Page 34 of Colton First Responder (Coltons of Mustang Valley)

Now, the family members who were here all dug into their salads, conversing with the others around them. For a while. For a frustrating while to Grayson. And so he was the first to speak up.

“It’s good to see all of you,” he lied, looking around. Well, maybe it wasn’t a total lie. He didn’t enjoy much camaraderie with his family members, but it was okay to see them now and then. “And I know something is going on around here, which is why I’m here. But first thing—I’d really like to know how Dad is doing.”

There. That should get them talking. Grayson glanced first toward Ace, who stared at him as if he’d been slugged.

“He’s still alive, at least,” Ainsley said from between them. She clutched her salad fork, then placed it on her plate. “But he remains in a coma.”

At least their father still held his own, Grayson thought. That was a good thing. He wanted to ask about the investigation into the shooting but, for Ace’s sake, hesitated.

Ace spoke up, though. “And in case any of you still wonders if I was the one to shoot him, the answer is no. But I don’t know where the cops stand on their investigation, other than to make assumptions about me because I’d argued with him.”

“An understatement,” laughed Callum. “Oh, I’m not accusing you, bro, but you certainly weren’t pleased when he fired you from Colton Oil.”

“Can you blame me?” Ace countered loudly.

Their adopted brother Rafe, son of the ranch’s old foreman, got into the conversation. “I don’t imagine the cops believe you’re the source of that Arizona State University pin,” he said to Ace. “That’s got to be something in your favor.” The pin, found near their father when he was shot, was considered a possible clue.

“Certainly nothing I had anything to do with, either,” Ace said.

“Besides,” Callum broke in. “So what if Ace wasn’t a Colton by blood? The bylaws should be changed. And one of the reasons I wanted to get you all together was to give an update on our investigation into who actually was the baby Ace was swapped with.”

For nearly the rest of the meal, Grayson listened to the discussion going on.

Callum had narrowed in on Luella, a nurse at the hospital, who had also given birth to a baby on the night of Ace’s birth forty years ago. She had left quickly, allegedly to find better medical care for her baby, since that infant had major medical issues.

No one had yet been able to find Luella to learn any more. One good thing, though, was that the nurse who’d first identified Luella had recently let Callum know she’d finally remembered Luella’s last name: Smith. Of course that wasn’t great news because the name was too common. But Callum hadn’t given up.

The conclusion at the end of dinner that night? The search continued. Callum told them he’d tracked every Luella Smith in Arizona and bordering states. Three had seemed like possibilities because of their ages. But none had panned out.

“The last time Luella Smith seemed to have existed was on Christmas Day forty years ago,” Callum said, “and then she vanished off the face of the earth. There’s no birth record of her son, since those records were destroyed in the hospital fire. And since she apparently switched babies and took one that wasn’t hers, she must have forged a birth certificate for him.”

“She must have taken on a fake name, don’t you think?” Grayson asked.

“Yes, that’s what we think,” Ainsley replied. “And we’ll find her one day, somehow, someway. Turning over rocks always reveals something.”

Grayson’s siblings had also begun trying to track down the other babies born locally on Christmas morning forty years ago by checking through newspaper microfiches and doing online searches. Maybe one of them was the real, missing Ace Colton.

Well, Callum had said that one reason why this dinner had been called was to let them all know the status of the search. And it was an interesting update, kind of.

Fortunately, the meal included some great-tasting steaks. When Grayson finished eating, he tried to excuse himself.

He wanted to return to his office and do a bit more research.

His intention was to hurry to see Savannah in the morning, let her know what he had already found and discuss with her what to do next—although he figured he knew.

But before they let him go, Callum said to him, “You can’t leave yet. We all want to hear more about how our first responder brother did after the earthquake—and the man you found dead.”

Grayson remained seated and refrained from rolling his eyes. A lot of this had already appeared in the media.

But this was his family, so he described how he had found the crushed transport van with the dead driver.

“But the back was empty inside, right?” Ainsley asked.

“That’s right,” Grayson agreed.

“But they said there’d been someone inside being transported,” Ainsley pressed. “Savannah Oliver, right? She’d been arrested for murdering her husband and was on her way back to prison from the courthouse.”

“That’s what I understand.” Grayson tried not to grit his teeth.

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