Page 16 of Colton's Last Resort

Allison: I miss you!

Noah: Miss you, too. Sorry about lunch.

Allison: It’s NBD. I know work’s crazy. Hugs!

Noah: Hugs to you.

Noah winced as he scrolled through the next exchange.

Allison: I’m at the cantina.

Noah: Damn. I’m across town. Had to make an arrest. I’m sorry, Al.

Allison: It’s ok.

Noah: I’ll pick you up.

Allison: It’s nice out. I can walk.

Noah: Let me know if you change your mind.

Allison: Will do.

A smiley face capped the message.

He looked for subtext. He searched for anger on her part. Blame. Disappointment. Anything to beat himself up with. As ever, he found nothing. Just happy, look-on-the-bright-side Allison.

The only other person who’d loved him like this...who’d worried about him like this and looked out for him...was his mother. Before she was killed and he had gotten dumped into the system.

He’d let her down. Even if Allison didn’t know it, he’d let her down.

He had to live with that. He had to live with the fact that there would be no more text messages at 10:00 p.m. telling him torelax...unwind...life’s short...live well...

Forcing himself to swallow, he took stock of his emotions. He felt raw, unspooled. He’d gone at Laura Colton too hard. If she really was Allison’s friend, did she have a litany of cheerful, forgotten text messages that broke her heart in hindsight, too?

There was movement, he noticed. He stuffed the phone back in his pocket as a security guard moved into the Coltons’ circle. He placed a hand on Joshua’s shoulder. They all turned to listen. Joshua nodded and walked away.

Laura and Adam spoke quietly, nodding back and forth before moving toward the door.

Maybe he should apologize to her, Noah thought. He could have waited to question the Coltons, done some digging into them and Mariposa first... But he hadn’t been thinking with his head when he’d left Allison at the coroner’s office.

He’d done this before with his mother. There had been grief, and he’d been alone then, too. Nobody had cared about him, much less commiserated with him. He didn’t know how to expose the hurt and had no idea how to talk about it. The shock of Allison’s death had put his fists up and his head down like a brawler.

He’d swung at Laura Colton, Noah reflected as Adam escorted her into C Building to face off with him again. Noah did his best to relax his stance.Breathe, Allison said in his ear as Laura’s gaze climbed back to his.

“It was a mistake,” he said without taking a beat to think about the wording. He backtracked. “Yelling at you in the break room. It shouldn’t have happened. I apologize.”

Her hands balled together over the parting of Adam’s jacket. After a moment, she nodded shortly. “I accept your apology.”

“That doesn’t resolve everything that happened here this evening,” Adam said evenly. “I intend to call the Sedona Police Department for some clarity on the situation. They wouldn’t let you lead this investigation if Allison was a relation of yours, which is why Fulton was the detective on scene this morning. Not you. Does your commanding officer know you’re here now?”

Noah studied Laura and her cold, white-knuckled hands. Then he asked the man, “If it was your sister, what would you do? Would you sit around, bury your head in the sand, hoping somebody else figures out what happened to her? Or would you use every skill, every resource at your disposal, to make sure what happened to her is brought to light?”

Adam tilted his head. “I understand why you’re here, Detective. As a brother, I sympathize, and I’m deeply sorry for your loss. If I didn’t have Laura...” His shoulders lifted, then settled as he deflated. “I wouldn’t be standing here.”

“Adam.” Laura spoke her brother’s name in a whisper. She raised her hand to his arm as she had outside. This time, she held it.

“But the fact remains that we don’t know what happened to Allison, precisely,” Adam went on. “We don’t know that anyone at Mariposa is responsible or if she died of natural causes. That’s for the coroner to decide, yes?”

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