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Chapter 2

Detective Carson Gage’s hands were shaking as he urgently turned his brother over onto his back. Any hope of trying to revive Bo disappeared the moment he saw the bullet wound.

His brother had been shot right through the heart.

Irrationally, Carson felt for a pulse anyway. There was none. Swallowing a curse, he sat back on his heels. His brother’s skin was already cold to the touch. This was January in Red Ridge, South Dakota, but death brought a different sort of cold with it and there was no mistaking it for a simple reaction to the weather.

“Damn it, Bo, I told you playing fast and loose with women would be the death of you someday. Why d’you have to prove me right?” Carson demanded angrily.

He curbed his impulse to straighten Bo’s clothing. Bo always took pride in his appearance and death had left him looking disheveled. But the crime scene investigators were going to need to see everything just the way he had found it.

Shaken to the core, Carson got back up to his feet and opened up his cell phone again. He needed to call this in.

It took him a minute to center his thoughts. He was a trained police detective, Carson silently upbraided himself. He couldn’t afford the luxury of coming apart like some hysterical civilian who had just unexpectedly witnessed death up close and personal—even if this was his half brother.

Taking a deep breath and then exhaling, he put in a call to his chief, Finn Colton. As he waited for Finn to pick up, he looked again at the name his brother had written in his own blood.

Demi C.

Demi Colton. Carson shook his head. When this got out, it was going to throw all of Red Ridge into one hell of an uproar, he thought. As if the feud between the Coltons and the Gages needed more fuel.

The next moment, he heard Finn’s deep voice as the chief answered his phone. “Hey, Gage, aren’t you supposed to be at your brother’s bachelor party right now, getting drunk and toasting Bo’s last few hours of freedom? What are you doing calling me?”

Carson enunciated the words carefully, afraid that if he spoke any faster, his voice was going to break. He and Bo weren’t close, but they were still family. “There’s been a murder, Chief.”

“Damn,” Finn cursed. Instantly, the voice on the other end became serious. “Whose?”

Carson paused before answering. “Bo’s.”

“This your idea of a joke, Gage?” Finn demanded impatiently. “’Cause if it is, it’s not funny.”

“I only wish it was, Chief,” Carson answered.

“You’re serious,” Finn responded, stunned. When no contradiction came, Finn asked, “Where and when?”

Carson looked down at his brother’s body. The whole scene seemed utterly surreal to him. “I just found him two minutes ago, lying facedown at the edge of The Pour House’s parking lot.”

“The Pour House,” Finn repeated. “Isn’t that where his bachelor party is supposed to be taking place tonight?”

“One and the same,” Carson answered his superior numbly. He realized he was leaving the most important part out. “And, Chief?”

“Yeah?”

“Looks like Bo wrote a name in his own blood. Maybe his killer’s name.”

Carson heard a noise on the other end as the other man said something unintelligible before going on to ask, “Whose name did he write?”

“Demi C.”

This time there was total silence on the other end for approximately thirty seconds as the information sank in.

The city of thirty-five thousand citizens had more than its share of Coltons. There were three branches in total, as different from one another as the seasons were. The chief liked to say that he belonged to the middle branch, the one that was neither rich nor poor and rough around the edges.

But whatever section he gravitated to, the chief was still a Colton and Carson couldn’t help wondering how Finn Colton would deal with having to bring in one of his own as a suspect for first-degree murder.

Finally, the chief broke the silence and asked, “You think Bo wrote that?”

“It’s in his own blood, Chief,” Carson answered. Then, in case there was any further question as to whether or not Bo was the one who wrote the name, he added, “There’s blood underneath Bo’s fingernail. Looks like he wrote it.”

Finn sighed as if the weight of the world had suddenly been dropped on his shoulders.

“Good enough for me,” he replied. “I’ll have Demi brought in for questioning. Meanwhile, I’ll send some of the team to bring in your brother’s body.” His voice softened, as if he was feeling sympathetic about what Carson was going through. “You can give your statement in the morning if you need some time, Gage.”

Finn was cutting him some slack, Carson thought. He didn’t want any slack, he wanted to get his brother’s killer.

Now.

“I don’t need any time, Chief.” Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howled. Carson would have been hard-pressed to name a lonelier sound. “I’ll stay here with Bo until the detail gets here,” he told his boss. “And then I’m coming down to the station. I want to be there when you interrogate Demi.”

“Gage, you can’t—”

Carson felt the walls going up. He cut Finn off before the chief could officially exclude him. “I need to be there when you question her, Finn. You owe this to me, Chief.”

There was silence again. An annoyed silence if he was any judge, Carson thought. He fully expected the chief to argue with him, but he wasn’t about to back down.

However, Finn surprised him by saying, “All right, you can be there, but I’ll be the one handling the interrogation. I don’t want to hear a word out of you, understood?”

Even though Finn couldn’t see him, Carson nodded his head grimly. “Understood.”

Terminating the call, Carson put his phone into his pocket. Silence enshrouded him although the distant sound of music and raised voices coming from the bar sliced through the air, disrupting the night.

“Sounds like your bachelor party’s getting underway without you,” Carson said to the prone figure near his feet. “Not exactly the way you expected the night to go, is it?” he asked ironically. He squared his shoulders. No, he and Bo hadn’t been close, but Bo was still his brother and he didn’t deserve this. “Don’t worry, Bo. If Demi did this, she’ll pay. I don’t know what happened, but I promise she’ll pay. I’ll see to it.”

It was getting colder. Carson pulled his sheepskin jacket tighter around him and turned up the collar. But he remained where he was, a guard at his post. He wasn’t about to go anywhere until the unit came to pick up Bo’s body.

* * *

“I know my rights. I’m a bounty hunter, damn it, and I know my rights better than you do,” twenty-seven-year-old Demetria Colton shouted angrily at the two police officers who brought her into the small, windowless room within the Red Ridge police station. “Why am I here?” she wanted to know.

But neither of the two police officers, one young, one old, answered her, other than one of them telling her, “The chief’ll be here shortly.”

“The ‘chief’?” Demi repeated in a mocking tone. “You mean Cousin Finn? Is he still pretending to be in charge?”

The two officers left the small eight-by-ten room without answering her. An angry, guttural noise escaped the redhead’s lips. Frustrated, she would have thrown something if she’d had something to throw.

“Why am I here?” she demanded again, more loudly this time. Furious, she began to pound on the locked door. “I know you’re out there! I demand to be released. You can’t hold me here like this, you hear me?” she cried. “I haven’t done anything, damn it! You let me out of here! Now!”

When the door suddenly opened just as she was about to start pounding on it again, Demi was caught off guard and stumbled backward. Had the table not been right there behind her to block her fall, she would have unceremoniously landed on the floor.

“You’re here,” her cousin calmly told her as he and Carson walked into the room, acting as if they were about to have a run-of-the-mill, normal conversation, “to answer some questions.”

Demi tossed her head, her red hair flying over her shoulder.

“What kind of questions?” she asked defiantly, her dark brown gaze pinning him down.

“Like where were you tonight?” Finn wanted to know, gesturing toward the lone chair on the opposite side of the table and indicating that she should sit.

“Home,” Demi bit off, grudgingly sitting down. “I was in my home—since 5:00 p.m.” she added for good measure.

Finn gave no indication whether or not the answer satisfied him. He waited until Carson sat down next to him, then asked, “Alone?”

“Yes,” she bit off, then followed that up with a question of her own. “Why?” she demanded. Squaring her shoulders, she drew herself up and raised her chin, always ready to do battle with the world—and her cousin. “Is that a crime now?”

Hearing Carson’s chair scrape along the floor as he started to rise, Finn shot him a warning look before answering Demi’s question. “No, but murder is.”

“Murder,” the redhead repeated, growing more furious by the second. She made the only logical conclusion. “You think I murdered someone?” she cried, stunned. “And just who is it I was supposed to have murdered?” When Finn didn’t answer her immediately, she pounced on him. “C’mon, you can’t just throw something like that out and then leave me hanging in suspense, Finn. Just who was it that you think I murdered?”

Unable to remain silent any longer, his hands fisted at his sides, Carson pinned her with a damning look as he answered her question. “Bo. You murdered Bo and then you stuffed a cummerbund into his mouth.”

“Bo,” she repeated in noncomprehension. And then, for a moment, Demi turned very pale. Her eyes flicked from Bo’s brother to her cousin. “Bo’s dead?” she asked hoarsely.

It was half a question, half a statement uttered in total disbelief.

Then, not waiting for an answer, what had become known in the county as Demi’s famous temper flared, and she jumped up to her feet, her fists banging down on the tabletop.

“You think I killed Bo?” she demanded incredulously, fury flashing in her eyes. “Sure,” she said mockingly. “Makes perfect sense to me. The man’s dead so let’s blame it on the woman he dumped—EXCEPT I DIDN’T DO IT!” she yelled, her angry gaze sweeping over her cousin and her former fiancé’s brother.

“Sit down, Demi,” Finn ordered sternly. “And calm down.”

Instead of listening to her cousin and taking her seat again, Demi Colton remained standing, a firecracker very close to going off in a flash of fireworks.

“No, I will not calm down,” she cried. “And unless you have some kind of concrete evidence against me—” she said, staring straight at her cousin.

“How about Bo writing your name on the asphalt in his own blood?” Finn said. “Demi C.”

Demi paled for a moment. “The killer is framing me?”

Finn raised an eyebrow.

Demi gave him a smug look. “Just as I thought. You don’t have any sort of actual evidence against me. Okay, I’m out of here,” Demi declared.

“You’ll leave when I tell you to leave,” Finn told her sternly. Rising from his chair on the opposite side of the table, he loomed over her.

“Do you have any evidence against me, other than my name written in Bo’s blood and the fact that I had the bad judgment to have been engaged to the jerk for a month?” she asked, looking from her cousin to the other man in the room.

Though it obviously killed him, Finn was forced to say, “No, but—”

Triumph filled her eyes. “There is no ‘but’ here,” Demi retorted. “You have nothing to hold me on, that means I’m free to go. So I’m going.” Her eyes swept over her cousin and Carson. “Gentlemen, it has definitely not been a pleasure.”

And with that, she swept past them to the interrogation room door like a queen taking leave of a pair of disloyal subjects.

Finn shook his head as his cousin stormed out. “Hell of a lot of nerve,” he muttered under his breath.

“As I recall, Demi was never the sweet, retiring type. If she was, she would have never become a bounty hunter,” Carson told him.

Finn blew out a breath. “You have a point.” He walked out of the interrogation room with Carson directly behind him. “Well, check out her alibi, talk to anyone who might have seen her,” the chief said, addressing the victim’s brother. “I’m open to any further suggestions.”

Carson looked at his boss in mild surprise. “I thought you made it clear that I wasn’t allowed to work on my brother’s case.” Although, he thought, since Finn could work on the case in which his cousin was a suspect, he should be allowed to investigate his brother’s murder.

“Technically, you’re not,” Finn said as they walked out into the main squad room. “But I’m not an idiot, Gage. You’re going to work this whether I give you my blessing or not.” He stopped just before his office. “So you have any ideas where to start?”

He’d been thinking about this ever since he’d found Bo’s body. The fact that Bo had written Demi’s name seemed pretty damning to him, but he didn’t want to discount the slim possibility that someone else had killed his brother.

It didn’t warm his heart to have to admit this, but in all fairness, he had to. “Well, it’s common knowledge that Demi wasn’t the only woman Bo romanced and then dumped. I’d say that there were a whole lot of women who’d love to have seen Bo get what was coming to him. And that includes a number of disgruntled husbands and boyfriends, as well. Why don’t we start talking to them?”

That Bo was a playboy wasn’t exactly news to anyone. Finn frowned. “But would any of them actually resort to murder?”

Carson shrugged. Nothing jumped out at him, but this needed closer examination. “Only one way to find out,” he told his boss.

“I agree,” Finn responded. “Make up a list. Meanwhile, I’m going to have some of the boys go over the crime scene with a fine-tooth comb, see if someone missed anything just in case. Although the ground’s undoubtedly been trampled on,” he commented.

Carson nodded grimly. “Nobody ever said that solving crimes was easy. I can swing by my place, pick up Justice,” he said, referring to his K-9 partner. “See if maybe he can pick up a scent.”

“After you put that list together,” Finn told the detective.

Carson headed over to his desk. Given the hour, the squad room was practically empty. “Will do,” he told the chief.

“Oh, and, Gage?” Finn called after him.

Carson turned around, expecting further orders. “Yeah, Chief?”

“I’m really sorry for your loss.”

The words were standard-issue, said over and over again in so many instances that they sounded numbingly routine, yet he felt that Finn really meant them.

“Yeah, me, too,” Carson answered stoically, then added, “Thanks.”

* * *

Carson had just finished making a preliminary list of all the women he could remember Bo having had any romantic encounters with over the last several years when J.D. Edwards, one of the crime scene investigators, came into the squad room. J.D. looked excited.

Temporarily forgetting about the list he’d just compiled, Carson crossed over to the man. J.D., in turn, had just cornered Finn.

“You’re going to want to hear this,” the investigator was saying to Finn.

The chief, seeing Carson, nodded at him, indicating that he join them. Carson was all ears.

“What have you got?” Finn asked.

“Lots,” J.D. answered. “First off, I found this under a wheel near where the body was found.” He held up a sealed plastic evidence bag. The bag contained a necklace with a gold heart charm.

Finn squinted as he looked at the necklace. “That looks familiar.”

“It should be,” the investigator said. “It belongs to—”

“Demi,” Carson said, recognizing the gold heart. “That’s her necklace.”

“And that’s not all,” J.D. informed them. The investigator paused for effect before announcing, “We’ve got a witness who says he saw Demi Colton running in the shadows around 6:45 p.m. near The Pour House.”

“Six forty-five,” Carson repeated. He looked at Finn. “I found Bo’s body at seven.”

J.D. looked rather smug as he said, “Exactly.”

“Who’s the witness?” Finn wanted to know.

“Paulie Gains,” J.D. answered.

Carson frowned. He would have preferred having someone a little more reliable. “Gains is a small-time drug dealer.”

“Doesn’t mean he couldn’t have seen her,” Finn pointed out. He looked at J.D. “How did he know it was Demi? It’s dark at that hour.”

J.D. laughed. “Not that many people around here have her color hair, Chief.”

Finn nodded. J.D. was right. “Okay, that puts her at the scene. Looks like we’ve got that evidence Demi kept going on about,” he told Carson, adding, “Time for that bounty hunter to do some heavy-duty explaining if she intends to walk out of here a second time. Let’s go wrestle up an arrest warrant.”

Carson didn’t have to be told twice. He led the way out the door.