in the eyes of the citizens of Texas, and he wanted revenge. The less likely scenario was that he actually was innocent. Though he had provided no proof in his letter, there was something in his words that Victoria could not ignore. She had explored the depths of evil many times in her nearly three decades of private investigations. Long ago she had learned to trust her instincts. “There was ample opportunity for you to come forward.”

“I had my reasons for not speaking out before.” He looked away as he said the words, each of which was imbued with distrust and what sounded more like misery than defensiveness.

A deep calming breath was necessary for Victoria to repress any outward reaction. This man, one painted as a monster by the deeds he had refused to deny more than twenty years ago, despite his frail appearance and imminent death now, held the key to closure for so many. Parents who merely wanted to find peace, to provide a proper resting place for their daughters. The warden, Don Prentice, had urged Victoria to tread carefully here. Barker might very well be looking for a last-minute reprieve. No amount of strength possessed by any human fully abated the natural inclination to keep breathing. That cold, hard reality aside, the families of the victims should not have to go through more agony, particularly unnecessary agony. Prentice was right. Too much misery and loss had been wielded by this man and his wife already. Yet, if there was even the most remote chance he was telling the truth … Victoria had to know and to glean whatever good could come of it.

“Mr. Barker, you asked me to come here. You suggested in your letter that it was a life-and-death matter. If you want my help, I need the truth. All of it. Otherwise, I won’t waste my time or yours.”

Barker stared at her for so long that Victoria wasn’t sure whether he would respond or simply cut his losses and call out for a guard to take him away. There was no mistaking the fear that had trickled into his weary eyes. Her pulse accelerated as the realization sank deep into her bones that the terror she saw was undeniably real. But was it for his own life or was it because he believed, perhaps even harbored some sort of proof, that the real killer of all those children had just gone free?

He took a breath that jerked his upper body as if it was the first deep gasp of oxygen he’d been physically able to inhale since sitting down with her. “I didn’t hurt anyone, much less a child. I couldn’t.” Again he looked away.

“Unless you have irrefutable evidence,” Victoria began prudently, “the chances of staying your execution are minimal.” If that was his intent, as the warden suggested, Victoria refused to be a pawn in Barker’s game. She would not allow the media to use her or the Colby Agency to that end.

“I’m ready to go.” He squared his thin shoulders. “Don’t waste any time on me. This is not about my guilt or innocence. It’s about my children.” His lips trembled. “And the others.” The craggy features of his face tightened as he visibly fought for composure. “I can’t do anything to bring those girls back, and I don’t know that the truth would ease nobody’s pain. Dead is dead.” He moved his head side to side with the defeat that showed in the deep lines forged around his mouth. “But I can’t let her hurt anyone else, especially my girls.”

Despite the anticipation whirling like a biting snowstorm inside her, Victoria kept her expression schooled. “In your letter you claimed your wife was responsible for the murders. All of them.” The bodies of their three small daughters had never been found, but neither had those of at least four other victims. As much as Victoria wanted to ask specific questions, she could not risk putting words in his mouth. Over and over in his letter he had insisted his daughters were in danger. Yet not a single shred of evidence supported the theory that the children had survived that final downward spiral the morning of the arrest. In all this time no one had come forward and suggested otherwise. The little girls had vanished, and concrete evidence that a violent act had preceded their disappearance had been documented at trial. What he alluded to in his letter and now, face-to-face, had to be supported by something tangible. He needed to say the words without a visible or audible prompt by Victoria.

“That’s the truth,” Barker repeated, the defeat she’d seen and heard moments ago now gone. “I can’t prove it, don’t even want to. But it’s so just the same.” He blinked, clearing the definable emotion from his eyes. “I didn’t beg you to come here to save me. I died in here—” he glanced around the room “—a long time ago. I need you to help my girls.”

Now they were getting somewhere. His leading the way was essential. “What exactly is it you’re asking me to do?” Did he want her to recover their bodies and ensure a proper burial? If they weren’t dead, why would he not want to prove his innocence of those particular charges? Why had he allowed all involved in the case to believe they were deceased? Was he simply trying to muddy the waters? Whatever his end game, Victoria needed him to spell it out. The warden was monitoring this interview, as well he should.

“As far as the world is concerned,” Barker explained in that unpracticed voice, “I can stay the devil they believe I am. That doesn’t matter to me.” His gaze leveled on Victoria with a kind of desperation that sent a chill all the way to her core. “Once I found out she was going to get away with what she’d done, it took some time to find just the right person I could trust with what I knew had to be done. Careful research by certain folks in here who knew I needed help.”

That this man had developed a loyal following of some sort during his tenure was no surprise, since the warden had not known the contents of Barker’s letter until Victoria had shown it to him. The letter had gotten through the prison mail system without the usual inspections.

“But over and over the results they found were the same,” Barker continued. “There was only one place that consistently fought for justice and helped those in need without ever falling down on the job or resorting to underhanded deeds in order to accomplish the goal. A place that has never once bragged about its record or used the media for self-serving purposes. That place is the Colby Agency.”

Time stopped for one second, then two and three. Victoria didn’t dare breathe until he finished.

“I can’t pay you a dime, and I know my appreciation means nothing to you.” He shrugged. “I’m worse than nothing in the eyes of the world. But if you can ignore what you think of me and just do this one thing, I’ll know your agency is everything I read it was.” Another of those deep, halting breaths rattled his torso. “I beg you, just protect my girls from her. That’s all I want.”

Victoria’s heart thudded hard against her chest, then seemed to still with the thickening air in the room. “I’m sorry, Mr. Barker. You’re going to have to be more precise as to what your request involves since you pled guilty to murdering your daughters twenty-two years ago. Neither your letter nor what you’re saying to me now makes sense.”

“They’re alive.” The words reverberated against the cold, white walls. “My girls are alive.”

Adrenaline burned through Victoria’s veins. Still she resisted any display of her anticipation. “The first officers on the scene the morning you and your wife were arrested,” she countered cautiously, “found blood in the girls’ bed. Blood in the trunk of your car along with a teddy bear that your middle daughter carried with her everywhere. The blood was tested and determined to be that of your daughters.” Victoria hesitated until the horror of her words stopped darkening his features and echoing in her own ears. “You never denied killing your young children, Mr. Barker. To date there is no evidence to the contrary. In light of those facts, how can you expect me to believe you’re finally telling the truth now?”

Fury, undeniable and stark, blazed in his eyes before he quickly smothered it and visibly grabbed back control. “That was to prevent her from ever knowing the girls were alive and hurting them somehow to get back at me for setting in motion her discovery.” Several moments passed as he discernibly composed himself. “They deserved a chance at a decent life untainted by her poison. I had to make sure that happened.”

When Victoria would have responded, he said more. “My daughters are alive and well, and if you don’t help me, she will find them and kill them. For real this time.” He leaned forward, as close as his shackles would allow, and stared deep into Victoria’s eyes. “She’s pure evil, and you’re the only one I can trust to stop her.”

Chapter Two

1:00 p.m., Polunsky Prison

“He’s lying.” Warden Don Prentice made his announcement and pushed out of his chair, indicating his already thin patience had reached an end. “You know what this is, and I’m not taking the bait.”

Lyle McCaleb waited for a reaction from his boss, Simon Ruhl, head of the Colby Agency’s new Houston office, or from the agency’s matriarch, Victoria Colby-Camp. Simon exchanged a look with Victoria then turned to the warden. “Mr. Prentice, we genuinely appreciate your indulgence in this matter. I must admit that I concur with your assessment in light of the facts as we know them.”

“That said,” Victoria continued as if the rebuttal were a well-rehearsed strategy and she was about to play bad cop, “as warden of this institution, you have an obligation to report this theoretical threat to the proper authorities. Our agency does not have that same legal obligation. However, we have a moral one. We cannot just walk away and pretend this incident never happened.”

Prentice shoved back the sides of his jacket, planted his hands on his hips and gave his head a frustrated shake. “Do you have any idea what stirring up this mess in the media will do to those families?” He paced back and forth behind his desk like an inmate in his compact cell. “There’s no way to keep it out of the press.” Prentice stopped and stared at Victoria, then Simon. “The folks who thrive on this kind of heartache have been waiting for this moment for twenty-two years!”

“I do understand,” Simon agreed once more. “That’s exactly why I hope you’ll see the logic in our proposition.”

Lyle figured things could go either way from here. Prentice had agreed to this conference after Victoria’s brief meeting with Barker this morning. Three hours had elapsed since that time with Victoria, her husband, Lucas, and Simon organizing a feasible strategy and the necessary resources. Lyle had jumped at the assignment. As the former head of one of Houston’s most prestigious security firms, he knew the business of protection, and his tracking skills were top-notch from his days as a county sheriff’s deputy. Add to that the fact that he was a lifelong resident of Texas and the combined bonus of high-level connections with a number of those in law enforcement, and he was the best man for the job. Initially, Simon and Victoria had hesitated. Texas was home and perhaps that made him less than objective. Though he’d only been seven at the time of the Barkers’ arrest, his parents had followed news of the high-profile case for years after that.

He might not be the most objective investigator on staff, but in his opinion, that deep-seated understanding of how the entire travesty had affected the community as well as the state could prove useful in solving this puzzle. Fortunately, Simon and Victoria had concluded the same.

Lucas was not happy about his wife’s insistence on being so deeply involved in this case. Recently retired from the day-to-day operations of the Colby Agency, the two were in Houston for only a few months. Just long enough to get the new office staffed and running efficiently. Simon was clearly more than capable of getting the job done on his own, but Lyle sensed Victoria and Lucas were dragging their feet with the whole retirement thing. Suited him just fine. Lyle was grateful for the opportunity to work with the esteemed Victoria Colby-Camp. Lucas was more or less an unknown to him, but Lyle was acquainted with the Colby name. The moment he’d heard the agency was opening an office in Houston, he was ready to sign on. This would be his first case, and he was itching to get in the field and start proving his value to the agency.

“You have my personal assurance, Mr. Prentice,” Victoria said, drawing Lyle’s attention back to her and the challenge she would absolutely win, “that this matter will be handled in the most discreet manner. No one outside this room and a select few at my agency will know the details of this case. The Colby Agency’s reputation speaks for itself.”

Lyle studied the warden’s face, analyzed the way the muscles relaxed as he slowly but surely admitted defeat. He wasn’t totally convinced, but he had likely done his homework. A guarantee like that from the head of the Colby Agency was the best offer he was going to get. And, as Victoria said, there was no turning back at this point. The cards had been dealt, the wager on the table. Someone had to make the next move.

“If this gets out—”

“It won’t,” Simon assured the warden. “Not from the Colby Agency.”

“How can you protect these children—” Prentice closed his eyes, shook his head in resignation before opening his eyes once more “—these women when you don’t know if they’re even alive, much less where they are. My God, this is ludicrous.”

Lyle wanted to give the man a good, swift kick in the seat of the pants. They were wasting time with all this beating around the bush.

“We already have someone in place monitoring Clare Barker’s movements,” Simon enlightened Warden Prentice. “We took that measure immediately.”

Surprise and confusion cluttered the warden’s face. “How is that possible? They took her out of Mountain View in the middle of the night. Half a dozen decoy vehicles were used to elude the media and the horde picketing her release. No one—not even me—knows where she is!”

Lyle had learned quickly that at the Colby Agency the enigmatic Lucas Camp was an ace in the hole. Former CIA, the man had some serious connections of his own. Clare Barker had requested residence in Copperas Cove, north of her former hometown, Austin. Part of Lyle wanted to be the one keeping an eye of the woman, since the Cove was his hometown. But tracking down the truth was his primary goal.

“Be that as it may, Mr. Prentice,” Victoria confirmed, “if we could find her so quickly, others will too in time. If this is a game Barker is playing, perhaps his wife is a target and doesn’t even realize it. For all we know, she may be the one in danger. Obviously he has some who support his cause. We can provide protection for her in addition to surveillance if the need arises.”

“Mr. McCaleb will be tracking down the daughters through the woman Barker claims helped him get the children into hiding.” Simon looked from the warden to Lyle and back. “We hope to locate her before the end of the day. Depending on the situation, if the three are indeed alive, we’ll assign a bodyguard to keep an eye on each one until this mystery is solved one way or the other.”

Prentice held up his hands. “You’ve made several valid points.” He looked directly at Victoria. “Still, the only way I’m agreeing to this is if you keep me posted on your every step.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “That said, I have no choice but to inform the district attorney. If he has a problem with our decision, he and I will work it out.” He exhaled a burdened breath. “There’s no denying Barker has something up his sleeve, and I don’t want any time wasted on bureaucracy. We’ll do what we have to do.”