Colton's Lethal Reunion (The Coltons 0f Mustang Valley Book 2) Read online

  She could hear the words as clearly that night as the day they’d been said. “I had to physically hold him back from running up to the mansion to find you.”

  She’d never been sure what Tyler thought Rafe could have done, even if he’d still been their friend. Since Rafe was older, it wasn’t like he was ever on Tyler’s elementary school campus.

  But that had been the year that changed her little brother. He might not have been as big as the other boys, but he’d been smart. And he’d toughened up. By seventh grade he’d been running with the troublemakers who’d once made fun of him. Running them.

  By the time she’d come home from college in Phoenix, he’d been running drugs, too, though she never got him to admit that. And he’d never been caught. She saw the money in his room, though.

  And saw him getting high and drunk every night.

  She’d been away getting an education, attending the police academy to make their little world a safer place for people without Rafes to protect them, and while she’d been gone, he’d turned into her father.

  “He fell off a cliff, right?” Rafe was going through photos, having opened the folder without seeking permission first. So Colton-ish.

  “He was driven up there and pushed off.”

  He looked at her—studied her, more like it. “You sound sure about that.”

  “I am sure. I just don’t have the evidence to prove it. Yet.”

  “He was pulled off the mountain drunk more than once,” Rafe said softly, compassion in his gaze.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because while you were gone...he was in high school...I made sure that he got back to the ranch, to your cabin, without Payne ever hearing about it.”

  She’d wondered how Tyler had been so wild without being kicked off the ranch. He’d left on his own. After he’d graduated from high school.

  “I made sure he stayed until he graduated,” Rafe added.

  “I don’t believe that. Tyler would have said something...”

  “He didn’t know. I...had a talk with one of the guys in your department, Spencer... The police made a deal with Tyler that he wouldn’t be charged with underage drinking as long as he stayed in school. And they watched over him, just happening to show up wherever he might be getting himself into trouble.”

  Wow. Just... Wow.

  What did you do with that piece of information?

  How did you hate a guy who...

  Not that you liked him, again, too much else had happened...

  He’d looked after Tyler while she’d been gone. Had made sure her brother got his education.

  She just couldn’t believe it.

  Wished she’d known. And it still wasn’t enough. Didn’t make up for ditching them in the first place. For choosing wealth over love.

  Because even if, as a kid, he’d felt he had no choice, five years after that last ultimatum, he’d been an adult. And yet he’d waited twenty-three years...

  Seriously, what did you do with something like that?

  Chapter 3

  Rafe studied the information about Tyler’s death so he didn’t have to look at Kerry. Or feel her home around him, reminding him of everything he’d once had and never found again. Not the room. Or the furnishings. It was a sense of being fully and completely alive.

  She hadn’t said a word since he’d broken his promise to himself and told her what he’d done for Tyler while she’d been at the police academy. He’d gone away to college, too, but he’d had a helicopter that brought him home for three days every weekend. Payne’s insistence. His way to keep control, Rafe had figured. “Why are you so certain that this wasn’t an accident?” he finally asked, closing the folder when he couldn’t bear to look at the pictures any longer. The cliff face. The tire tracks and footprints in the dust.

  The funeral he’d missed because he’d been at an international oil summit in Washington with a couple of his siblings—or the biological Colton heirs, as he sometimes thought of them. Although, why she had a picture of the people gathered at the grave site...

  He glanced again. Noticed the man standing in the back of the small gathering. And then looked at the wall again. And through another file. “You think Odin Rogers had something to do with this?”

  The man was little more than a scumbag with no morals, no class, who lived like a member of royalty—thinking his word and desires carried the weight of a king. He’d tried to take on Rafe once—when Rafe had been looking out for Tyler. Not face-to-face, of course. But word got around that the Coltons couldn’t save Tyler if the punk didn’t finish some job for which he’d been paid. No job that was on any record, of course. It hadn’t ended well for Rogers. And yet, the hefty white man continued to live well. And free.

  Rogers’s one success was that he had enough minions willing to do his dirty work so that his hands were clean when it came to actual proof of dealing drugs.

  “I know he’s behind it,” Kerry said, standing to join him by the wall. “I know Tyler got into trouble, that he made some horrible choices there for a while...” She paused and Rafe felt the sting of guilt, whether she’d intended it or not. “But he was on the straight and narrow for almost a year before he was murdered. I know that he’d been running with some of Odin’s people. I saw him downtown, talking to Odin once, but when I asked him about it, he denied knowing the guy. Kept trying to convince me that I’d seen it wrong. Then something went down that either scared him, or opened his eyes to what he was becoming, because he came to me and apologized for all the worry and trouble he’d brought me over the years. He told me that he knew how much I’d done for him, that I was always there for him. Told me how much that meant to him. And he swore that he was going to make it all up to me...”

  She’d been sounding all police-like...until she didn’t. Her voice didn’t break, it just trailed off. And she stared unmoving at the wall.

  Collecting herself, Rafe knew. Not because it was anything she’d ever done around him before; on the contrary, she’d always shown him everything she was feeling, when they were kids. But he knew she wasn’t going to let herself show him anything, anymore.

  The practical adult man he’d grown into was glad about that. Because if Payne lived, and Rafe truly hoped he did, the old man would likely still carry through on his threats to a thirteen-year-old Rafe. Back then all he’d have had to do was fire her father. Which would have been akin to sending Kerry and Tyler straight into hell. With Tyler Sr.’s drinking, the kids would likely have been left to fend for themselves. Or become wards of the state, and risk being split up. At least on the ranch they were always looked after by the other cowboys’ wives. And Tyler was looked after, too, by the men who trusted him to work hard come morning. At the RRR they could be together as a family. And one thing Rafe had always known was how much Kerry loved her little brother. And her father, too.

  But even now that Rafe and Kerry were adults, Payne could wield his power. Have Kerry pressured out of the Mustang Valley Police department, forcing her to leave the town that had been her home her entire life to seek out other employment. The man meant well—he was fiercely loyal and loved his family—but he also believed that he knew best and used his power to see that his will was done.

  And he believed that where Kerry Wilder was concerned, Rafe was weak. Or he just held a grudge because Rafe had managed to carry on a secret friendship with her for eight years before the man found out.

  Either way, Rafe wasn’t going to be the cause of that power being unleashed on Kerry.

  “There has to be a reason that he was up on that mountain.” Kerry’s words, calm and professional again, broke into his thoughts. “That’s not where he ever climbed, or hung out. There’s nothing up there. Not even a good view. And the tire tracks don’t match his car,” she added. “They’re bigger, the tread is wider.”

  “So what’s the official ex
planation for that?”

  She shrugged. “There’s no proof that those tire tracks had anything to do with Tyler’s death. Someone could have been up there before, or after he went over. As dry as it was, they could have been there for a couple of days. And there’s no proof that anyone else was with him. You see the footprints...there are several partials, different shoes...so we know people were up there, but not necessarily when he was. The theory is that it was a new hangout spot, but no one has come forward saying so. Or admitting to having been up there. And it’s not like there’s a surveillance camera...

  “If it hadn’t been for a hiker finding his body down below, we would likely never have known what happened to him...”

  “How long was he down there?”

  “A couple of days.” She shook her head. Studied the wall as though the answer was there for her to see.

  And maybe it was. She seemed so certain. He followed her gaze.

  “It could be that the prints in the photo were from people who heard about his death and went up to look,” she continued, “but there’s got to be evidence there, too. He was up there. We know that. I need to know why. Because I am certain he didn’t climb a mountain and jump. Or go hiking and fall off. There was no evidence of him having slid off, no ground broken away, no sign of a body hitting the sides, or sliding, on the way down.”

  “So let’s go back and take another look.” Rafe didn’t think before he spoke. But didn’t regret the words.

  Kerry stared at him. “What?”

  He looked her straight in the eye. “Look, I know some of the responsibility for this lies on me. I knew he looked up to me, and I just quit his life. Let me at least do this. Let me help. I’ve got an analytical mind. And fresh eyes. I’ve never been up there. So take me up. Show me. Maybe I’ll notice something that wouldn’t appear significant to someone trained to assess a crime scene.”

  “It’s been two years...”

  “But maybe something up there will trigger an idea...a possibility you haven’t yet thought of. I really want to help, Kerry. If you never speak to me again after this, fine, I deserve that. But let me at least help you find justice for Tyler.”

  He knew he had her before she opened her mouth. He recognized the look in her eyes before she glanced away.

  If he’d needed proof that what had once been sacred between them wasn’t dead yet, he’d just had it.

  And knew, just as he had twenty-three years before, that he was going to have to walk away from it.

  Because sometimes the heart didn’t win.

  * * *

  “It’s still going to be light for another hour. Can you go now?” Kerry knew better than to let Rafe Colton back into her personal sphere—knew he’d be heading right back out again—but if he was willing to help her find justice for Tyler, she wanted to use him quickly and be done.

  While she had to have dealings with him anyway because she’d been assigned his father’s case.

  No one else wanted anything to do with investigating Tyler’s death. His case was done. Closed. They thought her paranoid, needing to get over it, at worst. And a grieving sister who was struggling to accept the truth, at best. Which was why the case files were at home, not work. Why her dining room wall had become an investigation board.

  “I’m not really dressed for a trek up the mountain...” He looked at her and finished, “But, yeah, let’s go now.”

  Whether he still had the talent to read her, or she’d just been obvious in her thoughts of “now or never,” she didn’t care to guess. But after locking up, she holstered her gun at her waist and headed out of her house through the door off the kitchen that led to a two-car garage.

  Rafe offered to drive. To take his truck. She wasn’t riding anywhere with him. The control was all hers or she wasn’t going.

  Not that she said as much aloud. She just got in her Jeep and pushed the button to raise the garage door. He climbed in beside her without pressing the matter.

  Smart man.

  “One of the last times that Tyler talked about having changed his life around...he was telling me how good he was doing, loved working as a cowboy, actually out on the range for a week at a time, moving herds, running down strays and assisting with difficult births. He’d been thinking about riding in an amateur rodeo during the county fair...and then he let something slip,” she said, doing everything she could to remain fully focused on the case at hand, and not getting distracting by the man at her side.

  “He said that he was staying away from the ‘Big B.’ He paled right afterward and when I questioned him on it, he just shook his head.”

  “The Big B? Is that a person?”

  “I have no idea, but I assume so. It kind of sounded like it, like it was someone he had to avoid, not a place he just didn’t go to anymore. I’ve looked all over the county and can’t find any establishment that would go by the name Big B.”

  “Odin Rogers doesn’t have a B,” Rafe said, almost as though she hadn’t already figured that out.

  “And his middle name is Paul,” she let him know she’d done her homework. And could spell enough to know there was no B in that, either.

  “I’m thinking that someone who works for Rogers is the Big B. Maybe one of his hired thugs. Or, I suppose, it could be some kind of moniker for a substance cocktail, but not one that’s on any radar.”

  The entrance to the drive up the mountain was several miles outside of town, in the opposite direction from the RRR. The well-worn, if little used one-lane road had been carved into the mountain back in the early days of gold and copper mining. Her Jeep bounced up it just fine, taking the sometimes harrowing turns slowly when she couldn’t see ahead to know if she’d need to yield to oncoming vehicles.

  “You’ve obviously done this a few times,” Rafe said, holding on to the handle just above the door frame. He didn’t look nervous though. He was smiling.

  And she almost missed the next turn.

  Being up on the mountain with Rafe, away from the world, with only more mountains, higher peaks, and the gulch below in sight, threw her. They’d spent most of their hours together out in the middle of nowhere, out of view, out of sight, so they wouldn’t be caught together. In the vast Arizona landscape, she’d felt so free.

  Free from her father’s drinking. From worry. From little Tyler needing things from her.

  Free to love Rafe Kay.

  Free to love Rafe Colton.

  Standing up on that mountain with him, even several feet apart, watching him look over an area she pretty much knew by heart, she felt her whole being suffused with a sense of rightness, followed by a stream of longing that almost brought her to her knees. Everything about him was familiar in that moment. The way a few strands of his thick blond hair picked up when a breeze blew over them. The set of his shoulders. The intent focus he gave to whatever had his attention.

  How could twenty-three years make no difference at all? Especially when it made all the difference in the world?

  “This is where he went over,” he said, apparently not as affected by being alone in the wilderness with her as she was with him. And why would he be? He’d probably taken a lot of girls back to their old hiding places. And why not? They were a known way to get past Payne.

  Those old hiding places were all part of his family’s land.

  “Yes.” She gave herself a strong mental shake and focused on why she was up on that mountain. On why she was talking to Rafe Colton at all.

  “And there was no scuffle? No sign of struggle?”

  She shook her head. Another fact that Chief Barco had taken into consideration before ruling her brother’s death accidental.

  “But if he was facing the gully down below, thinking he was alone, or if he was up here with someone he trusted, he could easily have been taken off guard.”

  Tyler could have been making out with so
meone. Not that she’d ever considered that before, but she definitely knew how lost you could get in a kiss when you were out in the middle of nowhere...

  “He hadn’t been expecting to be in a fight. Hadn’t had a chance to defend himself,” she said, bringing her thoughts firmly back to current ground.

  Rafe turned slowly, glancing all around them. He didn’t walk far, didn’t venture too close to the cliff’s edge.

  Glancing at the slick-bottomed, expensive leather dress shoes he was wearing, she didn’t blame him.

  “What’s over there?” He motioned to a cliff side that tilted downward, toward another shallower gully off to the left of where Tyler had been pushed.

  Shrugging, she walked that way. “I never climbed down to see,” she said. It wasn’t like she’d hiked an entire mountain range. Most particularly not alone. No reason to do so. “There’s no path, no sign of broken vegetation, so obviously it’s not a place people go.” She moved closer, anyway. Rafe thought he noticed something.

  She trusted his instincts.

  Not him.

  But he’d always had good instincts. Like the time he’d shoved her back and to the ground, a seemingly mean thing to do, until she’d noticed the rattlesnake he’d prevented her from stepping near. He noticed things. Knew things. He always had...

  What the...

  “Rafe, look...” She was probably just seeing things. “Is that a trail over there? Leading to that cliff face across the way?”

  When he came up beside her, she turned red. Hot. Embarrassed that she’d just been seeing things. Of course there was no...

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “If it is, it’s covered over with all of those tumbleweeds.”

  “Yeah.” She’d been overreacting.

  To him. Which clouded her normally spot-on thinking. She could feel his body heat. He was that close. And could smell him, too.