Page 14 of Colton's Last Resort

He stopped roving. His palm scraped across his jaw, the Roman numerals etched across his knuckles flashing. “Nothing else makes sense.”

“Murder at Mariposa doesn’t make sense,” she said. “The people here aren’t prone to violence.”

He dropped his hand in shock. “You actually believe that?”

She didn’t answer. His mockery locked her jaw.

“Here’s a news flash,” he said. “Most people are inherently violent.”

“If you actually believe that,” she countered, “then I’d say you have a very narrow view of humanity. And so would Allison.”

He flinched. “Someone at your resort killed my sister, Ms. Colton,” he said. “I’d advise you to watch your back, because I won’t rest until I have proof.”

The quiet warning coursed through her. She sensed, if this man had his way, Mariposa would be reduced to rubble before he was done.

Chapter 4

Goddamn it. She had to be beautiful.

Inside C Building, Noah watched Laura Colton and her brothers through the glass doors of the atrium. Legs spread, arms crossed, he listened to harp strings and water cascading cheerfully from the fountain to his left, trying to read the exchange. Trying to discern what was on her face.

He didn’t have to. He recognized it, and it drove a knife through him. She was grieving. The tension around the frown lines of her mouth were indicators, just like her heartbreakingly blue eyes drawn down at the corners. She eyed him, too, through the glass doors as Adam and Joshua Colton stood on either side of her, debating what to do about the situation.

Although he gathered sadness and confusion from her face, she didn’t waver. She was a winking star at the edge of the galaxy—remote, out of reach and somehow constant.

His shoulders itched. He didn’t roll them, but the urge bothered him. It raised the hair on the backs of his arms and neck. The supernatural sense strengthened as she continued to stare.

He could be constant, too—like a roadblock. An obstacle. He would stop traffic. He would dent fenders. He would do anything to find out what had happened here.

It didn’t matter if it made waves for these people. Nothing mattered except Allison.

He hadn’t been there. The hopeless thought burned on the edge of his conscience. It burned and smoked, and he hated himself.

He hadn’t been there for Allison. Not in the last few months. Not like he should have been. He’d been distracted by work, his closure rate at the SPD and the rise in homicides around the area.

And now Allison was dead. If it wasn’t someone else’s fault, it was his.

He was responsible...until he found who was to blame.

He couldn’t live with her death on his conscience. That sweet little girl. She’d had no one, and he’d promised her. He’dswornhe would be there for her—until the last breath.

That last breath was supposed to be his, not hers. It wasn’t supposed to be her. It should be another person lying under a sheet at the coroner’s office.

He’d known she was too soft for this world—too pure. Too good. And, like a son of a bitch, he’d neglected her.

Her voice came to him.I’m an adult. Noah, you don’t have to chase my monsters out of the closet anymore.

Are you sure about that?he’d challenged.

She had laughed, dropping her head back and belting. Allison never did things halfway, especially when they brought her joy. She’d taken his hand as she’d said,There are no more monsters. We’re free of them now.

He was the monster, he realized. He was a monster who’d abandoned her to the real world, and she was dead because of it.

As if she could read his thoughts, Laura Colton shivered. She broke the staring contest by turning to gaze at her younger brother, folding her arms around herself.

She was cold, he mulled. Of course she was cold. She was standing outside with the barest of snow flurries falling at a slant from the north. Her white dress was long-sleeved, with a leather belt cinched at the waist and a rustic blue handkerchief tied elaborately at her throat in a Western knot. The handkerchief wasn’t meant to keep out the cold. It was silk, for Christ’s sake. The dress may have been long, but there was a slit on one side.

As she shifted, he saw a flash of creamy skin. Her boots, the same blue as the handkerchief, with custom floral tooling, rose to just below the knee. Her shoulder-length blond hair swung as the wind flurried and spiraled. She shivered again, visibly.

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