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At the sound of Noah’s voice, Jesse’s bad mood lifted. Noah was the son of one of his farmhands and sometimes came with his mother to work. Noah liked talking to Jesse, and since he didn’t cause trouble and his mother worked hard, Jesse didn’t have complaints about him tagging along behind him. He’d actually grown accustomed to the boy’s company and enjoyed listening to his stories.
“Did you hear the good news?” Noah asked.
Jesse could use some good news. “Nah, what did I miss?”
Sometimes, Noah’s news was about his sixth grade class, which wasn’t anything for Jesse to get excited about, but the boy needed to talk. Jesse hoped he could sometimes offer advice to keep Noah on the straight and narrow. He was a good kid, and, despite his father having left Noah and his mom before Noah was born, Noah didn’t seem lacking in parental love.
Noah tipped his red ball cap back on his head. “Mom’s having a baby.”
Jesse stopped, unsure if he had misheard Noah. The boy was right behind him. He turned. “Your mother is pregnant?”
“That’s what she said. It’s a secret, though, so don’t let it get around town.”
Jesse tried to remember what tasks Grace had been assigned for the day. Monitoring the cows? She could get kicked in the stomach. Repairing fencing? That was heavy, hard work. Grace was an experienced farmhand. Should he approach her? Let her know he could give her modified assignments? Offer her leave from work? Jesse knew nothing about babies and even less about pregnancy. What was the right thing to do?
His conscience wouldn’t rest easy until he spoke with Grace. As not to alarm Noah or make the boy think he had caused any problem, he set down his clipboard. “I’ll be right back. Why don’t you give me a hand and take that bag of duck feed to the pond?” It was a task Noah loved, and it had gotten to the point that, when the ducks saw Noah coming, they flocked toward him.
Noah grabbed the small bag of feed. “Okay. Be right back!”
Jesse checked the task schedule. Grace was assigned to the horses that day. He found Grace right where she should have been, feeding the horses. “Hey, Grace.”
She jumped at the sound of her name and turned. “Hey, boss.”
“Everything okay?” he asked. He didn’t want to ask her directly in case she wasn’t ready to talk about it.
Grace was smart. Lines formed around the corners of her eyes. “Noah told you.” She sighed.
He didn’t want the boy in trouble. “He cares about you and so do I. I can pretend not to know until you’re ready to tell me. But I want you to know I have plenty of work that might be less taxing. But it’s up to you, okay?”
Grace brushed her long brown bangs to the side. The rest of her hair was twisted on the back of her head and pinned. “The others will be upset if I’m given the easy work.”
Jesse folded his arms. “There is nothing easy on this farm, and everyone knows it. Plus, I’m the boss. What I say goes. When Tom broke his arm last year in that car accident, no one said a thing when he was given work he could manage.”
Grace’s eyes filled with tears, and she hugged Jesse. “Thank you.” After a couple seconds, she broke away and wiped at her eyes. “I’ve been tired and emotional. I was worried about telling you and the other guys. I don’t want anyone to think I’m getting special treatment.”
“If anyone has a problem with your work, tell them to speak to me. Got it?”
“Yes, boss,” she said with a smile.
Jesse would leave it at that. He’d adjust the schedule going forward and keep Grace safe. Grace seemed to be unaware that Tom, his foreman, had a soft spot for Grace, and the other guys looked to Tom for guidance. Tom would be fine with whatever Grace did, and the other guys would follow his lead.
As Jesse walked back to the barn, he thought again of the brunette police officer. He didn’t have a good reason to see her again. But maybe he’d go into town to buy a few fencing pliers to replace ones that had broken. If his path crossed with the police officer, it would be well worth the trip.
* * *
“Tough break in Rosewood,” Luis said, adjusting the air-conditioning in the car. It was eighty-three degrees, and it felt hotter inside the vehicle.
Annabel set her iced coffee in the cruiser’s cup holder. “Yeah.” She didn’t want to talk about it. Annabel had agreed to read the letters sent from Regina to Matthew, less as a police officer and more as a relation to Matthew Colton.
Though the police had been too late to catch Regina Willard, her room in Rosewood had convinced them that they had the right person. The walls in Regina’s room had been covered in the alphabet, written in red permanent marker, a bull’s-eye drawn beside each letter and newspaper articles of the victims posted on the walls. Hundreds of clippings, obsessive and disturbing. Regina used the same red marker and the bull’s-eye on the foreheads of her victims after she killed them. “Regina’s in the wind.”
“We’ll get another break,” Luis said.
Regina was no longer writing to Matthew Colton in prison. They had the letters and not much else. The FBI might find something in her room or perhaps they’d receive a tip on their hotline, but the more time that passed, the colder the trail grew. “Hopefully soon.”
“What letter is she up to? G?” Luis asked.
“G,” Annabel confirmed. The Alphabet Killer, while adopting some of Matthew Colton’s rituals, had added some of her own. She was killing women of a certain profile—long, dark hair, twenty to thirty-five years old—in letter order based on her victims’ first names. The police hadn’t caught the pattern until the killer’s third victim, Celia Robison, had been killed on her wedding day. She’d had a bull’s-eye center dot slightly off center to the left drawn on her forehead. Celia had been Sam’s fiancée, and her death had brought the serial killer case even closer to home. So close, in fact, the FBI previously suspected Annabel’s long-lost sister, Josie, of being the Alphabet Killer. Annabel was relieved the FBI had turned their attention away from Josie. No matter what rumors swirled about Josie, Annabel wouldn’t believe her missing sister was a killer.
They had their father’s blood in them, undeniably, but each of Matthew Colton’s children had chosen honorable and respectable jobs on the right side of the law. Though she couldn’t know for sure, Annabel believed the same was true of Josie.
The car radio beeped. Annabel answered and waited for the message and code and tried not to let disappointment nip at her. They had to investigate a missing cat. Again. Annabel hid her annoyance and ignored Luis’s grimace. He was an experienced cop, and before being paired with her, he’d worked much more interesting cases.
After Annabel acknowledged the code and location, Luis made a U-turn in the direction of the house with the missing cat. “You realize this is the same dingbat who lost her cat last week?” Luis asked.
“I realize it,” Annabel said.
“Cat’s probably hiding in her house again,” Luis said. The last time Mrs. Granger had called them to help find her cat, Cubbles had been sleeping in a windowsill.
“She called us. We need to take it seriously,” Annabel said.
“Fine, but I’m not turning on the lights and sirens for this,” Luis said.
“I agree. But we will check the windowsill first,” Annabel said.
This was a familiar discussion between them. Luis had much less patience for calls he considered a waste of police resources. Some of the calls seemed silly, but she was eager to prove herself. They had to respond to calls—even the ones that were a waste of her time. If she could get the chief and Sam to see her as more than a rookie in need of protecting, she might prove to them she was capable of actual police work.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_2a7fbe50-a58d-5cdc-a888-474c861af314)
Ethan and Lizzie had invited the Colton siblings to their ranch house for dinner. Annabel didn’t know how Lizzie was managing to cook dinner for so many people when she was due to have her baby soon. Most days after work, Annabel was so tired she heated dinner in the microwave and had a glass of wine.
Ethan and Lizzie were jazzed about their baby. It was almost hard to watch. They were in love, and after what they had been through, they deserved every moment of happiness they’d found together.
Of course, not all of the Colton siblings would be in attendance. Josie wanted nothing to do with her biological family. Despite Trevor’s FBI resources, Sam’s detective skills and Chris’s PI abilities, they hadn’t been able to locate her.
Annabel wondered what they had done, or hadn’t done, to make Josie hate them. Lizzie had been in foster care with Josie, and she didn’t recall Josie speaking angrily about her siblings. Annabel worried Josie had gotten herself into trouble, perhaps drug use or hanging with the wrong crowd. Given how the Colton siblings had grown up, the statistics weren’t in their favor for them becoming successful and productive members of society. She and her brothers had worked hard in their careers, and Annabel believed her brothers carried the same burden of their father’s crimes with them. Annabel thought Josie had risen above the past, but in dark moments of doubt, concerns plucked at her.
Annabel parked outside the ranch house. She was pleased to see her twin’s white pickup truck in front of the house. Annabel could confide in Chris, and he didn’t seem to resent her new career as a police officer as much as her other siblings. Whether it was because she and Chris had their twin connection or because they’d become and stayed close in high school, he listened to her. She could tell him anything.
Last year when Annabel had graduated from the police academy at the top of her class, she had thought her brothers would see her desire to be a police officer, and one day a detective, wasn’t a whim or an act of defiance against them.
Only Sam had been present at her graduation, and that was because most of the current members of the GGPD attended the ceremony. Her brothers’ absences had hurt her more than she’d ever said. They rarely asked her about her job, nor did they acknowledge her professional accomplishments. Annabel tried to remain calm about it and pretend she didn’t care. Their family was facing enough problems, and her brothers wouldn’t take kindly to criticism.
Taking a deep breath and focusing on the reason she was there, to see her family and discuss the clues Matthew Colton had provided them, Annabel rang the doorbell.
Sam answered, beer in hand, and he greeted her with a hug. At least when they were at family gatherings, he didn’t act like her superior. He was a detective, and she, six years older, was a rookie cop. His frostiness at work was his way of keeping her away from dangerous cases, as if that would keep her safe. Random, bad things happened all the time, even to cops who were assigned missing-cat reports.
She lived with that knowledge and had since the day her mother had been murdered. Annabel’s soul wasn’t at ease, knowing something terrible could happen to someone she loved with no warning. It was a brutal lesson she had learned from her father.
Sam escorted her inside. Lizzie had a fresh pie cooling on the counter and dinner was set in serving dishes on the table. How did she do it? Annabel didn’t own serving dishes, period, much less matching ones.
Annabel pointed to the pie. “If your pie goes missing, I can help you find it. I have some experience with that.” The words left her mouth tinged with anger. She hadn’t meant to say anything about the crappy assignments she had been given at work. It was not professional to speak about her job in her free time or to make passive-aggressive comments. That wasn’t the way to deal with Sam. She knew better.
“We all have to start somewhere,” Sam said, looking uncomfortable. He glanced at his fiancée, Zoe, and then at Annabel.
Zoe, a librarian, cleared her throat, adjusted her glasses and narrowed her eyes at Sam. It confirmed what Annabel suspected. The entire family knew she was given the worst, most boring assignments in the GGPD.
That made it sting worse and feel as if they were in cahoots against her, even though Ethan, Lizzie, Chris and Zoe had nothing to do with her work duties.
Annabel’s tactics to get better assignments were to act with professionalism and grace regardless of the circumstances. She had to rise above, as she had done all her life. Rise above her father’s terrible legacy. Rise above her foster parents’ crushingly low expectations of her. Rise above the police department’s belief she couldn’t handle the tough assignments. “Did you handle a lot of cases that involved missing cats and handing out tickets along Main Street?” she asked sweetly.
Chris came in from the porch. “Annabel, I thought I heard your voice.” He hugged his sister and then looked at her. “What did I miss?”
“Nothing of note,” she said. Before she could tell him anything about what a rotten day it had been, Lizzie broke in.
“It’s just us tonight. Ridge and Darcy couldn’t make it. Darcy’s on shift at the hospital, and Ridge is working,” Lizzie said.
Ridge, Annabel’s younger brother, worked in search and rescue, and his high school love, Darcy, was an emergency room doctor at Blackthorn County Hospital. Though they’d parted ways after high school, they’d recently reunited, and Annabel had never seen Ridge so happy.
“I thought Trevor was coming by,” Sam said.
“Something came up at work, apparently,” Lizzie said.
“Another dead body,” Chris said, more a question than a statement.
Lizzie shivered. “He didn’t say. He spoke to Ethan when he called. Ethan would be here, but he had a couple of heifers birthing tonight and he’s with them in the barn.”
Trevor and his FBI team were working with the Granite Gulch Police Department, but the FBI was keeping some details of the Alphabet Killer cases to themselves. The FBI had access to the data in the Alphabet Killer case: the complete autopsies, the ballistics reports and detailed crime scene data, analyzed at their state-of-the-art labs.
Annabel wondered how much Trevor shared with Sam. Some details of the case had been made public knowledge, some had been distributed to the members of the GGPD assigned to the case and some were a matter of speculation.
They sat at the table, and after exchanging pleasantries, the conversation turned to Matthew Colton. Since Matthew had first made a deal with Sam to reveal the location of their mother’s body, he had been the focus of discussions often.
Though speaking of him wasn’t the most pleasant topic, Matthew Colton was dying, and he’d engaged them in a game of clues, offering each of his children one word to figure out where their mother had been buried. They were permitted to visit, one Colton per month, on the last Sunday of the month, to receive their clue.
Matthew Colton was serving six consecutive life sentences, and knowing his life would end in prison, perhaps he felt doing something for his children would earn his soul some peace. Matthew did nothing selflessly.
Annabel had considered Matthew was screwing with them, baiting them into visiting him in prison and pretending he was willing to tell them where their mother was buried. Her brothers believed Matthew was genuine in this instance, perhaps attempting one final act to make some amends to his children for what he had done to their family. Nothing would grant him absolution, but at least knowing their mother’s final resting place would provide them closure. They could give Saralee a proper burial and service, which Annabel thought her mother would have liked.
Annabel anticipated Matthew Colton was ultimately trying to manipulate them. No way did visits from his children mean anything to him. If he cared about his children, he wouldn’t have killed their mother and destroyed their family.
“Texas, hill and B,” Zoe said. As a librarian, she had been conducting research on the Colton family and those words, trying to establish connections that the siblings, being too close to the case, hadn’t made on their own.
“Annabel, you’re planning to visit Matthew, aren’t you?” Sam asked.
Why was he on her case? She would go, of course. She hadn’t seen her father in over twenty years, and looking at his murderous face, the face that had haunted her dreams for years, was the last thing she wanted to do. But her siblings needed answers, and even though Annabel had her doubts about Matthew telling the truth, she wasn’t selfish enough to put her hatred of her father above her brothers. “I will go see him. I’ve been combing the letters, and he might give something away during our conversation. Hopefully, I can make a connection to what Regina wrote in her letters,” Annabel said. “I’d like to spare Chris and Trevor the punishment of seeing him.”
Chris patted her hand encouragingly, and Lizzie and Zoe smiled sympathetically. Sam just stared at her.
“Do you want one of us to go with you? I could wait in the car,” Sam said.
He was being supportive, but she couldn’t help feel he was questioning her strength. “I can do it.”
“Alone?”
“I don’t know if he’d be willing to speak to me if I brought someone else,” Annabel said. “The arrangement you made with him was pretty specific, and I’m sure he’d love for one of us to make a mistake so he can renege on the deal partway through.”
As they discussed techniques of dragging more information from their father, Annabel’s thoughts switched to Regina Willard and then to Jesse Willard.
Jesse had to have some connection to his sister, Matthew Colton’s most loyal fan. Having read the letters Regina had sent Matthew, Annabel had no doubt Regina was unhinged. But Jesse had seemed normal. Could Annabel have been wrong about that? Was Jesse just better at hiding his crazy? Annabel’s police instincts were usually reliable. She had dealt with enough nutcases and criminals to intuit when someone was off their rocker.
“Earth to Annabel,” Zoe said softly.
“What?” Annabel asked, straightening. “Sorry, I was thinking about the case.”
“I asked if you’ve been seeing anyone,” Sam said.
Annabel hated that question, because the answer everyone wanted was she was in a stable relationship. She dated, but it never turned into anything serious. “I’ve been busy with work and the letters from Matthew,” Annabel said. Sam, Ethan and Ridge had found love, and she hoped Chris was next, but a great romance wasn’t in the cards for her. She didn’t have time. Past relationships ended because she couldn’t make a connection with someone. Boyfriends were wary of her, suspecting something dark and twisted slept inside her, because she was the daughter of Granite Gulch’s most infamous serial killer.
Chris had found love once, but it had ended tragically. He had lost his wife, and he hadn’t been able to move on yet. The house he had built for Laura remained empty. He couldn’t move into it and, instead, lived in an apartment over Double G Cakes and Pies. They made the best desserts in town, and Chris was lucky he wasn’t a hundred pounds overweight. His PI job kept him hopping. Every time Annabel visited her brother, she couldn’t resist stopping into the Double G for a dessert and to visit with her good friend Mia.
Even so, thinking about the woman Chris had lost made Annabel sad. Chris could have been happy with a family of his own, but instead he worked too much and kept any prospects at bay.
“You need some balance in your life,” Sam said.
Annabel felt her defensiveness rise. No one criticized Chris or Trevor about their lack of love lives. “Just because you fell in love doesn’t mean everyone else will.”
Sam smiled at Zoe, and if Annabel didn’t love them both so much, she would have gagged at the sugary sweetness in that shared look.
“We just want you to be happy,” Lizzie said. “And lately, it seems like you go to work and then go home and read those letters.” She shuddered. “You deserve more. You deserve happiness.”
She was happy. She was finally a police officer, a dream she had chased without her family’s approval. Achieving that goal meant a lot to her. Proving herself meant she could ask for better assignments. “Until we get this resolved with Matthew, I’m satisfied with my life and plenty busy.”
The conversation moved on, and Annabel was glad the focus had shifted away from her.
After dinner, Annabel joined Chris on the back porch. She sat next to him on the patio sofa, and they propped their feet on the wooden coffee table.
“You know he goes after you because he worries,” Chris said. “We all do.”
He was referring to Sam. Annabel understood. Her younger brother might be one of Granite Gulch’s best detectives, but he had a lot to learn about his place in the family. He didn’t get to call the shots in her life. “I worry about you all, too. Your PI work puts you in tough spots. Ridge is running around in dangerous terrain, and Sam is working the streets, searching for criminals, and Trevor...well, who knows what he’s up to, but I guarantee it involves dangerous people.”
“I know. I worry about everyone, too. With you, it’s different. We lost Josie,” Chris said.
His words hit her in the gut. Annabel wanted more than anything to find her sister, work out whatever problems were keeping them apart and for Josie to be part of their lives. “I know.” It was painful for them to have Josie far out of reach.
“And Mom,” Chris said. “And Laura. It’s the Colton curse. Bad things happen to Colton women.”
Annabel had thought about that before. “I think about Mom and Josie, too.”
