The Coltons of Red Ridge
Maternal instinct? Her brow furrowed. What on earth did that have to do with anything? Then a memory struck her.
“Is this about your cousin and her baby?”
She found it hard to believe one awkward moment with a tiny, squalling, squirming infant could have brought them to this. Sure, it had been clear she didn’t know the first thing about babies, but why would she? She was Gemma Colton, daughter of Fenwick Colton—not to be confused with her distant cousin with the same name, who had had to deal with that awful virus a few years ago in Dead River, Wyoming, the best reason she’d ever heard for not becoming a nurse—and any children she might ever have would be safely ensconced with a nanny.
“That was just the demonstration of what I already knew,” Dev said. And now he was sounding sad. “Gemma, keeping Harrington Incorporated in the family is my responsibility. And that requires children.”
She might not know much about kids, but that seemed a rather cold-blooded way of thinking about them, even to her. But she loved Dev, and so she plowed on. “So? I want kids...someday.” She shoved aside the doubt. “And they’ll have a good life,” she declared. “The best schools, the best care, a dozen nannies if that’s what it takes to find the right one.”
“Exactly.”
Gemma blinked. “What?”
“I want a woman who will be hands-on with our children. Who will be a great mom. Like mine. She never turned us over to a nanny. Never abdicated her responsibility.”
“Abdicated her responsibility? You make it sound like giving up a crown—” She cut off her own words when she heard how snarky she sounded. Secretly, she thought Dev probably had a rose-colored-glasses view of the mother who had died. Kind of like her father did of his first wife, Layla’s mother.
Layla.
“Wait, what about your father? Who’s to say he and Layla won’t have children when this crazy killer is caught?”
Something flashed in Devlin’s eyes. Was he not happy about his father being engaged to a woman only three years older than him? Surely he didn’t think he would be supplanted by any children they had, since he was already a crucial part of the company.
She herself wasn’t thrilled with her sister marrying Dev’s father, and not just because it would make things complicated—her father-in-law would also be her brother-in-law—but because she couldn’t quite believe Layla loved the guy. Not like Gemma loved Dev, anyway.
And belatedly she remembered she was thinking about complications that would now apparently never arise. Because Dev was breaking up with her. Her ultimatum had gone seriously sideways.
“You can’t mean this,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “It’s just not a good match. But you’ll be all right, Gemma. I wish...” He paused, then said decisively, “I’ll let you find the happiness you deserve.”
He’d let her? She’d had about enough of this royalish munificence of his. She wanted to ask who put him in charge of the world, but didn’t.
She’d show him. No one broke up with Gemma Colton. She was the one who did the breaking up. He wanted maternal instincts? She’d show him maternal instincts. She’d make him sorry he’d ever doubted she had them. She’d have him crawling back, apologizing, in no time at all. She’d never been thwarted in her life, not for anything she’d really wanted.
And she would not be now.
* * *
“I’ll go let the Sarge know you found something.”
Dante nodded, didn’t even look as Duke left. His attention was fastened on the phone. The screen was tiny compared to his own, and it was obviously bare-bones, but it booted up quickly enough.
The call log was empty. No contacts saved. Neither of which surprised him. He opened the messaging app. His mouth tightened a little at the short list of text conversations. Top name meant nothing to him, nor did the next. In fact, none of the four names did.
But the next three had only phone numbers listed, no names assigned.
And that middle number looked familiar.
He pulled his own phone out of his pocket and quickly called up a file. Scrolled down to a list of numbers...
It was there.
Holy bloodhound nose, it was there. They finally, finally had a link to the Larsons. He looked at the patient dog. “Flash, you’re a genius.”
Okay, Dante thought, that look was dignified. And it fairly screamed, “Of course I am.” He grinned. His Monday was turning out not just decent, but great. He quickly checked the rest of the bag—nothing but flour. Sealed up the evidence bag. Picked it up. Headed back toward the living room.
Boom.
The front windows of the apartment shattered. Gunfire. Dante grabbed Flash and hauled him back to the kitchen, out of the line of fire. More shots.
His mind was racing. Ran through it in a split second. Three quick rounds. Not fast enough for fully automatic. Large caliber, but not huge. No hope of hitting anyone, so a warning. Then a squeal of tires on pavement. Picking up speed. Maybe—
A horrendous crash from outside echoed through the now broken windows. Metal versus metal, and more glass raining down.
But no more shots.
Can’t drive and shoot at the same time.
The ominous silence held. Then he heard shouting from outside. He ordered Flash to stay in the no-nonsense voice the dog always obeyed unless he was on a scent so strongly that his nose shut down his ears.
He made his way into the living room, keeping out of the line of sight of the front windows. Still more shouting, but no shooting. He edged his way over to the window, still in the shelter of the solid wall. Pulled his Glock 22 from the holster, just in case. Risked a quick, darting glance. Behind the relative safety of the wall, he played the scene back in his head.
It was ugly. A big heavy white van had T-boned a small, expensive—and in this case too easily destructible—sports coupe. Crushed it up against a power pole. Signals at the corner were dark, and he’d bet the power was out for blocks around.
The white vehicle was the shooter. Had to be—only one on the street heading the right direction. So the guy he’d glimpsed running from it had to be him. And whoever was in that little coupe had never had a chance, they—
It hit him then. The coupe. The little bright yellow coupe.
He knew that car. There might be more than one in town, but in this neighborhood?
“Dominic,” he breathed.
Gun still in his hand, he bolted out the door.
Chapter 3
“He got away,” Collins was saying.
Dante registered the words but couldn’t speak. He was only barely aware of Flash sniffing around the shooter’s car, and he ignored the dog’s questioning look as the animal wondered why he wasn’t getting the order to track.
“He’s hurt, though. He left a little blood on the steering wheel.”
Again, Dante didn’t react. He was staring at the second gurney being loaded into the coroner’s van. When the doors of the van were slammed closed, the coroner’s assistant glanced back at him. He supposed someone had told the guy who he was. His connection to the fatalities.
As the van pulled away, he shifted his gaze to his hands. At the blood already dried, staining his shirt cuffs.
“You tried, man,” Duke said softly from behind him. “There was nothing you could have done. They were gone the moment that shooter plowed into them.”
“They should have stolen a sturdier car,” Dante mumbled to himself. Although he’d never been able to prove it, he’d known his brother had stolen the coupe, probably with his wife’s help. If for no other reason than Dominic never bought what he could steal, and Agostina had expensive taste.
She had had expensive taste.
“Run the VIN, if it’s not ground off,” Dante said.
“Already did,” Duke said. “Matches the logo, comes back to Red Ridge Delivery Service.”
Dante registered the name; he’d been so focused on his brother he hadn’t even glanced at the side of the van. One of the Larsons’ front companies. And suddenly the shooting made sense. Sending a message: don’t talk to the cops. They must not know we already have the guy.
“I meant that one,” he said, nodding toward the bright yellow wreckage, which would now just about fit in the back of the van that had hit it.
“Your brother’s?” Duke asked hesitantly.
“Odds are it’s stolen,” Dante said flatly. Not from here in Red Ridge—the car was too distinctive, he thought. They’d likely done their version of car shopping in a bigger, easier-to-be-ignored-in place.
Duke just looked at him for a long, silent moment. Dante stared him down, silently daring him to say something. Anything that would burst the gates on the dam that was holding back the tangled, messy emotions churning inside him. He and Dominic had never seen eye to eye on much of anything, had had only strained contact for years, but he was still his brother. And they’d had some good years together as kids.
Kids.
Dante’s breath jammed up in his throat.
The twins. God, the twins.
“Mancuso? You need the medics? You just went pale.”
“I just thought of something,” he muttered, all he could manage.
“About the crash, or the shooting, or the investigation?”
They hadn’t been in the car. Thank all the gods there be, they hadn’t been in the car. “No,” he finally got out. “Personal... Family.”
Duke eyed him. “Look, get out of here. I’ll handle this.” Dante blinked. His friend shrugged. “You shouldn’t be here anyway, with your brother and all. So whatever it is, go deal with it.”
He didn’t often let his heart take the lead over his gut-level cop instincts, but this...this was huge. Too huge to be denied. No matter what or who his brother had become, no matter the problems that had caused Dante in his life, this was bigger than any of it.
“Thanks, Duke,” he said, called for Flash and ran for his car. He hit the button on the fob for the liftgate and got the dog in the back of the big black SUV. Seconds later he was behind the wheel.
It only took a few minutes to cover the distance to Dominic’s. He spent every second of it thinking about the tiny, helpless babies his brother and sister-in-law had brought into the world, perhaps unwisely, just six months ago. For a short while, the arrival of the tiny girls had smoothed things out between them all, but it sadly hadn’t lasted, for even that small pair of miracles apparently couldn’t change Dominic’s chosen path. He continued with his crooked ways, and Dante had had to back away once more.
The place stood out on the quiet street; Agostina’s taste for flashy things didn’t stop at vehicles. Amid the wood-sided houses with big trees, lawns and carefully tended flower beds in the neighborhood, the tiled roof, stone walls and concrete yard stood out glaringly. And even if they hadn’t, the statuary would have done it. He’d thought Agostina was going for the feel of a palazzo in Florence, although he knew she’d never set foot in Italy. Problem was she’d missed it by a very long shot; the statues were cheap copies lacking the life and vitality of the originals. He was all for respecting his Italian heritage, but this didn’t look impressive or grand, just completely out of place.
The house was locked, which he’d expected. But the fact that no one answered the door made him wonder where the girls actually were. Agostina might not be the nicest person around, but surely she wouldn’t have left those two tiny children home alone.
He walked around the side of the house. Most of the windows were shuttered, or masked with the showy ceiling-to-pooling-on-the-floor draperies his sister-in-law had chosen. Every possible point of entry was secured with high-quality locks, which he also expected.
He took the flat stone path around to the back of the house, where the kitchen looked out on yet another courtyard full of statuary he thought would make a meal rather unappetizing. This was where Agostina had chosen to put the more brutal art—gods fighting with each other, warriors running through their enemies or beheading them. He’d expected—maybe hoped—she would lighten up a bit after the twins arrived, but there had been no visible changes yet.
And now there never will be.
He pried loose one of the larger stones from the pathway and used it to break a window in the kitchen door. He wasn’t worried about an alarm system; the very last thing his brother would have wanted was to have the police responding to his house when he wasn’t there. He’d told Dante more than once that while his brother was welcome in his house, the cop was not. And certainly not that ugly, drooly thing he called a dog, Agostina always added.
He knew he was thinking about those things to avoid fixating on the images that were etched into his mind, probably permanently. When he’d first reached into the crumpled vehicle to touch his brother, he’d already known. The unnatural angle of Dominic’s head had warned him, and when he’d been unable to find a pulse, it only confirmed what his gut was already telling him. And one look at his sister-in-law had told him there, too; Agostina must have hit the windshield hard. She’d always hated seat belts, for they wrinkled her elegant clothes. And even becoming a mother, having two innocent souls depending on her, had made no difference.
So you avoided wrinkles but ended up blood-soaked.
He shook his head sharply as the kitchen door finally swung open. He stood just inside for a long moment, simply listening. The house was quiet.
Dead quiet.
He looked around the kitchen, hoping to find a notepad or something, maybe with a helpful phone number. No such luck. He repeated the action in the large room adjacent, which looked more like a museum than a home. He made his way to where he knew Dominic’s office was; there, at least, his brother had refused to allow his wife’s taste to dominate. It was a functional room, with a large desk holding a computer and a file cabinet behind it. He could only imagine what might be in there. Dominic wasn’t stupid enough to keep paper records of his illicit activities, was he?
He walked to the desk, again looking for some kind of clue that might tell him where his nieces were. Nothing.
He sat down, booted up the computer. It was, as he’d expected, password protected. He tried the obvious ones first—names, birthdates, including the twins’. No luck. There did not appear to be any password-generating software present, although it didn’t have to be on the machine itself. He was sure Katie Parsons, the RRPD’s tech whiz, could crack it in a matter of hours, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to go there yet.
Right now all that mattered was finding the girls. Once he knew where they were, that they were safe, he’d be able to think straight. It would be something to focus on, something productive. He and Dominic had no other family left—at least not out of prison—except an elderly uncle and some cousins back in New York. Now he just had to—
The knock on the front door was faint all the way back here, but definite. It was followed by the loud clang of a doorbell that sounded disconcertingly like church bells from a cathedral. He made his way carefully, watchfully down the hall and through the drapery-darkened living room to the rather grand foyer. A glance out a window had told him there were no police cars in sight, but then, a good cop wouldn’t park in view anyway. And he still didn’t believe Dominic would have risked a burglar alarm, and there had been no control panels visible anywhere in the house.
The sidelight windows next to the door were a rather garish stained glass portrayal of...something, but they enabled him to see onto the porch, although distortedly. A short someone, with a frizzy-looking shock of gray hair. And a rather shapeless dress.
He put a hand on his weapon, and with the other pulled the door open. An older woman stood there, and her expression when she saw him was one of surprise. He saw her eyes flick to the K9 unit patch on his jacket.
“Oh! I knew it was the police, I saw the car...but you’re Dominic’s brother, aren’t you?”
“I... Yes.”
“I thought so. I recognize you from the picture, although you look very different out of uniform.”
Picture? Dominic had a picture of him? Somewhere this woman would have seen it?
“Who are you?” he asked carefully.
The woman smiled briefly, and in that moment she looked like someone’s kindly grandmother. “I’m Louise Nelson. I live next door. But I’m very glad you’re here. I got a phone call a while ago, and my daughter is ill. I have to go to her.”
“I’m...sorry,” Dante said, not sure what else to say, or why she was telling him, a total stranger, about this. Then, because it was his nature as well as ingrained, he asked, “Can I do anything? Drive you somewhere?” With my luck she’ll say yes and the daughter lives in Sioux Falls, about as far east as you can go and still be in the state.
She looked startled. But then she smiled again, and it was steadier this time. Worry, he realized. She was worried. “No, but that’s so sweet of you. You’re as nice as Dom said you were.”
It was his turn to be startled. “He...did?”
“Oh, often.” She hesitated, then added, “He said sometimes you were too nice for your own good.”
Well, that was his brother, all right.
Had been.
He wondered how long it took to start thinking in past tense.
But she was frowning now. Looking at his hands. He’d pulled his jacket on over his bloodstained shirt, but the cuffs still showed. “I was...at an accident scene a while ago,” he said, and she seemed to relax. And thankfully did not put his sudden appearance at this house he never visited together with that bit of information and realize who was in that accident. It was not something he wanted to talk about. He hadn’t even begun to process it himself.
And he needed to find Zita and Lucia, that was the most impor—
“So can you come over and get the girls?”
He blinked. “What?”
“I’m really sorry, but I have to leave as soon as possible.”
“You have the twins?” he asked, feeling a little slow on the uptake.
“Yes. I watch them now and then. I enjoy having little ones to take care of again for a while.” She smiled again. “My husband’s with them now, so they’re all right, but he’s hopeless with babies beyond keeping them from getting hurt.”
“I’m afraid so am I,” he admitted. Hopeless, meet helpless. What the hell am I going to do?
“Oh, you can’t be that bad. Otherwise Dom wouldn’t have told me to call you if anything happened and I couldn’t reach them.”
And again he felt a little slow. Shock, maybe? “He told you to...call me?”
She nodded. “He said you were the reliable one in the family.”
He almost laughed. Except he wasn’t sure there was any laughter left in him.
A few minutes later, he was staring down at two impossibly small humans, sleeping snuggled up to each other in a single crib.
“They’re doing so well for being born early,” Mrs. Nelson was saying. “They’ll be caught up soon. They’re so cute.”
She kept talking, but Dante had tuned out. Because one of the babies had opened her eyes and looked at him. And smiled. It gave him an odd, melting feeling inside.
It was followed by an icy chill.
She didn’t know that her short life had just changed forever.
Chapter 4
“Well, now there’s a sight fit for a horror movie.”
Dante didn’t get angry at Carson Gage’s comment as he walked into the Red Ridge PD building. In fact, he almost welcomed it; everybody else wanted to pour out sympathy he didn’t want. But then Gage had lost his own brother, a brother he hadn’t been close with, to the Groom Killer, so if anyone knew about walking in these shoes, it was Gage.
Besides, the detective was right. What else would you call a guy with eyes the color of an overripe tomato, hair that had yet to see even his fingers run through it, a jaw that was more stubbled than usual, and under his jacket with the unit logo, a T-shirt he thought he’d probably pulled on backward in his bleary-eyed haste this morning?
The fact that this character out of a horror flick was also lugging two baby carriers, occupied, only made it all scarier. To him, anyway.
“Longest night of my freaking life,” he muttered to Gage.
“I can see that.” And Gage was looking at the twins warily. They stared back, wide-eyed and uncertain. “Uh...what are you going to do with them?”
“Hell if I know,” Dante muttered.
One of the girls made a string of sounds that—purely coincidentally, he was sure—had the same cadence and number of syllables of his muttering. He groaned inwardly but made a mental note to watch his language. He had no idea when babies started to talk, but he didn’t want their first words to be swear words they’d picked up from their uncle.
He stared down at the two innocent faces. He had no idea when babies started to talk. He had no idea when they started to walk.
He had no idea, period.
Not to mention that the twins had gone through most of the bottles Mrs. Nelson had provided, and he had no idea what to do when the food ran out.
His desk phone rang. Since it was practically behind her head, Lucia gave a start. Her face scrunched up in the expression he’d learned during that long night meant she was about to erupt into a screeching wail. Quickly he reached into the bag Mrs. Nelson had sweetly packed for him and pulled out a bright pink stuffed rabbit. The moment Lucia saw it, her expression changed. The wail became a coo. And after a moment she moved a tiny hand toward the toy.
Breathing again, Dante tucked it in beside her and answered his phone. “Mancuso.”
“Hey, Dante, it’s Frank.” Dante cradled the phone between ear and shoulder as Frank Lanelli, the day-watch dispatcher, spoke. “I’ve got a caller on the main PD line asking for you by name, but with everything—I’m really sorry, by the way—I thought I’d check with you before I put him through.”
“Thanks,” he said, meaning it, and appreciating the businesslike approach. “Who is it?”
“Name’s Fisk. He’s a lawyer.”
Dante frowned. Rarely did a lawyer’s call mean good news for a cop. “Any idea what he wants?”
“Maybe,” Lanelli said, and for the first time Dante heard hesitancy in the efficient man’s voice. Frank had been with the department for decades and was the solid linchpin that kept things moving, keeping more in his head at one time than Dante would have thought possible.
“Hit me,” Dante said with a sigh.
“He says he’s your brother’s lawyer.”
“Damn.” His eyes flicked to the twins as soon as the word slipped out. But Lucia seemed happy with her rabbit, and Zita was merely watching him with apparent interest. “All right, put him through.”
While he waited a freight train of possibilities barreled through his mind. Criminal lawyer? Was there some case pending? Was his brother a suspect in something? Had Dominic been arrested and he just hadn’t heard about it yet? Oh, God, had they been fleeing a scene when the shooter had hit them? They had been careful about where they did their thing; Agostina had always said you didn’t dirty your own pool.
But you never minded dirtying someone else’s, did you? You always—
The click of the call going live cut off his fruitless thoughts.
“Mancuso,” he said again.
There was a brief pause before the caller spoke. Startled by the name? That he was still using it, despite the connotations his brother had hung on it? Believe me, I’ve thought more than once about changing it. But he’d chosen to keep the name. Both as a reminder of growing up dirt-poor and wanting, and maybe, in some crazy way, thinking he could clean it up a little.
“This is James Fisk,” the caller said. “I’ve just gotten word about your brother. My condolences.”