Colton Baby Rescue

A K-9 cop must protect a single mom as USA TODAY bestselling author Marie Ferrarella introduces the new Coltons of Red Ridge miniseries

Carson Gage has a crime to solve—the murder of his brother—and his number-one suspect is his archenemy, Serena Colton. The Coltons and Gages have feuded for generations; Carson is convinced the cowgirl is hiding his prime suspect on her ranch. But the beauty and her baby stir unwelcome yearnings in his calloused heart. After all, Carson has learned the hard way what vulnerability can cost. When Serena and her child become targets of a mysterious assailant, Carson’s protective urges take over. Can an irresistible attraction prove stronger than old family hatreds and help them capture a criminal?

Serena mentally threw up her hands.

This was hopeless. Why did she even care if something was bothering this boorish man who had come stomping into her house, disrupting everyone without even displaying an iota of remorse that he was doing it? Never mind that her brother had led this invasion into her parents’ home. She felt better blaming the detective for this than blaming Finn.

“Never mind,” she told Carson, changing topics. “I have to see to my baby—if it’s all right with you,” she said, a mild touch of sarcasm breaking through.

Rather than say anything in response, Carson just waved her back to her quarters.

Serena’s voice was fairly dripping with ice as she said, “Thank you.”

With that she turned on her bare heel to walk back into her suite.

“Let’s go, Justice,” Carson said to the dog, steering the animal toward the stairs.

Keeping a tight hold on the dog’s leash, Carson walked out of the house quickly, a man doing his best to outrun memories too painful to coexist with.

* * *

The Coltons of Red Ridge: A killer’s on the loose and love is on the line

Colton Baby Rescue

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred and fifty books for Harlequin, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

To

Nancy Parodi Neubert

And

The Successful Return

Of

Happiness

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Chapter 1

He really did not have time for this.

Detective Carson Gage frowned as he drove down the darkened streets to The Pour House. He had more important things to do than attend his older brother Bo’s bachelor party at a second-rate dive bar in the sketchy part of town.

Hell, he would have rather stayed home and spent the evening talking to his K-9 unit partner, Justice. Granted it would have only been a one-way conversation, but the German shepherd was probably more intelligent than half the people who were going to be at the bachelor party anyway.

This whole thing was a joke, the Red Ridge police detective thought. Bo shouldn’t be getting married anyway, not to a woman who he’d only known for a total of three months. This was way too sudden.

The whole thing seemed rather strange to him, not to mention ironic. Bo’s bachelor party was being thrown at The Pour House, which just happened to be owned by Rusty Colton, who was the father of Bo’s last girlfriend, Demi—the woman Bo had been engaged to for one month, then dumped when he took up with Hayley Patton, his current bride-to-be.

More than likely, Carson thought dourly, given who was being invited to this party, the evening was going to end up in a huge brawl—which was why he intended to stay for just one drink, then get the hell out of there.

Besides, he had work to do. His burning obsession was to find some piece of irrefutable evidence he could use to finally put away the Larson brothers, the cold-blooded twins who fancied themselves up-and-coming crime lords intent on building up a vast criminal empire and destroying everything and everyone in their path.

The Larsons were behind at least two murders that he knew of and they were at the center of a rash of drug busts, but because the thugs who worked for the brothers were more afraid of them than they were of the police, he hadn’t been able to find anyone willing to testify against the twins.

But he would. Come hell or high water, he would, Carson swore, his hands tightening on his car’s steering wheel. All he needed was to find that one elusive piece of evidence that would start the process of nailing the Larson brothers’ coffins shut.

Carson picked his way through the streets, driving slowly. The area seemed even more unsavory at this time of night than it was during the day.

“If you have to marry this one, why couldn’t you just run off and elope like a normal guy?” Carson asked out loud, addressing the brother who wasn’t there. “Why all this need for fanfare and hoopla?”

It almost seemed, what with having the bachelor party at The Pour House, like Bo was deliberately rubbing Demi’s nose in his wedding.

Yup, fireworks were definitely going to be on the agenda tonight, Carson thought. One beer and he was out of there, he promised himself again. He had no burning desire to break up a bunch of drunken men who should know better, doing their damnedest to knock each other’s heads off. Bo had said he was inviting both Coltons and Gages to this party. Gasoline and fire, Carson thought.

He swore under his breath. No, he definitely didn’t need this.

With a sigh, he pulled into The Pour House’s parking lot. Because he wanted to be able to drive off the lot with a minimum of maneuvering—and make sure that his car didn’t get dented by some celebrant who had overindulged in liquid courage, Carson decided to park all the way in the back of the lot. It would be a bit of a trek to the bar’s front door, but it was between that and his peace of mind, and his peace of mind definitely made it worth it.

So he guided his vehicle all the way to the last row of the lot. The lot happened to back up against a grassy embankment.

Pulling up the hand brake, he sat there for a while, trying to get into the right frame of mind.

It wasn’t happening.

With a sigh, the police detective got out of his car and locked it. Carson was about to start walking toward the entrance of the bar when he thought he saw someone lying facedown at the very far edge of the lot.

Carson paused, squinting. That part of the parking lot was pretty dark. What streetlights there were didn’t reach that far.

“Looks like someone’s already been partying too much,” he muttered under his breath.

Some people just couldn’t pace themselves accordingly and this guy obviously couldn’t hold his liquor, Carson thought. With a resigned sigh, he changed course and headed toward the drunk instead of the bar. If he didn’t wake the guy up and get him out of the way, Carson had no doubt that during the course of the evening, someone was liable to run the drunk over.

The lot wasn’t all that full yet, he observed. This guy must have got a really early start. From what he could make out, the man was half on the edge of the lot, half on the grass at the very perimeter of the parking lot.

Drawing nearer, Carson saw that the man, whose face was obscured because it was turned toward the grass, had one arm stretched out with his index finger raised, like he was trying to draw attention to something.

That’s odd.

And then, despite the fact that it was pretty dark there, Carson saw that there was writing on the ground just above the man’s head. It looked as if he had written something—

In blood?

Taking his phone out, he hit the flashlight app, then squatted down. Using the light from his phone, Carson looked at the ground just above the man’s head more closely.

“It looks like you wrote Demi C,” Carson murmured, half to himself. The last letter was barely finished.

Demi C? Demi Colton?

Carson’s eyes widened. What was this guy doing, writing the name of his brother’s former girlfriend on the parking lot asphalt? And where had the blood come from? Had the guy hit his head?

“Hey, fella, wake up. The parking lot’s no place to take a nap.” He shook the man’s shoulder but couldn’t seem to rouse him.

Blowing out a breath, Carson rose to his feet and circled the man’s body so he could get a look at the drunk’s face.

“C’mon, fella, you can’t sleep it off here. You’ve gotta get—”

The rest of the sentence froze on Carson’s lips.

The man he was trying to wake up was his brother. Bo’s eyes were wide-open and unseeing.

There was a black cummerbund stuffed into his mouth. And he wasn’t breathing.

Chapter 2

Detective Carson Gage’s hands were shaking as he urgently turned his brother over onto his back. Any hope of trying to revive Bo disappeared the moment he saw the bullet wound.

His brother had been shot right through the heart.

Irrationally, Carson felt for a pulse anyway. There was none. Swallowing a curse, he sat back on his heels. His brother’s skin was already cold to the touch. This was January in Red Ridge, South Dakota, but death brought a different sort of cold with it and there was no mistaking it for a simple reaction to the weather.

“Damn it, Bo, I told you playing fast and loose with women would be the death of you someday. Why d’you have to prove me right?” Carson demanded angrily.

He curbed his impulse to straighten Bo’s clothing. Bo always took pride in his appearance and death had left him looking disheveled. But the crime scene investigators were going to need to see everything just the way he had found it.

Shaken to the core, Carson got back up to his feet and opened up his cell phone again. He needed to call this in.

It took him a minute to center his thoughts. He was a trained police detective, Carson silently upbraided himself. He couldn’t afford the luxury of coming apart like some hysterical civilian who had just unexpectedly witnessed death up close and personal—even if this was his half brother.

Taking a deep breath and then exhaling, he put in a call to his chief, Finn Colton. As he waited for Finn to pick up, he looked again at the name his brother had written in his own blood.

Demi C.

Demi Colton. Carson shook his head. When this got out, it was going to throw all of Red Ridge into one hell of an uproar, he thought. As if the feud between the Coltons and the Gages needed more fuel.

The next moment, he heard Finn’s deep voice as the chief answered his phone. “Hey, Gage, aren’t you supposed to be at your brother’s bachelor party right now, getting drunk and toasting Bo’s last few hours of freedom? What are you doing calling me?”

Carson enunciated the words carefully, afraid that if he spoke any faster, his voice was going to break. He and Bo weren’t close, but they were still family. “There’s been a murder, Chief.”

“Damn,” Finn cursed. Instantly, the voice on the other end became serious. “Whose?”

Carson paused before answering. “Bo’s.”

“This your idea of a joke, Gage?” Finn demanded impatiently. “’Cause if it is, it’s not funny.”

“I only wish it was, Chief,” Carson answered.

“You’re serious,” Finn responded, stunned. When no contradiction came, Finn asked, “Where and when?”

Carson looked down at his brother’s body. The whole scene seemed utterly surreal to him. “I just found him two minutes ago, lying facedown at the edge of The Pour House’s parking lot.”

“The Pour House,” Finn repeated. “Isn’t that where his bachelor party is supposed to be taking place tonight?”

“One and the same,” Carson answered his superior numbly. He realized he was leaving the most important part out. “And, Chief?”

“Yeah?”

“Looks like Bo wrote a name in his own blood. Maybe his killer’s name.”

Carson heard a noise on the other end as the other man said something unintelligible before going on to ask, “Whose name did he write?”

“Demi C.”

This time there was total silence on the other end for approximately thirty seconds as the information sank in.

The city of thirty-five thousand citizens had more than its share of Coltons. There were three branches in total, as different from one another as the seasons were. The chief liked to say that he belonged to the middle branch, the one that was neither rich nor poor and rough around the edges.

But whatever section he gravitated to, the chief was still a Colton and Carson couldn’t help wondering how Finn Colton would deal with having to bring in one of his own as a suspect for first-degree murder.

Finally, the chief broke the silence and asked, “You think Bo wrote that?”

“It’s in his own blood, Chief,” Carson answered. Then, in case there was any further question as to whether or not Bo was the one who wrote the name, he added, “There’s blood underneath Bo’s fingernail. Looks like he wrote it.”

Finn sighed as if the weight of the world had suddenly been dropped on his shoulders.

“Good enough for me,” he replied. “I’ll have Demi brought in for questioning. Meanwhile, I’ll send some of the team to bring in your brother’s body.” His voice softened, as if he was feeling sympathetic about what Carson was going through. “You can give your statement in the morning if you need some time, Gage.”

Finn was cutting him some slack, Carson thought. He didn’t want any slack, he wanted to get his brother’s killer.

Now.

“I don’t need any time, Chief.” Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howled. Carson would have been hard-pressed to name a lonelier sound. “I’ll stay here with Bo until the detail gets here,” he told his boss. “And then I’m coming down to the station. I want to be there when you interrogate Demi.”

“Gage, you can’t—”

Carson felt the walls going up. He cut Finn off before the chief could officially exclude him. “I need to be there when you question her, Finn. You owe this to me, Chief.”

There was silence again. An annoyed silence if he was any judge, Carson thought. He fully expected the chief to argue with him, but he wasn’t about to back down.

However, Finn surprised him by saying, “All right, you can be there, but I’ll be the one handling the interrogation. I don’t want to hear a word out of you, understood?”

Even though Finn couldn’t see him, Carson nodded his head grimly. “Understood.”

Terminating the call, Carson put his phone into his pocket. Silence enshrouded him although the distant sound of music and raised voices coming from the bar sliced through the air, disrupting the night.

“Sounds like your bachelor party’s getting underway without you,” Carson said to the prone figure near his feet. “Not exactly the way you expected the night to go, is it?” he asked ironically. He squared his shoulders. No, he and Bo hadn’t been close, but Bo was still his brother and he didn’t deserve this. “Don’t worry, Bo. If Demi did this, she’ll pay. I don’t know what happened, but I promise she’ll pay. I’ll see to it.”

It was getting colder. Carson pulled his sheepskin jacket tighter around him and turned up the collar. But he remained where he was, a guard at his post. He wasn’t about to go anywhere until the unit came to pick up Bo’s body.

* * *

“I know my rights. I’m a bounty hunter, damn it, and I know my rights better than you do,” twenty-seven-year-old Demetria Colton shouted angrily at the two police officers who brought her into the small, windowless room within the Red Ridge police station. “Why am I here?” she wanted to know.

But neither of the two police officers, one young, one old, answered her, other than one of them telling her, “The chief’ll be here shortly.”

“The ‘chief’?” Demi repeated in a mocking tone. “You mean Cousin Finn? Is he still pretending to be in charge?”

The two officers left the small eight-by-ten room without answering her. An angry, guttural noise escaped the redhead’s lips. Frustrated, she would have thrown something if she’d had something to throw.

“Why am I here?” she demanded again, more loudly this time. Furious, she began to pound on the locked door. “I know you’re out there! I demand to be released. You can’t hold me here like this, you hear me?” she cried. “I haven’t done anything, damn it! You let me out of here! Now!”

When the door suddenly opened just as she was about to start pounding on it again, Demi was caught off guard and stumbled backward. Had the table not been right there behind her to block her fall, she would have unceremoniously landed on the floor.

“You’re here,” her cousin calmly told her as he and Carson walked into the room, acting as if they were about to have a run-of-the-mill, normal conversation, “to answer some questions.”

Demi tossed her head, her red hair flying over her shoulder.

“What kind of questions?” she asked defiantly, her dark brown gaze pinning him down.

“Like where were you tonight?” Finn wanted to know, gesturing toward the lone chair on the opposite side of the table and indicating that she should sit.

“Home,” Demi bit off, grudgingly sitting down. “I was in my home—since 5:00 p.m.” she added for good measure.

Finn gave no indication whether or not the answer satisfied him. He waited until Carson sat down next to him, then asked, “Alone?”

“Yes,” she bit off, then followed that up with a question of her own. “Why?” she demanded. Squaring her shoulders, she drew herself up and raised her chin, always ready to do battle with the world—and her cousin. “Is that a crime now?”

Hearing Carson’s chair scrape along the floor as he started to rise, Finn shot him a warning look before answering Demi’s question. “No, but murder is.”

“Murder,” the redhead repeated, growing more furious by the second. She made the only logical conclusion. “You think I murdered someone?” she cried, stunned. “And just who is it I was supposed to have murdered?” When Finn didn’t answer her immediately, she pounced on him. “C’mon, you can’t just throw something like that out and then leave me hanging in suspense, Finn. Just who was it that you think I murdered?”

Unable to remain silent any longer, his hands fisted at his sides, Carson pinned her with a damning look as he answered her question. “Bo. You murdered Bo and then you stuffed a cummerbund into his mouth.”

“Bo,” she repeated in noncomprehension. And then, for a moment, Demi turned very pale. Her eyes flicked from Bo’s brother to her cousin. “Bo’s dead?” she asked hoarsely.

It was half a question, half a statement uttered in total disbelief.

Then, not waiting for an answer, what had become known in the county as Demi’s famous temper flared, and she jumped up to her feet, her fists banging down on the tabletop.

“You think I killed Bo?” she demanded incredulously, fury flashing in her eyes. “Sure,” she said mockingly. “Makes perfect sense to me. The man’s dead so let’s blame it on the woman he dumped—EXCEPT I DIDN’T DO IT!” she yelled, her angry gaze sweeping over her cousin and her former fiancé’s brother.

“Sit down, Demi,” Finn ordered sternly. “And calm down.”

Instead of listening to her cousin and taking her seat again, Demi Colton remained standing, a firecracker very close to going off in a flash of fireworks.

“No, I will not calm down,” she cried. “And unless you have some kind of concrete evidence against me—” she said, staring straight at her cousin.

“How about Bo writing your name on the asphalt in his own blood?” Finn said. “Demi C.”

Demi paled for a moment. “The killer is framing me?”

Finn raised an eyebrow.

Demi gave him a smug look. “Just as I thought. You don’t have any sort of actual evidence against me. Okay, I’m out of here,” Demi declared.

“You’ll leave when I tell you to leave,” Finn told her sternly. Rising from his chair on the opposite side of the table, he loomed over her.

“Do you have any evidence against me, other than my name written in Bo’s blood and the fact that I had the bad judgment to have been engaged to the jerk for a month?” she asked, looking from her cousin to the other man in the room.

Though it obviously killed him, Finn was forced to say, “No, but—”

Triumph filled her eyes. “There is no ‘but’ here,” Demi retorted. “You have nothing to hold me on, that means I’m free to go. So I’m going.” Her eyes swept over her cousin and Carson. “Gentlemen, it has definitely not been a pleasure.”

And with that, she swept past them to the interrogation room door like a queen taking leave of a pair of disloyal subjects.

Finn shook his head as his cousin stormed out. “Hell of a lot of nerve,” he muttered under his breath.

“As I recall, Demi was never the sweet, retiring type. If she was, she would have never become a bounty hunter,” Carson told him.

Finn blew out a breath. “You have a point.” He walked out of the interrogation room with Carson directly behind him. “Well, check out her alibi, talk to anyone who might have seen her,” the chief said, addressing the victim’s brother. “I’m open to any further suggestions.”

Carson looked at his boss in mild surprise. “I thought you made it clear that I wasn’t allowed to work on my brother’s case.” Although, he thought, since Finn could work on the case in which his cousin was a suspect, he should be allowed to investigate his brother’s murder.

“Technically, you’re not,” Finn said as they walked out into the main squad room. “But I’m not an idiot, Gage. You’re going to work this whether I give you my blessing or not.” He stopped just before his office. “So you have any ideas where to start?”

He’d been thinking about this ever since he’d found Bo’s body. The fact that Bo had written Demi’s name seemed pretty damning to him, but he didn’t want to discount the slim possibility that someone else had killed his brother.

It didn’t warm his heart to have to admit this, but in all fairness, he had to. “Well, it’s common knowledge that Demi wasn’t the only woman Bo romanced and then dumped. I’d say that there were a whole lot of women who’d love to have seen Bo get what was coming to him. And that includes a number of disgruntled husbands and boyfriends, as well. Why don’t we start talking to them?”

That Bo was a playboy wasn’t exactly news to anyone. Finn frowned. “But would any of them actually resort to murder?”