Colton 911--Family Defender Read online

  Struggling to protect his heart...

  he must also protect his growing family

  Former FBI agent Riley Colton tends to keep to himself...except for the time he gave in to Charlize Kent. Now that single passionate night produced a surprise Riley never imagined—a baby! His paternal and investigative instincts kick in when their new family comes under fire. As sparks fly, Riley and Charlize work together to track and capture a criminal...who will stop at nothing to destroy everything they hold dear.

  USA TODAY Bestselling Author

  “I’d just like to be there for the ultrasound.” But it wasn’t nonnegotiable. “If that’s okay with you,” Riley added, to make that clear.

  Charlize closed her mouth, studied him for a moment, and then nodded. “Yes, of course that’s okay,” she said. “As you say, the baby is your child, too.”

  With that, she passed by him, left the kitchen, and a few seconds later he heard her feet climbing the stairs.

  Whether she’d be back down, or had locked herself in her room and would remain quiet enough that he wouldn’t know she was there, didn’t matter. She could be invisible and completely silent and he’d still feel her. Still want her.

  And still not want a marriage and family of his own.

  Heading into his office, Riley hoped to God he could lose himself in work. He hoped for a lot of things.

  While the only thing he knew for certain was that it was going to be one hell of a long night.

  * * *

  Colton 911: Grand Rapids

  Where there’s danger—and true love—around every corner...

  * * *

  If you’re on Twitter, tell us what you think of Harlequin Romantic Suspense! #harlequinromsuspense

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome to an all-new Colton 911! We’re in Grand Rapids, Michigan, right now, at Colton Investigations headquarters, and I’m just so thrilled to bring you up to speed and introduce you to a strong, compassionate family of Coltons. Riley is the big brother. He was thirteen when his first set of twin sisters was born. Yeah, you read that right, the first set. He was fifteen when the second set came along. And while he doesn’t fancy himself a family man, his sisters would all tell you that he’s the best big brother a girl could ever hope to have.

  Especially when trouble brings danger to their door.

  I love this family. And with my entire family tree hailing from Grand Rapids, I love this place, too. My mom grew up on the very street where Colton headquarters is located! So I feel well-placed to welcome you to Colton 911! We’ve got a stellar lineup of stories and authors coming your way...

  Tara Taylor Quinn

  COLTON 911:

  FAMILY DEFENDER

  Tara Taylor Quinn

  Having written over ninety novels, Tara Taylor Quinn is a USA TODAY bestselling author with more than seven million copies sold. She is known for delivering intense, emotional fiction. Tara is a past president of Romance Writers of America and a seven-time RITA® Award finalist. She has also appeared on TV across the country, including CBS Sunday Morning. She supports the National Domestic Violence Hotline. If you need help, please contact 1-800-799-7233.

  Books by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Harlequin Romantic Suspense

  Colton 911: Grand Rapids

  Colton 911: Family Defender

  Where Secrets are Safe

  Her Detective’s Secret Intent

  Shielded in the Shadows

  The Coltons of Mustang Valley

  Colton’s Lethal Reunion

  Harlequin Special Edition

  The Parent Portal

  Having the Soldier’s Baby

  A Baby Affair

  Her Motherhood Wish

  A Mother’s Secrets

  The Daycare Chronicles

  Her Lost and Found Baby

  An Unexpected Christmas Baby

  The Baby Arrangement

  The Fortunes of Texas

  Fortune’s Christmas Baby

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  To my Keller and Gumser families:

  I’ve finally found my way home!

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Excerpt from Exposing Colton Secrets by Marie Ferrarella

  Excerpt from No One Saw by Beverly Long

  Chapter 1

  He had to get that woman out of his head. With a silent curse, Riley Colton scrolled past the photo that had distracted him for no good reason. He moved on to another, trying to focus on the investigation at hand, and instead, wondered why the previous photo had even brought an image of Charlize Kent to his brain.

  The unknown female he’d been looking at via photo didn’t bear the slightest resemblance to the flesh-and-blood woman with whom he’d had one night of incredible sex—and walked out on pretty much as soon as they were done. The only thing the two images—his mental one and the one he’d seen on his screen—had in common was that the women depicted were female, about the same age.

  The world was filled with thirty-year-old women—all much younger than his forty-three years.

  He scrolled back up one. Glanced at that picture again. Looking for a resemblance that would justify the intrusive Charlize image. There was a look about the woman on the screen—trusting, almost. Trusting could have been Charlize’s middle name. From what he’d heard the night he’d met her, Ms. Kent was one tough cookie. A social worker in private practice, she specialized in domestic violence matters and dealt with some pretty tough situations. With him, she’d been charming, smart, sweet, passionate and completely...trusting.

  The other woman, the one he was hoping to find by scrolling through internet photos matching her description, had been trusting, too. And then one day she’d just disappeared.

  Charlize had left the fundraiser with him when he could have been a criminal. Was that what had happened to Shannon Martin? Had she trusted the wrong guy and met with a painful fate? The missing person cold case was still with the Grand Rapids Police Department, and filed with the FBI, as well, but his client, Shannon’s younger brother, Avis, had hired Colton Investigations to try to find her. Avis had said he’d figured that Riley, with his more than twenty years as an FBI agent, might have some success where others had failed.

  Since Riley and his younger siblings were all about finding justice, he’d taken the case on the spot. He had Ashanti, Colton Investigations’ tech expert, and Bailey, their researcher, both working on Shannon’s file, but with them out of the office on separate pursuits that afternoon, and a hunch occurring to him, there he was, alone in the office, poring over photos. He’d honed an ability to listen, study and find the truth, and trusted his instincts above all else.

  Shannon, nineteen at the time of her disappearance, had choreographed an award-winning piece for a high school dance class shortly before she’d vanished. Riley knew, through carting his two sets of younger twin sisters to the dance studio years ago
, that there were national competitions for choreography. It was possible that Shannon was alive, and, for some reason, could be pursuing her talent under a different name.

  Ashanti would be much more capable than he was at finding such needles in the haystack of life, but he’d wanted to play out his hunch privately before turning such an onerous task over to her. No use wasting agency resources if he started looking and got a feeling he was on a dead end.

  So there he was, in jeans, a T-shirt and tennis shoes, sitting at his desk in what used to be his dad’s study, scratching at the scruffy growth on his face as he perused photos of dance choreographers, and getting no inspiration at all—except to be reminded of Charlize Kent. A woman he had no intention of contacting ever again.

  He had no doubt that he would remain true to that intention.

  But comparing choreographers to the age-progressed photo of Shannon, he wasn’t feeling it...perhaps this angle was a bust...

  A scurry of claws against expensively finished hardwood floors had him glancing out toward the large living room converted into the main CI office space. He lived in the family home where they’d all grown up, part of which he’d converted into the CI offices. Pal, his six-year-old German shepherd, was taking off outside, heading through the doggy door he’d had installed into the dining room wall beyond the living room. He listened for the second before she let out a bark of alarm, and, hand on the gun at his waist, headed out to see what was bothering her.

  It wouldn’t be birds or squirrels. She had a different sound for the wildlife prey she seemed to think were her toys.

  “Pal!” he hollered, his tone filled with command. Twenty years as an agent with the FBI had gained him some dangerous enemies. Losing Pal to one of them wasn’t on his list of “to-dos.”

  Keeping to the walls, out of direct line of windows, he heard Pal whine—in greeting. Not pain. And stepped outside as Brody Higgins, their tall unofficial foster sibling, came hurrying toward him, in skinny blue jeans, button-down shirt and brown blazer, with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Ignoring Pal completely, Brody glanced behind him and then his spectacled and clearly terrified brown-eyed gaze landed on Riley.

  “Thank God you’re home,” he panted, out of breath, as though he’d been running, his brown mop of hair, which was normally gelled, wet with sweat.

  Seeing Pal trot over to sniff the gate Brody had come through, and then head back up toward them, Riley, worried for the younger man, quickly pulled Brody inside.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “Where’s your car?” Sixteen years older than Brody, Riley had always been a watchdog and big brother figure.

  “I left it a couple of blocks over,” Brody said, “I think I was being followed, and ditched my car to head out on foot between houses.”

  Pal came running in through the doggy door. Tail wagging.

  That meant the backyard was clear of any foreign scent or bodies, Riley translated, giving the dog’s head a few absentminded strokes while he assessed Brody. Though he was now an attorney, Brody had once been on Riley’s father’s radar for murder. A Michigan district attorney, Graham Colton had believed the kid had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, hadn’t murdered the Heritage Park woman he’d been arrested for killing—in spite of the fact that Brody had been in possession of the dead woman’s wallet. He had declined to prosecute the then eighteen-year-old Brody.

  The kid had claimed that he’d found the wallet near her body. Graham had believed him and been proven correct two months later when DNA confirmed a meth dealer’s guilt. After that, feeling for the kid, the Coltons collectively had taken the orphaned foster kid under their protective wing.

  “You think you were being followed,” Riley said, taking stock of the tall, skinny young man who stood there trembling. And then, saying, “Stay here,” he took his gun in hand and headed outside.

  His gun leading the way in front of a muscular build that served him well, Riley protected his back with walls and cover, checking out the entire perimeter of the property, finding nothing amiss. A no-gooder would have a hard time going unnoticed in that elite historic neighborhood, and an even harder time staying unnoticed with the plethora of security cameras everywhere. On his property and others’, too.

  “It’s all clear,” he announced, heading in the back door, through the kitchen, to the main office where Brody sat, hunched over, propping himself with a forearm across his knees as he rubbed his eyes.

  The hand that lay limp by his knee caught Riley’s attention. Two of the five fingers were splinted and taped.

  “What happened to your hand?” Riley might carry some personal guilt for not doing more for the kid after Riley’s parents had died so suddenly, but he’d always kept track of him and had his back.

  Sitting up, Brody shoved a couple of fingers from his good hand up under his glasses, rubbing his eyes, and then, hand falling to his leg, gave a quick, hitched sigh.

  “I’m in trouble, Riley,” he said, his tone not whiney, but needy just the same. “Big trouble.”

  Thinking first of the high paying corporate law firm Brody had signed on with right out of law school, he asked, “What did you do?”

  While Brody had a small string of misdemeanors on a juvenile record, left over from life with a drug-addicted mother who’d eventually overdosed, he’d walked the straight and narrow in the nine years since his escape from prosecution for the murder he didn’t commit.

  Riley had been front and center when Brody had graduated from college, and then law school and he’d been the first one Brody called when he’d passed the bar.

  “I borrowed some money,” Brody said, his gaze dropping away from Riley’s. “I had a chance to get in on the ground floor of a great, can’t-fail deal, with a quick return. Enough to pay off the hundred thousand I owe in school loans...”

  Heart sinking, Riley dropped his butt to the corner of Bailey’s desk, facing Brody, who was still slumped on a chair along the wall. Few things that promised huge returns quickly panned out. He knew that. Why didn’t Brody?

  Keeping the unproductive thoughts to himself, he went for the facts. Listen, study, find the truth.

  “What deal?”

  “I passed by this promotional poster, claiming you could make six figures overnight, and attended a seminar. All you had to do was become a part of this exclusive RetivaYou team...”

  “RevitaYou,” Riley interjected, not gently. He really needed to work on his patience. Most particularly where Brody was concerned. He expected way more out of the kid than was fair.

  Especially considering the fact that when Brody had been in college and would have welcomed a place to call home, Riley hadn’t taken the kid in. He’d been living alone in a place big enough for three people to comfortably stay out of each other’s way. But after spending his teen and early adult years helping to raise five siblings, he’d needed space to himself. Quiet in which to breathe. He had a sometimes dangerous job that required total focus. He’d prized his solitude. He’d let Brody down.

  “It’s this new vitamin product,” Brody said, sitting up straighter and looking Riley in the eye. “You take one vitamin a day, and you start to look ten years younger within a week...”

  Riley didn’t bother to hide the rise of his brow on that one. Seriously...

  “I know it sounds crazy, Riley, but I swear to you, if you’d been there, you’d understand. There were people there who’d taken the vitamins and you could see the difference looking at time-stamped photos and then seeing them up on stage...”

  Photos could be manipulated in a ton of ways. Even a child could do it...

  “They don’t even have FDA approval yet, so this was the chance to get in before big investors and pharmaceuticals took it over. The ingredients are a combination of minerals and vitamins that promote healthy cell restoration...” Brody reached into his bag and held out a little green
bottle. “It’s a dietary supplement,” he said.

  Taking the bottle, Riley looked it over. Could have been any of the various vitamin supplements he saw on shelves at the store. Thirty capsules to a bottle. “Have you been taking them?” He recognized some of the ingredients listed.

  “No,” Brody said, glancing away again. “I was dating this older woman... I...umm...recruited her to take them because I’d get extra bonuses, but not only did she swear they were making her look older, she claimed they also made her sick, and she dumped me.”

  Oh, good God. For such a smart man, Brody exhibited gullibility that was almost pathetic. And not all that surprising, considering that the kid had been needing a mother most of his life.

  “I’m telling you, Riley, in the beginning, these guys...the scientist who invented these things was at the seminar, giving, like, a medical explanation for why the stuff works, metabolism and things that react with other things. And there were four investors who all stood up and talked about how they’d already made back double their investment. They even provided bank statements to prove it.”

  Riley itched to get his hands on those documents. But had to figure out how much trouble Brody had gotten himself into, first. The kid had evaded his question regarding the splint on his fingers. Had he gotten himself into some kind of fistfight?

  And was the victim pressing charges?

  He couldn’t let Brody lose his law license over a stupid financial move.

  “And it didn’t occur to you that there are already products on the market that promise the very same thing? Or, that if it was such a simple thing to put vitamins and minerals together as a fountain of youth, someone would have done it long before now?” he asked.

  “Later it did. When my girlfriend got sick. But at first, I was there to hear about the investment...you know...if people want to buy vitamins because it makes them feel younger, that’s up to them...”

  So Brody had been willing to skate on the ethics of it, to invest in selling something that offered false advertisement...on the promise of big return?