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
