Colton 911: Unlikely Alibi
Autor
Lisa Childs
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26
HarlequinChapter 1
This is it! The thing that could catapult Colton Connections from a multimillion-dollar company to a multibillion-dollar company. Excitement coursed through Heath Colton’s veins, so much so that his fingers shook as he punched in the code on the elevator panel so that it would bring him to his penthouse apartment.
He drummed his fingers against the mahogany wall as he waited for the trip to end. When the doors started sliding open, he was already pulling out his phone. Then he strode the short distance across the marble foyer to the big, hammered-steel door of his unit. With one hand, he shoved in the key and unlocked the heavy door as he told his smartphone to call Kylie.
Despite it being well after business hours, she picked up immediately. “Hey, I was just going to call you about an employee situation we might have...”
Like him, the vice president to his CEO position didn’t work just during regular business hours; she worked all the time. She handled finance and human resources. Colton Connections had about fifty employees, but Kylie Givens rarely had problems with any of them, at least with any that had required his attention before.
“Serious?” he asked.
She sighed. “Right now more petty than serious, but I think it might become more.”
“Then it can wait until it does,” he said as he crossed the hardwood floor to the bar built into one of the Chicago brick walls of his living room. Tall windows in those walls looked out onto the city of Chicago with all its glittering lights. “I have news!”
She chuckled, a throaty deep chuckle that never ceased to surprise him because, at five foot four, she was so petite in stature. “You’ve heard about the patent? It came through?” she asked, her voice rising now with the excitement already coursing through him.
“Not yet,” he said. “But I’ve been assured we’re very, very close to having it approved.” The concept was so unique that no one—but his dad and uncle—could have come up with it let alone try to claim credit for it. So there was no way that another inventor or company could file a pre-issuance submission to challenge it from being approved...unless they’d somehow gotten copies of the plans.
She chuckled again. “So is this a cause for celebration yet?”
“I think so,” he said, casting aside any doubts he might have had. This was just too damn big. He put his phone on Speaker and set it in the bar cart. “I’m going to fix myself a drink.”
“I will, too,” she said. “And we’ll toast.”
He chuckled again. “You’re going to toast with genmaicha, aren’t you?” It was the green tea, roasted with rice, that she drank all the time either hot or over ice.
Ice tinkled from the phone speaker. “So who’s going to do the honors?” she asked.
“Me,” he said. However, he wanted to toast to more than the pending patent. She’d essentially been his partner the past five years she’d served as vice president, but he wanted to make it official. He wanted to bring her in as a full partner before the patent went public, before they became even richer, so that she benefited as much as the rest of the company had from all her work.
He grabbed a glass and poured a chilled white wine into his. He wasn’t going to talk about the partnership yet. Not over the phone. That, he would offer her in person, maybe over a dinner at his cousin Tatum’s restaurant downtown.
“So I’m waiting,” she prodded him.
He chuckled, but before he could begin his toast, his doorbell rang. It was late for deliveries and visitors. Dread knotted his stomach as he considered that it might be Gina. He was too happy to deal with any more of that drama. Kylie probably wouldn’t want to listen to any more of it either, but he left the phone on Speaker, saying, “I better see who’s at the door. Hang on just a second.”
The glass of wine still in his hand, he headed toward that heavy steel door. But when he peered through the peephole, it wasn’t Gina standing in the foyer. Two uniformed Chicago PD officers stood outside his door. The security guard in the lobby must have given them the code for the elevator.
Whatever relief he’d felt over it not being Gina turned quickly back to even more intense dread. Instinctively he knew these men were not bringing him good news. Heath pulled open the door. “Hello, Officers...”
“Are you Heath Colton?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Sergeant Brooks and this is Officer Chandler, sir,” the older of the two men said.
“How can I help you, Sergeant?” Heath asked.
Was it Jones? Had Heath’s younger brother gotten into trouble again? While he’d always been a bit of a rebel growing up, he’d been doing so well lately. He had finally seemed to get his act together. But better that the officers come to Heath than to Pop. Their dad would be furious.
While he was always so happy and fun-loving with everyone else, he had less patience with Jones for some reason.
“Mr. Colton, we need you to come with us,” the sergeant replied.
“Why?” Heath asked.
Of course if Jones was in jail, he would have been given a phone call, not an escort to his brother’s house. And Jones was not anywhere in sight. Heath was the one getting an escort. To jail?
“Am I in trouble?” Heath asked.
“No, sir, not at all,” the younger officer replied which earned him a quick glance from his sergeant.
What was that look? A rebuke? Wasn’t the younger man allowed to speak? Or had he misspoken because Heath was really in trouble?
“Someone needs to tell me what’s going on,” Heath said, his patience wearing thin. “Or I’m not going anywhere with you.” At least not without a lawyer present.
Although he couldn’t imagine why he would need one.
“Sir, we need you to come with us to the morgue,” the sergeant replied. “We need your help identifying bodies.”
Heath sucked in a breath. Oh, God...
It was worse than jail.
Jones had died. But not alone.
Tears stung his eyes, but he furiously held them back. “Of course,” he said. “But I don’t know who my brother would have been with...” Emotion choked him. “So I—I don’t know who the other body might be.”
“Brother?” The sergeant shook his head. “No, sir. We believe these bodies to be your father and uncle.”
Heath gasped as all the air left his lungs. He felt like he’d been sucker punched and nearly doubled over from the force of the emotional blow. “No...” he murmured, shaking his head.
“Your mother and aunt are currently out of town and therefore not available, so your grandmother, Abigail Jones, told us that you would be able to make the identification for us,” the sergeant continued.
“No, it can’t be them,” he said. Not Pop and Uncle Alfie. “There must be some mistake.”
“When did you last see them, sir?”
“Just a couple hours ago. They were at the office, working late because Mom and Aunt Farrah are at that home show for their interior design business.” The twin brothers had come up with another invention, probably one as brilliant as the one for which Heath was awaiting the patent. That was going to benefit the medical community so much. But not the pharmaceutical companies. The new breathing-treatment apparatus was going to eliminate the need for so many drugs.
“We are pretty certain that it’s them,” the younger officer said gently. “We just need the confirmation of a family member.”
“I’ll go,” Heath said. “But you’re going to see that there’s been a mistake.” A cruel mistake.
It couldn’t be them.
Not Pop.
Not Uncle Alfie.
There was no way in hell either of them was gone let alone both. No way in hell.
Shock gripped Kylie so that she nearly dropped her glass of tea onto the kitchen floor. The voices emanating from the cell phone she’d left sitting on the butcher-block counter had to have been some kind of act, not reality.
Was Heath playing a sick joke on her?
No. He wouldn’t joke about something like this. Even Ernie, famous for his bad jokes, wouldn’t joke about this.
Ernie...
Or Pop as he always insisted she call him. But only his family called him that. Kylie wasn’t his family. At least not his real family. She was part of his work family. His and Alfie’s and Heath’s and the rest of the employees. They were a family of sorts, one who reveled in the inventions the twins came up with although at least one of them might have too much interest.
“Heath!” she yelled his name, her voice ricocheting back from the speaker on her phone like an eerie echo. But Heath didn’t answer her back. Had he left his penthouse without his cell phone?
Heath always carried his phone.
A strange fumbling sound emanated from the speaker of her phone, and Heath’s voice rumbled out after it, “Kylie, I have to go now.”
“Wait,” she said. “I’ll go with you.” She didn’t want to go, but she didn’t want him going alone.
“No,” he said. “I’m sure it’s a mistake. I’ll go with these officers and confirm that those bodies are not Pop and Uncle Alfie.”
“No, don’t go with them,” she protested as an image popped into her head, of her mother being dragged through the doorway of their apartment, two officers grasping the arms they’d shackled behind her back. She was so tiny...even in Kylie’s childhood memory, her long black hair tangled around her delicately featured face.
It’s a mistake, Kylie. I’ll be home soon...
But she hadn’t returned. Ever.
“I’ll be fine,” Heath said. “I’ll call you when I get back.”
If he got back.
A click emanated from her phone, and the screen went black, the call disconnected. Even knowing that he was gone, she murmured, “Heath...”
She was worried about him—worried that he was wrong, that it wasn’t all a mistake.
“No.” She shook her head. She agreed with Heath; the police had to have made a mistake. And if they hadn’t, what the hell could have happened? A traffic accident? It must have been, in order to have claimed both their lives.
But that wasn’t possible. They couldn’t be gone.
She glanced at the clock on her microwave, noting that the nightly news was just about to start. Hurrying into the living room of her small home, she scrounged around for the remote control she always misplaced. Maybe it had slipped between the couch cushions again. She picked up a sweater—one her grandmother had knitted her before her arthritis had gotten too bad for her to handle the big needles. While she uncovered some of the navy corduroy of the couch, she didn’t find the remote...until she lifted a pile of papers from the trunk she used as a coffee table.
Her fingers fumbling with the buttons, she clicked on the TV she rarely watched. Whenever she had it on, it was mostly for white noise, so that she didn’t feel quite so alone in the house now that Baba was gone. Baba was short for the Japanese word obaasan for grandmother. Her grandmother and mother had been Japanese. She didn’t know what her father was.
Baba had loved her shows.
She hadn’t liked the news. She hadn’t wanted reality. But Kylie had been a realist since that night the police had taken her mother away. Heath hadn’t been taken away like that. He wasn’t being arrested; he was being devastated—if the police were right.
She should go and try to find him. But by the time she figured out which precinct and morgue, she would be too late. The police could not be right. But as she scrolled through the channels, she knew she’d found the news when flashing lights flickered across the screen. Crime-scene tape cordoned off a parking lot at the back of a big building with many businesses inside. Kylie recognized the building and the parking lot—where she worked, where she parked.
She fumbled with the remote again, trying to find the Volume button, so she could hear what the reporter was saying. She turned it up so loud that the words echoed throughout her living room. “Police have confirmed two casualties at the scene of a shooting earlier this evening. The victims have yet to be identified.”
They were probably being identified right now. Alfie. And Ernie. Pop...
Heath’s father and his uncle.
Her employers and her friends.
Shot.
It made no sense. But violence never made any sense. Not to Kylie. She hugged her grandmother’s sweater against her chest, holding it close to her. But it offered no comfort. Not to her.
And what about Heath? Would anything comfort him for his loss?
He was numb. Just earlier he’d been filled with such excitement. But now...
Now he could barely think. Barely feel.
He punched in the code in the elevator just as he had over an hour ago, and it brought him back where his nightmare had begun, where the police had come to his door. And it was a nightmare, one that would haunt him forever.
He would never forget standing in front of the viewing area of the morgue, waiting for the coroner, who stood on the other side of the interior window, to lift a sheet. Heath shuddered as he remembered what he’d seen—more than had been intended for him to see. It had been so terrible, so much worse than the scariest thing he’d witnessed before then—Kylie having an allergic reaction. Her face had gotten so red before turning pale, and he’d thought she was going to die. But she’d used some kind of injector and had saved herself.
There would have been no way to save Pop. Not from that.
The coroner had quickly adjusted the sheet and murmured, “Sorry.”
But it was too late.
That image was forever burned in his mind, a nightmare that would never end. He’d had to clear his throat before turning to the sergeant who’d stood beside him. Then he’d answered the man’s silent question. “That’s my father.”
The coroner had lifted the sheet on the second body then, and Heath had flinched. “That’s my uncle.”
“They look so much alike,” the younger officer had murmured.
Almost exactly. Even in death.
They’d died the same way, at the same time.
Or maybe Alfie had gone first, just like he’d been first to come into the world and had never let his younger twin forget it. Heath’s eyes burned with tears as he remembered the camaraderie and the love between the two men.
The men he’d idolized and tried to emulate from the day he’d been born. With his thick dark-blond hair and dark blue eyes, he looked the most like them. For a moment he imagined himself on those morgue slabs.
But why?
He wasn’t in danger. He hadn’t known that his dad and uncle were in any danger either. Everybody had always loved them—would always love them.
He blinked and focused on unlocking his door. When he pushed it open, light enveloped him. He must have left the lights on because it wasn’t dawn yet; it wasn’t even quite midnight, which would mark the end of the longest, most horrific day of his life.
He should go to the house, go to his mother and aunt. But he wasn’t even sure they were home yet. They’d been out of town—at that decorating show. He would wait a bit, give himself a little while to try to get those images out of his head, the horrific images of what had been done to the men he’d loved.
Why would someone do that?
He could sooner imagine someone wanting him dead than either of them. But both...
He swallowed hard, choking on the emotion strangling him. He’d tried to be stoic in front of those policemen, and fortunately the shock had numbed him. It was wearing off now.
The pain was starting to grip him.
He shoved the door closed behind him and leaned back against it. He was just about to slide down it to the floor when a metallic clang broke the silence of his penthouse, like something clattering onto the hardwood. He couldn’t see anything that had fallen in the living room, but the kitchen was around the corner, out of his line of sight.
Someone was in there, moving around...waiting for him, like the killer must have waited in the parking lot for his dad and his uncle to leave the building. Why the clatter? Was he looking for a weapon? A knife?
Hadn’t he brought the gun he had used to kill Heath’s heroes?
A gun.
For the first time in his life, Heath wished he had one. That he had more than his fists and his smart mouth to defend himself now. Because just as his dad and his uncle hadn’t survived the bullets fired into them, Heath knew he wouldn’t survive either.
He needed to open the door and run back into the hall, into the elevator, to try to escape...
But something stronger than fear gripped him now. Rage. If the person who’d killed his dad and uncle had come for him, Heath was going to give him a hell of fight.
