Colton Family Rescue. Justine Davis
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would go about a murder. But I heard John Eckhart caught the case. He’s a good detective, one of the best. He’ll—”
“Liddy,” Emma said suddenly.
Jolie looked at the child on her lap. “What, honey?”
“Her eyes were like Liddy’s.”
Officer Wilcox looked at Jolie, clearly puzzled.
“Lydia,” Jolie explained. “She’s an anime character Emma loves.” Her brow furrowed, and then she smoothed back Emma’s tousled hair. “Do you mean the color, honey?”
“Green.”
“Well, now,” Officer Wilcox said with a wide smile. “That’s brilliant, Emma.”
The flicker of a smile curved Emma’s mouth. Wilcox was obviously a very kind woman. Jolie gave a brief, silent thanks, as she always did, to Art Reagan, the beat cop who’d pulled her out of a morass of trouble and helped set her on a better path. And who had kept her from forever being wary of anyone who wore the uniform and badge. It was he who’d gotten her the job at the Colton Valley Ranch. He was distantly related to Bettina Morely, the cook there, and she’d given Jolie the chance on his say-so.
She felt a sudden burst of longing, something she hadn’t felt—hadn’t allowed herself to feel—in a very long time. A longing for the safety and happiness and hope she’d felt for that idyllic and painfully short time. Right now especially for the safety. And for the man who’d made her feel that way, that she—and her little girl—would be safe. She wanted more than anything to feel that way again.
She yanked her frazzled brain off that fruitless path.
“Do you know who she is?” Jolie asked. Was, she amended silently, grimly.
“Can’t say yet.” Officer Wilcox looked up, assessing her.
“What?”
“Just thinking...”
“What?” Jolie asked again. When the woman hesitated, she added, “My little girl has witnessed an awful crime, and was threatened herself.”
“Might have been worse, if you hadn’t gotten there so quickly.”
Jolie didn’t need the woman to remind her the killer could have broken a car window and gotten to Emma. That her little girl could have been killed right then. She suppressed a shudder and went on.
“You know what witnessing something like this could do to her,” Jolie said. Probably leave her with an indelible, lifetime, horrible memory long term, and likely nightmares and skittishness or worse short term. None of which she wanted to say aloud in front of Emma, for fear it might plant the ideas. But she was guessing this officer would understand that; she seemed a very perceptive and insightful sort. And she was a mom. “If she can deal with that, I can deal with whatever you’re thinking.”
Officer Wilcox glanced over her shoulder to where the van was finally pulling away. Then she looked back at Jolie, rather intently. “She was about five foot eight, I’d say a hundred and twenty-five pounds. Long dark hair. Gray eyes.”
Jolie’s breath caught as it registered. She went very still as her gaze shifted to the departing van. Her arms tightened around Emma, enough so the girl made a little sound of protest. She made herself ease up, tried to suppress the shiver that went through her.
Five-eight. A hundred twenty-five pounds. Long dark hair. Gray eyes.
Wilcox could have been describing her.
* * *
“She came back for more money, of course.”
T.C. barely heard his brother’s gloating words. He was staring out at the city he loved, the city he’d thought Jolie long gone from. In truth, he’d half suspected she was long gone from Texas altogether. But perhaps he should have known better; he’d been Texas born and bred just as she had, and the blood of Texians ran in her veins just as it did in his. They might succeed elsewhere, might even flourish, but there would always be a part of them that longed for this unique, amazing place.
“I told the cops she has a huge motive. I’ll bet the old man turned her down when she came at him for more money, and she killed him.”
T.C. knew Fowler wanted him to react, so he kept his mouth shut.
“As if what Mom and Dad gave her back then to stay away from you wasn’t enough. Greedy little bi—”
“Shut the hell up, Fowler.”
He knew the instant he said it, it was a mistake. And Fowler proved him right by practically crowing. “Ha! I knew it, you fool. I knew you’d never gotten over that little slut!”
T.C. spun around to stare at his brother. When he spoke, his voice was as cold as a rare Texas snow. “It’s going to take you longer to get over the bones I’m going to break if you don’t get your ass out of here.”
They were nearly the same height, but T.C. was younger, stronger, and tougher—those parties Fowler tended toward, not to mention the overindulgences, softened a man—and they both knew it. They’d been involved in enough brawls growing up, and a few after that, that there was little doubt who would be left standing. Besides, Fowler no longer got his own hands dirty. He paid others to do his dirty work for him.
Like someone to kidnap, or even kill, his own father?
T.C. tried to quash the thought, but at this point he had few illusions about his family, in particular his ruthless brother.
“Really?” Fowler said in that superior tone he adopted when someone called him on his obnoxiousness. “Resorting to physical abuse now?”
“It’s more honest than your kind of abuse,” T.C. said, knowing he’d won the instant he heard the shift in attitude. In a moment Fowler would raise his nose and sniff, as if of course he was far above such tactics. When it happened, T.C. nearly laughed aloud. His brother was nothing if not predictable.
Fowler left without another word. T.C. sat back down, and the sound of the desk chair shifting seemed abnormally loud in the quiet after their outburst.
In typical Fowler fashion, he left the office door standing open. T.C. stared at it, thinking he should get up and close it, but in that moment even that simple action was beyond him. And then Hannah was there at the doorway, glancing in only long enough to roll her eyes expressively before pulling it shut for him. A thought jabbed at him; given Fowler’s penchant for revenge, the passive-aggressive kind, he wondered how he was treating Hannah. He’d have to ask, because he doubted the assistant would complain. He was going to give her that raise, whether or not she wanted or needed it, T.C. thought.
He turned back to the windows, to the view he’d been contemplating before his brother burst in. It looked no different. There had been no change in the buildings, the reflections of the Texas sun on the glass edifices, the orb on the tower was still there.
And yet it felt entirely different.
How could the knowledge of the presence of one person among the million-plus that populated Dallas proper change everything? How could the thought that Jolie was here now make even the bright Texas sun seem different?
Why was she here? Had she ever even left at all? Could she have been within reach, even, as he went about his life, went about Colton business? Fowler said he’d seen her, and he rarely left the Central Business District unless it was for some party or function, and T.C. would have known about that. No, his brother liked to stay where he could tell himself he was an uncrowned prince of industry, with frequent jaunts to Austin to walk the halls of power, as if he needed to prove to himself just how much weight the Colton name carried. But he hadn’t made one of those trips for a couple of weeks, and he’d obviously seen Jolie recently.
Maybe even today.
Damn, he should have asked him where. But that would have given Fowler more satisfaction than he was willing to provide.
Besides,