Page 44 of Colton's Secret Weapon
Because they most definitely were in question.
“After the break-in and her father’s disappearance, it didn’t seem prudent to have her in her small place alone. She’s staying in my guest room. At the opposite end of the house from me, as you well know. I’d left my phone in the kitchen when I’d headed back upstairs from making coffee. She heard the phone ring and, seeing Kansas’s name, knowing it was about her father, she answered it.”
“And you’re honestly going to tell me you haven’t noticed how hot she is?”
He refused to validate the question with an answer.
“I’m just giving you a hard time,” Eli said then, all notes of teasing gone from his voice. “Seriously, bro, you’re a Colton, doing what any of the rest of us would in the same situation. You think she’s going to be okay if Whaler doesn’t make it?”
He was doing all he could not to ask himself that question. “She won’t have much choice, will she?” he responded in the only way he knew how. Logically. And then asked, “Still nothing solid on Brad Fletcher?”
“Nothing we can pick him up for. Or even sufficient evidence to get a warrant for his phone records. Based on some of his known associations, it’s likely that he hired someone to trashDove’s studio. Probably has someone watching her house, too. I know Kansas is looking at him seriously for Whaler’s assault. Hope to God some prints show up on the clothes she brought in. In the meantime, I figure him for putting pressure on Dove within the next several hours. Fits the MO. The man is determined to take over Whaler’s business.”
Mitchell had already come to the same conclusion. “I’ve told her not to answer if he calls. To leave any text messages and voice mails for me to deal with,” he said.
“Be extra diligent, Mitchell. This Fletcher guy…he doesn’t need the income from Whaler’s business. He’s just a number one ass. It’s all about him. Him getting what he wants. Anyone tries to tell him no or go against him, he makes them pay. Including the three ex-wives in his past, from what I’ve heard.”
The news tightened the muscles in Mitchell’s gut. And honed his thinking to getting back to Dove—and not letting her out of his sight if he could help it.
Maybe a bit drastic. But there, just the same.
There was an off note in Eli’s tone that got through to him, too. Enough so that before he ended the call he said, “You sound tired. Still nothing on the body that Hetty and Spence stumbled upon?”
“It’s worse than that,” Eli said, gaining Mitchell’s full attention. Worse than an unidentified young female corpse half buried with her left hand—bearing a flashy engagement ring—sticking out of the ground?
“Two more bodies have shown up in the past twenty-four hours,” Eli said. “Both found along the Muskee Glacier Pass. Both young women, both half-buried, left hands exposed. Haven’t been able to identify either one of them. Coroner thinks they’ve both been dead about a year.”
“Dear Lord,” Mitchell hissed quietly. Implications quickly piling atop each other.
“It’s looking like we’ve got a serial killer, Eli spoke aloud the conclusion Mitchell was reaching on his own, already grabbing his keys.
To hell with an officer outside Whaler’s door. Mitchell was heading straight back to the hospital. A serial killer on the loose with victims getting closer to Shelby?
Dove, a young, gorgeous and sexy woman?
What if there was an explanation far more sinister than Brad Fletcher for the break-in at Dove’s studio? And the subsequent possible stalker outside her house? What if her woes, and Whaler’s, weren’t related at all?
Telling his brother to keep him posted and to let him know if there was anything he could do to help, Mitchell was already in his car, engine started as he hung up.
A serial killer on the loose, and Dove vulnerable and unprotected? With no family to check in on her? Protocol be damned.
Mitchell wasn’t letting the woman out of his sight.
Whaler hadn’t moved a muscle, other than to breathe. The fact that he was managing to do that on his own was cause for great thanks. Maybe even miracle level.
As were his vitals. Considering the way he’d abused his body over the past couple of years, sousing it in alcohol and failing to feed it healthy meals often enough, he was actually doing well. His blood pressure was a little high. His oxygen levels were good. Thank God he wasn’t a smoker.
The biggest concern was the obvious trauma to his head. The fact that he hadn’t shown a single sign of regaining consciousness was a huge concern. He was scheduled for more scanning later in the day or early the following morning. Until then, all anyone could tell Dove was that he was in a coma.
There was no prognosis.
Except to hope, every second, that it would be the one in which he woke up.
Hours of sitting in the chair by his bed, holding his hand, talking to him, while she hoped hard with every breath, was draining Dove of the very strength she needed to help keep her dad alive.
Slowly stealing her positive energy away in the process.
So when her friend and client Hetty Amos texted, saying that she was at the hospital for a checkup on the healing bullet wound she’d sustained in her leg and was available if Dove wanted to talk, Dove agreed to meet her at the coffee shop just down from the hospital.
