Colton Countdown Read online

  Theresa ran for the door, intending to search every room, every closet, under every bed until she found Claire and Neve...

  “I’ve already searched the rooms on this unit,” Ezra said. “Can you check security tapes? I know cameras aren’t in individual rooms, but they’d show us hallway activity, right? And outside?”

  Yes. Absolutely. “Of course,” she said then tore out of the room, down the hall, past employees who were standing at their assigned doorways, off the unit and over to her office, not sure if Ezra was even behind her.

  It didn’t surprise her when she pulled up the live feed on her computer and his face lowered right next to hers in front of the screen. For a brief second, it comforted her.

  Until the blue truck flashed up on her screen from the top right camera image. Then all she knew was stone-cold fear.

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome back to The Coltons of Colorado! This story starts out tamely enough. A grandnephew visits a nursing home, little twin girls and their dog visiting, too. A family picnic—it’s real and fun and sweet until it’s not. I couldn’t quite see, once danger appeared, how anyone was going to be okay. Every day, I presented myself to the page, and I worried. And...well...this is one of those books you just have to read to get it all. Even if I told you the end, if you don’t go on the journey, you’d miss the real story here. It’s that different. Two young girls taught me things I needed to know, reminded me of things that maybe I once knew. And, while I’m not sure he’d admit it aloud, and certainly not in front of any of his siblings, they teach Ezra Colton his most important life lesson. It was a tense road there for a bit, but once again, the Coltons left me with a full heart. I hope we fill your heart, too.

  Tara Taylor Quinn

  COLTON COUNTDOWN

  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

  The Coltons of Colorado

  Colton Countdown

  Where Secrets are Safe

  Her Detective’s Secret Intent

  Shielded in the Shadows

  Falling for His Suspect

  The Coltons of Grave Gulch

  Colton’s Killer Pursuit

  Colton 911: Grand Rapids

  Colton 911: Family Defender

  The Coltons of Mustang Valley

  Colton’s Lethal Reunion

  Visit the Author Profile page at

  Harlequin.com for more titles.

  For Morgie and Bay Bay—twins of my heart. Born only two weeks apart, you two five-year-olds light up my life just by existing. I think of you, send love to you, every single day.

  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

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Excerpt from The Spy Switch by Karen Whiddon

  Chapter 1

  Ezra Colton’s chin hit his chest and he jerked awake. Every muscle tensed, he quickly assessed his immediate danger level to be zero and relaxed back into the quite comfy-for-his-big-shoulders chair, in his great-aunt’s lovely, homey room. Glancing across at the woman who’d been mostly dozing in a matching chair during the entirety of his afternoon visit, he noticed she was also awake and staring at him.

  His smile was immediate, and he tried to shrug off her lack of response. His siblings, his mom, had all warned him that his aunt’s memory loss had drastically worsened since he’d last been home. Still, fingers tapping on bare knees beneath the army-green shorts he’d pulled out of his duffel that morning, he couldn’t accept that she didn’t know him. At least a little bit.

  “It’s pretty hot outside,” he offered, looking her right in the eye. “People are grumbling a bit, but after being in Afghanistan, I’m fine with the heat. You remember that time I went tubing in the river without Mom and Dad’s permission and ripped my swim trunks on that tree limb? I came straight to you. You had me change into some of Uncle’s old shorts, and you fixed those trunks for me. And then told me to go home and tell my parents what I’d done.”

  Not a snippet of response. Of any kind of recognition, even.

  But she was still looking straight at him. So he kept chatting until she dozed off again. Figured he needed to get his lumbering butt up and active. A month of leave could make a guy soft, and no way he was letting his men down. His sergeant stripes were way more than uniform decoration, and he’d die before dishonoring them.

  Still...a few more minutes to relax... That was what leave was for, right?

  What did it say about him that he was more relaxed hanging out in a room at the Sunshine Senior Home than with most of the siblings who’d all, for once, gathered in the same town at the same time for his big brother Caleb’s wedding?

  The home—at least, the wing where Aunt Alice’s room was located—might be filled with memory-care patients, but there was order to the day, to the rooms and the patients who wandered in them. You knew what to expect and how to deal with it.

  Unlike the chaos and drama that attached to his huge, well-known family like bees on honey. And sometimes stung like bees, too.

  But...did sitting there make him a coward? He ran a hand across the top of his close-cropped hair. Stood, stretching muscles that, while difficult to fit into some shirts, served him well, and glanced again at his great-aunt. When she was sleeping, she looked...as he remembered her. Like herself. The vacant stare when she was awake...

  His mom had been right. He hadn’t been prepared.

  He should just go. It wasn’t like she’d know—or remember that he’d been there. Still, she was Aunt Alice. He couldn’t just walk out on her.

  With a hand on the back of her chair, he bent to kiss her cheek like he’d done every time he’d left her since he was a little kid, moving slowly so he didn’t startle her. And then, with a hard bump in the butt from behind, nearly fell over.

  “What the...?” Swinging around, his first instinct to defend and protect, he had an arm half raised in front of him as he shielded his aunt with his body and had to drop his gaze to meet that of his attacker.

  Big brown eyes gazed soulfully up at him from a mutt’s tilted, light brown head. Before he could even drop his arm, a very young voice, in a place filled with old voices, called out, “Charlie!”

  And two dark-haired urchins appeared in the doorway. “Charlie!” The girls, in identical sundresses and sandals, didn’t even seem to notice him as they hurried straight to the errant dog. “We’re really sorry, sir.” The child with braids and holding a book spoke up. The other one, wearing her long straight hair down, patted Charlie on the head.

&n
bsp; “He doesn’t like it when someone claps at him, and he ran off,” the bookless one of the two of them—and, he noted, the one without freckles as well—added to the first’s apology.

  With virtually zip experience around children—his little niece, Iris, didn’t count because she was only a few months old, still just sleeping, eating and being held, and because with his career mostly out of the country, he’d only seen her, sleeping both times, in the few days he’d been home—Ezra was mesmerized by the pair, clearly sisters and most likely twins, until a slight movement caught the corner of his eye—and his attention.

  Charlie had a paw on the edge of Aunt Alice’s chair, and her hand moved to cover it. His gaze rose slowly from that gesture to his aunt’s face, and he could hardly believe the small smile he saw there. He’d been there a couple of hours with no sign of life from the woman other than a blank stare, but Charlie had a response out of her in less than two minutes.

  Bookless was reaching for the dog’s collar.

  “I’m a triplet,” he blurted, grabbing her attention before she pulled the animal away. Even if the girls weren’t twins, they were dressed alike as though someone wanted them to be. “And I have three sets of twins for brothers and sisters,” he added, as though someone was adding up multiple birth values.

  “We’re twins,” Bookless told him, her little fingers resting on her dog’s neck. And not holding the collar. “We were born at the same time,” she added.

  “I’m Claire and she’s Neve,” the girl with braids told him. Her adorable freckles made him want to smile at her. And he might have if she hadn’t worn such a serious expression. “We aren’t supposed to be in here.”

  “We can’t help it, Claire,” Neve said, shrugging. “We had to get Charlie. Claire was reading to Mrs. Sally and Mr. Bo, and I’ve heard the story a gazillion times—” she rolled her eyes “—but I like the part where Flow—that’s the smaller horse who everyone thinks can’t win—gets ahead of everyone else because she’s trying harder—and I guess I forgot to hold Charlie’s collar tight enough right when Mrs. Sally clapped for Flow and, well, what’s a triplet?”

  “It’s three instead of two, Neve,” Claire said. “We’re two. Triplets is three. But—” she peered up at him, nose scrunched “—what’s three twins?”

  “Three sets of twins, right, mister?” Neve said. “And that’s...” Letting go of Charlie, she held up the fingers on one hand, pointing with her other to individual fingers as she tried to count to two, three times.

  “One, two, one, two, one, two,” Claire butted in then, holding up a finger each time she named a one or a two, and then looking at the total of held-up fingers when she was done. “You have six twin brothers and sisters?”

  “That’s right.” He nodded, noticing that Aunt Alice’s hand was moving atop the paw still resting on her chair, as though Charlie knew that the lost old woman needed him.

  “Six kids being born at once?” Neve burst out, her voice rising markedly by the end of the question.

  “Just two at once,” he said. “Remember, that’s twins. Two born at once. They were born three different times, years apart.”

  “Is triplets years apart, too?” Claire asked.

  “Nope,” he told her, suddenly enjoying the moment of diversion more than he had anything else since getting off the plane in Denver. “It’s three born at the same time.”

  “You have two more of you born at once?” Neve asked, giggling.

  Thinking of Dom and Oliver, he couldn’t in any way see his brothers as two more of him. He and his fellow triplets were very different guys. But he ended with, “Yep,” because the girls seemed so delighted by the thought.

  “Two against one,” Claire said. “That’s what sometimes happens if someone wants to play with Neve but not me. Is that what happened to you?”

  “I always say you can play, Claire. You just sometimes want to read.”

  Not sure if he was still required to answer the question Claire had posed, but certain that he didn’t want to do so, he asked her, “Are you the younger or older twin?”

  “I’m younger,” Claire said, her gaze serious.

  “I’m her big sister by two minutes!” Neve chimed in, standing next to her sister to gaze up at him. “But I’m a little person. You sure are big,” she said. “Almost like a giant.”

  “Are your other triplets as big as you?” Claire, full of questions, apparently, asked.

  “My older triplet—” he used her word for him and his brothers “—is named Dom, and he’s taller than me by one inch. And the younger one, his name’s Oliver, is my same height, but he’s a little skinnier than I am.” Lean, Oliver was lean.

  “Oliver?” Neve asked, her nose scrunching up as the lilt in her voice rose. And then she giggled. “He’s a cat! And him and Jenny are together forever, just like Claire and me.”

  When Ezra stood there, his brain racing trying to figure out the reference, Claire said, “Did you ever watch Oliver & Company, mister?”

  The Disney movie. Right. Had he ever seen it?

  “You’re like a sandwich.” Neve popped back into the conversation, once again sparing him from Claire’s question. “Smooshed in the middle of two more!” she pronounced, clearly pleased with herself. “A giant sandwich.”

  He followed the conversation, and also noticed something pretty cool going on apart from the girls. Aunt Alice’s hand rose to Charlie’s head, her fingers moving slightly. Wanting to prolong her enjoyment, and unable to come up with any interesting reply to a giant sandwich, he motioned toward the book that Claire had been hugging to her chest since they’d come in. “So your book’s about a horse named Flow?”

  She held it up, showing him the cover. Flow Goes to the Races. The title was in bold purple-and-pink lettering.

  “I have a brother and sister, one of the pairs of the twins I told you about, who run a ranch, the Gemini, and they have horseback riding. Have you been there?”

  The question gained him identical shakes of two little heads, in tandem. And while Neve stepped back beside Charlie’s head again, Claire pointed to Aunt Alice. “You want me to read it to her?”

  “Sure, if you want to,” he said, as another movement caught his eye. This one from the doorway—a woman hovered there, just off to the side, mostly out of sight.

  For the first time since the kids had appeared in his great-aunt’s room, he wondered why two young girls were roaming freely through the halls of the memory-care unit.

  And had a feeling he was about to find out.

  And perhaps get chewed out as well, for engaging with them.

  Figuring he’d much rather have it be him than them, he invited Claire to start reading and backed slowly toward the door.

  * * *

  She’d been made. Dealing with all the feels, Theresa Fitzgerald stepped farther back from the door, but not so far she couldn’t still hear her daughter’s sweet, so serious voice as she read her beloved story to the memory-care patient. She’d never have believed it was possible to love anyone as much as she loved her twins.

  And she most certainly hadn’t expected to be caught eavesdropping—by one of the gorgeous Coltons, no less. Embarrassment joined the flood, but there was so much more. Her girls...the ease in their tones, the innocent, unfiltered chattiness...

  As she came down the hallway, the sounds had stopped her in her tracks.

  She hadn’t heard them talking like this since their father died...

  Mark.

  A year later, and she still lived with the gaping hole his death had left in their lives.

  But the girls... She’d had to see who’d managed to elicit natural engagement with them...who’d had the ability to draw them out of whatever darkness had held them captive. Even if just for a moment...

  “Are you...?” The man broke off, his gaze going to the badge she wore pinne
d just above her left breast. “Oh...you manage this place? I sincerely apologize here,” he continued on, his blue eyes meeting hers with none of the complexity or veils she’d have assumed a Colton man would wear naturally. “I know I should have sent these girls out immediately, the second they came into the room to retrieve their runaway dog, but...” He glanced at her badge again. “Senior Care Manager?” he asked.

  To which she nodded, intending to say more, but he said, “Then you know Alice,” nodding at the scene playing out in the room. “Maybe you see this all the time, you know, if the dog is a regular or something, and Alice always responds this way. But from what my mom told me, my aunt is almost always little more than a breathing statue, showing no reaction or awareness at all, and she’s smiling. Kind of petting him. I’m afraid I purposely kept the girls chatting so that the dog could stay a moment and...” He glanced down at his feet, showing her the top of his head, covered with shortly cropped light brown hair, before looking up at her once again.

  The quick look shot a flame through her...one she hadn’t felt since Mark got sick...shocking her so much she barely heard his next sentence: “Please apologize to whoever is in charge of them. I swear they weren’t harmed...”

  “I know they weren’t. I’ve been standing here listening.” She had to fess up. It was just her way. “Enjoying the conversation.”

  Claire’s voice carried over to them, the words filled with the emotion of the story and yet a very distinct pause at the end of each sentence, too, as the little girl read, rather than recited, the book Theresa knew she had completely memorized. Neve, bless her energetic little heart, stood right there, listening, her little fingers on Charlie’s collar, as though she hadn’t done exactly the same, hearing exactly the same, far too many times to count over the past months.

  “They bring Charlie to visit specific residents every Tuesday afternoon,” she said, when there was so much more important information to glean in the minute or two she had. What had he done to draw them out?