Long ago, he broke her heart.

Now he’d do anything to save her life.

Rafe Colton and Kerry Wilder were inseparable as kids—until Rafe cut Kerry out of his life without explanation. Now a detective, Kerry unexpectedly crosses paths with Rafe again while investigating a deadly shooting. When Rafe discovers she’s also investigating a cold case that puts her in harm’s way, he vows to work overtime to protect her. But can Rafe redeem his betrayal…and keep her safe?

Having written over eighty-five novels, TARA TAYLOR QUINN is a USA TODAY bestselling author with more than seven million copies sold. She is known for delivering intense, emotional fiction. Tara is a past president of Romance Writers of America and is a seven-time RWA RITA® Award finalist. She has also appeared on TV across the country, including CBS Sunday Morning. She supports the National Domestic Violence Hotline. If you need help, please contact 1-800-799-7233.

Also by Tara Taylor Quinn

Her Detective’s Secret Intent Her

Lost and Found Baby

An Unexpected Christmas Baby

The Baby Arrangement Fortune’s

Christmas Baby

Child by Chance

Mother by Fate

The Good Father

Love by Association

His First Choice

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Colton’s Lethal Reunion

Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90486-9

COLTON’S LETHAL REUNION

© 2020 Harlequin Books S.A.

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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For Rachel Marie. I think of you in all I do and have

been reminded through this book that family is

forever—the tie that binds is too strong to break.

I love you.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

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

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

He had to see her. This wasn’t news. Rafe Colton had known for years that he owed Kerry Wilder an explanation for the way he’d cut out on her—on them—abandoning her and their budding love with no warning. Leaving her to face life alone after they’d been friends, best friends, even secret friends, since they’d been old enough to walk and talk.

For years he’d known. And for years, he’d been avoiding her.

For so many reasons. Not the least of which was that he suspected, maybe even feared, that he was still in love with her. He couldn’t be, of course. There was no way the pubescent feelings of youth would carry unrequited into adulthood. And certainly wouldn’t still be incubating in a grown man of thirty-six.

And yet, he’d procrastinated. Which made him not real fond of himself—deep down in the places he rarely visited, at least.

And then, in the middle of the shock that had rocked his whole adoptive family—the Coltons—she’d walked in the room. And in the two days since, he’d been able to think of little else. Payne, his adoptive father, had been shot—was still lying comatose, unchanged since he’d been admitted to the hospital—his oldest brother was the prime suspect in the murder, and Kerry was the detective assigned to the case.

How could that possibly be?

Okay, he knew how. At eighteen, Kerry had left the ranch where they’d both grown up, but she’d returned to Mustang Valley after college. Had joined the police force in the small Arizona town that was home to Colton Oil. As far as he knew, she hadn’t been near Rattlesnake Ridge Ranch since. Probably didn’t know that, unlike the biological Colton heirs, he’d moved out of the family mansion he’d moved into at five, when he’d been orphaned and subsequently adopted by Payne and his first wife, Tessa.

Kerry also wouldn’t know that, instead of moving back into the old foreman’s house he’d lived in until his father had died—which, as a Colton, and CFO of Colton Oil, would have been completely inappropriate—he’d built his own home. The adopted, nonbiological Colton house. Sitting on a stretch of land out of view of the mansion, a flat piece on the other side of a hill close by the barns—the place where he and Kerry used to go play until he was no longer just the foreman’s son and they weren’t allowed to be seen together anymore. Then it was the place where they hid out, just to be able to see each other.

None of which mattered as the long stretch of two-lane road he’d been traveling through the barren and stark Arizona land gave way to signs of the town ahead. What mattered was that he had to see Kerry.

It wasn’t a mistake that she’d been assigned to investigate his adopted father’s attempted murder. It was fate. Forcing him to do what he should have done long ago. Especially since his adoptive brother Ace, who’d recently been outed as a non-Colton by blood, appeared to be a person of interest to her.

Giving him an excuse to go see her, to talk to her, without raising any eyebrows. Or Payne Colton’s ire. Spoken displeasure, clear lessons that had held Rafe in check where Kerry was concerned for far too many years.

The last admission made him slightly sick. He wasn’t thirteen anymore, ashamed after being caught during his first kiss. He was a man who should have known better then to have let so much time pass. Who should have come clean sooner.

Or at the very least, apologized.

She could look at the video for the hundredth time. Study it another few hours and still come up with no more than she already knew. Payne Colton’s elegant and luxurious corner office showed up in black-and-white on the security footage. And a tad bit grainy. Made the looking easier for her without the proof of his lavish living so obvious. And identifying his shooter more difficult.

She knew what she knew—very little and not enough—and all the staring in the world wasn’t changing that.

“Kerry! You got a visitor.”

James Donovan, the redheaded officer ten years her junior, was leaning back in his chair to peer into the small office Kerry shared with the department’s only other senior detective, P. J. Doherty. Why Doherty couldn’t have pulled the Colton case she didn’t know, but there you had it. Kerry was stuck with it. Spencer was a sergeant, but he was also a Colton. Just a distant cousin, and not close with his family, but also not appropriate for him to be working the case.

Standing, she nodded to Donovan, shut down her screen, headed out front, and a so-so day got a whole lot worse.

Rafe Colton. CFO of Colton Oil. The boy who’d once been a lowly farmhand kid, like her, on the Colton family’s Rattlesnake Ridge Ranch.

With a backward look at Donovan, letting him know she didn’t appreciate him not giving her any warning, she walked to the small reception area.

Donovan didn’t know about her past with Rafe—as far as she knew, no one did. But he should have given her a heads-up that a member of the Colton family was there. Especially since he’d just been involved in a Colton case himself—helping catch a stalker who’d been after another sibling, Marlowe.

It wasn’t like they handled cases involving billionaires all that often. Or ever. And while the Coltons weren’t the only wealthy family within fifty miles of sleepy little Mustang Valley, they were by far the most prominent. The Colton heir, Ace, was her prime suspect at the moment.

“Mr. Colton.” For anyone else, she’d have held out a hand in greeting. “What can I do for you?”

His head tilted a bit, as though her formal response to his sudden presence in her sphere surprised him. Whatever.

“Can we go someplace and talk?” While his body had changed enormously since the last time she’d stood close to him—filled out, sprouted up—his hair was still the thick blond mass she used to imagine running her fingers through. And those blue eyes… They looked right into her.

“No.” She realized the inappropriateness of the stark response a second too late. “Not really,” she amended. His dark pants, white shirt and tie were all new to her, but fitting for one who’d traded her away for a chance at having finer things. “I assume this is about your father’s case?”

The word father stuck in her throat, but she got it out. Payne Colton might be Rafe’s adoptive dad, but Kerry had known Rafe’s biological father, Carter Kay. Known and loved him, probably as much as Rafe had. The man had taken Kerry’s own father under his wing, and Kerry and her younger brother, too, because they were a package deal.

Carter had been foreman of Rattlesnake Ridge when Kerry’s ranch hand father had been at his lowest point, recovering from the defection of his young wife, struggling to raise two young kids on his own. Tyler Wilder Sr. had been a hard worker until the day he’d died after falling thirty feet into an old grown-over mine in the desert. He’d also been a heavy drinker—mostly when he wasn’t working, which didn’t bode well for Kerry or Tyler Jr.’s home life. He didn’t hit them or scream at them much. He was just too drunk to parent, and sometimes so drunk he needed to be parented. He’d stumble and break things. Said he’d take them places they needed to be, but then couldn’t. Couldn’t always even remember to pay all the bills.

“Please, Kerry, can we talk?”

Again, she shook her head, standing tall and slender in her jeans, oxford shirt and cowboy boots. If she’d known he was coming she’d have done more that morning than throw her long auburn hair—her best trait—up into a ponytail. Ha. If she’d known he was coming, she’d have made an excuse not to be there.

“I don’t have much to tell you,” she said. “Until or unless your…father…comes out of his coma and can answer some questions…”

Not entirely true. The shooter wasn’t going to get away with attempted homicide. Or murder if Payne Colton didn’t pull through. Even if she couldn’t personally stand the man—or his adopted son.

The chief wasn’t in, but two of their three full-time officers were busy behind her. They’d have no reason to pay attention to her discussion with a member of the victim’s family. Unless they, like Rafe, were enamored with the Colton money.

“I’ve been over the security footage from your father’s office,” she offered, mostly to get rid of him. “The shooter can mostly just be seen in shadow and is hunched, so it’s hard to tell much other than he or she is dressed all in black and is wearing a ski-type mask. We don’t have an accurate height measurement of the body, only of the projectile of the bullet. Don’t really even know if it’s male or female, or have any idea of age. Just know that whoever did this is of a lean build. Maybe thin and the clothes add a little weight, but definitely not heavy.”

Sliding his hands in his pockets, Rafe studied her with that potent gaze, and then said, “But you suspect Ace anyway, even though you have no real evidence against him. Because, what, he’s not overweight?”

Okay, good. He was going to let the past go and just play his Colton part, as she was insisting he do. There was no reason for her to be disappointed by that. Or in him.

She didn’t care enough.

“I have to consider what I do know,” she said, ready to show him that while she might not be impressive enough for him in the personal department, she was a damned good detective. One of the best. “His whole life as he’s known it has just been snatched away from him—something we call a stressor. He just finds out he’s not really a Colton and then he threatens…your… Payne, in front of witnesses, telling him he’d regret having just removed Ace as CEO of your billion-dollar company. He admitted to me that he’d made the threat. He had access to Payne’s private office here in town. And has no way to corroborate his alibi.”

“He was at home, in his wing at the mansion, from eight o’clock on—dealing with work he brought home with him.”

So Rafe had become a puppet for the man he now called brother. Spouting family speak.

“Security cameras don’t bear testimony to that. Yet they show two of your other siblings coming in just before nine. You and Asher.” If Rafe had been a suspect, she’d have had to recuse herself from the case. Too bad he wasn’t.

“The system was probably on a momentary lag—it happens. Being set in the middle of thousands of acres of cattle ranch, it’s not like the reception out there is perfect. And in the evenings, when most of the ranch hands are in their cabins using the internet, rather than out working, service can get a little sketchy.”

Because, of course, the Coltons had the fancy, wireless camera system, not some independent job with a tape you could actually remove and take with you.

“And I suppose you’ll use that same excuse to explain why there was no digital time stamp to verify that he’d been signed on at home, or to show any work he’d done?”

“He was going over employee files, ones that had been flagged from a recent performance review. He was looking at the physical files, signed documentation, which is why he was doing it at home. He didn’t want anyone walking in on him.”

Which was exactly what Ace and his attorney had told her. Didn’t mean it was true. Only that the family had their story straight.

If only she had some solid forensic evidence, but there were so many people in and out of Payne’s office; they’d found fibers and hairs from a number of people, including Ace, which meant little since he worked there. Rafe did, too. As did other siblings.

If only Ace hadn’t insisted on having his lawyer present when she’d questioned him the other night, she might have been able to get more out of him.

“Your brother sure didn’t tamp down his anger when he was here the other night,” she told Rafe, stumbling over that last word as she met his gaze head on. She’d shown him a dent in her armor and felt like she’d let herself down.

“How would you feel if there’d just been an attempt on your father’s life, you’re dragged away from the hospital where he’s lying in a coma, from the rest of your family, and treated like a suspect?”

She wouldn’t know. Her father hadn’t been murdered. But her brother had. Not that anyone believed her about that yet. Another case she had to solve.

One she was actively working, albeit secretly, and determined to prove.

“Do you want whoever shot Payne to be caught and pay for what he or she did?” She looked him straight in the eye—to show him she could. That he had no hold over her whatsoever.

“Of course.”

“Then you need to let me do my job,” she told him. “And that means I look at every possibility and talk to anyone and everyone for whom I have questions.”

Which didn’t include him.

Although she could see him siding with Ace. Sympathizing with him. After all, now neither of them were able to hold the coveted CEO position of Colton Oil, since neither of them were biological Coltons.

“Kerry, please, I want to…”

She shook her head. Glanced at the small, big box store watch her father and brother had bought her for her sixteenth birthday. Her dad had forgotten to get a battery and had been too drunk to drive the ten miles into town to get one. Since she hadn’t been allowed to take her driving test yet, and Tyler was only eleven, she’d worn the watch for almost a week before it actually told the correct time.

It hadn’t been wrong since.

“I really have to get back, Mr. Colton,” she said. “This case isn’t going to solve itself and I’m the only detective working on it. I’ll be sure to call your stepmother as soon as I have anything to share with you all.”

Maybe she should have asked him how Payne was doing. She already knew. She’d called the hospital that morning to hear that there’d been no change in the older man. Each day he remained in a coma had to lessen his chances of coming out of it. Asking still would have been polite.

And had it been any other Colton…

Turning, she left Rafe standing there, her back ramrod straight as she walked, feeling the heat of his gaze all over her body.

He’d had more to say. She’d read his intent.

Had seen the sorrow in his gaze. The regret.

And absolutely could not stand there and take it.

Sometimes, no matter how much someone might have to offer, it really was too little, too late.

Chapter 2

A smart man would cut his losses. Tuck the regret so far away it would eventually fade into oblivion. Do whatever it took to help his family through both crisis and tragedy: one followed by the other in the space of mere hours.

He was the financial wizard. The one they all looked to for levelheaded, clear thinking. The mathematician who could figure out the way to make everything add up.

But nothing was adding up.

DNA proving that Ace wasn’t a Colton? It made no sense. Seriously, a baby getting switched at birth? A sick one for a healthy one? No formula was going to be able to calculate that one.

And to think, even for a second, that Ace was capable of shooting Payne? Sure, he’d been pissed that Payne had removed him as CEO, but he’d also known that killing Payne wasn’t going to help his cause any. Payne had only been following Colton Oil bylaws, appointing a CEO who was a biological Colton, to protect the company. It hadn’t been about Ace, but about keeping their billions safe. He knew Ace wanted that as badly as any of them. Would have stepped down himself if he’d been given a few days to come to terms with everything. Ace lived for Colton Oil and was surely more pissed at the fact that his whole life had been stolen from him, pissed at whoever had switched him at birth, pissed at fate.

And, as far as Rafe could see, Ace adored Payne Colton, if such a thing were possible.

Rafe had never found it so, in spite of the years he’d spent trying.

So what was it about him that drove him to give himself impossible tasks? To set himself up for emotional failure? Because that was certainly what he was doing, knowingly doing, as he parked his fancy new metallic navy blue truck out in front of Kerry’s small, but nicely landscaped stucco home that afternoon before heading back to the ranch.

His own, much more opulent home was waiting for him. It was full of food brought over by one of the mansion staff and left in his refrigerator, as was procedure any night that he didn’t present himself at the family table for dinner. And whether he made it back to the ranch on time that night or not, he wasn’t going to dinner. The staff had always spoiled him. Possibly because when Tessa Ainsley Colton died, his upbringing had been largely left to those running the household.

Payne’s first wife was the only reason Rafe had become a Colton. Carter had been such a vital part of their lives for so long, had lost his wife right there on the ranch from valley fever, and Tessa Colton had insisted that the family take in Rafe. Payne had argued with her about it, which he wasn’t supposed to know, and no one knew he knew. He’d gone to see Tessa one night and had heard them. And had gone back to his room and cried himself to sleep. He’d worried about what was going to happen to him and then, suddenly, he was told he was going to be a Colton. Obviously, Payne had eventually given in. Then Tessa had died and Payne’s second wife, Selina, hadn’t given a rat’s ass about the little orphaned boy.

He wasn’t even sure how many of the siblings would be at dinner that night. They were taking shifts sitting with Payne at the hospital. He’d done his stint before going to see Kerry that morning.

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.

While she had to have dealings with him anyway because she’d been assigned his father’s case.

No one else wanted anything to do with investigating Tyler’s death. His case was done. Closed. They thought her paranoid, needing to get over it, at worst. And a grieving sister who was struggling to accept the truth, at best. Which was why the case files were at home, not work. Why her dining room wall had become an investigation board.

“I’m not really dressed for a trek up the mountain…” He looked at her and finished, “But, yeah, let’s go now.”

Whether he still had the talent to read her, or she’d just been obvious in her thoughts of “now or never,” she didn’t care to guess. But after locking up, she holstered her gun at her waist and headed out of her house through the door off the kitchen that led to a two-car garage.

Rafe offered to drive. To take his truck. She wasn’t riding anywhere with him. The control was all hers or she wasn’t going.

Not that she said as much aloud. She just got in her Jeep and pushed the button to raise the garage door. He climbed in beside her without pressing the matter.

Smart man.

“One of the last times that Tyler talked about having changed his life around…he was telling me how good he was doing, loved working as a cowboy, actually out on the range for a week at a time, moving herds, running down strays and assisting with difficult births. He’d been thinking about riding in an amateur rodeo during the county fair…and then he let something slip,” she said, doing everything she could to remain fully focused on the case at hand, and not getting distracting by the man at her side.

“He said that he was staying away from the ‘Big B.’ He paled right afterward and when I questioned him on it, he just shook his head.”

“The Big B? Is that a person?”

“I have no idea, but I assume so. It kind of sounded like it, like it was someone he had to avoid, not a place he just didn’t go to anymore. I’ve looked all over the county and can’t find any establishment that would go by the name Big B.”

“Odin Rogers doesn’t have a B,” Rafe said, almost as though she hadn’t already figured that out.

“And his middle name is Paul,” she let him know she’d done her homework. And could spell enough to know there was no B in that, either.

“I’m thinking that someone who works for Rogers is the Big B. Maybe one of his hired thugs. Or, I suppose, it could be some kind of moniker for a substance cocktail, but not one that’s on any radar.”

The entrance to the drive up the mountain was several miles outside of town, in the opposite direction from the RRR. The well-worn, if little used one-lane road had been carved into the mountain back in the early days of gold and copper mining. Her Jeep bounced up it just fine, taking the sometimes harrowing turns slowly when she couldn’t see ahead to know if she’d need to yield to oncoming vehicles.

“You’ve obviously done this a few times,” Rafe said, holding on to the handle just above the door frame. He didn’t look nervous though. He was smiling.

And she almost missed the next turn.

Being up on the mountain with Rafe, away from the world, with only more mountains, higher peaks, and the gulch below in sight, threw her. They’d spent most of their hours together out in the middle of nowhere, out of view, out of sight, so they wouldn’t be caught together. In the vast Arizona landscape, she’d felt so free.

Free from her father’s drinking. From worry. From little Tyler needing things from her.

Free to love Rafe Kay.

Free to love Rafe Colton.

Standing up on that mountain with him, even several feet apart, watching him look over an area she pretty much knew by heart, she felt her whole being suffused with a sense of rightness, followed by a stream of longing that almost brought her to her knees. Everything about him was familiar in that moment. The way a few strands of his thick blond hair picked up when a breeze blew over them. The set of his shoulders. The intent focus he gave to whatever had his attention.

How could twenty-three years make no difference at all? Especially when it made all the difference in the world?

“This is where he went over,” he said, apparently not as affected by being alone in the wilderness with her as she was with him. And why would he be? He’d probably taken a lot of girls back to their old hiding places. And why not? They were a known way to get past Payne.

Those old hiding places were all part of his family’s land.

“Yes.” She gave herself a strong mental shake and focused on why she was up on that mountain. On why she was talking to Rafe Colton at all.

“And there was no scuffle? No sign of struggle?”

She shook her head. Another fact that Chief Barco had taken into consideration before ruling her brother’s death accidental.

“But if he was facing the gully down below, thinking he was alone, or if he was up here with someone he trusted, he could easily have been taken off guard.”

Tyler could have been making out with someone. Not that she’d ever considered that before, but she definitely knew how lost you could get in a kiss when you were out in the middle of nowhere…

“He hadn’t been expecting to be in a fight. Hadn’t had a chance to defend himself,” she said, bringing her thoughts firmly back to current ground.

Rafe turned slowly, glancing all around them. He didn’t walk far, didn’t venture too close to the cliff’s edge.

Glancing at the slick-bottomed, expensive leather dress shoes he was wearing, she didn’t blame him.

“What’s over there?” He motioned to a cliff side that tilted downward, toward another shallower gully off to the left of where Tyler had been pushed.

Shrugging, she walked that way. “I never climbed down to see,” she said. It wasn’t like she’d hiked an entire mountain range. Most particularly not alone. No reason to do so. “There’s no path, no sign of broken vegetation, so obviously it’s not a place people go.” She moved closer, anyway. Rafe thought he noticed something.

She trusted his instincts.

Not him.

But he’d always had good instincts. Like the time he’d shoved her back and to the ground, a seemingly mean thing to do, until she’d noticed the rattlesnake he’d prevented her from stepping near. He noticed things. Knew things. He always had…

What the…

“Rafe, look…” She was probably just seeing things. “Is that a trail over there? Leading to that cliff face across the way?”

When he came up beside her, she turned red. Hot. Embarrassed that she’d just been seeing things. Of course there was no…

“I’m not sure,” he said. “If it is, it’s covered over with all of those tumbleweeds.”

“Yeah.” She’d been overreacting.

To him. Which clouded her normally spot-on thinking. She could feel his body heat. He was that close. And could smell him, too.

It wasn’t possible that a boy of thirteen would carry the same scent as a man of thirty-six. Logically, she knew that. Her olfactory nerves were out of control.

“It’s kind of funny, though, that they’re all conglomerated around that one area, don’t you think?” She had to say something, even if it was stupid. Better than standing there letting the past take control of her present. Ruin her present.

“Not if the wind blew them. They stopped there because of the cliff face…”

Something sounded behind them. A crunch of something heavy on the hard ground. Hand to her gun, Kerry froze. If it was a bear, or, more likely, a mountain lion, their greatest hope was to keep it calm. To pray that it didn’t charge them before she could turn and get a shot off.

“What’re you two doin’ up ’ere?”

Not recognizing the voice, yet relieved to know that their intruder was human, Kerry spun around, her gun steady and pointing forward.

“Hey there…put that thing down. You ain’t s’posed to be huntin’ up here…”

The man was older than both of them by a good ten years. Maybe more. Rough looking and wearing a forest ranger uniform. Dropping her gun, she reached into her back pocket for her badge wallet.

“I’m Detective Kerry Wilder,” she said, aware of Rafe right behind her as she approached the man, showing him her identification.

“Yes’m, I know who you are,” the man said, pulling out his own ID. “Grant Alvin,” he said. “My wife and I transferred in with the Forest Service about five years ago. Used to be up at the Grand Canyon,” he said.

Kerry knew some of the forest rangers in the area by sight. Not all. Those near Mustang Valley usually lived in remote, government housing, someplace in national forest territory. And unless there was a matter in MVPD’s jurisdiction, they didn’t really cross paths.

But if he’d been in the area for five years… Shouldn’t someone have talked to him about Tyler’s death? She hadn’t seen his name in any reports. Getting excited as she faced a possible new lead, she said, “I’m investigating my brother’s death.” She named Tyler and gave the man the date and time of death that the coroner had given two years ago.

Staying silent, Rafe stood right beside her, like he was poised to jump to her defense at any moment. Fancy clothes and all. Like his slippery shoes would get anywhere near as far as her well-worn cowboy boots.

Still, she was glad he was there. If the ranger had been a bear—if she’d been about to die—having Rafe there, dying with him…

“You lookin’ at that old case agin?” Alvin looked at her like she was cow dung. “It was an accident. They all said so.”

“Maybe it was,” Kerry acknowledged, not wanting to get on the wrong side of the Forest Service. “I’d just like to be sure.”

“Seems like there’d be more important stuff for you to be doin’,” the somewhat-large man said, holding his ground, his arms crossed against his chest.

“I’m doing this in my own time,” she told him. And then asked, “You said you’ve been in the area for five years.”

“That’s right.”

“And you patrol this mountain?”

“Sometimes. Depends.”

“Were you here two years ago?”

“Off and on.”

“You ever notice any suspicious activity?”

“No.”

Something about the speed of his response put her on edge. Further on edge. The guy seemed pissed off. Put out.

She and Rafe weren’t doing anything wrong. The land was open to the public. They hadn’t even veered far from where they’d pulled the Jeep off the track.

“No one hanging around…no vehicles that visit frequently? Anything that might be big enough to haul guns in and out? Repeat visitors who only stay a minute or two each time they come?”

“Nothin’,” Alvin said, dropping his arms to take a step closer to them. “There’s nothin’. And now the two of yous need to be getting on down the hill,” he said. “It’s getting late, gonna be dark soon, and there’s all kind of wild animals out here at night. I sure don’t want to be having to come back up and git you down,” he said. And then, with a sour look added, “And them thousand-dollar leather shoes sure ain’t gonna keep that one from sliding off a cliff.” He practically spat the last four words.

Before either of them could respond, the man turned and then walked off.

Kerry could have called him back, but she was just as glad to see him go.

“What the hell was that?” she breathed, staring at Rafe. “Did he just threaten you?”

“Seemed that way.” Eyes narrowed, Rafe was staring after Alvin, who’d apparently come upon them on foot. There was no other vehicle in the immediate vicinity, which would explain why they didn’t know he’d been approaching.

“How’d he know we were up here?”

“I’m guessing he heard the Jeep. Came to check us out.”

Which would be his job. Still… “He seemed kind of paranoid, though. What’s it to him if I look into a cold case?”

“I’m not sure.” Rafe didn’t say much, but one look at his face told Kerry that he wasn’t blowing off the incident. He was going to find out more.

Because he had the clout to do so.

And for the first time in a very, very long time, she was glad that she knew Rafe Colton.

Chapter 4

He knew exactly who to call. Chafing to get down off the mountain and into the privacy of his truck, Rafe thought about the woman he’d known briefly, but intimately, almost a decade ago. Colton Oil had mistakenly been excavating on government land. As the newly appointed CFO and eager to prove himself, Rafe had quickly and personally presented a financial offer to the government’s attorney, Shelly Marston, to allow the company to continue drilling with more than fair remuneration to the government. He’d spared CO the cost of pulling out, applying for permission to drill and moving back in, and the government received more than usual compensation for the use of the land. And Shelly… She’d reminded him of Kerry. Same auburn hair. Same strength and sass. One night with her had told him that he couldn’t go back. And that it was grossly unfair to another woman to use her as a stand-in.

Which was just as well. The next morning, when Shelly told him at breakfast that she’d appreciate it if, as part of their deal, he’d keep their night together just between the two of them, he’d noticed the wedding ring that had not been on her hand the day before.

She’d said that she and her husband were separated, going through some growing pains with careers that took them to different parts of the country, but that her night with Rafe had shown her how much she loved her family.

They’d used each other. Which had formed an odd bond between them. A completely nonsexual, noncommunicative bond. They’d go years without talking. But when either of them needed some professional advice in the area of the other’s expertise, they picked up the phone trusting that it would be answered…

He saw a flash—a reflection off silver—a second before Kerry rounded the bend. Suddenly, they were forced cliffside, inches from going over.

His shoulder hit the door. He felt Kerry swerve again, felt the propulsion forward as his chest slammed into the seat belt, sensed a tightening within that braced for the unknown. And was aware of the thud as the Jeep came to a stop nose to nose with the mountain on the opposite side of the road. It took him a second to realize that flash of silver had been another vehicle.

By the time they’d stilled, his mind had caught up, was giving him instant replay in rapid staccato. And Kerry was saying, “Stay down,” and was out of the vehicle, gun drawn, crouching with her door as a shield on one side and the mountain at her back.

Keeping his head below the windshield, Rafe slid across the seat, digging his thigh with the gearshift, and slid out her open door to crouch beside her.

“That was deliberate,” she said. “He was waiting in this alcove for us to come around the corner.”

“The ranger?” He’d eventually caught up to the situation. Knew that she’d had the wherewithal to swerve on the wrong side of the oncoming vehicle that had been clearly gunning to run them off the narrow road into the valley below.

She shrugged. “Who else?” The tension in her voice stung him. Alerting him anew to the danger of their situation.

“Something about us up there, looking into Tyler’s death, sure had him paranoid,” he said aloud, looking behind him, up what he could see of the part of the winding road they’d just descended. “We need to go,” he said urgently, but softly, as though he could be overheard. “He’s going to be coming back down.”

She nodded. Did a three-sixty with her gun pointed out in front of her. And stopped.

“What’s that?” she said, pointing with her gun to a space in front of her opened car door. With the falling dusk, he didn’t immediately see what she was pointing at.

And then he did.

A boot. One that hadn’t been there long enough even to get dusty or look unused. To have white bird droppings or chewed holes.

A boot that matched those the ranger had been wearing.

“Why would he leave without his boot?” Kerry asked. “If he was sitting there in his vehicle waiting for us, he wouldn’t have been taking off his boots.”

He knew she was right. Didn’t want to worry about it at the moment. “Maybe he had an itch,” he said, inanely, and then, “Come on, Kerry, we need to get down off this mountain before he comes back.”

She nodded. “I know.” And pushed the door forward enough that she could scoot around it, scraping against the mountain as she went, and then toward the boot.

Rafe followed her. He wasn’t leaving her out there in the growing night alone.

“Look,” she said, pointing toward tamped down underbrush. “Someone dragged something heavy…”

“Like a carton of ammunition.”

She’d moved forward again, toward another drop-off on that side of the road. He’d grown up in those mountains, knew that they were filled with gullies and valleys, with steep slopes and dangerous, unforeseen drops. He knew how easy it would be for someone to fall and get hurt, if she missed just one step out there…

“Kerry, please,” he said, heart pounding as he followed her.

“Or like a body,” she said, her voice changed, shaking, and it took him a second to realize that she was responding to his comment about a carton of ammunition—or something else heavy having been dragged.

The land was mostly in shadows, but the setting sun still shone clearly in parts, highlighting the twisted body lying at an obviously lethal angle thirty feet below.

“Come on, we have to go,” she said, swinging her gun from side to side, watching as they hurried back to the Jeep.

“That was the ranger.” What the hell had they gotten themselves into? Not much point now in the phone call he’d been going to make—requesting a transfer for Grant Alvin. The ranger had just been sent much further away than he’d anticipated.

“I know it was. And I also know there’s someone else out here. We have to go. To get help.” She bit out the words with every step she took, pulling her phone off the clip at her hip. “There’s no reception,” she said, looking down, and in that instant, a shot fired out, dinged off the mountain less than a foot away from them.

Pushing Kerry into the Jeep in front of him, Rafe climbed in behind her, started the vehicle and sped off. Another shot rang out, but he made it round the bend before it could hit the car. He was driving too fast, prayed to God another vehicle wasn’t coming up around a bend, but knew that he couldn’t slow down. He had to get them the hell out of there before the gun behind them caught up.

What in the hell had just happened? Shaken mentally as well as physically, Kerry had a hand on the dash, turning in her seat to watch ahead of them as well as behind him, as Rafe sped the rest of the way down the mountain. Neither one of them spoke. All focus had to be on getting down to safety.

And when they’d reached the end of the drive, when Rafe had maneuvered them safely to the road leading into town, her brain started to shoot forward. The first thing she did was make a phone call, getting a specially trained rescue crew out to retrieve the ranger’s body. While it was too dangerous to drive up the mountain in the dark, Chief Barco was positioning a car at the base of the mountain to prevent anyone from leaving before daybreak.

Of course, the perp could have already exited the drive, a minute or two after they did. With all of the turns in the road, she wouldn’t have known if the black SUV she’d seen was right behind them or not. He could have waited until her Jeep was out of sight and then turned in the opposite direction. Away from town. He could be long gone.

Still, she’d intended to drop off Rafe and head back out there to explore at least the lower part of the mountain drive, but the chief had other ideas.

For the moment, she’d been ordered to stand down. Worse, he was sending a patrol car to sit outside her home for the rest of the night.

She’d been shot at. End of story.

Except that it wasn’t.

“Who’s out there?” she asked Rafe, completely frustrated as she hung up the phone. She wasn’t good at inactivity. “And why?” Her whole life, the way she’d dealt with stress was by taking action. Same for combatting fear. You met it head-on. Dealt with it. You didn’t hide in your home behind other officers at your front line.

“And what in the hell is going on up that mountain?” she asked when her first question received no answer.

“You asked him about guns and implied something about drugs,” Rafe said slowly, his gaze focused on the road in front of them, as though he wasn’t going to relax a muscle until they’d made the last five miles into town. “You really think that there’s something big going on,” he continued.

“Big enough to warrant killing Tyler,” she said. “I know my brother wasn’t involved in anything illegal that last year, but before that?” She hated that the question even had to be out there.

“It’s possible he just stumbled into something,” she continued, thinking out loud more than anything. “Tyler, I mean. But…you saw the photos from Tyler’s fall,” she said.

What she was about to say was the fact most on her mind at the moment. And the one she left out of her verbal report to the chief. Someone else might notice. They might not. For the moment, until she could think, she was keeping silent.

Rafe’s nod was short. Succinct.

“Same way the head was bent back beneath the body…there’s no way two falls could end up with the body landing so closely the same.”

“Unless the bodies were held, probably by the neck, and then pushed in exactly the same way,” Rafe said, earning her respect. He was right there with her.

Just as she’d have expected her best friend from long ago to be.

“I’m not getting why the ranger was killed,” she said, less than a minute later. The town’s lights were up ahead. Still another mile or so away. “He clearly wasn’t out there protecting us. To the contrary, he wanted us gone. Like he was protecting something else.”

She was back to the drugs and guns. She couldn’t get off them, which told her that she was likely on the right path.

One that led, somehow, to Odin Rogers.

“Could be some kind of turf war and we drove into the middle of it.”

“I need to get back up there and find the casings from the shots that were fired. To run ballistics on the guns.”

Luckily they had a small crime lab right there in Mustang Valley, donated years ago by the Coltons.

“From what I heard of your conversation, you’ve been told to stay home for the rest of the night.”

“That doesn’t please me,” she said. But she knew better than to disobey the chief’s orders. He was chief for a reason. He knew the area. He knew his job. And she valued hers.

“I wonder if whoever killed the ranger was with him when he approached us? He had to get up there somehow and we never heard or saw another vehicle. Alvin walked up to us, walked away. Maybe whoever was driving the black SUV had parked the vehicle farther down and then followed the ranger up. Could be that person heard me asking Alvin about Tyler’s death. But then he’d know that the guy was a jerk. Warned us off. Why would that get him killed?”

Rafe’s shake of the head was brief. They’d entered Mustang Valley proper and he’d slowed to the speed limit.

“Whatever is going on must be big since it was worth killing not one, but two men over it.”

She glanced at him. “You believe Tyler was murdered.”

His quick glance thawed a small piece of her heart. “I trusted your instincts to begin with, but after this…it’s clear you were right, Kerry. The problem is, how are we going to prove it?”

There was that “we” again.

The two of them. A team. Just as she’d once imagined they’d be.

But it was only for a moment.

Because, ultimately, nothing between them had changed. She couldn’t trust him to have her back when life returned to normal and the Colton money and power became an issue again. Couldn’t trust him to stick around.

And Kerry didn’t like to think about the chances of her heart remaining intact if she gave it to him a second time and he crushed it in the dirt on his way out.

Chapter 5

The patrol car wasn’t outside Kerry’s house yet when Rafe pulled into her drive. Pushing the garage remote control, he parked in her garage, turned off the Jeep and handed her the keys. Then pushed the remote to close the garage door behind them, with his truck outside at the curb.

When those blue eyes of her turned on him, brows raised like she was questioning him, yet with a hint of their connection of old, he said, “I’m not leaving you here alone. I know, you’re the trained cop with a gun and I’m just a numbers guy in expensive dress clothes, but two bodies, two sets of ears and eyes, are better than one.”

“I wasn’t going to argue with you sticking around for a bit,” she told him, reaching for the door handle. “I was going to thank you.”

She got out and led the way into the house, leaving him with his heart threatening to clog up his throat.

And then she offered him dinner. Leftover meat loaf, mashed potatoes and peas, a meal he’d have had as a young kid eating in the bunkhouse kitchen with his dad and the other cowboys, or a meal his dad might have prepared for him. Not anything he’d see on the Colton dinner table. Not unless it was hidden beneath garnishes and sauces that distinguished between cooking at home and having a chef. Or so he’d been told by Selina, Payne’s second wife, who’d never made a secret of the fact that Rafe, as an adopted Colton, was merely a fly at her picnic.

Over the years, he’d grown accustomed to the wide variety of flavors, the combinations of spices that made eating a physical pleasure, rather than something one did to stay alive. He’d grown into those tastes. To seek them out, no matter the cost, when he traveled.

But to sit at Kerry’s table with her—those leftovers were just fine. They’d taken their seats—his perpendicular to hers on two sides of her little four-seat table off to the right of her galley kitchen—when her doorbell rang. He hadn’t been particularly worried about her safety at home in her neighborhood in the middle of town. Not many would try to kill a cop in front of other Mustang Valley citizens—who were known to watch each other’s comings and goings—most particularly not in their little remote part of the Arizona desert. A lot of people carried guns for their own protection against whatever wildlife might venture into town looking for water. Most wouldn’t hesitate to pull a weapon and use it to protect one of their own.

But when the bell rang, he was right behind her as she passed through the dining room to the living room and then the tiled area before the front door.

“I’m fine, Kay,” she said, turning with a grin on her face that was quickly swept away.

He’d forgotten just how great he’d found the sound of his last name rolling off her lips as she jested with him. Said with just that same intonation.

Apparently she’d forgotten, for a second there at least, that he was a Colton now.

The knock came again, more urgently, and Kerry, with her hand at the gun she’d failed to remove when they’d returned home, looked through the peephole and then quickly opened the door.

“Lizzie, James,” she said, stepping back to let the two blue uniformed officers into her home. “Don’t tell me, the two of you are assigned to guard duty tonight?”

Lizzie shook her head. “James drew that straw,” she said, with a wry glance at her partner.

“I volunteered for it,” James corrected, his light red hair and the kind look in his hazel eyes giving the appearance of a man who could be a pushover. Rafe wasn’t so sure he liked that this would be the guy in charge of Kerry’s safety for the night until the man’s gaze turned on him and he felt the full force of the steely stare.

“Aren’t you one of the Coltons? Some kind of cousin to Spence?” the man asked. “You’re the finance wizard, right?”

“Rafe,” he said, holding out his hand, and feeling strangely self-conscious of his dust-covered expensive leather shoes as the man glanced down at his feet. “Kerry and I used to be friends, a long time ago,” he heard himself explaining. And then wondering what in the hell had compelled him to answer a question this guy hadn’t even asked.

“I knew her brother and when she told me that she thought maybe his death wasn’t an accident, I wanted to hear more.”

The man’s look hadn’t wavered from Rafe’s face and it took him a second to realize that the other two law enforcement personnel in the room were standing there, watching the exchange.

“She’s been saying that for a couple of years,” the woman Kerry had called Lizzie said. With her long dark hair, back in a ponytail at the moment, and brown eyes, she was quite pretty, even in uniform. He hoped she was stronger than she looked. “Why you just taking an interest now?” Her gaze locked on his, as well.

Kerry could jump in anytime. Save his ass. Give whatever explanation she wanted them to have.

Or he’d give his own…

“We just reconnected, since Payne’s shooting,” he said. “I had no idea Tyler’s death wasn’t an accident.”

“Until tonight, it was,” the man, James, said.

And then Lizzie piped in, “The case was closed, but now, who knows?” She shrugged. “With two bodies found dead in kind of the same manner, someone might have some questions.” When she turned to Kerry, Rafe felt like he might be off whatever hook they’d impaled him on, at least for the moment.

He listened intently as Lizzie told Kerry, “The chief and I headed straight up there as soon as you called it in. The rescue crew is still in the gully, getting the ranger out, but we went up the drive and couldn’t find anything, Kerry. No shell casings. No sign of anyone around. Just a broken agave arm and the boot you saw. Again, it looks like he could have jumped. But there’s a little bit stronger evidence at this point that he might have been pushed. With that boot there. We’re looking for fingerprints but don’t expect to get anything.”

“The boot obviously came off while he was being dragged,” Kerry said. “He’d have been digging his foot into the ground, trying to get a hold, to stop himself from going over, but whoever dragged him was a helluva lot stronger than he was and dragged him right out of his boot.”

“That’s what it looks like.” Lizzie’s attention was only on Kerry at that point. As if the women were friends who spoke their own language in between the words they said. The type who understood the nuances and emotions not being expressed.

“The heel of the boot was caught on a root.”

So Kerry’s hunch had been right.

Again. He wasn’t surprised. She’d always impressed him with her intuitive observations. Even as a kid.

“We’ll be going back up in the morning,” Lizzie continued. “Maybe when it’s light, we’ll see more, but for now the only thing we have is the wider tire tracks of the SUV, just as you described. We drove all the way up the hill, by the way. There was no sign of the vehicle up there, so either the guy has a hiding place where he parks it up there someplace…”

“Or he’s long gone,” Kerry finished for her. “Someone shot at us as we were leaving, which means someone was close by. He could easily have just followed us down the hill and took off as we came back to town.”

He’d already entertained the same uneasy thought. His family’s ranch was on the opposite side of town, but still out there. He didn’t like knowing there were ranch hands with families in little cabins with a crazy killer free.

“Which is why I’m going to be right outside until dawn, and people are up and about and it’s less likely that someone would get into town undetected,” James said.

“And I need to get back to the station,” Lizzie said, and then both officers looked at Rafe, as if Rafe had just been given his cue to leave.

“I’m going to hang around here,” he said, without looking at Kerry. Her friends were right there. If she wanted him out of there, he’d be gone in an instant.

“We were just sitting down to dinner,” she told the two in uniform. And then asked James, “Have you had something to eat?”

“I’ve got a cooler full out in the car,” he told her. “And a pee bottle, too.”

Rafe could have done without that piece of information.

But then the two were gone, leaving him and Kerry all alone in the watched cocoon that was her house. The awareness of what had just happened—the two of them acknowledging, in front of others, that they wanted to spend more time together that evening—simmered between them and they just stood there, on that small area of tile, looking at each other.

Kerry broke the eye contact first, heading back through the dining area and kitchen to the food gone cold. She sat anyway, as though eating a cold dinner didn’t faze her at all.

“James might look like an easygoing nice guy,” she said, scooping up mashed potatoes and then meat on the same bite. “And he is nice. He’s perfectly compliant on any occasion that warrants it, but he’s as tough as they come when he perceives a wrongdoing. Or a threat to any townspeople.”

He nodded, not sure if she was reassuring him as to their safety, or warning him in regard to hers. Should he try to make a move on her.

Despite needing her to know that as much as he longed to grab his Kerry into his arms and never let her go, he had no intention of touching her. Not when even a chaste kiss in the past had been red-hot. So he sat. Forked cold food. And ate it.

While they ate, Rafe loosened his tie, talked about all the exotic foods he’d eaten, most of which he’d enjoyed. If he’d set out to remind Kerry of the vast differences between them, he needn’t have bothered. His being a Colton was something she was never, ever going to forget.

And while he did the dishes he insisted on taking care of, she went to the restroom. She’d been holding it for a while, and hadn’t wanted to go with him in the house. Seemed way too…personal, too intimate, for what she needed him to be. Everyone peed. She just didn’t want to go do it with him there.

“You should call the hospital, check on your father,” she told him as she came back down the hall and found him standing in the dining room, glancing at her wall. She’d deliberately used the parental designation rather than Payne’s name.

“I just did,” he told her. “No change.”

She wondered who he talked to… Ace? Another sibling? Payne’s third wife, Genevieve? The spouse was always the first suspect when someone was shot, but both Genevieve and Payne’s second wife, Selina Barnes Colton, had airtight alibis: security footage from the RRR during the time of the shooting. Genevieve in the mansion, Selina walking from her car to her smaller house on the property, carrying in bags of shopping from someplace farther than Mustang Valley, based on the bags’ logos.

Weird that Selina would have gone shopping while the rest of the family dealt with the shock of Ace Colton’s surprise heritage, the knowledge that the eldest heir had been switched at birth and subsequently been stripped of his position as CEO of Colton Oil…

Her mental switch to her current case was a coping mechanism, she knew. Recognized it. Anytime things started to rattle her emotional ground, she focused on a case. Made her great at her job. And still single at thirty-six.

“I made another call, too,” Rafe said, still facing the wall plastered with the last ten years of Tyler’s life. “To a government attorney who works with the Forest Service. I asked for a fast track on any warrant or request that may come through for Grant Alvin’s employment record, or for anything else pertaining to anyone working that mountain.”

To show her how powerful he was? To push his weight around?

He turned and her gaze hooked up with the depth of emotion in those so-familiar blue eyes of his. He’d called because he cared.

Because he was committed to helping her find out what had happened to Tyler. She got the message. He was going to help and then he’d be going back to his real life—the one where he could pick up the phone and call a US attorney after eight o’clock at night.

She made a note of that, too.

“I had no idea it was going to be so hard, seeing you again.” The longing in his words, barely above a whisper, shot through her with the force of a blast.

She couldn’t go down that road again. “It’s a little weird, yeah, but fine, too,” she said, arranging folders on the table.

“I used to watch you.” He’d put his hands in his pockets and was standing there not bothering to hide the glistening in his eyes. “After you’d get home from school, you’d get on Annabelle and ride out to our hill. Every day, when you’d disappear out of sight, I’d pretend I was out there with you…”

“Don’t, Rafe.” He’d watched her? It could be creepy. But it was Rafe. Needing her.

Just as she’d needed him.

Even in their separation they’d been together? The idea soothed her.

And nothing had changed.

“I’d sit up in my room and picture you out there with someone else. Someone who would love you as much as I did, and not leave you…”

Picturing the thirteen-year-old man-child he’d been, all alone in his room at the mansion—she even knew which window to picture since she’d looked up to it often enough over the years—she didn’t want to care.

He’d made his choice. But…

“Payne Colton’s a powerful man.” She gave him what little leeway she’d been able to find for him over the years. For the young Rafe, that was. “You were a kid with no other family. It would have been suicide to challenge him over a girl at that age,” she said.

He swallowed so hard she noticed his Adam’s apple bobbing.

And she thought of the eighteen years after he’d no longer been a kid and still hadn’t even bothered to call. To send her a card. To acknowledge she existed.

“You were right to stay away,” she said then. Because clarity was a wonderful thing when it came loaded in truth. And a total bitch, too, with the pain it brought. “It would have hurt too badly to be in touch with our lives so completely different.”

They might inhabit the same twenty-mile radius of the universe, but their worlds were so distant they’d done so without ever running into each other. Stone-cold truth.

“Tonight…when that shot rang out…when I thought at first that you’d been shot…” She looked at him. She should never have looked at him. “You’re in my heart, Kerry. You’re there. Exactly where you’ve always been. As much as you’ve always been. I just need you to know that.”

For a brief second, her spirit soared. She was young again. With a heart filled with hope and possibility. With plans. With a heart that knew how to dream. And then reality hit. Him standing there in his expensive clothes, in front of a wall filled with her brother’s murder details.

She wasn’t the only one who’d been hurt by Rafe’s defection. And he hadn’t said a word about coming back, either. About being friends in the future.

Because he couldn’t. She got that. He’d been a Colton for too long. His family depended on him, and he on them, too, she figured: whether he liked that or not.

She wanted to tell him that he was in her heart, too, but that door wasn’t open. Not even a little bit. Her secrets had been shut away for so long, she wasn’t even sure what was in there anymore.

Didn’t really want to know.

“When I got back from college, I moved out of the mansion,” he told her. “I built a house…”

“You don’t live in the mansion?”

But that’s where she’d been picturing him. In the present. But in the past, too. All those years, every time she’d driven out that way, she’d always looked out in the distance and pictured him up on the third floor, in a corner room separate from his other siblings. He’d used to describe the place to her: all the bathrooms, the carpeting so thick you don’t hear steps when you walk…

“I built my own place…” he was saying again, and she stopped him.

“Had it built, you mean.”

He wasn’t in the mansion. She had no idea where he lived. Couldn’t picture his home, but it shouldn’t matter.

She just didn’t like that kind of surprise. Some things were meant to stay neatly in their place.

“I hired help, yes, but I did as much of the work myself as I could,” he told her, surprising her. “It took me over a year.” He stood there, meeting her gaze, holding on to her with it, like he needed her to see inside him.

She wasn’t going to look. Didn’t he get that? He’d taken away that right, once. She wasn’t going to let him take it from her again.

And couldn’t live with it and not live with him.

“I built it on our land, Kerry. Our spot on the other side of the hill behind the barn.”

No. He. Did. Not.

He was living on the one acre in the world that was sacred to her? The one that had sustained her during her years with him, allowing them to be friends unseen, and the ones after him, too. The one place in the world where she’d always been able to find solace?

She’d cried more tears in that dust and dirt than she’d cried since. Ever.

Not at her father’s funeral. And not at Tyler’s, either.

She’d cried more for Rafe than for either of the men who were family to her.

And she couldn’t do this. She wasn’t that girl anymore. He’d killed her.

“You broke my heart, Rafe.”

Chapter 6

Rafe might have killed the girl she’d been, but she wasn’t a girl anymore. She was a grown woman with a life that satisfied her. She could risk her life saving others because she didn’t have anyone who was counting on her, anyone who’d be devastated, if she was killed.

Not that there was usually all that much danger in Mustang Valley. Lately, though… First with the murder of a bodyguard hired to protect the president of Robertson Renewable Energy Corporation, Bowie Robertson. Then attempts made on the lives of Bowie and Rafe’s sister Marlowe, and then Payne Colton’s shooting, and now a ranger killed and someone shooting at her and Rafe…

“How come you never married?” Kerry plopped down to one of the six chairs tucked into her dining room table—an antique she’d restored. After everything that had happened in the past few hours, she needed a moment to regroup. To be the woman she was, not the young girl she’d once been.

She needed to see Rafe Colton as the man he was now, not the boy he’d been.

He sat, too, leaving a chair between them. “Never found a woman I wanted to live with for the rest of my life. How about you?”

She’d brought that on, she supposed. Don’t ask if you don’t want to be asked. Being a detective, one who spent her days asking questions of others with it understood that her own thoughts didn’t come to play in the interaction, she’d maybe become a little rusty at the personal stuff.

“I’m not all that fond of men,” she said. “I just don’t believe they’re wired to be what I need in a relationship.”

She saw the verbal bullet hit him. Hurt for him. And couldn’t lie about what his choices had done to her. Not just his, of course. Her father—he’d tried his best but most definitely had not been a man she could rely on, other than to be able to trust that if he wasn’t drunk, he would be soon.

And Tyler—he’d fallen down that same rabbit hole.

“Then you haven’t known the right men,” Rafe finally said.

She shrugged. Maybe.

“There are a lot of happily married women in the world. And men who’ve risked everything for their families. For their country. For…”

Holding up a hand, Kerry smiled. “I get it,” she said. “I actually work with several of them.”

And at home, she had trust issues.

“I’ve found that my life is happier, I’m more at peace inside, when I have no expectations where men are concerned,” she said, giving him more than she’d ever admitted aloud.

Because he was Rafe?

She hoped not. She wanted to believe that she was just a bit more open—a smidge vulnerable—because they’d just been shot at and she had a cop stationed outside her door.

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