Colton Under Fire

Sloane had only gotten more beautiful with age, which anyone could have seen coming if they bothered to take a good look at her back in high school. What he hadn’t predicted, though, was the sadness lurking in her big, expressive hazel eyes. Like she’d given up on herself. What had done that to her? She’d been braver than just about anyone he knew.

A need to understand her, to find out what had happened to her, surged through him. She looked as if she could use someone to protect her. Which was quite a change from the girl he’d once known.

Ever since he’d met her at the ripe old age of seven or so, Sloan had been a firecracker, fully able to take care of herself. She raced through life like a runaway train, flattening every obstacle that dared step into her path.

Not that her fierce independence had prevented her older brother, Fox, from looking out for her just as fiercely. Of course, as Fox’s best friend, it had fallen to Liam to help defend Sloane over the years. A task he’d taken on with secret relish—

Let it go, buddy.

His fantasies of Sloane Colton were just that. Fantasies. She would never see anything in a plain, ordinary, hometown guy like him. If only he could show her who he was now—

Nope. Not even then. He was a small-town cop living a small-town life. The girl he remembered wouldn’t ever see any appeal in that.

Sloane had run off to the bright lights of the big city as soon as she could after high school and college. Married a rich, high-powered lawyer, and became a renowned defense attorney herself. She obviously wanted excitement out of life. Challenge. She didn’t want anything to do with sleepy Roaring Springs or the people in it.

He swore under his breath. Who knew that, after all this time, he could still carry a hotly lit torch for a girl he’d grown up with? He had to find a way to douse it and get on with his life.

Liam checked in on the prisoner on the second floor, still sleeping off his alcohol binge, before heading out to his truck. It dawned on him he didn’t know where Sloane lived. He could call Fox—Strike that. No Coltons. He called the police station to run her address.

Her house was only a few blocks from where he’d grown up. And where he lived now. He’d renovated and then moved into the apartment over the garage of his parents’ home last year after his father died.

It was hell on his social life to be that guy who, in his early thirties, lived at home with his mom. But her health was frail and she needed help. He’d been a late-in-life only child, and there was no one else for his mother to lean on.

Sloane’s street was quiet. Bucolic. Lined with trees and upscale craftsman bungalows vying to be the most authentically restored. It was well after midnight, and only sporadic imitation gas porch lights cast any glow into the dark shadows wreathing the street.

Huh. He wouldn’t have pegged her for the type to live in a cozy neighborhood like this. What was up with that?

He pulled his truck into Sloane’s driveway and was just reaching for the door handle when he spied something slipping around the back corner of her house.

Whatever it was looked too big for a dog or a coyote. Frowning, he climbed out of his truck and crunched up the gravel drive. He moved cautiously toward the bushes, giving a wild animal plenty of time to get away. No sense startling a bear or cougar. He turned on the flashlight function of his smartphone and shone it at the holly bush. No eyes glowed back at him. But jumbled shoe prints leaped into view in the snow. What the—?

He raced around the corner of the house, following the boot prints through the ankle-deep snow in Sloane’s backyard and into the green belt behind her house. The prints led down a hill to an asphalt bike path that the snow had melted off of in the past few days. The asphalt was dry and gray and gave no clue as to which direction the person had gone. He listened carefully and heard no running footsteps.

His money was on the guy having had a bicycle parked back here. Jerk was long gone by now.

An intruder, maybe? Burglar? Peeping Tom? Or maybe he was thinking too much like a cop. It could’ve just been some neighborhood kid sneaking home through her yard.

Except it was too cold and too late on a school night for kids to be out fooling around. In full detective mode, he snapped photos of the footprints and called in the incident, putting it into the official police record. It was going to cause some extra paperwork for him, but whatever. Sloane might be in danger.

Before he unlocked her front door, he inspected the lock and jamb for signs of any attempt at forced entry. Nope, no scratches. Although that was a pitiful excuse for a lock. Just the original brass knob’s lock protected her house. She needed a decent dead bolt at a minimum. Even an amateur thief could pick the existing lock in a matter of seconds.

Frowning, he opened the door and stepped in.

The living room was thin on furniture with only some bean bag chairs, a big recliner and a flat screen TV hanging on the wall.

The place had clearly undergone one of those open concept remodels recently that knocked out most of the walls. The living room flowed into a dining room taken up with toddler toys and no furniture and on back into a gourmet kitchen.

He headed down the hallway, and the first room he came upon was Chloe’s, a princess paradise. A low bed was tucked inside a fairy castle, and a night-light cast firework patterns on the ceiling. He backed out of the room, feeling oversize and alien surrounded by so much...sparkle.

A hallway bathroom was unremarkable and he left that quickly. A utility closet held a furnace, and the door at the end of the hall revealed a bedroom much more his speed. Four-poster bed. No-frills navy comforter. A handmade-looking oak dresser and chest of drawers were crowded with framed pictures of Chloe, but other than those, the room was devoid of decoration—or any personality.

Odd. Was Sloane still unpacking, or was she that shut down emotionally?

He opened the first of two interior doors in Sloane’s bedroom and found an elegant, but sterile, bathroom. It was pretty but didn’t feel lived in.

Where was the real Sloane Colton hiding in this house? He hadn’t found her yet.

The second door revealed a spacious walk-in closet the size of a small bedroom. A riot of color and texture assaulted his eyes as he turned on the light. Ahh. Here she was. The fiery Sloane he remembered so clearly.

He looked for something to put her clothes in and spied a duffel bag stuffed on a high shelf. He reached up, needing his full six-foot height to grab it. He turned his head to the side as he reached for the back of the shelf and happened to glance out into her bedroom. Which was probably why he spotted the tiny hole in the wall, hidden high in a shadowed corner of the room, tucked beneath the beautiful, dark oak crown molding.

Maybe if he hadn’t already been suspicious of an intruder, he would’ve ignored the hole. But as it was, he took the duffel and moved over to the chest of drawers underneath the hole, and then took a quick peek. A tiny glass circle filled the small opening.

Alarm exploded in his gut and fury threatened to overcome reason.

For all the world, that looked like a surveillance camera.

Stop. Breathe. Think. It wasn’t necessarily what it looked like.

Maybe Sloane had some sort of high-tech security system installed in her house.

Or was that camera something more sinister?

Surely, he was being paranoid. After all, he was bored to death being a police detective in a quiet little town where the occasional bicycle theft was about as exciting as police work got.

Until that murder last month out at the Crooked C ranch, of course. A high-end call girl who’d been seen up at the resort had been killed by a client. Initially, there were two possible suspects—Wyatt Colton as well as European millionaire George Stratton, who’d brought the girl in from Vegas. But upon further investigation, the sheriff’s department figured out that a disturbed man who’d later killed himself had done the deed.

Liam forced himself not to look up at the camera lens as he randomly opened drawers in search of clothes for Sloane. His mind raced as he found socks, T-shirts and sweaters.

Why would anybody covertly surveil a young mother in Roaring Springs? Who had Sloane made an enemy of? A criminal she’d been involved with in her work? The ex-husband? Either way, a random stranger going to all the trouble to set up surveillance on her was not likely.

He retreated to the closet, where he spied jeans and sweatshirts folded on shelves and grabbed one of each.

He moved to the shoe rack and was bemused to discover that it rotated. How many pairs of shoes did one woman need, anyway?

He grabbed a pair of gym shoes made of a knit fabric that looked comfortable and headed for her bathroom. There had better not be a camera in there, or there would be hell to pay. He took a surreptitious look at each of the corners and spied nothing but paint. Then he did a thorough search of the walls as well to assure himself there were no hidden surveillance devices in the vicinity.

Not a sicko Peeping Tom, then. Which left something—or someone—more sinister behind that camera in her bedroom. He swore under his breath and grabbed a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste out of the cup by her sink.

Taking a moment to look at the duffel bag, he forced himself to think about what he’d forgotten to pack for her.

Goop. Fox always used to complain that Sloane was a world-class goop collector and hogged the bathroom they’d shared to smear it all over herself.

Liam warily eyed the neat rows of bottles and tubes on the counter.

Did Sloane even wear makeup? He honestly didn’t remember. He’d been so shocked by the girl he’d had a giant crush on all through high school slamming into him out of the blue at the hospital that he hadn’t registered any of the details he usually would as an observant detective.

What was he missing?