Colton 911: Baby's Bodyguard. Lisa Childs

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СКАЧАТЬ issue you a citation.”

      “Rae—”

      “You’re not above the law,” she said, “just because you’re a Colton.”

      “I know I’m not above the law,” he said, his face still flushed, but with anger now. It burned in his hazel eyes, as well. “And neither are you.”

      “I am a law student,” she said. “And I’m already working as a paralegal. I probably know the law better than you do.”

      He snorted then. “I’ve been a police officer for years,” he reminded her. “I know the law. Why did you switch from managing the general store to law?”

      She narrowed her eyes and studied his handsome face. He’d barely talked to her at her friend and his brother’s wedding, so why was he curious about her now? Especially since he seemed to know more about her than she’d realized.

      She was proud of her decision to go to law school, so she answered him, “I want to do something about all the crimes happening around Whisperwood.”

      “Then you should want me to investigate what I found on your property,” he pointed out.

      Now she was curious, which she probably would have been right way if she wasn’t so damn exhausted. “What did you find?” she asked.

      “A body.”

      She gasped in shock and shook her head. “No.” It wasn’t possible. Someone couldn’t have been murdered in her backyard, where she’d imagined her son playing as he grew up, just like she had played there as a child. She shuddered and murmured again, “No.”

      Forrest nodded. “I’m afraid it’s true.”

      “But—but I didn’t hear anything.” Wouldn’t she have heard something if someone had been murdered in her backyard? But with work and school, she was gone so much that she probably hadn’t even been home when it had happened. “I didn’t see anything amiss.”

      “Have you missed anyone?” he asked. “Somebody staying with you that suddenly disappeared?”

      She shook her head. Somebody had disappeared years ago on Rae, but that had been his choice to leave. Nobody had murdered him, although she’d sometimes wished she would have...when she’d watched her mother suffer.

      “So you didn’t notice anything in the backyard? Any digging?” he asked, persisting with his questions.

      She shook her head again. “Why the hell would someone bury a body in my backyard?”

      “I’m not sure if they’d just buried it, or if it was just uncovered,” Forrest said. “It could have been there awhile.”

      “Like the body that Maggie and Jonah found after the hurricane?” she asked.

      They had just stumbled across the body—the mummified body. She shivered with revulsion. What if that was what Forrest had found in her backyard? Another mummy?

      “I’ll know more once the coroner arrives,” he continued.

      The wail of a siren grew louder as it came closer to her house. Maybe the coroner was arriving now, along with the squad cars with the flashing lights that were pulling into her driveway.

      Connor cried out now, and it wasn’t a sleepy little cry but a wail almost as loud as the siren.

      “What the hell is that?” Forrest asked in alarm.

      And Rae bristled all over again with outrage. “That is my son,” she replied as she hurried off to the nursery.

      * * *

      Tension gripped the chief, and he tightened his grasp on his cell phone before sliding it back into his pocket.

      Behind him, sitting on the porch of his two-story farmhouse, Hays Colton chuckled. “Forrest has always had good timing,” he said of his son. “You drive out here, looking for him, and he calls you like he somehow knew.”

      Chief Thompson shook his head. “That’s not why he called.” And he could have pointed out that Forrest’s timing wasn’t always perfect, or young Colton wouldn’t have taken that bullet in his leg. But if his instincts weren’t as strong as they were, he might have taken that bullet in his heart or his head instead of his leg.

      He had survived.

      His shooter had not.

      “What’s wrong?” Hays asked, his blue eyes wide with alarm. “Is he all right?”

      Thompson nodded. “Yeah, he just called to give me a heads-up.”

      “Did he find out the identity of that poor girl found at the pharmaceutical company?”

      The chief shook his head. “I wish that was why he called. Or better yet, to tell me he caught the killer.” Because it would probably hit the news soon anyway, Archer Thompson shared, “He found another body.”

      Another person for the already overworked coroner to identify.

      “I’m sorry,” Hays said. He rose from the porch swing, set his coffee cup on the railing and reached out to pat Thompson’s shoulder.

      They’d known each other for a long time, but Thompson didn’t need any more sympathy. He needed answers—about his sister’s murder and about these bodies that had recently turned up. He uttered a ragged sigh as he pushed himself up from the rocking chair in which he’d been sitting. He didn’t move as fast as he once had, his bones aching now with age and overuse. He didn’t stand quite as straight and tall as he once had either.

      Neither did Hays, though, who had spent too many of his seventy-some years in the saddle, working his ranch. “My son will find out who really killed your sister,” Hays assured him.

      Thompson wanted to believe the killer was Elliot Corgan, because then he would have the satisfaction of knowing the sick bastard had died in prison. But Elliot had denied killing his sister, and there was no way he could have killed that woman whose body had been discovered in the Lone Star Pharma parking lot.

      There was another killer in Whisperwood.

      And until he was caught, the chief had a feeling that bodies would keep turning up.

       Chapter 3

      Cries emanated from the house, drawing Forrest’s attention back to the one-story ranch structure and to her. A shadow passed behind the windows as if she was pacing in her kitchen. She had a baby.

      Somebody had probably mentioned it to Forrest, but he didn’t remember. He’d been preoccupied with the hurricane damage and now with the murder investigation. He surveyed the crime scene. Techs worked on bagging those corroded coins or buttons he’d uncovered, while the coroner worked on removing the body from the hole. They knew what they were doing; they didn’t need his supervising their every move. In fact they’d probably resent it if he did.

      So СКАЧАТЬ