Bonnie Vanak - His Forgotten Colton Fiancée

Maybe she could change West’s mind about having a family.

I need breakfast if I’m going to deal with this. Quinn opened the stainless steel refrigerator and gathered the ingredients for a blueberry-peach smoothie. When it was finished, she took it outside in the cool morning air.

Up and down Main Street, shopkeepers were opening their stores and starting business for the day. Summer business bustled in August with tourists who wanted some late-season fishing or hiking, taking kids to see Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills before shuttling them off to school. But not this year. Maybe the visitors heard about the Groom Killer and decided to stay elsewhere.

The brick facade of her little shop was aged, and gave Good Eats a small-town charm, along with the flower boxes lining the big windows overlooking Main Street. Her store, at the very edge of town, backed onto a wide-open field where there had been talk of developing a shopping center.

Those plans had been abandoned by the developer after business started going south in town.

Quinn had dug into her slim savings and purchased wrought iron bistro tables and chairs where customers could sit outside and enjoy a hot cappuccino or a cold smoothie in the warm weather. Once, the drinks were icing on her store’s financial cake; now they were the entire cake and frosting.

If she didn’t get a big order soon, she and Austin would be in financial trouble.

Never. Austin was her bestie. She needed him in her life as much as she needed West. And her brothers and sister.

Where was Demi?

She had constantly wrestled with worry over her kid sister. A bounty hunter, Demi was tough as nails, fierce, and Quinn couldn’t help wondering if her half sister really had snapped and killed her ex-fiancé and the other grooms. Her ex had been the first victim. There had since been many more. According to the RRPD—many of whom were related to Demi and Quinn in some way—Demi was guilty. Others said she was being framed. All Quinn knew was that Demi was alone out there, supposedly trying to prove her innocence. At least, she’d texted as much to their brother Shane a couple months back.

Since then: radio silence.

What Quinn couldn’t stop thinking about was that when Demi had fled town, she’d been pregnant. She must have had the baby already. Or was about to.

Quinn sipped the shake and set it down on the table. Her phone buzzed and she reached into her apron to pull it out when a tremendous KA-POW split the air, startling her into dropping the cell phone and spilling her drink.

Shaken, she stood up, staring in the direction of the explosion. Her father’s bar was down that way...

In the direction West had taken when he’d kissed her goodbye and then headed for work.

Chapter 2

The abandoned hardware store had been totally flattened. West thought it looked as if a giant stomped on it, squashing the roof, toppling the walls and shattering what was left of the broken windows.

West was so focused on solving the Groom Killer case, on finding Demi Colton, that he figured her into every crime that affected Red Ridge. Blowing up a building to take the focus off the murders would allow her to sneak around the city more easily, hunt down the grooms who’d refused to hide their love and relationships.

But Demi hadn’t done this, unless she graduated to high-tech explosives.

Then again, Demi Colton was a smart woman, a clever bounty hunter, and anything was possible.

Lights flashed from RRPD patrol cars and fire trucks lining the dirt road in front of the abandoned hardware store. Nearby, several tent canopies sat over tables for collection of evidence—the command post—along with an industrial generator. Yellow crime scene tape had already been strung up along the perimeter, where a crowd of curious bystanders started to gather. He recognized some of the hard-core patrons from Rusty Colton’s bar and gritted his teeth. Drunk civilians were a pain to deal with, and worse at a crime scene.

His pulse raced as he parked his black Ford truck. West grabbed his kit, climbed out and then skirted around the side to let out Rex. The Lab jumped out and stood close to his side as West surveyed the detectives and cops already milling around the scene—the abandoned building he and Rex had jogged by earlier this morning. He raked a hand through his hair and sighed.

At his side, the dog gave him a reproachful look as if to say, I told you so .

“Hey, I checked it out,” he told Rex.

He took a deep, calming breath. Steady now.

Every time he investigated an explosion, he remembered that day when he was seventeen, and his entire family had been killed by a bomb. He had been the sole survivor.

Surviving only because he’d been out with his girlfriend, parked at the local lovers’ lane. The sex had been good, and quick and forgettable.

What he saw when he arrived home had not been forgettable.

Focus. Priorities. Safety first. West took another deep breath and glanced at Rex.

“Let’s do this.”

Every inch of the scene had to be processed, numbered and documented. His dog would alert him where the most evidence of the bomb was, while other investigators would sort out the scene for shrapnel embedded in the building and dirt.

But not until he and Rex checked out the scene for unexploded devices.

Ducking under the tape, he headed for the staging tent and grabbed a white hazmat suit and put it on, along with booties. Then he took the specially made booties he’d ordered for Rex and attached them to the dog’s paws, fastening them with Velcro. The booties would not only protect Rex’s paws from broken glass and debris, but helped preserve the integrity of the crime scene, as well.

Chief Finn Colton saw him and headed to the tent. He glanced at Rex.

“We’ve divided the building into four quadrants. Need you and Rex to search for secondary devices. When you give the all clear, I want you to search for evidence in the fourth quadrant—the southwest corner.”

“No prob.” West motioned to Rex and they entered the blown-out building.

The bomb had been a big one. Glass windows had been shattered from more than two hundred feet away and the boards that blocked the windows were now shards.

Any hopes this was a prank pulled by kids were immediately dashed. Kids who liked to blow things up wouldn’t cause this kind of destruction.

No, they’d take a pipe bomb into the woods and then explode it, watching the destruction from afar.

He recognized Cal Flinders from the district Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms office. Cal was one of the few he trusted.

West nodded at Cal and gripped Rex’s leash. Safety first. If there were any unexploded devices on scene, his dog would detect them.

“Find,” he ordered Rex, still gripping the leash.

Rex combed through all the sectors, searching for secondary devices. When he finished, he remained standing. West stared at the wreckage. No bodies today.

Not like at his family’s house, where he’d screamed and tried to break past the barricades, get to his father, mother, two little sisters...

Focus. Rex looked up at him expectantly. All clear, we okay? the dog seemed to ask.

“Quadrants one, two, three and four all clear,” West called out.

Next, he began scouring the area of the building assigned to him. Rex sniffed through the debris. The bomb had detonated in the building’s center, where the worst damage was, but shrapnel traveled far. Patterns of the damage indicated how powerful the explosion was. Fortunately, no one had been injured.

Rex nosed beneath a piece of wood and sat. West hunkered down and examined the evidence.

Caked with dust and soot, it was heart shaped and partly bent. A woman’s gold compact, with a butterfly design. West photographed the item and then studied it. It was covered with a film of white powder.