The Coltons of Texas

Reid watched her for a moment, mesmerized by the way the soft stream of sunlight from the office window made her auburn hair shine with coppery highlights. Her Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt was unflattering, too big for her—probably one of Andrew’s—but her blue yoga pants fit snugly and showed off her shapely bottom and long legs. She moved down the wall to the next painting, checking for a hidden safe, a spot of color in the otherwise darkly masculine room.

A niggling guilt bit him. What right did he have to be ogling his late partner’s wife? Especially when, intentional or not, he’d had a hand in Andrew’s death.

She glanced his way, caught him staring and tilted her head. “What? Did you find something?”

Scrubbing a sobering hand over his face, he turned back to the file cabinet. “No. Just...thinking.”

“Anything you want to share?”

“Not at the moment.” He moved to the next file drawer, found nothing suspicious, and repeated the process, being careful to replace any file he pulled out in the exact manner he found it.

Finding nothing behind the pictures, Penelope moved on to the bookcase, pulling books from the shelves and flipping open the covers of larger books. “I heard about your father, that he’s missing, presumed dead. I’m so sorry.”

Reid paused and jerked his gaze back to her. “So you heard, huh? Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. We’ve tried to keep it out of the news but...”

“Actually, Helen mentioned it when we talked last time. She said they found a burned body in a car they think is your father. She said the house staff has been all abuzz about it and the reports that my father thought he’d seen him before the body was found.”

“Yeah, well, thanks. He is missing, but the burned body they found proved not to be him.”

“Oh!” She flashed an awkward smile. “Good. That’s... I’m glad.”

“Yeah, that was a relief.” Reid didn’t really want to talk about the disappearance of his elderly father. The five months of crazy twists and unexpected turns to his father’s case would take more time than he and Pen had and would only renew his simmering frustration. Still...if it opened a line of communication with Pen, he’d indulge her with the abridged version. “Needless to say, it’s been a stressful few months, and we don’t seem any closer to finding him.”

“The police have no leads?” Pen crossed the floor toward him, her arms folded loosely over her chest. “You’d think, as high profile as his case must be, that there’d be pressure on the cops to find him. To do more. To leave no stone unturned.”

“You’d think. There’s been no shortage of suspects, but nothing that’s been substantiated. A few clues, and numerous theories, but nothing that’s been proven helpful.”

“My father’s sighting—”

“Hasn’t panned out yet. But it’s worth further investigation.” Reid turned to Hugh’s massive desk and began sliding open drawers, searching for a key that might indicate there was a safe in the house or any other indication he’d secreted information somewhere.

She strolled to a window seat and knelt to lift the pillows and the lid of a storage space. “Well, you have my sympathies and prayers that he’ll be found soon and well.”

“Do I?” He paused to study her again, wishing he could get past the distance she’d put between them in the past year.

She sat back on her heels and sent him a puzzled look. “Of course. I may be angry with you, not trust you, feel betrayed by you, but I’m not so uncaring as to wish you or your family ill. I have no grudge against your father.” She dropped her gaze to her lap and frowned. “Not much of one, anyway.” She huffed softly, then added, “But then, my father’s preference of you Coltons over me isn’t your fault, I guess. Coltons are wealthy and powerful clients.” She gave him a bitter smile and waved a dismissive hand. “I’m just family.”

Reid sighed. “Pen—”

More hand waving as she pushed back up on her knees and dug into the window-seat storage again. “No, no. Don’t start. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. My troubles with my father aren’t for you to worry about.”

But he couldn’t write off her feelings of disappointment and jealousy so easily. When Andrew was alive, she’d managed to set aside her feelings toward Reid’s family and enjoy his company at face value. This return of her hostility toward the Coltons showed him just how high the wall she’d built had become. He didn’t want any barriers between them. Especially something he had no control over, like the family he belonged to.

Having the name Colton was a mixed blessing. Along with the prestige, the wealth and the opened doors, his family connection carried a lot of baggage. The Coltons had made enemies in a variety of ways, unintentionally rubbed some people in the community the wrong way, while some folks disliked them simply because of what they represented. They were a part of the infamous 1 percent. The .01 percent even. Not a popular distinction with the other 99.99 percent these days.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, “for your prayers and well wishes. I still have hope he’ll be found. A man like Eldridge Colton doesn’t just disappear without someone knowing something. We just haven’t found that someone yet.” He rubbed a thumb along the beveled edge of Hugh’s desk as he pondered the circumstances surrounding his missing father. “Or we haven’t provided the right incentive to make that someone talk.” He opened a desk drawer and rifled through the files, felt the bottom of the drawer for anything suspicious.

They worked silently for another minute before Pen glanced in his direction. “Do you suspect foul play, or is it possible he left on his own terms, that maybe he doesn’t want to be found?”

Reid twitched a grin. “Yes.”

She frowned at his evasive answer, then shook her head and continued her searching.

“Anything is possible. The truth is we really don’t know.”

Reid looked on the underside of the desk for a file taped to the unfinished wood. Nothing. He gritted his teeth. Hugh Barrington didn’t strike him as the cleverest man. Devious, perhaps. Intelligent, yes. But the man had a twenty-five-year-old passcode on his house security system. Surely Reid could figure out where Hugh might have stashed incriminating information. If there was any to find.

And he believed there was. Because despite how things had gone down in the last months of his time on the police force with Andrew, he trusted his partner’s intuition and insights.

Pen climbed to her feet, abandoning the window seat, and moved down the wall to another bookcase. “But you’re a cop, Reid. Surely you have some gut feeling about what happened to your father. Haven’t you done any investigating on your own?”

He snorted. “I was a cop. I’m not privy to all the details of the case. The family knows some, but not all of what the detectives have learned. They have to keep a few tricks up their sleeve to stay a step ahead.” He moved on to a bottom drawer, big enough for hanging files. The drawer rattled but wouldn’t open. A locked drawer. Not uncommon, all things considered, but...

He felt the underside and checked the smaller top drawers for a key. Nothing. The matching file drawer on the opposite side of the desk slid open easily, and Reid walked his fingers through the contents of the drawer, scanning tab labels. “All that said, I—”

His gaze snagged on a file with the heading Penelope. He stilled, his line of thought forgotten. Furrowing his brow, he pulled out the file and flipped it open. The file was full of legal documents. A few medical records. A picture or two.

The last document was a petition for adoption. Hugh and his wife had signed as the adoptive parents and two names were scribbled on the lines for the birth parents. He blinked and reread the opening lines.

We the undersigned do permanently relinquish all claim and parental rights for our biological child, Lisa Umberton, to Hugh and Constance Barrington of Dallas, Texas...

His breath snagged in his chest, and the thump of his pulse grew in his ears. With fumbling fingers he flipped back to the front of the file to the first documents. A court order to legally change Lisa Umberton’s name to Penelope Lisa Barrington.

“You what?” Penelope prompted, dragging his attention away from the file. Her expression shifted when she glanced at him. “Reid, what’s wrong? Did you find something?”

Uncertainty and shock fisted around his lungs. He swallowed hard and scrubbed his cheek with his palm before stammering, “Uh, no. N-nothing...relevant.”

Did Pen know she was adopted? He thought back through the many meals he’d shared with Andrew and his wife through the years, game-day parties and birthday celebrations. Had she ever mentioned being adopted? She’d talked about how hard her mother’s death had been on her, how distant she felt from Hugh, how alone and out of place she’d felt in the large, sterile home growing up. She talked about her envy of Reid’s large family, how she’d hated being an only child.

But she’d never mentioned adoption.

“Reid,” Pen said, a note of excitement in her tone. “I found a safe.”

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