Colton's Twin Secrets Read online

  “Wouldn’t you think that someone smart enough to elude capture for months would have been smart enough not to leave any evidence?”

  In fact, he had thought exactly that for some time. It was the big question mark that had been hanging over that case for him. But he still couldn’t tell her anything that wasn’t already public knowledge. “Like I said, what I think doesn’t matter.”

  It wasn’t a direct answer, but it wasn’t a denial, either. And she seemed to understand that. But she shook her head slightly, looking at him with a bit of awe that made him feel almost awkward.

  “I never thought of that,” she said slowly. “That you have to do things you don’t like, or that you disagree with.”

  “Of course we do. Our job is to follow the leads even if we don’t like where they take us, and sometimes enforce laws we don’t agree with.”

  She studied him for another moment. And he had no idea what she was thinking. But he had no doubt that she was, because as he’d also come to know there was always a lot going on behind that pretty, rich-girl facade.

  Chapter 23

  Gemma left with the girls without saying anything more. A little while later he loaded Flash up and took him to the training center. The dog looked delighted for a change, knowing he was going to get to simply follow his nose off harness. Dante checked in at the desk and told them barring anything unexpected, he’d be back for him this afternoon.

  Then he went home and settled in to do one of those things he didn’t like. Really, really didn’t like. Namely, trying to find a dirty cop.

  Once more he watched the video feed the chief had sent him, correlating whom he saw coming and going with the duty roster and the cases caught for the time between when Ron, the property officer, had booked in the phone and when it had been discovered missing. No one who shouldn’t have been there appeared. Nothing that didn’t match up with the reports, paperwork and time elements appeared. He’d watched the video run at least a dozen times, and nothing unusual happened. There was no gap in time or action, and the only hiccup at all was a few minutes during a power failure an hour after the phone was booked in. There had been a twenty-second delay before the standby generator had kicked in.

  That would normally be suspicious, especially since the property officer had been at lunch, but it hadn’t been just the department but the entire neighborhood. Ironically, the utility company said it had been an intentional outage, while they repaired damage done by a vehicle that hit a power pole. His brother’s vehicle.

  Was it enough time to get in, get the phone and get out? He supposed so, if you knew exactly where it was. But you’d also have to know exactly when the power was going to be shut down for the repair, because you’d only have that twenty seconds before the generator fired up and restored the power. Maybe another couple of seconds while everything came back online and settled.

  Whoever had done it would have to have been right there. Waiting. Had to have had the security code to get into the evidence room. That pretty much limited it to sworn officers and the property officer, who had already been cleared by several people who had seen him at lunch at the time.

  Dante watched the video yet again, at normal speed. Saw Duke joking with Ron as he handed over the sealed plastic baggie holding the flour-dusted phone Flash had found, and Collins tapping his pen on the counter restlessly. Moments later saw Duke sign the form on Ron’s clipboard as the other man filled out a number on the ID tag. As Ron went to put the phone in the locked evidence room, Duke and his partner turned to go. Collins realized he’d left his pen and turned back. Reached to pick it up off the counter but somehow missed and pushed it farther away so he had to lean over and grab it before it slid off the other side. Got it, straightened up and stuffed it in his jacket pocket as he again turned, and this time left the room, stepping out of the frame just as Ron came back. Dante again watched Ron call out something, probably goodbye.

  Once they were all out of frame, he sped the video up. He’d already made note of what time stamps showed visitors to the room. There weren’t that many, only a couple of cases that had physical evidence that had to be booked in. More that had forensic evidence listed, fingerprints and the like, but that was handled in the lab, not here.

  He sipped at his third cup of coffee as he watched. His frustration was growing; there was nothing here that he hadn’t seen multiple times already. Nothing that didn’t correlate with his list, nothing that couldn’t be matched up to a corresponding case. There was nothing out of the ordinary.

  Except that damned power glitch.

  He fast-forwarded to that spot on the recording. Since the power had gone out, there was no blank spot in the recording, just a barely perceptible hiccup and a jump in the time stamp when it had begun again. Showing the same empty room it had been showing before. He froze the image.

  He sat thinking. Closed his eyes. How would he have done it? Skip the part about knowing exactly when the power would be cut for now. How would he have gotten in and out with the phone in under twenty seconds? He pictured the layout of that part of the building and walked through it in his mind. It would be better if he could do it on site, but right now he was working on the quiet, and being caught timing things would make his assignment pretty obvious.

  He opened his eyes. Stared at the empty room on his laptop screen. And finally he picked up his phone and called the chief. Finn didn’t seem surprised to hear from him on a Sunday, although something about his voice made Dante wonder if he’d interrupted something. Which made him wonder if Darby Gage, who bred dogs for the K9 center, was with him.

  Isn’t she always these days?

  He smothered a pang of envy and made his request for the videos of the hallways leading to the property room. Finn said he’d have them first thing tomorrow. “How are your nieces?”

  “They’re alive,” Dante answered wryly.

  Finn laughed. “You’re doing your job, then.” Then, in a different tone, he asked, “How’s my cousin working out?”

  He wasn’t sure what the change in tone meant. “Uh...fine. Sir.”

  “Really?”

  “Better than I expected,” Dante said, then hastily amended, “I don’t mean I thought—”

  “Stand down, Mancuso. I’d probably have thought the same thing if I hadn’t seen the way she works on those fund-raisers. She’s got more grit than I ever expected in Fenwick Colton’s baby girl.”

  Dante breathed again, reminded of why he liked working for this man. “Yes. Yes, she does.”

  “Personally, I’m of the opinion the less Fenwick had to do with raising them, the better his kids turned out.”

  Dante couldn’t help laughing at that. “I understand there was a nanny involved who kept them all fairly sane.”

  “Ah. So she had someone to model on.”

  “Yes. Sir.”

  Finn laughed, told him to ease up for the rest of the day. The man sounded...happy. After they’d disconnected, Dante sat for a moment, pondering the oddities of life in Red Ridge lately. Seemed almost every cop from the K9 unit had found whatever they’d been looking for in a life mate and were settling into lives with them, albeit holding off on marriage until this killer was caught.

  Well, except him. Other than the twins now, he had no one in his life. But he wasn’t looking. Still, it was making him feel...something. Not quite bothersome, but close. It somehow made him feel alone. Isolated. Left out.

  He gave an inward, mocking laugh at himself. Poor, poor, pitiful me.

  And for some reason he thought of Gemma saying, so very prissily, “It was a gold spoon, thank you very much.” And that made him grin. Stupidly, at a room empty even of Flash.

  That his mind had gone from thinking about mates to Gemma was beyond unsettling.

  He stood up, yanking his mind out of that track by muttering, “I’ll start worrying when Nash goes down.” Fell
ow K9 officer Nash Maddox was in a similar boat to Dante’s, raising his four half siblings, and he had no time whatsoever for a life of his own.

  And neither did he, now.

  But Gemma’s already in it.

  He shook his head sharply. Realize he was pacing the living room. Stopped.

  Maybe he’d go pick up Flash. The dog would give him that mournful side eye for cutting his wandering session short, but maybe he’d make up for it with a game of tug-of-war with his favorite rope toy. That’d probably do them both some good. Maybe if the big bloodhound yanked him off his feet and dragged him a couple of yards, as he’d done once before, he’d be just scraped up enough to keep his mind straight. Or maybe nothing would help.

  And why was his life suddenly full of maybes?

  He was in civilian clothes, so he got the Springfield XD and clipped the holster at the small of his back. He grabbed a jacket and pulled it on to conceal the weapon, grabbed the long, knotted rope toy from the basket near the door that held miscellaneous Flash-related items, and headed for the car. He was just pulling out of the condo parking area when his cell rang. He glanced at the screen. Quickly hit the button on the steering wheel.

  “Gemma?”

  “Dante, please, you have to come. To the park.”

  She sounded a bit breathless. Like she’d been running. “What’s wrong?”

  “Please, hurry.”

  It hit him then. She wasn’t breathless because she’d been running. She was terrified.

  “What happened? Are the girls okay? Are you?”

  “Yes, but—” Her voice broke, and he heard her gulp as if she were taking a huge breath, trying to steady herself. “Dante, somebody tried to kill us.”

  Chapter 24

  For a moment time seemed to freeze. And rather inanely, Dante realized he’d been wrong. There was someone else in his life now.

  Gemma. And it made no difference how or why, because she mattered. A lot.

  He made a violent U-turn, then drove as if he had lights and siren on, even though it was only two blocks. He tried to keep her talking, even knowing his time would likely be better spent calling in reinforcements. She rather chaotically told him the man was gone now, but they were still hiding, just in case. She told him where they were, sounding more shaky by the second.

  The tires squealed as he pulled into the parking area. He slammed on the brakes and threw the SUV into Park. Leaped out, killing the engine with the key fob as he went. His off-duty weapon drawn, he took a split second to scan the area, searching for any sign of a still-active threat. He saw nothing, no one else even in the park this Sunday morning.

  “Gemma!” he yelled as he ran toward the wooden play structure, where she’d told him they were. He spotted the stroller standing lopsidedly, half on the walkway and half in the sand of the play area. The girls were not in it, and his stomach knotted violently.

  “Dante!”

  Gemma sounded steadier than she had on the phone. He was taken aback for a second when she stepped out of the small cedar building; he hadn’t realized she’d meant they were in the thing. He shifted direction, still running. A few feet later and he could see the girls, in the sand, apparently too fascinated with this new environment to care about anything else.

  And then he was there, and Gemma threw herself into his arms. She was shaking so hard that he knew he wasn’t going to get any information out of her yet. He holstered the Springfield at the small of his back and wrapped his arms around her. Held her.

  “It’s all right, you’re all right now, it’s over, everything’s fine,” he whispered to her, smoothing her hair. She buried her head against his chest, and he heard her gulp in a breath again. Then he realized she was crying. She hadn’t been, but now she was. As if she’d been waiting for him before she let go. He wasn’t sure how that made him feel except...good.

  He held her close, saying whatever soothing thing came to him, and had the odd thought that if anyone came at her now, he’d take them out without hesitation.

  As it triggered by the realization, the cop in him kicked back to life.

  “What happened?”

  “He...shot at me. Us.”

  Dante’s blood suddenly ran cold, and he nearly shivered with the force of it. It was all he could do to keep his voice even.

  “Did you call 911?”

  “I... No. You were the only one I could think of to call.”

  Those quiet, shaky words almost put him on his knees. He made the call for reinforcements himself, warning them of a possible shooter still in the area, but he never let go of her.

  “What happened?” he asked again. The answer came in pieces.

  “I heard the sound, but I didn’t realize... I thought it was a car backfiring, but then...it came again and I saw a chip of wood fly off that post—” she gestured vaguely toward the play structure “—and realized what it was.”

  He looked, spotted what looked like a fresh graze on one of the upright support posts.

  “Then what?” he asked, trying to keep his voice calm.

  “I looked where the sound came from—” another gesture, toward the trees on the north side of the park where, Dante noted, there was the most cover “—but I didn’t see anyone. But...he kept shooting.”

  “Gemma, it’s okay. You’re safe now,” he said softly, tightening his hold. She nodded against his chest. “What then?”

  “I grabbed the girls and ran in there,” she said. “I didn’t know if the logs would stop the...the bullets, but it was the only place I could think of.”

  And only now did she fall apart, after she’d done what was necessary.

  She’s got more grit than I ever expected in Fenwick Colton’s baby girl.

  He’d have to tell his boss just how right he’d been.

  “You did good,” he said, letting both his thanks and his admiration echo in his voice. “Really, really good. You took yourself and the twins out of his line of sight. You saved them, and yourself.”

  He felt another, stronger shudder go through her. But after that she seemed steadier.

  “Did you ever see the shooter?”

  She shook her head. He felt the tiny movement more than saw it. But then her head went back and she looked up at him. “But I saw his car. It had to be his. There was no one else here. Dante, it was the same kind of car that guy at the funeral was in.”

  It didn’t take much for him to put it together. The trigger-happy clown who had capped off those rounds at the apartment had shown up at the funeral, must have seen Gemma with the girls there in the garden. What Dante didn’t know was whether the shooter had just happened upon them now or had somehow discovered where he lived and staked them out. That thought made him so furious it was all he could do not to let out a string of oaths that would turn the air blue.

  But he knew what this was now. A warning. I know who matters to you, and if you don’t back off, I’ll take them out.

  “I don’t understand,” Gemma said, sounding as if the shock of it was receding now. “The girls, they’re just babies. Me, maybe. Dad always said we had to be careful about getting snatched, but what good would shooting me do him?”

  Dante felt a little jolt as he realized for the first time that despite that silver spoon, Gemma had grown up with her own set of problems. He looked over at the twins. Something tickled the edge of his mind, but he was too grateful they were all right to formulate the thought right away. And again he was nearly swamped with the enormity of being responsible for these two.

  And if Gemma hadn’t thought so quickly, either or both of them could be dead now. He tightened the hug, and this time she hugged him back.

  And suddenly it hit him, what he’d noticed. His head snapped back around to stare at the girls. Zita. “Wait...was she doing that before?”

  Gemma looked over. Her eyes widened. “N
o! Dante, she’s sitting up, on her own! And look at Lucia.”

  The other girl was apparently too fascinated with the sand to care that her sister had hit a milestone. She was trying to grab tiny handfuls of it and then watching as it slipped through her fingers like...well, grains of sand.

  For that moment, even though Dante heard the approach of the sirens, he just stood there, still holding Gemma, looking at the two creatures who had brought them together.

  “If I had to guess,” she said, and there was a trace of her old humor in the words, “I’d say we’ve got the makings of maybe an athlete and a scientist here.”

  A bit to his own shock, Dante laughed. At the sound of it, both girls looked over at them.

  “Ba ba ah eh,” Zita crowed, reaching out toward them with her arms up. Lucia giggled, as if reacting to his laugh.

  As if instinctively—and perhaps it was—they both moved at once, toward the girls. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to Dante to pick up the baby who was reaching out to him, and he wondered if it really was in the DNA to react to tiny, helpless humans like this. Gemma picked up Lucia, and she giggled again.

  For a moment their gazes locked. Something alive and warm seemed to flow between them as they stood there, something he couldn’t quite put a name to.

  And then the cavalry arrived, and he knew the next couple of hours would be chaos. But in this moment he simply stood there, staring at this woman who had been so much different, so much more than he’d ever expected.

  And when she smiled at him, he wanted nothing more than to hang on to this moment, this feeling, as long as he possibly could.

  * * *

  Gemma had never been so glad to get home.

  And there it was again. Home. Who’d have ever thought she would come to think of this place as home, this condo she’d at first thought small but now thought cozy, convenient and rather charming. At first she’d caught herself thinking she’d like it better with a few of her own touches, but now, with the girls’ things scattered about, Dante’s laptop here and his work boots by the door, and even puffs of Flash’s fur here and there, it felt more like home than her own big, glamorous, top-floor place ever had.