Page 1 of Colton's Last Resort

Prologue

Allison Brewer didn’t belong in a morgue. She was a twenty-five-year-old yoga instructor with zero underlying conditions. She never smoked, rarely drank, and was the picture of health and vitality.

Detective Noah Steele sucked in a breath as the coroner, Rod Steinbeck, pulled back the sheet. How many times had he stood over a body at the Yavapai County Coroner’s Office? How many times had he stared unflinchingly at death—at what nature did to humans and what human nature did to others?

She looks like she could still be alive, he thought. No cuts or bruises marred her face. There were no ligature marks. She could have been asleep. She looked perfectly at peace. If Noah squinted, he could fool himself into thinking there was a slight smile at the corners of her mouth. Just as there had been when she’d feigned sleep as a girl.

However, an inescapable blue stain spread across her lips. He could deny it all he wanted, but his sister was gone.

“I’m sorry, Noah,” Rod said and lifted the sheet over her face again.

“No.” The word wasn’t soft or hard, loud or quiet. Noah surprised himself by speaking mildly. As if this were any other body...any other case. His mind was somewhere near the ceiling. His gut turned, and his chest ached. But he let that piece of himself float away, detached. He made himself think like he was trained to think. “What’re your impressions?”

“Fulton’s already been here. It’s his case. And for good reason. You’re going to need some time to process—”

“Rod.” He sounded cold. He was. He was so bitterly cold. And he didn’t know how to live with it. He didn’t know how to live in a world without Allison. “Next of kin would be informed of any progress made in the investigation. I’m her next of kin. Inform me.”

Rod shuffled his feet. Placing his hands at each corner of the head of the steel table, he studied Allison. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this.”

“She’s dead.” Noah made himself say it. He needed to hear it, the finality of it. “If Sedona Police wants me to process that, I need to know how and why.”

Rod adjusted his glasses. “Look, maybe you should talk to Fulton.”

“She was found at the resort,” Noah prompted, undeterred, “where she works.”

“Mariposa.”

“You were on scene there,” Noah surmised. “What time did you arrive?”

Rod gave in. “Nine fifteen.”

“Where was she?”

“One of the pool cabanas,” the coroner explained.

“Tell me what you saw.”

“Come on, Noah...”

“Tell me,” Noah said. He knew not to raise his voice. If he were hysterical, it would get back to his CO. He’d be put on leave.

He needed to work through this. If he stopped working, stopped thinking objectively, he would lose his mind.

Rod lifted his hands. “She was found face down, but one of the staff performed CPR, so she was on her back when I arrived. Her shoes were missing.”

That could’ve been something, Noah thought, if Allison hadn’t had a habit of going around barefoot where she was comfortable, particularly when entering someone’s home.

The temperature had dipped into the thirties the night before.A little cold for no shoes, even for her, he considered. “What was she wearing?”

“Sport jacket and leggings,” Rod explained. “Underneath, she wore a long-sleeved ballet-like top cropped above the navel with crisscrossed bands underneath. It was a matching set, all green.”

“What do you figure for time of death?”

“Right now, I’d say she died somewhere between one and two this morning.”

She hadn’t gone home to bed, Noah mused. “Any cuts, lacerations? Signs of foul play?”

“Some abrasions on the backs of her legs.”

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