Page 62 of Colton First Responder (Coltons of Mustang Valley)

Oh, she had thought she loved Zane, but she hadn’t felt the kind of passion she’d anticipated having for the man she married and intended to spend the rest of her life with.

Grayson’s face suddenly popped into her mind.

Ridiculous. She was grateful to him. She enjoyed sex with him. And rightly or not, she trusted him.

But she didn’t love him. Couldn’t, either now or later. He didn’t seem to want a relationship, and she certainly didn’t want one on the heels of what had happened with her terrible marriage and afterward. She needed time and space...and trust, which would be really difficult for her now.

She turned the corner into the narrow outdoor passageway between Zane’s property and the one next door, both lined with fences. That was where she would open a gate and get inside. She knew where Zane put the key to that door, so even if he had changed locks, there should be no problem, assuming he hadn’t changed hiding places or the code for the security alarm.

She hoped.

She glanced toward the neighbors’ side and was glad to see the row of cacti still there. They apparently didn’t use their gate here, and hopefully didn’t stare at the plants along the fence.

And she wouldn’t even glance toward the guesthouse.

Fortunately Grayson had brought them both gloves to don to avoid leaving fingerprints. Savannah pulled hers on, then quickly searched for the key to the fence lock. There. It was where she’d anticipated, in a small box buried to the right of a fence post. This had been intended to be an emergency way to get on and off the property—and it worked right now.

The main house’s front door? It was much more likely that neighbors would see her there, even if they didn’t recognize her. Plus, she didn’t have the front door key any longer. And the house’s main security camera was aimed there.

As Savannah stepped inside the fence, in the shadow of the vast and lovely mansion she had called home for a couple of years, she saw Grayson approach from the direction of the main street. She waited for him. He, too, wore gloves.

“So far so good,” he said as he reached her side.

“Yes. And—well, I never told Zane, of course, but I kept a key to the side door of the main house hidden on the grounds, too. I didn’t think I’d have any need to use it, but it just—it made me feel a little better, a bit more in control. And I never disposed of it when we got divorced.”

As they talked, they approached the side of the house. A keypad was attached to the wall near the door, and Savannah pulled it open and pressed in some numbers—and waited.

“Good,” she said. “He mustn’t have changed the alarm code, either, or we’d hear a buzz to indicate we needed to try again.”

“Really? Then we wouldn’t have been able to get in the house, even if you know where the key is.” Grayson sounded unhappy.

“From what Zane told me when I moved in, that code hadn’t been changed in decades, so I wasn’t too worried.” There was a garden area off to the side, with a hopbush hedge nearly against the house. Savannah walked five steps with one foot in front of the other, then bent and dug a small hole in the sandy dirt. Sure enough, she found the key in a small box and stood up. Waving it toward Grayson, she said, “Let’s go inside.”

She used the key in a side door, and soon walked into the kitchen—an appropriate entrance for the help, the way she wanted to appear at the moment, she thought.

This was a swanky kitchen, with ornate and imported tile on the floor, and ebony wooden cabinets surrounding the most expensive major appliances, all in gleaming metal.

“We’re in,” she said, knowing her grin was huge. Grayson smiled back, then grew serious again.

“Okay, now that we’re in here, what are we looking for that might have evidence of Zane’s collusion with Schuyler Wells and even Ian Wright?”

Savannah felt her face drop. “Well, I have a couple of ideas, but—Look, here are the possibilities I thought of.” She proceeded to tell him about Zane’s security camera, which was always aimed at the front door, as well as his proclivity for recording all phone calls—or so he’d told her. He’d never let her listen to any. But he did maintain a landline in his home office, so it was worth looking for it and grabbing anything that could have recorded calls. “He probably recorded some or all of his cell calls, too, but I’ve no idea where that phone is. I assume the police have it—or he still does.”

Grayson looked at her. “So first thing, we need to go check out what’s recorded on the security camera at the front door.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But we need to be really careful. The way it’s hanging high up on the wall, I don’t know if we can get to it without having our photos taken, too.”

“Not good. Well, if we do, we’ll just have to bring the whole thing with us so no one else will see us.”

She nodded, though she said, “I’m not sure that’s possible. Getting to it, even with a ladder, isn’t easy. Besides, I think that the recordings of landline calls will be the most likely to include any conversations he had here with Schuyler and Ian. They might not have come to the house at all.”

“Got it.

Now, where’s the front door?”

Savannah led Grayson out of the kitchen and through the wide hallway decorated on both sides with modern artwork. They soon were near the front of the house, but she stopped before taking him into the large, open entry area. She pointed toward the wall to indicate where the camera was mounted, though they couldn’t see the device from here.

He got it. “Do you have any ladders?”

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