Marie Ferrarella - Colton Baby Rescue

Carson looked back at his dog. Now that the offending piece of clothing was gone, Justice became totally docile.

“C’mon, boy, keep on looking,” he urged his German shepherd partner. “Seek!”

Responding to the command, Justice quickly covered the remainder of the upper floor, moving from one area to another, but nothing seemed to spark a reaction from the dog. Nothing caused him to behave as if he had detected any telltale scent that indicated that the woman he was hunting was hiding somewhere on the floor or had even left anything else behind.

Serena kept her distance but still followed the detective, shadowing him step for step. For now, Lora was cooperating and went on dozing.

Coming back through the adjacent nursery, Carson made his way into Serena’s oversize bedroom. His eyes met hers.

“See, I told you she wasn’t here,” Serena told him. When his face remained totally impassive, she heard herself insisting. “You’re looking for the wrong person, Detective. Demi didn’t kill Bo. There’s got to be some kind of mistake.”

About to leave her suite and go back downstairs, Carson stopped abruptly. Justice skidded to a stop next to him.

“My brother’s dead. He wrote Demi’s name in his own blood on the asphalt right above his head. Her necklace was found at the crime scene, and there’s a witness who said he saw Demi running away from the area some fifteen minutes before Bo’s body was found in the parking lot. From what I can see, the only mistake here was made by Demi,” he informed Serena curtly, doing his best to hold his anger in check.

Part of the anger he was experiencing was because of the crime itself and part of it was due to the fact that having seen Serena holding her baby like that when he’d first entered had stirred up painful memories for him, memories he wanted to leave buried.

Serena shook her head, refusing to buy into the scenario that Demi had killed her ex-boyfriend in some sort of a fit of misguided jealousy. That was not the Demi she had come to know.

“Look,” she began, trying to talk some sense into the detective, “I admit that it looks bad right now—”

Carson barely managed to keep a dismissive oath from escaping his lips.

Serena didn’t seem to notice as she forged on. “There’s no way that the Demi Colton I know is a killer. Yes, she has a temper, but she wouldn’t kill anyone, especially not her ex-boyfriend.”

Carson looked at her sharply. What wasn’t she telling him?

“Why?” he questioned.

Did Demi’s cousin know something that he didn’t know, or was she just being protective of the other woman? Was it simply a matter of solidarity between women, or whatever it was called, or was there something more to Serena’s certainty, because she did look pretty certain?

Serena began to say something else, then stopped herself at the last moment, saying only, “Because she just wouldn’t, that’s all.”

Carson looked at the chief’s sister closely. She knew something. Something she wasn’t telling him, he thought. His gut was telling him that he was right. But he couldn’t exactly browbeat her into admitting what she was trying to hide.

He was just going to have to keep an eye on the chief’s sister, he decided.

Just then, the baby began to fuss.

“Shh.” Serena soothed her daughter. She started rocking the child, doing her best to lull Lora back to sleep.

But Lora wouldn’t settle down. The fussing became louder.

Glancing up, Serena was going to excuse herself when she saw the strange look on the detective’s face. In her estimation he looked to be in some sort of pain or distress. Sympathy instantly stirred within her. She hated seeing pain of any kind.

She had to be losing her mind, feeling sympathy for a man who seemed so bent on arresting her cousin. It was obvious that he had already convicted Demi without a trial and looked more than willing to drag Demi to jail.

However, despite all this, for some strange reason, she was moved by the underlying distress she saw in his eyes.

“Is something wrong, Detective Gage?” She waited for him to respond, but he didn’t seem to hear her despite their close proximity. “Detective Gage?” she said more loudly.

Suddenly realizing that she was talking to him, Carson looked at the chief’s sister. She seemed to be waiting for him to respond to something she’d obviously said.

“What?” he all but snapped.

The man was in no danger of winning a congeniality award, Serena thought. “I asked you if something was wrong.”

Damn it, Carson upbraided himself, he was going to have to work on his poker face. “You mean other than the obvious?”

Serena mentally threw up her hands. This was hopeless. Why did she even care if something was bothering this boorish man who had come stomping into her house, disrupting everyone without displaying so much as an iota of remorse that he was doing it. Never mind that her brother had led this invasion into her parents’ home, she felt better blaming the detective for this than blaming Finn.

“Never mind,” she told Carson, changing topics. “I have to see to my baby, if it’s all right with you,” she said, a mild touch of sarcasm breaking through.

Rather than say anything in response, Carson just waved her back to her quarters.

Serena’s voice was fairly dripping with ice as she said, “Thank you.”

With that she turned on her bare heel to walk back into her suite.

“Let’s go, Justice,” Carson said to the dog, steering the animal toward the stairs.

Keeping a tight hold on the dog’s leash, Carson walked out of the house quickly, a man doing his best to outrun memories he found far too painful to coexist with.

Once outside, he saw the other members of the K-9 team. Not wanting to be faced with unnecessary questions, he forced himself to relax just a little.

“Anything?” Carson asked the man closest to him, Jim Kline.

Jim, paired with a jet-black German shepherd whimsically named Snow, shook his head. “If that woman’s anywhere on the property, she’s crawled down into a gopher hole and pulled the hole down after her,” the man answered him.

Finn came over to join them. Carson noticed that the chief looked as disappointed as he felt.

“Okay, men, everybody back to the station. We’re calling it a night and getting a fresh start in the morning.” The chief glanced over in his direction. “You, too, Gage,” he ordered, obviously expecting an argument from Carson.

And he got it. “I’m not tired, Chief,” Carson protested, ready to keep going.

“Good for you,” Finn said sarcastically. “Maybe when you get a chance, you can tell the rest of us what kind of vitamins you’re on. But for now, I’m still the chief, and I still call the shots. We’re going back to the station, end of discussion,” Finn repeated, this time more forcefully. He left absolutely no room for even so much as a sliver of an argument.

Resigned, Carson crossed over to his vehicle and opened the rear door to let Justice in. Shutting the door again, he opened the driver’s side and got into the car himself.

He felt all wound up. Talking to Serena Colton while she was wearing that frilly, flimsy nightgown beneath a robe that wouldn’t stay closed hadn’t exactly helped his state of mind, either.

Carson shut the image out. It only got in the way of his thoughts. And despite being dragged through the wringer physically and emotionally, he sincerely doubted he was going to get any sleep tonight.

Biting off an oath, Carson started up his car and headed toward the police station.

* * *

Serena could tell that the rest of her family was still up. From the sound of the raised, angry voices wafting up the stairs, they were going on about this sudden, unexpected turn of events and how furious her father and mother were that Finn hadn’t seen his way to leaving them out of this investigation strictly on the strength of the fact that they were his family.