Beth Cornelison - Colton Christmas Protector

“Now, wait just a minute!” Penelope shot to her feet and glared at him, hands balled at her sides.

Reid set the file aside, prepared to defend his conclusions. He’d known she wouldn’t like what he had to say—implicating her father in felony crimes—but she’d asked his honest opinion and—

“What do you mean, ‘if these records are real’? You think Andrew made up those documents? Some of what’s there is on my father’s official office stationery! If you think I’m going to let you use this as an excuse to deride Andrew—”

“Penelope.”

“—and throw more mud on his good name—”

“Penelope!” Reid stood and moved around the coffee table toward her.

“—then you can get the hell out of my house, right now! I only asked your opinion because—”

“Pen!” He had to raise his volume to match hers, but he kept his tone nonconfrontational.

Taking her by the shoulders, he gave her a quick, interrupting shake. Beneath his hands, Pen felt fragile. Her willowy limbs were surprisingly thin under his large hands, and he felt the tremor that raced through her. “Time out!”

She blinked at him, her expression wounded, offended, then shrugged roughly from his grasp. “That’s what you said. ‘If these records are real, not fabricated.’ As if you think Andrew was trying to frame my father for something!”

“Yes. If. I said all that about fabrication as a qualifier of my assessment, not as an accusation against Andrew.” He stepped back and wiped his hands on the seat of his jeans. “The fact of the matter is, I believe Andrew was onto something. I think...” He hesitated, not wanting to set her off again and not finding any way to soften the blow for her. He respected Pen too much to sugarcoat what he suspected. “Pen, it looks like your father was stealing from his clients. Is stealing from his clients. He’s hiding income from the government. Falsifying records. God knows what else, but...”

He stopped as she sank slowly back onto her chair, her eyes wide and her mouth slack with shock. “You really think my father is doing all this? What I mean is, you think he knows about it? Couldn’t it be someone who works for him? Or...” She let her voice trail off, as if she knew the truth without him answering.

He said nothing, taking his seat again and giving her a moment to process the stunning bomb he’d dropped. He knew well enough that Pen had never had a good relationship with her father, but learning Hugh was likely guilty of criminal activity was another matter.

“So...now what?” She sounded as stunned as she looked, her voice an almost breathless whisper. “What do I do...” she motioned weakly toward the papers in his lap “...with those files? What do you think Andrew planned to do with them?”

“Andrew was a good cop. He wouldn’t have sat on incriminating evidence like this long. Chances are he was waiting for the case to come together to spare you the strain of a drawn-out investigation.” Noticing her befuddled look, he asked, “What?”

“So now you think Andrew is a good cop?”

He clenched his teeth, measuring his words. “Pen, I’ve always thought he was good at his job.”

Her mouth pinched, and one thin eyebrow lifted in skepticism. “That didn’t stop you from trying to sully his name before he died.”

He exhaled slowly, struggling to keep his frustration in check. “I wasn’t trying to sully his name. I was trying to intervene, bring him to his senses, before he sullied it!”

“Fine way of showing—”

“Pen, stop!” He raised both hands, palms toward her. His voice was louder than he’d intended. “This is a conversation for later. I will explain to you everything that happened eighteen months ago, if you’re willing to listen.”

She firmed her mouth and folded her arms over her chest. Classic body language saying she was closing herself off to what he was saying. He knew better than to press on with the topic if she wasn’t ready to hear him out.

“Later...” He tapped his finger on the files. “We need to address this, right now.”

He didn’t tell her this insight into Barrington cast a new light on issues involving his father’s disappearance. Hugh Barrington had been very vocal of late, claiming to have seen Eldridge being kidnapped, claiming a burned body must be the missing Colton patriarch—which it wasn’t. And, not the least of which, pushing forward a reading of Eldridge’s will, in which Hugh Barrington was named the heir of a controlling interest in Colton Inc. As a detective with the Dallas PD, Reid had learned not to believe in coincidence. If it looked like a dirty rat, smelled like a dirty rat and squeaked like a dirty rat, he didn’t need an exterminator to tell him he was dealing with a dirty rat.

If Hugh Barrington was as corrupt as Andrew’s files seemed to indicate, Reid had to wonder what role the family’s lawyer may have played in his father’s disappearance. Had Eldridge gotten wind of his lawyer’s disloyalty and theft? Had the senior Colton threatened to expose Hugh?

Or, Reid thought with a twist of dread in his gut, had Eldridge been mixed up in his lawyer’s illegal practices and crossed the wrong person?

She glared at him silently, stubbornly, for several moments, and he used the time to formulate a plan.

“Are you with me on this, Pen? For Andrew’s sake? Because I’m going to need your help if we’re going to get the proof we need to either finish building this case or disprove it.”

She blinked slowly, turning her gaze away. “How?”

Gathering together the papers he’d spread out on the floor to review, he tapped the stack into order and stood. “We need to look at your father’s personal files. We need to see what’s saved on his computer, what’s locked in his safe.”

Penelope scowled her disagreement. “He’s hardly going to just stand aside and let us search his office—especially if he has something to hide.”

“So we don’t ask.” He jammed a hand in his pocket and shifted his weight uncomfortably. He was crossing a line, and he knew it. They’d have to tread carefully.

Her expression was incredulous. “You want to break into his office and steal his files?”

“I doubt he’d keep the incriminating stuff at his office where his staff could come across it. We’ll start at his house. Your old home.” She opened her mouth as if to argue, and he added quickly, “If we are freely admitted to the house, then it’s not breaking and entering. If we only snoop around and don’t take anything, it’s not stealing.”

“I don’t know.” She bit her bottom lip and rubbed her hands on her pants. “You’re playing rather fast and loose with the definition of legal, Colton.”

He flashed her a wry grin. “Hey, that’s what my family does best.”

* * *

They’d laid out a plan and were in Reid’s truck ten minutes later.

“You’ve been to my father’s house before, right?” she asked in a tone that said she knew he had.

Reid dipped his head once in reply.

“Then you don’t need my directions?”

He lifted a corner of his mouth. “No. But thanks.” He pulled away from the curb and drove toward the highway that would take them out of the Dallas city limits and toward the affluent area where Hugh Barrington lived.

A stilted silence filled the cab of his truck, but Reid resisted the urge to turn on the radio. If Pen decided she did want to talk, he didn’t want anything to interfere with an open communication between them.

In fact, he really ought to be the one to broach the topic of what happened to Andrew. She should know why he’d started his investigation of his partner and his theories about what really happened that fateful date last year. He might not get another chance like this one to explain his side of events to her.