LITMIR.BIZ

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Colton Valley Ranch.

      She yanked her thoughts out of that well-worn track, even as she acknowledged the irony that thinking about her daughter seeing a murder was the only thing powerful enough to do it.

      That, and the fact that the victim bore a distinct resemblance to herself. Although that was merely an afterthought to her. Everything was, except her little girl’s safety.

      At last she slipped into fretful sleep, and it was she who had the nightmares, images of the lifeless woman whose name she didn’t even know, lying in a pool of blood, staring at the cloudless sky. In the dreamworld, she could only move in slow motion, as if she were underwater, despite her desperation to get to her daughter. When she finally got to the car and opened the door, Emma turned to look at her. She was also drenched in blood.

      Emma screamed.

      Jolie jolted awake. For a split second, not even a breath’s time, she thought she’d dreamed it.

      Emma screamed again.

      Jolie erupted out of the chair and headed for her daughter at a run, ready to soothe her child from the nightmare she’d probably had. In the next instant, something snapped in her brain and time slowed to a crawl.

      There was someone there. All in black. He had Emma. Was dragging her toward the window he’d somehow gotten in through. The child was kicking wildly. Screaming when she could twist her mouth free of the hand covering it. The black-clad shape froze as light from the other room slashed across the floor. Something in the black-gloved hand glinted.

      A knife.

      The sight propelled Jolie into furious action. She ran, hard. Lowered her shoulder and dived at the black figure. All three went to the hardwood floor.

      “Fight!” she cried out to Emma. Just as she’d taught her, the girl doubled her kicking, elbowing and clawing. She caught Jolie once by accident, but Jolie didn’t care. She was too focused on wrenching the would-be kidnapper off her little girl.

      The would-be kidnapper who was, she realized with a little shock, a woman.

      Simultaneously the woman pulled free, releasing Emma. Jolie had the ski mask she’d been wearing clutched in her hand. But before she could get a look at her, she was gone through the pried-open window. All Jolie could say for sure was that she’d been female, and maybe blond.

      “Mommy!”

      Jolie rolled over to Emma, and scooped up the terrified child. “It’s all right, baby, it’s all right.”

      But it wasn’t. She knew it wasn’t. Because there was only one person that woman could be.

      The killer. And she was after Emma.

Chapter 4

      T.C. tapped a finger on the steering wheel. He was accustomed to Dallas traffic, and used it to work through the things on his plate for the coming day so he could hit the ground running when he finally reached the office.

      But today he was spending more time pondering his restless night. He’d gone to his rooms at about ten, planning to do a little reading before bed, but hadn’t been able to focus. He’d finally given up and headed for the kitchen and some of Mrs. Morely’s incredible pecan pie, hoping the rare indulgence would soothe his scattered mind, but he had veered off when he realized just thinking about the pie and its maker made him think of Jolie, and he didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole again. Then he’d had to dodge the dining room, where his mother was apparently deep into a late-night session—because of course she couldn’t do it in the clear light of day, he thought sourly—with another one of her psychics. He didn’t know if she was foolish enough to actually believe in them, or if she just thought it might throw off suspicion that she had had something to do with her husband’s disappearance.

      And that’s a hell of a thing to think about your own mother.

      He had pondered just going back to his rooms. He knew it wasn’t really food he was looking for, it was peace of mind—enough to sleep. And that seemed out of reach, as it had for most of the three months now that his father had been missing.

      Besides, he’d been in no mood to walk past Fowler’s room, not when he and Tiffany had been having passionate and very noisy sex when he walked past their door coming downstairs. Hearing that again was something he’d prefer to avoid. Leave it to Fowler to be as loud as possible, as if he wanted everyone to know he was getting laid. But Tiffany was just as loud, although he suspected that was her flattering Fowler as much as anything.

      He wondered if the woman would ever manage to harangue Fowler into a ring. He thought his brother truly cared for her, at least as much as he was capable of caring for anyone other than himself, but he kept holding her off. However, Tiffany had a plan, and becoming a Colton was the goal. Was she determined enough, cold-blooded enough, to pull off the old man’s disappearance in the hope that Fowler would be shaken enough to take the plunge? It was hard to believe Her Whininess, as he and his sister Piper often called her, could be that clever, but maybe...

      He hated feeling this way about his own family. But he hated even more thinking about his brother’s noisy sex, because it made him think of Jolie, who had always been rather quiet about it. But her heated whispers, the expression on her face, the amazement in her beautiful eyes as they made love, had been all he’d needed.

      “Stop it, damn it,” he muttered under his breath as heat and need shot through him, making his entire body clench. Only Jolie had ever done that to him, only she had had the power to send him into overdrive with a mere thought. He stared at the delivery truck ahead of him as if it held all the answers.

      By the time he reached the Colton building, he’d managed to force his unruly mind to stay on the things he needed to deal with today. Once at his desk, he went quickly through the plan Hannah prepped for him every morning. The format she suggested had seemed odd to him at first, but now he didn’t think he could function without it. Her method of prioritizing, and noting in advance which items could be time-shifted and which could not, had increased his productivity markedly, and he rarely disagreed with how she had weighted things.

      Well, except when she slid in something like suggesting he attend a dinner function, an evening at the symphony or some other formal affair. He’d rather spend a day doing the dirtiest of work in one of their oil fields than tux up for one of those things. He’d leave that to Fowler, who could con the feathers off a peacock and leave them glad he’d done it. At least, until reality set in.

      He was midway through his email inbox when Hannah appeared in his doorway.

      “Mr. Colton?”

      Something in her voice, an undertone of...what, he wasn’t quite sure, made him look up quickly.

      “What is it?” He stood up quickly. “Something about my father?”

      She looked immediately apologetic. “No, I’m sorry, nothing about that. But there’s someone here asking to see you.”

      He opened his mouth to say he didn’t have time for unscheduled appointments today, then shut it again. Hannah knew this perfectly well, since she’d drawn up his agenda for the day. He also knew she would normally smoothly redirect anyone who wanted to disrupt that schedule without what she deemed a good enough reason. And he’d rarely disagreed with her on that, either. So something had made her think this was worth making an exception for.

      “All right,” he said, not even asking who it was.

      He saw a glint in her eyes that told him she knew exactly what thought process he’d just gone through. “Thank you,” she said, and he knew it was for trusting her.

      “You’ve never made me sorry.”

      She smiled. “I’ll bring them in.”

      Them? he wondered as she turned to go. He reached down and closed out his email program, because he’d had a confidential communication open. He looked up when he heard footsteps

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