Under Colton's Watch
Autorzy
Addison Fox
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15,3K
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19
Chapter 1
A woman became surprisingly productive, Ciara Kelly thought, when she was supposed to be dead.
Murdered, to be more precise.
She shuddered at the thought and laid a protective hand over her belly. For the past few weeks—ever since she’d nearly been run over by a killer who had a damned fine shot at an insanity plea—Ciara hadn’t been able to slow down. To settle.
She couldn’t erase the endlessly racing thoughts that kept her up to all hours of the night and drifting off in nightmarish daydreams during the day.
She’d already carried so much fear and worry for Humphrey since her husband’s disappearance at the start of the year. Four and a half months of hell as she’d waited for news. Or a call. Or any clue, no matter how meager, that her husband was okay.
Only to have it all finish with Humphrey’s murder at the hands of a seductive older woman the police had dubbed a black widow killer. Maeve O’Leary had eluded the cops and what felt like four different federal agencies, based on the endless reams of questions Ciara had faced since Humphrey’s disappearance.
It was a case the cops believed had wrapped up with Humphrey’s death—until Maeve had turned her sights to Ciara.
It seemed implausible anyone would want to harm her, but the memories of an oncoming sedan, bearing down on her with increasing speed, had left an indelible impression.
She was sure Maeve had found out about the child Ciara was carrying—now nearly five months along—and that was what had put her squarely in the crosshairs. Especially since it had become evident that Humphrey was caught up in some sort of emotional spell Maeve had wrapped around him. There was no way he hadn’t revealed his wife’s pregnancy—or rather, her attempts at getting pregnant prior to his disappearance, since he hadn’t known she was successful—during the months under Maeve’s influence.
It seemed unthinkable, yet no matter how much she wanted to deny Humphrey’s descent into Maeve’s clutches, the truth was clear. The woman wanted her—and, by extension, her unborn child—dead.
It didn’t matter that Ciara had done everything she could to keep her pregnancy a secret; Humphrey’s disappearance had been major news in New York. And his anxious and worried wife was prime fodder for the news outlets—those that dealt in respectable reporting as well as the ones who managed far less savory pursuits in their attempts to broadcast “news.”
Especially when that news concerned his considerably younger widow.
Her pregnancy had been whispered speculation, but since nearly all her clothing now no longer fit, Ciara had finally needed to acknowledge there was no hiding her growing baby bump.
A fact she’d have to reveal to her “roommate” as well.
Frowning at that thought, even as she was well aware there was nothing to be done for it, she refocused on the syllabus she was in the process of refining for her summer school students. Students who’d gamely agreed to gain her wisdom through remote learning, all while they spent their days out on a boat in the waters surrounding New York City and northern New Jersey with Ciara’s best teaching assistant.
She hadn’t wanted to step back. She lived for being out on the water, but with her husband’s death, her pregnancy and the increasing reality that the black widow who’d murdered her husband now wanted to finish off Ciara, she’d needed the reprieve. And her long-standing record of being a good, hardworking professor, and a popular one, in Rutgers University’s Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences had ensured her department head had been willing to work with her.
And boy, had she needed the break this year.
Between Humphrey’s disappearance in January and the ensuing stress of wondering what, exactly, had happened to her husband, Ciara had been torn between burying herself in work and having days where she could hardly concentrate. And then there was her pregnancy, carefully planned yet not at all what the average person would expect of her. She’d been fortunate to avoid morning sickness in most of the early days.
It was all the days that had come since—navigating the ups and downs all by herself—that had been the real challenge.
Humphrey had indulged her in this area, and while they’d had an understanding on how she’d become pregnant, she had expected to share some of the experience with him. Even if it was only as two dear friends who shared a home.
What did you expect, marrying a man who had secrets?
She’d asked herself that question over and over for the past six months, and she knew it was an honest assessment—as well as a daily reality—of her late husband’s life. His responsibilities as one of New York’s most respected psychiatrists meant he was in demand from a lot of high-profile individuals. People who had reason to keep secrets of their own, even if they did share them in the confines of a doctor’s office.
Secrets, Ciara reflected, had become an increasing reality of her life. One she couldn’t escape, no matter how deeply she buried herself in work. Especially since she’d landed herself a roommate and what felt like an endless stay in a safe house.
A roommate with secrets of his own, she already suspected. US marshal Aidan Colton had far too many shadows behind the compelling brown eyes that were so dark they were nearly black—she knew he was keeping his own counsel. A state she could appreciate when she did it herself, but that was rather frustrating when she was on the opposite end of the same treatment.
The subtle knock on the front door—tapped in the exact code they’d practiced—was an odd reinforcement to her thoughts of said roommate and, in a matter of moments, the tower of locks on the door frame all flipped, one by one.
But it was the chiseled face peeking through the door, immediately followed by one strong forearm holding three reusable bags of supplies, that caught her attention from where she sat at the dining room table, tapping at her computer.
She refused to smile at him, her small, personal brand of mutiny the only thing she could control in this entire situation.
Despite her lacking welcome, he seemed unfazed, as usual. In fact, she could have sworn his smile grew broader as he kicked the apartment door closed with one foot.
“Honey! I’m home!”
Twelve days, Aidan Colton thought with an inward sigh as he kicked the weathered apartment door closed. Twelve days of that cold, withering reception despite all his best efforts to get past Ciara Francis Kelly’s defenses.
Humor hadn’t worked.
Cajoling honesty hadn’t done much, either.
He’d even tried his own personal brand of law-enforcement-official-with-a-bad-attitude, which she’d roundly ignored.
The woman was impervious.
It should have been a relief. They weren’t stuck in this safe house to become bosom buddies or even friends. He had a job, and he was doing it.
Every damn day.
Twelve of them and counting.
So why was he so irritated at her seeming inability to respond to him, no matter what tack he took?
There wasn’t anything in the US marshal rule book that said a safe house guest needed to bond with you. In fact, he’d had buddies through the years who’d made that mistake and had nearly lost assets because of it.
He had a job to do, nothing more.
Which made the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking about the woman—and his complete inability to get any sort of reaction out of her—a frustration in its own right.
He’d studied her before taking on this job. His family was involved in the Humphrey Kelly case up to their eyeballs, his cousins all close to the late psychiatrist while growing up. Now, in their various roles in New York law enforcement, each had been a part of this case from the start. And even if there hadn’t been a family connection, Aidan would have needed to purposely put his head in the sand to miss such high-profile news.
It was Aidan’s involvement, along with his sister’s, that had ended up being the real surprise, he had to admit. Pulled in by his cousin Sean to help with the federal aspects that fell outside local NYPD jurisdiction.
His sister, Deirdre, with her FBI background, had been tapped first when the reality of Humphrey’s situation became increasingly clear. Wealthy, well-respected doctors didn’t simply go missing from the federal courthouse. Yet that was exactly what had happened back in January, and Sean, a NYPD detective known for cracking cases in record time, hadn’t been able to get anywhere with Humphrey’s case.
Nor did those same doctors disappear without leaving a trace. The boon for law enforcement that was modern technology made escaping the prying eyes of a video camera a challenging feat, especially in a dense setting like New York City.
And when that video camera was inside a federal facility? Well, disappearing was for all intents and purposes, impossible.
Yet Humphrey had vanished all the same, walking into a supply closet at the federal courthouse and seeming to disappear from there.
Of course, common sense had dictated that no matter how badly the technology had failed them, Humphrey Kelly hadn’t just vanished from the courthouse. And several months of detective work by his Colton cousins had unearthed the truth.
Humphrey had been brainwashed by Maeve O’Leary. She’d gotten him out of the courthouse in a heavy disguise and had proceeded to keep him a willing captive for months. It had only been Maeve’s attempt on Sean’s life—the reality break Humphrey obviously needed after a lifetime of watching out for Kieran Colton’s children—that had Humphrey jumping in front of a bullet Maeve had meant for Sean.
And now here he was, Aidan thought with no small measure of disgust, babysitting Humphrey’s young widow and putting up with her seemingly endless supply of attitude.
“I picked up groceries. I thought I might cook something tonight. I’m getting sick of takeout.”
“Okay.” She shrugged but never looked up from her computer.
“You up for pasta primavera or sweet and sour chicken?”
“Whatever you prefer.”
Still, that gaze never left her laptop screen.
“Maybe I’ll go with option three. Liver and onions.”
It was a dumb joke, meant only to get her to raise her eyes from that damn screen, but it had an odd effect on her. The eyes he knew were an enigmatic green widened before her face went ghostly pale. She slammed a hand over her mouth at the same time she leaped out of her chair and ran from the room.
The shift was so swift and immediate, it was all Aidan could do to stare after her before his own training kicked in.
What the hell had happened to her?
He followed the same path she’d taken, racing down the hall toward the bedroom and en suite bathroom she was using. Although he’d been very careful to give her space, only entering the bedroom to do the initial sweep for bugs, repeating the exercise only two other times after they’d left the apartment, he ignored any sense of propriety as he heard retching from the bathroom.
Following the sound, he found her huddled over the toilet bowl, a miserable look on a face that had gone even paler than when she’d run from the dining room.
And in that moment he knew exactly what secret Ciara Kelly had been hiding.
As she turned her head toward the bowl, in obvious distress as her stomach revolted once more, Aidan moved forward to hold her shoulders. He laid a soothing hand over her back and rubbed in large circles as she lost whatever meager contents were left in her stomach.
There’d be time enough for answers.
For now, he simply helped her through the worst of the sickness. And when she finally sat back, he gathered her into his lap and held her close as she shivered in his arms.
Ciara wasn’t sure what was worse.
Being sick in Aidan Colton’s arms.
Or huddling in those big, strong arms like a quivering baby bird fallen who’d fallen from its nest.
Even in the depths of her mortification and the still-roiling nausea in her stomach, she had to admit those arms felt nice.
Soothing.
They had an unexpected strength she hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed.
Her own relationship with her mother had been bad, growing horribly worse instead of closer as her mother had suffered through her life-ending cancer diagnosis the year before. But Ciara had borne up under the pressure, caring for her mom through the very worst.
And Humphrey had been an emotional source of strength, but, if she were honest, he’d been a means to an end as well. She loved him, albeit platonically, but he hadn’t been a physical source of strength. He’d provided financial security and a deep, abiding friendship she missed terribly.
But well-built, strength-filled arms that wrapped around her and held her through one of her worst moments?
No, that had been absent in her life.
“You doing okay?” Aidan’s deep voice rumbled against the side of her head, his lips pressed against her temple.
“Getting there.”
“Do you think you can stand? If so, I’ll leave you to it and meet you in the living room with a cold ginger ale.”
“That sounds nice.”
Suddenly recognizing she’d nestled deeper into his arms instead of pulling away, she scrambled to sit up, even as Aidan tightened his hold.
“Easy. I’ll help you up.”
He was never inappropriate, but his big hands settled at her waist as he lifted her to her feet. He did it easily, his palms settling against her increasing stomach.
If he noticed—and she had no doubt he did—he said nothing, instead getting to his feet beside her. “I’ll get that soda for you.”
Ciara stared at his retreating back in the mirror before shifting to assess her appearance, the hair she’d pulled up haphazardly to work on her syllabus now falling in strands around her face. She made quick work of redoing her topknot and then reached for her toothbrush, determined to remove the lingering memories of tossing her meager lunch.
She hadn’t thrown up much since her first trimester—and even then she’d been lucky the morning sickness hadn’t been too bad—but she was triggered by certain things. The smell from a piece of raw chicken the month before had done her in for the rest of the day, and a nasty whiff of garbage one morning walking back to her apartment had done the same.
Who knew the mere mention of liver could signal the same response?
Unwilling to dwell on it now that her stomach was settling, she brushed her teeth, dried her mouth and hands, and took a deep breath.
The time had come to tell Aidan the truth. She’d known her days were numbered—her pregnancy was growing impossible to hide—and she’d have to talk to him at some point during this safe house stay.
It looked like the time had come.
She padded back down the hallway and back into the living room. As promised, there was a large glass of ginger ale on the coffee table, its golden hue still bubbling with its recent pour from the can.
And sitting opposite was Aidan.
“How are you feeling?”
She took a sip, strangely comforted by the crisp coolness. “Better. Thank you.”
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“You can’t tell?”
“I’d rather hear it from you.”
Although his dark eyes brooked no argument, she didn’t sense any hostility in his voice, either. Recognizing that the more information he had, the better armed he was to do his job, Ciara considered how to address her pregnancy.
Because addressing that piece led to a bigger reveal about her marriage, the personal reasons she and Humphrey had even married in the first place, and what all of it meant for her life moving forward.
In the end, Ciara realized as she took another sip of soda, it was easier to start at the beginning. She’d done the same with Sean Colton and he hadn’t judged her. Granted, Sean had been focused on solving Humphrey’s murder, but she had to hope that his lack of judgment was a good sign.
With the increasing knowledge that Aidan Colton would respond however he chose, she dived in. “I don’t expect you to understand what I’m about to tell you.”
Again, those features remained impassive, even as she got the distinct sense Aidan was interested in what she had to say. “Why don’t you try me?”
“I got pregnant in January.”
“Did Humphrey know?” When she didn’t answer immediately, he added, “Before he disappeared at the courthouse?”
“He knew about the trying to get pregnant. But no, he never officially heard the news from me. I suspect, though, that Maeve found out the details.”
“Why do you think she knows?” The question beneath his question—why Maeve O’Leary might know when the US Marshals didn’t—was beside the point.
“Let me start from the beginning.” When he only nodded, Ciara continued. “Humphrey and I had a marriage of convenience. One of deep care and affection, though, as he’s an old family friend and he’s always watched out for me. When my mother got sick with cancer, I had to spend all my savings on her treatments.”
“I’m sorry for that.”
“It was worth it.”
“I’m not suggesting otherwise, but I’m sorry you lost her.”
Ciara was, too, but for a whole different set of reasons she wasn’t comfortable going into. Her relationship with her mother was...complicated, and the odd mixture of anger, guilt and relief still warred in her heart whenever she thought of her mother’s last months.
Yet Humphrey had understood all of that, somehow. He’d understood and done something so deeply kind and supportive for her.
“As a stipulation of my grandmother’s will, I needed to be married to inherit her fortune. And the ruin of my finances from my mother’s treatments being what they were, Humphrey kindly offered to play the part.”
“That’s some friendship.”
“Humphrey was some man. A good man. I know he had his secrets and these past five months have called everything about him into question, but I tell you, Aidan, he’s a good person. Was a good person.”
Hadn’t Humphrey proved that in the end? Taking that bullet meant for Sean Colton and ultimately losing his life?
“And the baby?”
“I’ve wanted a child for so long. I thought I’d find someone to share my life with and make a family, but time kept passing and I never found a relationship that lasted into the serious phase. Or to a point where I could see making a marriage and a life. And then my mother got sick and that area of my life was put on hold.
“I didn’t want to wait any longer.”
How could she? She was thirty-five, and the increasing reality was that if she hadn’t acted, she knew she might miss her chance. So she’d forged ahead, with Humphrey’s support every step of the way.
Save one.
“So in a matter of a few months you got married, got pregnant and lost your husband.”
She considered Aidan’s observation, thinking back to the whirlwind that had been the back half of last year and the start of this one. Her wedding to Humphrey. Her visit to the sperm bank in January. And the horrifying reality only a few days later that her husband was missing.
Vanished, really.
“So why do you think Maeve O’Leary knows? Especially if Humphrey didn’t know you were actually pregnant.”
Ciara wanted to believe that she’d kept her own counsel, never letting on to anyone that she was pregnant, but Maeve’s attempt on her life had suggested otherwise. Perhaps under her influence Humphrey confessed Ciara had been trying to get pregnant?
Or maybe Maeve was just jealous.
Either way, the woman was tying off loose ends, and Humphrey’s widow—his pregnant widow—certainly fit that bill.
“Based on your cousins’ investigative work, she’s not just a black widow, but she’d somehow managed to brainwash Humphrey. Although he was a wonderful man, he was a strong one, too. Determined. And someone who most definitely knew his own mind. If she’d broken through those defenses, then I have to assume he shared my plans.”
“But now that Humphrey’s gone, how does it benefit Maeve to kill you and the baby? The law enforcement community is on to her and she’s on the run.”
“I stood in the way of her getting what she wanted. A child only reinforced that.”
“And you think she’d want to eradicate Humphrey’s child out of spite?” Aidan shook his head, the first chink in his cool facade coming through in his deep frown and the small line that furrowed between his eyes. “I’m sorry. That’s cruel of me to speak of your and Humphrey’s child that way.”
“If only if it were that easy.”
“I’d hardly call her reaction easy.”
“No, but if she knew the truth it might put her even further over the edge. One more point of evidence that even while she thought she was manipulating Humphrey, the situation was already beyond her control.”
“The truth of what?”
“My baby. It isn’t Humphrey’s.”
