Page 5 of Colton's Second Chance
Shelby, Alaska
After disconnecting the call with Noelle, Eli sat in his ABI office, fingers steepled and tapping his chin. He replayed the call, the sound of her voice and what wasn’t said but plainly heard in the silences. Her flat refusal of his offer to help, saying she didn’t need him, had cut him deeply and salted old sores. But he shouldn’t have lost his cool, shouldn’t have snarled at her the way he had.
I got that message a long time ago.
Eli winced at the memory of his harsh tone. Not the professional presentation he’d intended when he started the call. Maybe if she’d had even a morsel of warmth in her voice, sounded even a little bit happy to hear from him—
Happy? When he was giving her tragic news about her sister?Come on, Colton. Get real.The message was as clear now as it had been thirteen years ago. He’d always cared more for her than she had for him. How else could she have walked away from their relationship and cut off contact without a backward glance? He’d never understood her reasons for the breakup, buthe had been left without any recourse. When Noelle left him, she was just…gone. She never took his calls again, never replied to texts, never explained herself.
And he’d never gotten over her. His love had been deep and true, and her departure wounded him, heart and soul.
“What’s with you?” His partner, Asher Rafferty, strolled into their shared office. Rafferty brought both the clinging chill of the November day on his clothes and a cup of steaming coffee in his hand. “You look like you just lost your best friend.”
Eli straightened in his chair and lowered his hands to his desktop. “Close.”
Asher did a double take. “Dang. I was kidding, but…what’s going on?”
“I just talked to Allison Harris’s sister. I let her know we identified Allison as one of the Fiancée Killer’s victims.” He picked up a pen and tapped it on the file open on his desk.
“You made the next of kin notification by phone?”
“I made sure someone from Seattle PD was there with her. But I needed to be the one to break the news to her.”
“Why? You didn’t do the notification for any of the other victims’ families.”
“Because I know her. I was…involved with her in college. I wanted to be the one… If she found out I’m working the case and hadn’t… I thought I owed her…”
“Because it was an excuse to talk to her again?” Asher asked, proving he was too perceptive to be convinced otherwise.
Eli rubbed the back of his neck and arched a dark brown eyebrow. “Maybe so. But isn’t it better she knows I’m working the case before she gets here? Can you imagine if we meet by chance in the hall at the coroner’s office or she reads my name in a newspaper article regarding the case? I don’t want her to think I’m avoiding her.”
“So she’s coming up here?”
Eli nodded. “To claim the body and make the funeral arrangements.”
“And you plan to see her? Even seek her out?” Asher asked, propping his feet on his desk.
“I, uh, guess I’ll leave that up to fate. I don’t plan to avoid her. If we run into each other…” Eli waved a hand, not knowing how to finish that sentence. What would he do if he saw Noelle while she was in town? His heart squeezed at the prospect.
“Yeah?” Asher prompted.
Eli bent over the file in front of him and flipped through the pages of notes. “Well, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”
Two days later, when Eli stepped into the lobby of the medical examiner’s office from the parking lot, he reached that bridge.
Chapter 2
Noelle stood with her arms crossed over her chest, clearly embroiled in a disagreement with an older couple whose backs were to him.
“My adoption made me her family. The law recognizes me as her sister, and that makesmenext of kin!” Noelle said, her shoulders squared and her jaw rigid.
“Well,Idon’t recognize you as anything but trouble,” the gray-haired woman retorted. “You’re not our blood, and you shouldn’t have a say in anything regardingmy niece.”
His hackles raised on Noelle’s behalf, Eli moved closer, blatantly eavesdropping. His approach caught Noelle’s attention, and she visibly shuddered when she spotted him. Her distraction lasted only seconds before she raised her chin a notch, and fire blazed from her dark brown eyes.
Her hair was shorter than it had been in college, he noted. Her thick black hair hung in a straight curtain to her shoulders, parted on the side and tucked behind her ears.
The older woman had aimed a finger at Noelle and was still railing at her in caustic tones. “If you think you’re going to get your grubby paws on my sister’s inheritance or anything else that belongs to my family, you can think again!”
