Page 1 of Colton's Second Chance
Prologue
Thirty years ago
San Diego, California
Will Colton stood on his parents’ front porch watching his five-year-old son restlessly shift his weight from foot to foot. “Why didn’t you go potty before we left the house?”
Eli glanced up, his nose wrinkling as he answered, “I didn’t have to go then.” The boy frowned and stared at the door as if he could will it open. “What’s takin’ them so long to let us in?”
“I don’t know. I told them last night we were coming over this morning. Someone should be up.” In deference to his son’s emergency, Will knocked again, calling, “Mom? Dad? It’s us.”
Still no answer. Before Eli had an accident, Will twisted the knob of his childhood home and pushed the door open. A niggle of alarm crawled through him that they’d not locked the front door. They may not take the threats of the guy bothering Caroline seriously, but that didn’t mean they should be lax in general home security. Even a safe neighborhood held the potential for crime. “Hello? We’re here.”
Eli pushed past him and sprinted inside, making a beeline for the bathroom.
Will chuckled and turned to close the door and hang up his jacket. “Caroline? Mom? Where is everybody?”
The house was still dark, and no scent of brewing coffee welcomed him, which was odd, considering his motherconsidered coffee first thing in the morning an unbendable rule of life.
“It’s for your own good,” she’d tease. “You don’t want to deal with me uncaffeinated.”
So maybe the family had overslept? Will ducked his head in the kitchen, confirming no one was there before heading down the hall toward his parents’ bedroom. He was just about to call out again, when Eli barreled out of the hall bathroom, zipping his jeans and crashing into Will. “Whoa, partner! No running in the house. Remember?”
“Sorry,” Eli muttered, though, due to his recently lost front tooth, it came out more likethorry.
“I don’t think Grandma and Grandpa are out of bed yet. Why don’t you go wait in the kitchen, and I’ll check on them. Okay?” Will turned Eli with a firm hand on his shoulder and nudged him down the hall.
With a shrug, Eli complied. “When are we eating breakfast? I’m hungry.”
“Soon. Be patient.”
As he headed down the hall to the last bedroom on the right, Will glanced in his younger sister Caroline’s bedroom. Her bed was made, and the room appeared to be vacant. Again, this seemed odd. At seventeen, his sister typically slept until noon on Saturdays. For her to be up and gone early on a weekend morning was unusual. Had Caroline been given a last-minute modeling job? When they made plans last night to have breakfast together this morning, his mother had not mentioned anything on their calendar or Caroline’s.
His parents’ bedroom door was closed, and for a moment, he wondered if they might be taking advantage of Caroline’s absence for a bit of morning—
Will shuddered, and with a wry snort, he shook his head.Nope.His brain refused to go there. His parents didn’t have sex. He, Ryan and Caroline were brought by the stork. End of story.
Just the same, he knocked and waited for a reply before opening the door. When he got no response, he cracked the door open a sliver and called in, “Yo! Everybody decent in there?”
No answer. A pulse of growing confusion and, okay,concernpulsed through him. What was going on? Where was everyone?
He pushed the door wider. “Mom? Dad?” He peeked around the door. “Eli says he’s hungry, and—”
Ice slithered through him. Horror froze him for a beat as he stared in disbelief at his parents lying in bed… blood soaking their sheets. The number of stab wounds, the pale color of their skin and the fixed stare of their eyes left no doubt they were dead.
Will opened his mouth to wail in grief and shock, but the sound that rang in his ears was not his voice but Eli’s.
His son was screaming in terror.
Jolted from his own trauma by the fear in Eli’s cries, Will stumbled backward from the bedroom and raced down the hall toward the kitchen. “Eli!”
But his boy’s screams were coming from the family room. Choking on the bile that rose in his throat, Will rushed to find Eli.
He found his son standing in the center of the room, shaking and crying, his wide blue eyes fixed on two figures on the sofa. Dread pooled in Will’s gut as he rounded the end of the couch and took in the macabre scene.
Caroline was sitting on the couch, wearing a skimpy black dress. She had scarlet smears and bruises around her neck and was propped by decorative pillows to lean against a man. The man, whom Will recognized from police reports as JasonStevens, Caroline’s stalker, had blood all over his clothes and face and hands.
The bloody butcher knife that had likely been used to kill Will’s parents was on the coffee table. A red-smudged syringe lay discarded on the couch beside Stevens. He and Caroline were both clearly dead.
