Tara Quinn - Colton's Lethal Reunion

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.

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…”