Hunting The Colton Fugitive

“You’ll get your chance later to explain all this,” she assured him, eager to move things along. Yet, she couldn’t stop thinking of how he’d said, should I ever get the chance to be a father. Her conscience prickled but didn’t stop her from reminding him, “I still have to take you in now.”

He shook his head. “You can’t. Don’t you understand? Selina only wants me dragged in to take the heat off her. Or she’s setting me up somehow. Probably planning some accident to take me out before I ever go to trial.”

“If that’s really the case,” Sierra assured him, “you’re better off in jail. I’ll see you get there safely.”

“I’m safer here, where I can keep working on finding the real shooter and figuring out exactly who’s behind all this.”

“I hate to break it to you, but that ship has sailed.” Sierra lifted her chin. “Even if I wanted to pretend I’d never seen you, when I take on a contract, I deliver.”

“If it’s professional pride,” Ace said, “what pride could there be in doing the bidding of a conniving schemer like Selina?”

“Listen, Colton, I’ve just met you. And even you have to admit, you’ve got a lot of very compelling reasons to lie your head off at this point.”

“Then pick up a damned phone. Ask anybody in the family. They’ll all tell you the same thing about that woman. She’s clearly up to something. And she means to destroy me, or maybe the whole family, to get it.”

Not my circus, not my monkeys, Sierra told herself, recalling one of her father’s favorite proverbs. No matter how compelling a case Ace Colton made, or how ridiculously hot he looked doing it, it didn’t change that fact.

But there was something in his expression—or maybe it was guilt over the secret she’d learned before coming to look for him, the secret she was keeping from him—that had her explaining, “It’s nothing personal, but you’re not the only one with father issues. And mine are about to get a whole lot messier if I don’t deliver you and collect the bounty Selina promised me tonight.”

“What could possibly be messier than having a framed man—or maybe even a dead one—on your conscience?”

She scowled, her stomach souring at the reminder of her most pressing problem.

“Losing a leg to my father’s loan shark,” she said bluntly, “all because he’s hell-bent on making an example out of me.”

As tough a customer as the bounty hunter holding him at gunpoint appeared to be, Ace couldn’t miss the flicker of fear in the depths of her green eyes warring with her apparent need to appear strong.

Yet, he sensed an opening, too, like a hairline fault in a rock face that would allow a skilled climber a toehold.

Praying that he wouldn’t plummet, he tried, “Your father’s loan shark? How’s that work?”

She tensed visibly, bristling at the question. “I don’t owe you some longwinded explanation. It’s enough that I tell you we’re going to—”

“You’re right.” He shrugged. “I don’t need a damned thing. But it looks to me like you could use to tell it. And why not to me? After all, who am I but some attempted murder suspect with a bounty on his head?”

Having said his piece, he fell silent, giving her the space to work it out for herself. If he failed, he had lost nothing. But if she opened up to him, he figured he might find some avenue to somehow talk his way out of this mess.

“You know, you’re not the only one who loves your old man,” she said accusingly before her voice went husky with emotion. “I loved mine, too, still do, God rest his stubborn soul. He taught me everything I know about the bounty hunting business, most of what I know about men. And everything I’ve learned about picking up on human weakness. The problem was, he was stone blind to his own.”

“We’ve all got our blind spots,” Ace said. He’d erupted in anger after his world had crumbled instead of using his head and working harder to figure out whatever angle the woman who’d apparently switched him at birth had been playing.

“Part of it was Vegas,” she continued, “that whole world where I grew up, and the cash, the flash and the high rollers he was always drawn to, especially after my mom left us. By the time I realized he was keeping everything afloat, even feeding the two of us, on borrowed money, he owed a small fortune. I did my best to help out, worked my tail off in the family business to pay down the debt, got him into a gambling rehab program, but it only got worse and worse until…”

Sighing heavily, she reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose, the gun drooping a little in her right hand.

Ace wondered if she might eventually drop her guard enough for him to turn the tables.

“For a while,” she continued, “it really seemed like things might work out. He was doing better. We were—until the cancer got bad.”

“I’m sorry,” he said reflexively, unable to keep his mind from going back, however briefly, to the hell of losing his mother when he and his siblings were just kids. Though Sierra was a woman grown, it sounded as if she had no other family, no one else at all, to lean on.

She nodded in reply. “The worse the news from his doctors, the more he needed an outlet for his stress—and the more convinced he became that he was on the brink of scoring that one big win that would finally turn everything around. It was so infuriating, listening to him claiming he was doing it for me when he was only making things worse.”

Ace told himself he’d been alone for too damned long, getting sucked into her story this way. “I totally get that. Ainsley and our siblings could never understand our father’s addiction to Selina. His refusal to banish her from our lives, no matter what she did.”

“By the time my father died,” Sierra continued, her gaze so distant that it made him wonder if she’d even heard him, “he owed doctors, the hospital—but the worst was the hundreds of thousands, with interest compounding daily, he had on the books of the most cutthroat loan shark in Nevada.”

“But those debts were your father’s,” Ace said, trying not to let her catch him watching her gun hand droop a little farther, “not yours.”

“Try telling Ice Veins that.”

“Ice Veins?” Ace shook his head. “You’re kidding. The name sounds like something out of some old gangster movie. With cases of machine guns and crates of bootleg whiskey.”

Sierra shrugged. “You don’t get a reputation like his by being subtle. Or reasonable, either. You would think he’d like to keep me in one piece just to keep his payments coming, but he took offense last month—extreme offense—when I refused to turn loose a bail jumper named Eddie Harris who happened to be his favorite nephew.”

“Maybe under the circumstances you should’ve considered—”

She shook her head, a hard, emerald fire sparking in her eyes as the gun twitched back to its full, upright position. “My dad might’ve owed the guy, but that doesn’t mean that Ice Veins owns me. And I’m not letting a homicide suspect, no matter who he is, walk for anybody. Especially not someone like Eddie, who’s been accused of other killings in the past.”

Ace’s heart fell. Because that was all he would ever be to the beautiful Sierra Madden. Another scumbag suspect to be handed over. Why would you even care what this woman thinks?

“Immediately after that,” she said, “Ice Veins called in the rest of my note, said I needed to pay off the final chunk by two days ago, or he was going to personally see to it that I came up a leg short.”

“A leg? He threatened to cut off your leg?”

“Smash it, sever it, shoot it… I didn’t ask for the specifics. All I know is I won’t be working, or making further payments, without two good legs to stand on. Which means I’m a dead woman if I can’t come up with the twenty-five thousand dollars that Selina promised me for bringing you back to your family.”

Twenty-five thousand dollars? Selina clearly wanted him back—and no doubt, locked up—in a big way, if she was willing to cough up that kind of cash. And it was crystal clear that the bounty hunter wasn’t about to—and couldn’t—set him free with her own health, possibly her life, hanging in the balance.

“So what if I told you,” he said, weighing the possibilities, “I’d be willing to pay you that same twenty-five grand. Get this gangster off your back forever, if you’ll only—”

“You have the money here?” she asked, the skin crinkling around her nose. “Just lying around this bunker?”

“Well, no,” he claimed. A knee-jerk reaction, when the truth was more complicated. And far too dangerous to share with a woman with a gun and such a pressing need. “Not exactly, but—”

“But nothing. I haven’t been in this business for a dozen years without having desperate fugitives try to buy me off before. I suppose you think I’m dumb enough to take a personal check?”

He made a scoffing sound, thinking quickly about how would be the best way to do this without guaranteeing that he turned his bunker hideaway into his tomb. Because he might feel for Sierra’s predicament, might even find her sexy, with those big green eyes and that tight little body that could so handily knock him on his ass, but he’d be a fool to trust the woman with his life.

“You can handle an online transfer, can’t you?” he asked. “I can’t access my accounts from here. We’ll need to get well away so I can use my cell without leading the authorities straight here.”

He’d been fantasizing for weeks about returning to the surface. Feeling the wind whispering against his skin, smelling the fresh scents of the underbrush and seeing the outlines of the foothills, along with the variegated greens of the foliage at this elevation. But he knew that the moment he powered it up again, his phone would ping the nearest cell towers. And surely the police would be working with his telecom provider, waiting to spring into action the moment they could get a bead on his location.

She looked doubtful. “I don’t know, Ace. If I’m seen anywhere with you and I don’t turn you in like I agreed to—”

“It’s not like I can afford to take that kind of a chance, either,” he said. “That’s why I took the precaution of stocking this place with some things I might need in case I had to disguise myself.”

“You sure you’re only a first-time fugitive?” Amusement quirked the corners of her mouth. “Because you’ve really done a first-rate job on your prepping.”

He snorted and shrugged. “It’s the CEO in me. I’ve always been a big believer in the value of insurance. Let’s see if I have anything here in my bag of tricks that might work as a disguise for you, too.”

Pulling a duffel from one of the boxes on the shelves, he reached to unzip it.

“Not so fast,” she warned. “Push that over to me first, will you? Slowly.”

Looking up at her, he said, “Listen, I can assure you that you’re holding the only gun I had with me in the bunker.”

Red-blond brows, a shade darker than her hair, rose. “Forgive me if I need to make sure you haven’t planted a little insurance elsewhere.”

As she squatted down and checked through the bag’s contents, he said, “If I give you the money for this loan shark, I’ll need your promise you won’t lead the police to my bunker’s entrance.”

Sierra pulled out a cowboy hat, followed by an oversize snap-buttoned shirt and a pair of Western boots. “And you’re willing to take me at my word on that?”

He offered a half smile. “If you won’t sell out your honor for a man like Ice Veins, I have some hope, maybe this much—” he pinched his fingers about a half inch apart “—that you won’t do a woman like Selina such a favor.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Sierra offered. “You drop that money into my account, and I’ll make myself scarce. I promise. I’ll take off for Vegas before sunup. And I won’t volunteer any help to the police with their investigation.”

“But if you’re brought in and questioned?”

She huffed out her disbelief. “You aren’t seriously asking me to outright lie to the cops for you? Come on, Colton. I’ve already told you what I will do. What I can do if I want to keep my license.”

He stared a challenge at her, certain that all he’d have to do was wait before his silence and the lure of desperately needed money would convince her to give up even more. It was a tactic that had worked for him more often than not during business negotiations.

But it was clear from Sierra’s expression that she wasn’t falling for it. Clear enough that he dropped the idea of sweetening the deal with an additional sum of money almost as quickly as it occurred.

“You’ve heard my terms.” She rose from her seat, the gun held firmly in her hand. “So are we still dealing? Or do we make the drive to the police station instead?”

He sighed, realizing that trusting in this deal—and whatever luck the universe might have on offer—remained his best shot to steer clear of whatever his loving stepmother was plotting. It was his best chance, too, to buy himself the time to figure out whether Selina might be somehow linked to the woman who had apparently switched him with the real Colton heir—or his father’s shooter.

“All right, then,” he agreed. “Let’s do this disguise thing.”

“Just don’t make any quick moves or do anything you haven’t vetted with me first,” Sierra warned him, “or your particular get-up may involve an eye patch and extra bandaging…”

Chapter 2

Having altered her appearance on many previous occasions, Sierra was quick to improvise. While he turned his back to make his own choices, she stripped off her gray fleece top, then pulled an oversize navy men’s work shirt from Ace’s bag of tricks over her tee.

After shoving the rolled sleeves up to her elbows, she tackled her long hair, twisting it into a long ponytail, which she tucked up beneath another duffel find, a tweed newsboy cap. Also large for her, the hat slanted jauntily, its short brim resting atop a pair of chunky, horn-rimmed glasses. To that, she added a distinctly teenage male slouch and the bored and sullen sneer that had made any number of jittery bail jumpers miss her among crowds before.

“Wow,” Ace said when he turned around a couple of minutes later. “If I didn’t know there was a good-looking woman underneath that…”

“And for a diamond cufflinks, silver-spoon type, you make a half-convincing cowboy,” she said, honestly assessing his new look, thanks to the black Stetson, Western shirt and boots and the red bandanna he’d tied around his neck. But then again, she reminded herself, he wasn’t biologically a Colton, so maybe this version was closer to the truth than either one of them imagined.

“I’ve got a fake beard and some spirit gum if you think that’ll help.”

Making a face, she shook her head. “Just keep your collar high and your hat low because if anybody gets close enough to look at either one of us too hard, this is gonna be a real short trip.”

Sierra couldn’t help noticing how nervous Ace looked as they emerged from the hatch that her charge had blown open earlier into a darkness brightened by the glow of a full moon. As he peered into the deepest shadows, he jerked his head toward the sound of an owl hooting and a soft wind rustling through the treetops.

“Relax, Ace,” she urged him, more concerned about his frame of mind than she was about running across anyone else on this isolated hillside. “I had every reason to make sure I wasn’t followed coming up here. We’re all alone, not a soul for miles. My car’s hidden just a couple hundred yards below.”

“Sure,” he said, his voice hoarse as he used some fallen branches in an attempt to disguise the now vulnerable entrance from other prying eyes, an entrance she’d had a devil of a time finding earlier, in spite of the rough map the real estate agent had sketched for her. But as he rose and walked beside her, their feet crunching on dried twigs and grasses, she could easily spot the tension in his movements, as if every muscle lay coiled, waiting to spring into action at the slightest sign of trouble…

Or was he waiting for his chance to get the drop on her?

Increasingly concerned that he might try something that would end up getting one or both of them hurt—or cost her her crucial payout—she began to wonder if sticking with Selina’s deal would prove the safer bet. “Maybe this offer of yours isn’t such a good idea,” she suggested as he lifted a pine bough and held it to let her duck under. “Twenty-five grand’s a lot of money just to delay a problem you’re going to have to deal with sooner or later anyway. And besides, if you really were right about your stepmother plotting something—”

“I’m willing to take my chances,” he said, his breath catching for a moment as he caught his first glimpse of the lights of town, many miles in the distance.

“I’d be just as happy solving my problem with her money as yours,” she admitted, reaching up to adjust her cap, which had slid down to obscure her vision. “Besides, you could hire a really good lawyer with that kind of—”

Returning his attention to her, he waved off her concern. “Lawyers and money I’ve got,” he said bitterly. “Money I’ve saved my whole life for the family I never took the time away from work to start. And now, for all I know, I’ll never get the chance to…”

“Ace…” Her heart twisted at the thought of the latest news from Mustang Valley. A personal matter and a secret that a complete stranger like her had no business sharing with the fugitive.

She weighed her options, struggling to balance the knowledge of the heinous crime this man stood accused of against the possibility that just maybe, telling him would ground him, giving him some reason to be careful. A reason that might help ensure her future, keeping her alive, as well…

Her gaze connected with his. A real connection that Ace felt running through him like a strong electric current. And in that moment he sensed, with a clarity unlike anything he’d experienced in his entire life, that there was something that she meant to tell him. Something that would fracture the plane of his life into two distinct parts: before and after.

“There’s no easy way to say this except to come right out and tell you,” she began, her voice vibrating with emotion. “You have a daughter. A daughter of your own who’s waiting patiently to meet you.”

“What? What the hell?” Adrenaline spilled through the floodgates, unleashing a throbbing in his chest, a burning tightness stretching over his skin. Followed by absolute fury that she would mess with him like this. “Why on earth would you tell a lie like that when you know damned well I’ve just lost any claim to all the family I ever had?”

“Whoa, whoa, cowboy,” she said, a glint of moonlight off the handgun’s metallic surface giving away the fact that she had raised it. And making him realize he’d advanced on her in a way she clearly found threatening. “Pipe down for a minute and just listen to me, would you? I’ve seen a picture of Nova myself, thanks to Selina, and heard that your brothers and sisters introduced her as your daughter. A daughter by blood, Ace. There’s already been a DNA test.”

“But that’s…impossible,” he said. “I don’t have a little girl—I couldn’t possibly.”

“She’s in Mustang Valley,” Sierra told him. “And she’s a young woman, not a child. Not only that, but she’s—”

Stiffening, Sierra cut herself off to glance back over her shoulder.

It was the only warning Ace had before a dark bulk separated itself from the deeper shadow. A loud crackling sound preceded her cry of pain and alarm as she buckled forward.

Before Ace understood what was happening, she’d collapsed completely. He spotted a large man hunched over her and pressing a stun gun to the side of her neck, which was sparking and snapping with the rattling sound of a transformer arcing.

“Hold it right there,” a deep voice growled as a second man grabbed Ace’s shoulder from behind and pressed something hard and unyielding—stun gun, it had to be—against the sore spot at his temple. “Move another muscle and you’re dead when you don’t hafta be. Our beef’s not with you. It’s this little deadbeat we got business with.”

“Stop it now! Stop shocking her before you kill her!” Ace shouted, sickened by the popping noises, the helpless jerking of her body beside the shaved-head ox squatting beside her, his mouth stretched into a leer of pure cruelty. Sierra Madden might be Ace’s captor, but this sickened him—and had him wanting to turn their weapons on the two thugs that had jumped them. Thugs that gave credence to the story she had told him about the loan shark who went by the name Ice Veins.

When the crackling ceased abruptly, the man holding the gun on him, a heavily muscled specimen with a dark chinstrap beard, told his partner, “Careful frisking her for weapons. My buddies from down the boxing gym tell me she’s won her last two matches by knockout, and half the guys are scared to spar with her.”

No wonder she took me down, Ace realized. Not that it made him feel one bit better to hear the bald guy laugh or watch him pin her down with one meaty hand splayed across her chest while she whimpered, struggling to regain control of her still-twitching limbs. “Bitch won’t be punching nobody for a while. Nice try with the disguise, Miss Madden.”

With that, he tossed aside the fake glasses and pulled her hair free of its makeshift updo.

“N-no,” she protested. “G-get your—h-hands off me.”

Ace surged forward in response, only to grunt with pain when the bearded goon holding him sharply cracked the gun against his brow and cheekbone. Vision graying out, Ace dropped to his knees.

By the time he could see again, the bald thug was pocketing both Sierra’s weapon and the one she’d taken earlier from Ace inside the bunker. Rising with a grunt, the huge man took a step back, aiming a revolver so long that it practically qualified as a hand cannon above the bounty hunter’s breast.

“I didn’t come across any wad of cash that felt like my boss’s twenty-five thousand dollars in those pockets,” he told her, a satisfied sneer spreading across his broad face. “So which leg do you want blown off? The right one or the left?”

Nauseated from the threat as she felt uncoordinated from the jolting, Sierra pleaded, “You can’t do this—”

“If you’ll be patient just a minute—” though dark streamers of blood were running down his face, Ace Colton spoke with the forced cheer of a determined salesman “—I’ll be happy to take care of Ms. Madden’s bill here.”

Both men’s heads snapped in his direction. Along with Sierra’s surprised gaze. Why would he volunteer his assistance, now that she was both unarmed and helpless? Did he think they’d kill him otherwise, eliminating him as a witness to their violence?

“All of it?” the bald man asked him, his pale eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Because we’ve got strict instructions not to leave Mustang Valley without either the money or a photo of the mangled leg she owes my boss.”

“And personally,” his bearded cohort chuckled, “we kinda figured that ole Ice Veins would just as soon have us blast her leg off, on account of the way she jammed up his favorite nephew.”

“Every penny,” Ace insisted, “if you don’t mind waiting for me to head down to where I can get a decent cell phone signal so I can transfer the funds to—”

The bearded man nearest to him snorted. “You think we take electronic transfers? I imagine you want us to print you out a nice, neat receipt, too?”

The men’s coarse laughter had panic bubbling up into Sierra’s throat.