Colton's Killer Pursuit
Autore
Tara Taylor Quinn
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24
Chapter 1
The cold was just about freezing her nose off. Two seconds out of the grocery store and Everleigh could already feel the sting through her jeans and thick black coat. Pushing her overflowing cart—as it turned out, spending two months in prison meant most everything left in her kitchen had to be replaced—she got a wheel caught on a chunk of ice. Pushed harder and skidded over it.
Of course, frozen February would be the time she’d be replenishing. Couldn’t be summer, when the long trek to the far end of the lot could have been less miserable.
It wasn’t like she’d had any warning, any time to prepare for an absence. One minute she’d been waiting tables at Howlin’ Eddie’s, trying like hell to make enough money to pay the bills, maybe buy some Christmas presents, and the next she’d been handcuffed in front of her coworkers and a couple dozen customers. Accused of murdering her soon-to-be ex-husband.
At the point she’d been arrested, she hadn’t even seen Fritz in over a week. He’d moved out the month before. He’d been accusing her of cheating on him, when the truth was, he’d been doing other women behind her back for years. Chump that she was, she’d trusted him.
Crunch. Crunch. Her ankle-length zip-up black boots sounded against the ice and salt crystals as she pushed, lifting a hand briefly to resecure her knitted hat over her short hair and freezing ears, still halfway down the pavement from her beat-up old red Park Avenue...a car that reminded her of herself in some ways. Luxury in name only. Except that her old beater of a car used to actually be top-of-the-line. Her beginnings on the east side of town had been anything but.
Still, she’d made it across the wrong side of the tracks, from lower-income housing and basic public school to the upscale part of Grave Gulch. Meeting Fritz, falling in love with the handsome fitness-guru charmer, marrying and buying a home on the west side, his side of town...
Crunch and...her boot slid forward on a patch of ice. With one hand flailing and her heart in her throat, Everleigh gripped her cart harder, lurching against it as she managed to avoid falling on her butt on the pavement. But the sudden movement knocked the bag of baking goods, flour, sugar and chocolate chips out of her cart and onto the wet ground.
Blinking back tears, she bent to rebag her goods. Stupid to cry. She didn’t need frozen eyelashes, or reason for her nose to run any more than it already was. The plastic handle on the bag ripped when she put the flour back inside. Her fault. She’d known she should have double bagged it. And really, she’d never been one to cry over spilled milk.
Or baking goods, as was the case here.
The tears that hadn’t quite stopped weren’t because of her groceries. She knew that. It was just... everything. The buildup of two months’ worth of sitting in prison twenty minutes from home, awaiting a trial for a murder she hadn’t committed while her little house sat empty.
But even that didn’t cause emotional overflow. No, the tears were for her gram. Every waking second of the forty-eight hours she’d been out of prison, she’d been mourning for her eighty-year-old role model, heroine, example and fount of love. In an act of desperation, her grandma, Hannah McPherson, had kidnapped a police sketch artist’s child just to get leverage so the cops would reinvestigate Fritz’s murder.
Gram had been so certain that Everleigh hadn’t killed her husband—which she hadn’t—that she’d been willing to risk her own freedom to get someone to prove it. Gram had been the only one who’d believed Everleigh hadn’t committed the crime.
Hard to believe...thirty-eight years of living in Grave Gulch, on both sides of the tracks...her entire life...caring for people, trying to be kind, doing her best...and everyone, her own mother and aunt included, believed her capable of murder—and that she was guilty!
And now the one person who’d been there for her, unconditionally, her entire life, was sitting in prison. Because while Gram’s goal had been met—the police had taken another look at her case and found that their own forensic scientist had tampered with evidence and Everleigh had been exonerated—her grandmother had committed a felony by taking that sweet baby boy. Didn’t matter that she’d cared for him lovingly during the few hours he’d been a guest at her home. She’d kidnapped a child. The little cousin of the chief of police.
And still, bottom line, she was a kidnapper, was sitting in prison facing felony charges, and there was nothing Everleigh could do to get her out.
Because while Everleigh hadn’t been guilty, Gram was...
Placing her groceries back in the ripped bag, Everleigh blinked through her tears to be able to see well enough to find two ends of plastic to tie together and get the bag back up to her cart, then lodged it securely among the dozen or so other packages still there. Frozen fingers having made the task that much more difficult, she pushed her cart as quickly as she could toward her sorry old car.
Murder or not, Everleigh would rather be the one facing another night in a cell than her grandma. Prison was no place for an eighty-year-old woman with frail bones and a heart filled with love.
She’d thought maybe, with the fault lying in the police department, and the boy’s mother being willing to not press charges, Gram would be free. But the DA still charged her.
And it wasn’t like Everleigh had any sway with the upper-echelon politicians in town.
Still...she was almost at her car, thank God...there were always silver linings if you looked for them, as Gram had always said. She might not have any pull in town, but Gram did. There’d been Free Granny posters going up all over town. There’d even been a formal protest going on when Everleigh had been released from prison two days before.
And they were still going on downtown every day, outside the police station.
Maybe... Oommfff. Someone—or something—slammed into her.
Hands ripped from the basket of her cart with the force that hit her, Everleigh seemed to fly, her feet off the ground, for a brief second before she landed with a thump on top of a heavily coated body much larger than hers. The gloved hands caught her around the waist like a football, held her in place for a brief second and then, just as quickly, let her go.
She looked up just in time to see the back of her car swiped by the front bumper of an old vehicle that hadn’t even bothered to stop.
What the hell!
Scrambling to her feet, heart pounding and her breath blowing out steam in large poofs, she saw her basket of groceries rolling off in the distance. And saw the man who’d just tackled her to the ground running after them. Almost starting to cry again as he caught the basket just before it bashed into a light post and pulled it safely back to her.
“We need to call the police,” he said, steam vaporizing around his face as he pulled out his phone.
And she recognized him. Had seen him around the police station and in court, too, as she’d arrived for the third day of her trial and found herself released instead. Clarke Colton. And of course, he’d want to call the police, being the big brother to the chief and all.
Plus, he worked for them. As a contracted private investigator.
The thought of police anywhere in her vicinity made her shake worse than the frigid temperatures.
“Someone just tried to run you down,” he said, phone to his ear.
Yeah, she’d gotten that. Just hadn’t processed it yet.
Clarke Colton spoke into the phone without introducing himself, reporting what he’d just seen happen to her, giving way more of a description of the car than she’d been able to make out, along with the fact that there’d been no license plate on it. His description of the driver followed but wasn’t nearly as detailed. With the bulky coat, big gloves and ski mask the person had been wearing, he hadn’t even been able to tell if it was male or female. Or any kind of hair color, skin color or body build.
So great, a phantom was after her now? She started to load her groceries with muscles weakened by shock. Fear hadn’t set in yet, but she knew it was on its way. She could feel it coming. As soon as she thawed out a bit more.
Why would anyone want to hurt her?
But...someone already had. The missing police-department forensic guy, something-or-other Bowe, who’d tampered with the evidence in her case to make her look guilty. She’d never even met the guy. Had no idea why he’d be out to get her.
But apparently, he still was and...
Clarke dropped his phone in his coat pocket and picked up a couple of her bags of groceries, depositing them in her slightly more dented trunk. The car sure didn’t show her in her best light, but from what she understood, Clarke already knew way more about her than she ever cared to know about him. He’d been the one to take another look at her case when Gram kidnapped his cousin.
He’d also been the one who’d found the discrepancy in evidence that had ultimately proved her innocence.
Everleigh might be from the wrong side of the tracks, but Gram had made certain she had her manners. “I owe you a debt of gratitude,” she told him. Just get the bags in the trunk.
Then she could lock herself in her car and cry. Or drive somewhere safe.
Somewhere she could hide until she could figure out what to do next.
No place that fit that description was coming to her.
She sure as heck wasn’t going to her parents’ house. They’d believed she was a murderer...
“You don’t owe me anything.” He loaded the last three bags.
“First you help find the evidence that gets me out of jail, and now this...” She nodded toward the dent in her trunk. “If you hadn’t moved when you did, I’d have been smashed between my car and the one...”
Her teeth chattered. She wanted it to be a result of the cold. But it wasn’t.
Oh, God. She’d almost been smashed to death!
Suddenly, standing out there on the pavement, in broad daylight, visible to anyone, didn’t seem prudent.
Ducking her head, she made her way to the driver’s door of her car. Thankfully didn’t have to bother unlocking it. The lock had busted a couple of months before. Once inside, she squinted up at her rescuer veiled in the sunshine. Standing between her and the door as he was, he’d left her little choice.
“I’m going to follow you home,” he told her. Didn’t ask. Told. “Just to make certain you get there safely.”
With a nod, she agreed to wait until he came around in his SUV before driving off. Only because he was fulfilling her goal. To get her somewhere safely.
And maybe because, after months of being afraid and alone, falsely accused and powerless, it felt good to have someone at her back.
Not that she’d trust a Colton. Or anyone but Gram. She’d learned that lesson hard and clear.
Just as she knew that the idea of being safe was only a mirage. Home, the scene of a murder two months before, definitely wasn’t it. But at the moment, it was all she had.
And...she had groceries to put away. No way could she afford to let all that food spoil.
Oh, God. Had she really almost been killed?
It just didn’t make sense.
Nor did the fact that she was a widow, not a divorcée. Fritz dead?
But then, since her husband had walked out on her, spreading rumors that she’d been unfaithful to him, nothing had made much sense.
And with Gram in jail...she was beginning to wonder if it ever would again.
Clarke hadn’t intended to follow Everleigh Emerson. He’d just been grabbing some bacon from the grocery store. But he’d watched her once he’d caught sight of her. She’d been pushing her cart slowly down aisle seven, moving aside and waiting as an older couple made a spaghetti-sauce choice. And she’d helped a pregnant woman lift a case of bottled water, too.
And if he’d been pressed, he’d have admitted that he’d hung around, waiting to watch her leave, thinking he might have a word with her in the parking lot. Unofficially. As a PI, he hadn’t been directed to pursue her case any further, but having delved into the woman’s life, he was intrigued by her vagaries.
And as a professional, he wanted to know why Randall Bowe had tampered with evidence on multiple cases, including hers. Did he have something against her specifically? Did the other cases he’d manipulated have anything in common with hers?
Work was life, so sue him if he took it to the grocery store with him.
As it turned out, his dedication to the job, his natural curiosity that made him good at his work, had saved a life that morning.
Following the woman to her small house in a nice neighborhood on the west side of town, thinking of her raw beginnings, and the way her husband framed her for infidelity to hide his own extramarital affairs, playing on her coming from the wrong side of the tracks and working as a barmaid, to protect his own reputation...he wanted to make certain that she stayed safe. It was just the right thing to do after everything that had happened. Police-department error had put her in prison. The Coltons and the rest of the department owed it to her to help her get her life back.
And, okay, he had to know who’d just tried to run her down. And why.
All of the cops, including those in his family, would be on it officially. Because of the stickiness of the case, the smirch Randall Bowe had put on the police department in general, and because some of the town’s residents were starting to get vocal about their mistrust, he’d called the chief of police herself to report Everleigh’s grocery-store incident. The chief of police just happened to be his younger sister, Melissa. She was already sending their cousin Grace, a rookie cop, out to canvass streets for any sight of the car.
But as a private investigator, even one who occasionally worked for GGPD, he didn’t have to worry about following as many protocols. Something he’d never been all that good at. Which was why the job fit him so well.
Everleigh pulled straight into the garage, leaving the newly shoveled driveway open for him. Or so he thought to himself as he parked behind her.
Though the yard was covered with the snow that had fallen the night before, he figured her for the type to have flower beds lining the front of her house, with colorful blooms all spring. And she’d probably be growing tomatoes in a little garden out back, too.
And she’d come up with all different things to do with them, various ways to prepare them so not a single one went to waste.
At least that was his profile of her based on the testimonies he’d read in her file—from those who knew her.
With a couple of long strides, he was beside her, managing most of the bags there on his own. His muscles and long limbs came in handy for all kinds of things.
“I can get those,” she told him, but he didn’t listen.
That was a fault his sister pointed out to him on occasion. He always thought he knew best.
He knew what pissed her off was that he so often did. Probably because for so long he’d been more wayward than reliable. A product of their artist mother’s genes, he’d decided. He had a spirit that craved freedom.
And what made Melissa love him, he’d also decided, was that he’d learned how to admit when he was wrong. To apologize. And to make good on his debts.
Exploits that didn’t exactly pull off as envisioned tended to teach a guy a thing or two.
Moving a little more quickly than the slender model-perfect short-haired blonde woman in front of him, Clarke almost crashed into her as he took the one step up to enter the door she’d just unlocked.
“Oh, my God!” Her cry caught at him, more than the situation would normally have caused.
She was tall, but he was taller; he could easily see beyond her shoulder as she stood stock-still, grocery bags in her hand.
Either she was one hell of a bad housekeeper—which his picture of her didn’t relay—or someone had ransacked her house. The hall he could see was strewn with debris. Papers, outerwear, a broken vase with silk flowers askew.
“Step back.” All business, he moved quickly, getting in front of her, setting his bags down on the floor and reaching for his gun. “Stay here.”
He entered the kitchen. Cupboards were hanging open, things pulled from them onto the floor and counters. As he made his way through the house, he found the same in the living room... Things had been pulled out of spaces; cushions were overturned. Rapidly making his way through the rest of the home, he ascertained, first and foremost, that they were alone.
Whoever had been there had left.
And he had a self-professed job to do—find out who was after Everleigh...and protect her at all costs.
