Page 102 of Colton's Last Resort

She gave a faint nod.

He blew out a breath, then cradled her to him. She closed her eyes because the cold had gone deep into her bones. She didn’t know if it was the temperature or nearly being choked to death, but she lay still, absorbing the heat of him as he held her.

He pulled away. His gaze seized on her throat. “I need to get you to the hospital,” he said gruffly.

She opened her mouth, but the words got trapped behind the pain. Looking around over the rocks, she fumbled a hand over them, searching.

She found the little braided cord and lifted it.

When she offered it, he took it from her and raised it to the light. At the sight of the evil eye, he stilled. “Where did you find this?” he asked.

Afraid, she locked her lips together.

He searched her face. Then he shook his head. “You didn’t.”

She lifted her chin in a half nod. A tear slipped past her guard. She wished she could look away. Then she wouldn’t have to watch his disbelief meld into disappointment.

“Laura,” he said. “You promised. Youpromisedme.”

His voice broke and her stomach twisted.I had to, she wanted to tell him.

His grimace was complete. It went through her. As he looked away, closing his hand around the evil eye, she felt it as keenly as a knife.

Noah spent an hour at the police station, watching Doug DeGraw be questioned, booked and processed. Even if he couldn’t be the one leading him through it, he needed to watch, just as he needed to hear the bars roll into place as the man who admitted to killing Allison was locked in a cell.

An accident, he’d claimed. Allison had shown up at his bungalow after dark for his private yoga lesson. When she didn’t respond to his attempts at seduction, he dosed her with fentanyl and waited for the drug to take effect before having his way with her.

“After, she didn’t come around like the others do,” Doug had claimed. “She just lay there. She didn’t breathe. I checked and realized her pulse wasn’t right. It was too slow. I tried to make her come around. She just lay there. Lay there and died.”

“You handled yourself well,” Captain Crabtree told Noah after they both watched Doug sign a confession.

“He’s beat to hell,” Noah pointed out, surveying the damage he’d done to Doug’s face.

“You saved Laura Colton’s life.”

And nearly killed the man who’d almost taken it. If not for Fulton, Noah knew he would have done worse. Each of the knuckles of his right hand ached like a sore tooth from the impact with Doug’s nose, jaw and cheekbone. “I’ve still got a job on Monday?”

“You closed the case,” Crabtree noted.

Noah had spent the entire day on the phone, tracking victims in the wind. He’d finally found one—a twenty-three-year-old colleague of Doug’s who had quit her job a year ago and moved to Tallahassee to live with her folks. She’d been reluctant to talk, and Noah had thought he would have to fly to Florida to speak with her face-to-face. But then she’d broken, and the story had come out. Doug had drugged and raped her, too, similarly.

There were others, Noah knew. A half-dozen women Doug had sedated and terrorized. Noah would find them all. He would bury the man for hurting them, for killing Allison and for nearly killing Laura.

“He tried to frame CJ Knight,” Noah said. “He assumed calling him away from Mariposa soon after Allison’s death would throw suspicion on him. It might have worked, too, had Erica Pike not come forward.”

“Knight was here while you were in interrogation. He confirmed he was with Ms. Pike during the time in question, but not much more.”

“What did he have to say about his manager being the killer?” Noah asked.

“He was in shock. He didn’t seem to know what to say.”

“I should’ve seen it sooner,” Noah muttered. “It was Doug’s office who refused to return my calls, not Knight directly.”

“You were pretty deep in the reeds on this one,” Crabtree said knowingly. “But Fulton didn’t see it any faster than you did. I’d like to give you both credit for the arrest.”

“All that matters is that this scumbag is going away forever.”

“Now you can focus on laying your sister to rest. And you’ll take some time off.”

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