Second Chance Colton

“Why do you think?” Not waiting for him to respond, she gave him the answer to her own question. “Because I’m not at the ranch. I’m not in Tulsa at all. I’m back in Oklahoma City.”

Ryan frowned to himself. Ever since Greta had gotten engaged, she’d spent more and more of her time in Oklahoma City, where her fiancé lived. She’d even taken on horse training jobs there.

“I thought you’d stick around the ranch for a while, you know, because of Mother.”

There was silence on the other end of the line and for a moment, he thought that the call had been dropped. But then Greta said, “Yes, well, I wasn’t really doing her any good just hanging around the house. Especially since she kept looking at me as if she was afraid of me. As if she thought I was going to do something to her. I don’t know what’s with that,” Greta complained, sounding as if she was at a complete loss.

“Did you ask her about it?” Ryan asked.

“Yes. But when I asked her why she was looking at me like that,” Greta went on, obviously upset about the matter, “she denied it.”

“So what’s the problem?”

He heard Greta sigh. “I got the feeling she denied it because she was afraid if she didn’t, I’d do something to her.”

He couldn’t believe that things between his mother and sister had actually degenerated down to this, but then Abra was prone to mood swings. “You’re imagining things, Greta.”

He heard Greta sigh. “I suppose that maybe I am, but just the other day she asked me if I was doing any recreational drugs. Me, who’s never taken anything stronger than an aspirin. I think that beating Mother took might have been even more serious than any of us suspected.”

It was Ryan’s turn to sigh. No one was more frustrated about not being able to find whoever had hurt his mother than he was. But right now, he had the break-in to deal with.

The break-in with the evidence mounting against Greta. There had to be an explanation for all this, he thought, but he needed to talk to her in person to get at the truth.

Growing up, Greta had been a tomboy almost in self-defense. She’d been outnumbered by her brothers five to one and had learned to hold her own at a very early age. At five-nine she was tall and willowy, and at first glance, very feminine.

But she was also tough to the point that he was certain no one could easily push her around. As far as he knew, his sister didn’t really have much of a temper, but then he supposed everyone could be pushed to their limit. What was Greta’s limit? he couldn’t help wondering.

Was there something that could push Greta over the edge?

His thought process suddenly took him in a very new direction, almost against his will. What if, for some reason, their mother had suddenly taken exception to Greta’s pending marriage to Mark Stanton? Handsome and glibly charming, it was no secret that the younger brother of the president of Stanton Oil got by on his looks, not his work ethic. Maybe, despite the fact that she had been instrumental in throwing Greta and Mark an engagement party—their father always left such things to his wife—Abra had told Greta to slow down and think things through and Greta had balked. One thing could have had led to another and—

And what? Ryan silently demanded. Greta had had a complete reversal in personality and gone ballistic on their mother? That account just didn’t fly for him.

None of this was making any sense to him—and he was getting one hell of a headache just reviewing all the various details over and over again in his head.

“Ryan? Are you still there?” The stress in Greta’s voice broke through his thoughts.

“What?” Embarrassed, he flushed. Luckily there was no one to see him. “Yeah, I’m still here, Greta. How long have you been in Oklahoma City?” he asked her abruptly, changing direction.

He heard her hesitate. Was she thinking, or...?

“A couple of weeks or so,” Greta finally answered. “Why?”

Ryan suppressed his sigh. “Which is it? A couple of weeks? Or ‘so’?”

“Three weeks,” she replied more specifically, irritation evident in her voice. “Just what’s this all about, Ryan?”

He didn’t address her question. Instead, he asked her another one of his own. “So you weren’t there—at the ranch—yesterday morning? Or the night before?”

“No, I already told you,” she replied, annoyed. “I was here, working. Why are you asking me all these weird questions?” she asked. And then, as if she had a premonition about what was happening, she asked, “Ryan, what’s going on?”

He gave her the unvarnished details. “Someone broke into the stables early yesterday morning.”

“That’s awful,” she cried, upset. And then realization entered her voice, as did abject horror. “Wait, why would you think that it was me?”

Maybe he should have refrained from telling her this until later, but Greta was his sister and he had to give her every benefit of the doubt. “Because one of the windows had been deliberately broken and there was blood on the jagged edges.”

Even as she said the words, she couldn’t really get herself to believe it. It was there in her voice as she asked in stunned disbelief, “My blood?”

He had never hated sharing a piece of information more than this. “Yes.”

She felt as if she had slipped into some sort of parallel universe, one that was not bound by the laws of reason—or reality for that matter.

Stunned, she protested, “That’s not possible,” because she couldn’t see how it could be. “What reason would I have to break into the stable, going through a window for heaven’s sake?” she demanded.

“I don’t know, Greta. That’s what I’m trying to find out,” he told her wearily. “The DNA test that came back from the lab was conclusive.”

“Then you need better equipment—or better people doing the test—because the results they came up with are wrong. I wasn’t there,” Greta insisted heatedly one more time. “I was here, in Oklahoma City, working with the horses.”

Ryan paused for a moment, hating what he had to ask. But this was protocol, not something personal—even though he knew that Greta would take it that way. And in her place, he would have felt the same way. “Can anyone vouch for you?”

“The horses aren’t talking,” she snapped at him in exasperation.

“I didn’t think so,” he replied, hoping to inject a tiny trace of humor into the extremely awkward exchange. “How about the rancher who hired you?”

“Sorry, no help in that quarter,” she informed her brother coldly. “He’s away on business. Apparently he trusts me because I’ve got free access to his ranch while he’s away so I can come and go at will.”

Ryan took no offense at the attitude that had slipped into his sister’s voice. If someone had been listening to their exchange, it would sound as if he was trying to break Greta down.

“How about Mark?” he asked hopefully. Personally, he didn’t care for his sister’s intended, but maybe the man could prove good for something. Maybe he could provide the alibi that Greta needed. “Is he—”

Greta cut him off. “Mark’s just away. I don’t know where he is.”

What she didn’t say was that her fiancé had been rather flaky of late, not showing up when he said he would, being secretive whenever he did show up. She had a very uneasy feeling that the second she had agreed to marry him, Mark had decided he no longer had to be on his best behavior.

But none of this was something she wanted to share with her family, especially since someone had almost killed her mother, and apparently her police detective brother thought that she might be the one who was responsible for that.

Ryan jumped on the last thing she’d said like a hungry dog on his first bone after suffering a week of deprivation. “What do you mean you don’t know where he is?”

Greta’s tone became entirely defensive. It was obvious that she was tired of having to defend herself. “Just what I said. He’s my fiancé, Ryan, not my pet. I don’t keep track of him when he’s ‘off leash,’” she informed her brother heatedly.

Ryan felt he would have had to have been deaf to have missed her hostility. Not that he could blame her. Again, he supposed he’d feel the same way in her place if she’d all but accused him of hurting their mother and then began questioning him about vandalizing the family ranch.

The Lucky C was their father’s pride and joy. Big J treated the ranch as if it was actually an entity unto itself, as human as the rest of them—at times, maybe even more so.

Much as he hated to admit it, he had lost control of this conversation. All he’d wanted to do was arrange to get together with Greta to have this discussion face-to-face and it had veered completely off track. He had no idea how to smooth things over, only that he had to do it in order to get something to work with.

Pausing, he searched for words. But before they could come to him, his cell buzzed, announcing a second call was attempting to come in.

The phrase “saved by the bell” suddenly occurred to him.

“Hold on a minute, Greta, I’ve got another call coming in.”

He could almost hear her sign of relief. “Take your call, Ryan. I’ve got to go,” she told him a beat before the line went dead.

Frustrated, Ryan blew out a breath. He’d just been about to tell her to remain on the line but she had hung up before he had the chance.

He tried not to read anything incriminating into Greta’s quick and abrupt withdrawal. If need be, he’d get Susie’s rather annoying intern to pinpoint Greta’s exact location to make doubly sure that his sister was actually where she said she was. Armed with that information, he could determine just where she was staying so he could drive to Oklahoma City and bring his sister back if he needed to.

He hated this.

What he hated even more was that he had a very strong hunch that “needed to” was going to turn out to be a reality, and soon.

Very soon.

“Colton,” he announced as he took the incoming call.

“You better get out here, boy,” a shaken voice instructed him.

For one isolated moment, Ryan didn’t recognize the voice. But he could be forgiven for that since he had never heard his father sounding this way. Stunned. Numb. And battling complete disbelief—as well as sounding just the tiniest bit fearful.

“Dad?” Ryan asked, still only half-certain that he was right.

“Yeah, it’s me.” His father’s voice, usually so bombastic and full of life, sounded incredibly old. “Get out here as quick as you can, Ryan. And come alone,” his father added, emphasizing the last word.

“More vandalism?” Ryan asked wearily. He’d had just about enough drama to last for a while.

“No,” his father snapped, dismissing the question as inconsequential. “It’s bad.”

Okay, Ryan thought. This sounded serious. And personal. He could only think of one thing that would prompt his father to evaluate the situation this way. “Is it Mother?” he asked, even as he prayed—something he hadn’t done in more years than he could remember—that it wasn’t.

“No. No, it’s not Abra,” his father was quick to say. “But you have to get out here.”

The urgency in his father’s voice was unnerving. There was a time when their father had them all intimidated. John Colton was a big man who cast a large shadow and had a voice like gravel.

“Then what is it?” Ryan asked. Now that he thought about it, his father almost sounded spooked. If this didn’t involve his mother, why did his father sound like he was frightened?

“Damn it, Ryan, I can’t talk about this over the phone. What good is it having a police detective in the family if I have to argue with you every time I need you to handle something for me? Just get out here, Ryan,” his father ordered. “Now.”

He knew better than to think that his father was playing games. Something else had happened on the ranch and rather than wasting time trying to get his father to tell him what was going on, he needed to see this for himself.

“Where’s ‘here,’ Dad?” he asked.

“The ranch, of course,” Big J retorted. “You suddenly gone dumb on me?”

Ryan didn’t bother answering that. “It’s big ranch, Dad. Where on the ranch? The main house, the Cabin, what?”

The main house was where his parents lived, along with Brett, his wife and Greta when she was in Tulsa. Jack, his wife and his son lived in what had once been the main house until the new one had been built, while Daniel and Megan lived in what everyone just referred to as “the Cabin.” That, too, was located on the ranch.

“Come to the bunkhouse,” his father instructed in a voice that was almost eerily still.

After terminating the call, Ryan tossed his cell phone onto the passenger seat and started up his vehicle.

Given the situation, the logical thing would have been to bring backup with him, especially since his father had sounded so shaken up, an unusual state of affairs when it came to Big J.

But since his father had also been adamant no one else come to the ranch to see this—whatever “this” was—except for him, Ryan felt as if he had to go with his father’s instincts.

Besides, his instincts told him to play this very close to his vest—at least until he knew what the hell was going on.

Ryan paused only long enough to reach into his glove compartment to take out his vehicle’s emergency-light attachment. Switching it on, he placed the whirling red and yellow lights onto his roof, securing it. Once he had, he hit the gas and took off.

* * *

Ryan did between eighty and ninety all the way to the ranch, something he would have loved to have done as a teenager. He would have enjoyed it a lot more then than now.

Once he reached the ranch, he took the long way around to the bunkhouse, passing all the other buildings just in case his father had been addled when he’d told him where to go. Ryan assumed that if that was the case, he would see his father standing in front of whatever structure he’d actually meant to direct him toward.

But Big J was not out in front of the main house.

Or the old main house.

Or the Cabin.

The process of elimination told him that his father had really meant to direct him to the bunkhouse.

Why was his father being so melodramatic? Was this actually just another break-in, complete with its own acts of vandalism?

This was definitely getting old, Ryan thought as he headed toward the bunkhouse.

His father was waiting for him out front.

Ryan could make out the lines etched in his father’s face. They were evident even at this distance.

After pulling up in front of the bunkhouse, Ryan got out of his vehicle. Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as his father was making it sound.

“Okay, what’s the big emergency?” Ryan asked his father as he approached.

“This way,” was all his father said as he gestured for Ryan to follow him into the bunkhouse.

“What the hell is all this mystery about?” Ryan asked impatiently.

“You’ll see,” Big J told him grimly.

Walking behind his father as they entered the building, Ryan thought that he was pretty much prepared for anything.

But he was wrong.

Chapter 4

There was a dead man lying on his back in the center of the bunkhouse floor, a drying pool of blood beneath him, a surprised look frozen on his young face.

Whatever he had expected to find when his father had summoned him, deliberately refraining from giving him any details, it definitely hadn’t been this.

Ryan felt as if he was moving in slow motion as he circled the prone body of the young cowboy with the conspicuous hole in his chest. He was careful not to step into or otherwise disturb the wide pool of blood that had had at least several hours to seep out of the man’s body.

Only after he had completely circumvented the ranch hand’s—Kurt Rodgers’s—earthly remains did Ryan squat down beside him.

Rodgers’s complexion was already beginning to take on a grayish pallor. That, and the condition of the blood on the floor, indicated that the cowboy had been dead for a while.

Even so, Ryan pulled out the handkerchief he had tucked into the back pocket of his jeans and gingerly felt along the cowboy’s throat and neck for any sign of a pulse.

There was none.

He hadn’t really expected one, but there was always that wild, outside chance that the man might have somehow still been clinging to life. Ryan felt he couldn’t rule that possibility out until he’d made absolutely sure.

Ryan caught himself thinking that the victim—a fairly recent hire who had an affinity for horses and had helped Greta and Daniel train the ranch’s horses—looked awfully young.

Just yesterday, Kurt’s whole life had been ahead of him. And now, it wasn’t.

Ryan was aware that his father had crept closer during the cursory exam and now hovered around him, peering over his shoulder. “That’s Kurt Rodgers,” Big J said.

Ryan didn’t bother looking his way. “I know who it is, Dad.”

Big J shrugged in response. “It’s just that lately, unless you’re investigating something going on at the Lucky C, you’re never here.”

Rising, Ryan pocketed his handkerchief. Irritation filled his voice. “I said I know who it is. Sorry,” he apologized the next moment.

He wasn’t annoyed with his father but with this latest, far more serious turn of events. Was this just a random murder or one that involved his family?

“It’s just that checking out a dead body in my family’s bunkhouse isn’t exactly something I ever expected to be doing.” Taking a breath, he looked around the otherwise empty bunkhouse. “Who found him?”

“Brett,” his father answered. At twenty-eight, Brett was the youngest of the Colton brothers. “Near as I can figure, he was coming in from one of his late-night work sessions,” Big J explained. “Boy was all white when he came and got me—I couldn’t sleep and was in the study,” his father added as an afterthought. “Brett looked like he’d seen a ghost or something.”

“Or something,” Ryan repeated, stifling a frustrated sigh. “Was anyone else with him at the time?” Ryan asked.

Big J guessed at what his son was really asking him. “You mean was Hannah with him? If she was, she took off before anyone else saw her. As far as I know, he was alone when he saw Rodgers lying there like that.” He shook his head sadly as he looked down at his murdered employee.

Ryan absently nodded, jotting down key points from his father’s statement. “Where’s Brett now?”

“At the house, most likely trying to steady his nerves.” A vague shrug accompanied his father’s words, as if he wasn’t a hundred percent certain that his youngest son was still where he just said he was. “I gave him my best Kentucky bourbon.”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Great, just what I need. An intoxicated witness to question.”

“He’s not a witness,” Big J countered defensively, as if the term was somehow tainted, or would taint anyone it came in contact with. “He’s your brother.”

Ryan didn’t see why that fact should create a discrepancy in the description. “Who was also the first one who found the body, that makes him a witness—of the scene, since he wasn’t here for the commission of the crime.” Ryan assumed that his father would have said as much if Brett had seen who had killed the ranch hand. “Was there anyone else here at the time?” he asked, rephrasing his previous question.

“Like I said, not that I saw,” Big J answered. “I called you the minute I saw Rodgers lying there like that.”

Ryan pressed his lips together, far from happy about this turn of events—or the predicament it would most likely put him in. What if, for some reason, another one of his siblings was behind this, or at least somehow connected to this?

It hadn’t been a great week for family relations, he couldn’t help thinking.

Reaching into his other back pocket, Ryan pulled out his cell phone. As he did so, he waved his father back. “You can’t be here right now.”

Full, bushy eyebrows drew together over Big J’s patrician nose. “Why not?” the big man demanded, for the moment sounding every bit like his former, larger-than-life self. “This is my bunkhouse, boy.”

“Nobody’s disputing that, Dad,” Ryan replied. “But right now it’s my crime scene, and until it’s processed, that tops your claim to it.”

“Possession’s nine-tenths of the law and I’ve got the deed, boy.” Although he was proud of his sons, Big J was not about to be easily usurped. He was the head of the family. “Okay, okay,” Big J said, raising his hands defensively when Ryan looked at him darkly, giving no sign of backing down. “I’ll get on out.”

John Colton began to do just that when he stopped suddenly to take a closer look at his son’s face, as if he was trying to gauge the gravity of what was transpiring on his property.

“Should I be calling Preston?” he asked, referring to David Preston, the fifty-year-old lawyer who he kept on retainer to handle any legal matters involving either him or his family.

“Not yet, Dad. But it wouldn’t hurt to let him know what’s going on,” Ryan told him.

His father began to say something in response to that, but Ryan raised his hand, stopping him. The phone on the other end of the call he was making had stopped ringing and had been picked up.

A melodic, albeit preoccupied female voice announced, “Crime lab.”

Susie.

Because his father was standing not that far off, despite his instructions to the contrary, Ryan addressed the woman he had called—the woman he had once made love to with abandon—formally.

“This is Detective Ryan Colton. I need the CSI unit to come out to the Lucky C.”

The impatient exhale echoed in his ear as he heard Susie say, “Look, I understand how you feel, Colton, but we just don’t have time to run a fourth DNA test on that broken window,” she told him in a voice that declared that there would be no further discussions on the matter.

“This isn’t about the broken window,” Ryan said sharply, cutting in before she had the opportunity to continue.

There was a long pause on the other end, as if the forensic expert was debating whether or not she believed him. “Then what?” she finally asked.

“We’ve got a body at the bunkhouse,” he answered grimly.

“Do you know who it is?” she asked him.

Ryan thought he heard rustling on the other end of the line, like she was getting her evidence case together to bring to the crime scene. “Yeah, it’s one of the ranch hands, a relatively new hire named Kurt Rodgers.”

“Are there signs of a struggle?” Susie asked.

Ryan turned around to look at the area around the cowboy’s body. The only thing that appeared out of place was Rodgers’s body itself—and the pool of blood beneath it, that went without saying. Nothing else seemed to be disturbed.

“From all indications, he didn’t see whatever it was coming,” Ryan answered. “Send your people out here.”

“Right away,” she promised, snapping the locks on her case.

Ryan thought that was the end of their conversation and was about to terminate the call when he heard Susie’s voice.

“Ryan?”

He put the phone back up to his ear. “Yeah?” He saw his father looking at him, as if Big J was trying to ascertain what was going on.

Her voice softened just a touch as she told him, “I’m sorry.”

Ryan didn’t have to ask about what. He knew. Susie was telling him that she was sorry he was going through this. It was hard enough investigating a murder, but when the murder took place on his own family’s ranch, that added an extra dimension to the case. A dimension that made it almost too delicate to work on, at least for him.

“Thanks,” he told her, adding, “Me, too.”

With that, Ryan ended the call and tucked his cell phone back into his pocket. He knew he was going to have to call his boss, Boyd Benson, who was the Tulsa chief of police, and tell him what was going on. The man wouldn’t be happy about this. But then, in all fairness, he had no idea what did make the police chief happy. Benson’s regular expression was a dour one. Ryan couldn’t recall ever seeing the man smile, not even at one of the Christmas parties.