Bonnie Vanak - His Forgotten Colton Fiancée

Until the pieces were tested, he couldn’t be certain, but he suspected it was the same type of bomb that had gone off earlier in the abandoned building. The first bomb was a trial run, probably to see how much damage the unsub could inflict.

But something had gone wrong. The killer hadn’t known that Quinn delivered lunch here every day around noon. Nor had he anticipated the device wouldn’t totally destroy evidence.

Or had he? Quinn had told him that everyone knew her schedule—that every day she hand delivered lunch to Tia, one of her best clients. Tia always ate at twelve thirty sharp. The woman ran a tight schedule.

He returned to his truck, fetched his equipment. With methodical care, he combed through the scene. Gray file cabinets were dented, some of their contents blown out. The computer was in shards, but if Tia backed her files up to a cloud, they could access them.

Maybe one of her clients had a grudge. Damn, it was better than thinking someone had it in for Quinn, or wanted to cause more than one injury.

In the rubble, he found the thin stump of a cigar. West bagged and tagged the evidence. Tia smoked. A fact Quinn relayed to him previously, her pert nose wrinkling in disgust. Tia even liked to light up Cubans after hours. But everything had to be looked over.

Something glinted among the rubble in a shaft of late-afternoon sunshine.

West crouched down and studied the fragment. The edge of a key chain, rounded, with the etching of a pine cone. He could just make out part of an address.

#5 Pine P.

Pine Paradise? Acid crept into his throat. Too much of a coincidence.

He knew this.

Pine Paradise specialized in cabins in the thickly wooded canyon south of Red Ridge.

After Quinn had told him she had a key to a cabin there, he planned to take her for a weekend. Maybe taking Quinn with him for hikes in the woods, long bouts of lovemaking into the night. He liked that area of South Dakota; it was quiet, peaceful, and enabled him to think and find peace. Get away from all the people in town and the nosy neighbors. He could use his gray matter to fit together pieces of a complex puzzle called the Coltons, figure out if they were covering up evidence of Demi Colton’s whereabouts.

Question her further.

Pine Paradise offered quiet, small cabins near a creek reputed to have excellent trout fishing. Each cabin was set back from the road, nestled in the thick woods. Isolated and accessed only by a dirt road, they were far apart from each neighboring cabin to offer seclusion and privacy.

When he’d first arrived in town, he’d asked Tia, Red Ridge’s reigning queen of real estate, about renting a Pine Paradise cabin. She’d haughtily informed him that the cabins were occupied. The property is unavailable, Mr. Brand. Got it?

The woman was just...nasty. He could understand why she mistrusted him for being an outsider and FBI, to boot. Some locals had looked at him with suspicion. Small town, strangers. But Quinn had told him the real estate agent was one of her best clients and a cold, demanding person. It wasn’t him. It was Tia’s personality.

Did that personality get her into trouble? Had the real estate agent gotten into a squabble with someone who decided on permanent payback by killing her?

Until the autopsy was performed, they could not confirm his suspicion that Tia had been killed prior to the explosion, and the killer had used the bomb to cover his or her tracks.

There was another troubling idea in his mind. Maybe Quinn had been the real target.

In his gloved hands, West fingered the evidence, his mind clicking over the facts like a computer.

What if there was a connection between the killer and this property? He needed to find out exactly what other properties Tia owned.

But Pine Paradise was a good, isolated place to hide while experimenting with making bombs, far away from the inquisitive locals. Someone who wouldn’t hesitate to blow up buildings and kill innocents like Quinn to cover a larger crime.

But what if this bombing was connected to the Groom Killer? There was no evidence yet to link the two crimes, but as an investigator trained to be thorough, he couldn’t rule it out. He had to look at all angles.

Maybe the bomber wanted to kill Quinn because she was related to Demi Colton.

Even without the autopsy report on Tia, West’s instinct warned whoever had planted the bomb didn’t do it to kill the real estate agent. Bombs were tricky. Sometimes they didn’t detonate, so as a means of killing someone, they were unpredictable.

The killer hadn’t used enough explosives to totally destroy Tia’s body. He’d planted the bomb in the wrong place. Maybe he—or she—had been in a hurry. Or perhaps the bomber’s intention had been to destroy evidence.

Or unfamiliar with exactly where to plant a bomb in order to do the most damage, and destroy the evidence one wanted to cover up.

And then Quinn had interrupted the crime. That meant she was a witness, and whoever did this would want to erase any evidence.

Eradicate any witnesses, especially one Quinn Colton.

Later, he and Rex would take a road trip to Pine Paradise. But not for trout fishing.

Fishing of a different sort—searching for Tia’s killer.

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