door. He froze for a moment when he looked inside.
Colt’s head snapped up, his gaze no longer on Gambil but on the road. And on her.
“Get down!” Colt yelled.
Elise froze, too, wondering why the heck Colt had told her that and why he was sprinting back toward her. He jumped into the truck, threw it into gear and hit the accelerator as if their lives depended on it.
A split second later, Elise realized that it did.
Because Gambil’s truck exploded into a giant ball of fire.
With his phone sandwiched between his shoulder and ear, Colt waited on hold while he watched the medic put some stitches on the side of Elise’s head. She didn’t even wince. Didn’t even seem to notice.
Because her attention was nailed to Colt.
She was no doubt on the edge of her seat, waiting for answers about why this nightmare had happened, but Colt figured those answers might be a long time coming.
Especially since their suspect was dead.
Now he needed to find answers to a couple of whys. Why had Gambil come after Elise in the first place? And why had the explosives been in the truck?
Colt had only gotten a glimpse of the device on the ceiling of the truck, but he’d recognized the type of explosive and figured it was time to get out of there. He’d been lucky that he’d gotten far enough away to get only a few nicks and cuts from the flying debris. A couple of seconds later and he would have been a dead man, too.
Yeah, he definitely wanted to know why, and that started with learning everything about Gambil that there was to know.
There was a slight sound on the other end of the line to indicate he’d been taken off hold, and he heard Reed’s voice. “It’s not good, Colt.”
Hell. Colt had already had his fill of bad news for the night and didn’t want more. “I’m listening.”
“We just fished Gambil’s body from the rubble, and it looks as if the explosion wasn’t what killed him. He already had a gunshot wound to the head.”
Colt was about to say that wasn’t possible, but then he remembered the sound that he’d heard right before Gambil ran off the road. A sharp pop. He’d thought it was the truck backfiring, but it could have been a gunshot.
“Check the area for any sign of a shooter,” he told Reed.
Elise stood even though the medic was still trying to put a bandage on her head. Her gaze locked with his, and Colt clicked the end call button so he could fill her in on something that she wasn’t going to want to hear.
“Looks like somebody shot Gambil,” Colt explained.
She released her breath as if she’d been holding it. “So, all of this is real.” She swallowed hard and caught onto the edge of his desk when she wobbled.
Colt went to her in case he had to stop her from falling or fainting, but the grip on the desk alone seemed to steady her enough. Still, it probably wasn’t a good idea for her to be on her feet. He thanked the medic after he finished the bandage, dismissing him, and Colt took Elise by the arm and put her in the chair next to his desk.
“I know I asked you this already, but do you have any idea why Gambil wanted to hurt you?” Colt insisted.
She was shaking her head before he even finished the question. “I never saw him before today.”
That didn’t mean there wasn’t a connection, and even though it was getting late and Elise would need to crash soon, he wanted to find out as much as he could while the events were still fresh in both their minds.
“What about your job?” Colt asked, trying for a different angle. “Are you working on anything controversial? Maybe running a background check on somebody who didn’t want you to find something?”
Elise didn’t immediately dismiss that. Not good. Because so far Colt hadn’t been able to rule out anything. He wanted to be able to check something off his list, and he apparently wasn’t going to be able to do that by eliminating anything work related.
“I’m working on two cases right now.” Elise idly rubbed her head and winced when her finger raked over the freshly bandaged stitches.
“Want something for the pain?” he asked.
Elise looked at him. Maybe a little surprised by his concern.
“I just need you to have a clear head right now,” he clarified. “Figured that wouldn’t happen if you were in pain.”
The corner of her mouth lifted for a split second, but there was no humor in it. He wasn’t normally a jackass, but he also didn’t feel too friendly toward someone who’d soon try to mess over his dad in a really bad way.
“Back to these two cases,” Colt continued. “Did any red flags come up that could be connected to Gambil?”
“Nothing that immediately jumps to mind.” She paused. “I’ll have a second look, though. But this seems a little extreme for someone who might just be upset over a background check that I’m doing on them for a job.”
Ah, he knew where this was going.
Right back to his family.
Colt was about to remind her that he and his brothers were all lawmen and not into witness intimidation, but there was another possible player in all of this. Best to stick to business rather than snarky comments that he really wanted to make.
“Could Gambil be connected to Buddy Jorgensen, the tenant who gave you all that trouble?” Colt asked.
She hesitated again as if surprised by the turn in the conversation. Another head shake. “I haven’t heard from Buddy in nearly two weeks.”
That didn’t mean it wasn’t connected. “He was furious about you moving back and threatened you.”
And not just a threat. He’d tried to buy the place for double its value, but Elise had refused.
The rumor Colt had heard was that she planned to make the old place a small working ranch again where she could raise and train cutting horses. Ironic since Elise had been in such a big hurry to get off that ranch and out of town when she’d turned eighteen.
In a hurry to get away from him, too.
“After all of that happened, I did a background check on Buddy myself,” Elise explained. “There wasn’t anything that popped up that would indicate he has violent tendencies toward other people. Obviously, he didn’t have quite that same level of respect for property because he spray painted graffiti on some of the walls.”
Yeah, Colt had read the report that she’d filed after the incident.
Colt figured the background check on Buddy Jorgensen had been thorough since it was Elise’s job. When it’d first come
