The Missing Colton Page 3

  Jagger lunged to the side, but it was too late—the horse’s chest rammed into his shoulder like a mallet, spinning him like a fairground top into the darkness. His gun went flying and he smashed into the ground, striking the back of his skull hard against something sharp.

  Jagger staggered to a kneeling position, then got up onto his feet, his vision blurring. He could hear mortar fire again. Automatic weapons. Smell flames. He could see the boy coming, hands held out from his robe. Empty hands...

  Focus. This is now...focus or you could die!

  The rider had swung the horse round. The hunting spotlight pointed at him. Jagger blinked. Defenseless, disoriented between past and present, he staggered forward, raising both hands, palms out.

  With a loud whinny, the horse reared up and pawed the air again. Then, as its hooves hit the ground, the rider barreled at Jagger again. This time Jagger dived for the safety of a ditch, but as he went down, a shod hoof thwacked across his temple and sliced a white streak of pain through his brain. He lay there on his back, in the ditch, unable to move, barely able to breathe, fading in and out of consciousness. He could feel blood, hot, wet, down the side of his face. His blood. And the world went black.

  * * *

  The first rays of morning sun shimmered gold over the mountains as Mia Sanders raced her horse—a bay mare that ranch wrangler Dylan Frick had chosen especially for her—over fields crisp with frost.

  The mare, Sunny, was Mia’s to ride for the duration of her employment at Dead River Ranch, where she’d worked as staff nurse for the past twenty-eight months. Early mornings, when the sun was just cracking over the distant peaks, was Mia’s most cherished time to ride.

  Today was her first day off after working 24/7 through the trauma of the wildfires. The fires, combined with the kidnappings and the murders on the ranch, plus the stress of Jethro Colton’s illness, had taken a toll, not only on Mia. Everyone on the ranch was exhausted and on edge.

  Mia was also still adjusting to the arrival of Dr. Levi Colton last month. Jethro’s estranged son had given up his first year residency in Salt Lake City to move onto the ranch to help care for his father. In the process, Levi had taken over command of the infirmary. That made him Mia’s new boss, this after she’d run the place on her own for over two years. While she liked Levi well enough, change by its nature disrupted, and it was making her rethink her time here on Dead River Ranch. Perhaps she was ready to move on now.

  But on this golden morning, before the world really awoke, fishing was all that was on Mia’s mind. The Laramie trout streams would provide her some rest and respite, and refill her soul. She kicked Sunny into a faster gallop as she traversed the burned back fields. Cold wind tore at her hair and her father’s old wicker creel bounced against Sunny’s flank. Her fly rods were in their cases, tied securely to her saddle. As depressing as these burned fields were, Mia looked beyond them, toward the untouched foothills where aspen and alders gleamed with fall colors in the mountains’ décolletage. Where she knew the rivers would be cold and chuckling and full of flashing rainbow trout.

  But as she crossed a track that bisected the field, something caught her eye—something that didn’t fit. A lump—a glimpse of blue and dark brown among the blackened stalks.

  Mia reined in her horse, breathing hard. It looked like a person. Her blood quickened.

  She urged her mare forward and with shock saw that the lump was a man, lying in the ditch, his hat discarded nearby. Quickly she dismounted, dropping to her knees in front of him. He appeared unconscious, face turned to the side. Blood pooled under his head.

  Mia switched instantly into nurse mode and reached for his pulse. He was alive, and he was breathing. But his pulse was weak and his skin ice cold. Quickly she took in details—the man was tall, about six feet. Lean. Dark hair. Possibly in his thirties with a shadowed jaw, gaunt cheeks. His cowboy hat lay several feet away. He was dressed like a ranch hand—jacket lined with shearling, scuffed cowboy boots. Blood had dripped down the side of his face, leaking into his ear. She moved his head slightly. There was a gaping wound on his temple.

  Mia ran back to her horse and fumbled to unhitch the first-aid kit she always carried. Returning to the victim’s side she opened the kit and quickly snapped on latex gloves. She pressed a wad of gauze to the man’s wound. With her free hand she reached for the radio on her belt. As staff first responder, she carried it always.

  She keyed the radio. “Dr. Colton, calling Dr, Colton!” Mia released the key and cleared her throat.

  Silence crackled.

  It was early. Maybe Levi Colton was still cuddled up in bed with Kate—the pastry chef he’d already fallen in love with since his arrival on the ranch. A pang of unbidden jealousy sparked through Mia, but urgency pressed back.

  “Mia for Dr. Colton—come in please, Dr. Colton, this is an emergency!”

  As she spoke she noticed the deeply-scuffed and flattened earth around the victim. Hoof marks everywhere. And the burned grass around the man had been trampled to ash. Had he been thrown from a horse? Then she caught sight of an empty hip holster beneath his open jacket.

  Where was his pistol?

  She glanced up. There was no gear lying near him, either. Had he been attacked, robbed? Her pulse began to race—please, not another tragedy on this farm. What on earth was going on?

  The radio crackled to life. “Mia, it’s Levi—what is it?”

  Relief washed through her. She keyed the radio. “There’s a man unconscious on the back field beyond the employee gate. He’s bleeding from a head wound. Breathing is steady but his pulse is weak and hypothermia is probable—I don’t know how long he’s been out here but he’s wet from frost.” She took in the length of his obviously toned body. “No other injuries immediately apparent—we need to get him to the infirmary stat, Levi.”

  Any other emergency help was at least fifteen miles away in the tiny rural town of Dead River and rudimentary at best. The infirmary, right now, was this man’s best bet.

  “Stand by—I’m on my way.” She heard the sudden seriousness in Levi’s tone.

  “Bring a spine board. I don’t want to risk moving him without it. He might have been thrown from a horse.”

  Sheathing her radio on her belt, she tore open a pouch from the kit and quickly unfolded a silver emergency blanket. She tucked it around the stranger before shrugging out of her own down jacket and draping that over him, too. Cold air struck her body immediately.

  Mia cleaned blood and dirt away from his wound to get a better sense of the damage. Then, using butterfly sutures from her emergency kit, she pulled the edges of the gash together as a temporary measure. She placed a soft gauze bandage over the top. As she worked, Mia saw a cloud of dirt rising in the distance, catching the low angled rays of the early sun—transport was coming.

  “Hey, there,” she said softly, cupping the victim’s face. “Can you hear me? What’s your name? Is there someone we can call?”

  He gave a soft moan and stirred. Relief washed through her— He was responsive.

  “Help is on its way. Try not to move, okay? We’re going to get you warm. Safe.”

  She heard the engine now, purring in the distance as it bumped over the farm track.

  “Hang in there, big guy,” she whispered, taking his hand in hers. His skin was cold, roughened. No ring. Mia swore softly to herself for even noticing.

  But she had. And it gave her a niggling little feeling that maybe she wasn’
t quite over being abandoned at the altar. Yet.

  “My name is Mia,” she said softly. “Dr. Levi Colton is on his way.”

  He moaned again, in pain.

  Keep talking. Keep him with you....

  “You got any ID on you? Can we call someone?”

  He groaned, moving his head. And his eyes flickered open. He stared at her. His eyes were a startling smoky blue, his pupils wide, dark. Fear crossed his features.

  “Shhh, it’s okay. Don’t move. Can you tell me your name?”

  Confusion creased his brow, then he winced as the muscles pulled at his wound. Blood seeped afresh into the gauze.

  He closed his eyes, sifting out of consciousness again.

  Mia felt inside his jacket pockets, searching for a wallet, a phone, anything that could help ID him. Her fingers came into contact with what felt like stiff paper. She pulled out a photo and sucked in a sharp breath of surprise. It was the same photograph that Jethro Colton had framed in his sitting room—the image of a woman cradling a tiny infant swaddled in a blue blanket.

  Cole Colton and his mother, Brittany.

  Mia turned the photo over. On the back was written simply the name, “Cole.”

  Her gaze shot to the stranger’s face. No. That was ridiculous. It couldn’t be him.

  But he was the right age and build and coloring.

  Mia felt inside the left-hand pocket of his jacket and touched something soft. Pulling it out, she found herself staring at a strip of baby-blue flannel. On it was embroidered with the name “Cole.” It looked as if it had come from the same blanket swaddling the baby in the photograph—the blanket little Cole Colton had been kidnapped in.

  Her chest tightened.

  “Cole?” she said quietly.

  He moaned, his eyes moving behind his lids.

  Could it be possible? Had the Colton sisters’ televised appeal brought this man here, their missing half brother, Jethro’s first-born son?

  The farm truck pulled up behind her, doors opening.

  “Over here!” Mia called out as one of the ranch hands came running with a spine board, Levi right behind.

  “I’ve stopped the bleeding,” she told Levi. “He came round for a few minutes, but he’s lapsed into unconsciousness again.” She moved aside as Levi dropped to his knees.

  “He’s not one of the farm hands, is he?” Levi said.

  Mia was silent.

  Levi glanced up, met her eyes.

  “I think he might be Cole,” she said quietly. “Cole Colton.”

  Chapter 2

  Back in the infirmary, heat turned on high, Mia and Levi carefully maneuvered their patient onto an adjustable hospital-style cot. He was heavy, his clothes wet, and Mia was already breaking a sweat.

  Levi had ascertained there was no spinal injury. He examined the stranger’s pupils, using a small flashlight as he held back each eyelid in turn.

  “Pupillary response normal,” he said quietly. “Reflexes normal. Pulse within acceptable range. He’s breathing fine on his own....”

  But the man was still unconscious. Although the gash on his temple looked nasty and had bled profusely, it was superficial. The concern was the possibility of a brain hematoma.

  Levi carefully felt his patient’s skull, searching for signs of further injury to his head. Mia watched the doc’s gloved hands moving through the man’s dark brown hair. It was thick, glossy. Her mind slipped back.

  She knew what it was like to run her fingers through a man’s thick, dark hair. Soft and sensual. She shook herself, startled at the sudden and unwanted memory, at the empty hole in her stomach that came with it.

  Her gaze went to the stranger’s face. His skin was sun browned, his lashes dense above the flare of well-defined cheekbones. He had a strong jaw, shadowed with stubble. Hawkish brows. His mouth was beautiful, wide, the lips etched as if with an ancient Roman sculptor’s precision.

  It had been a while since he’d had a haircut. And even in repose there was something edgy and hungry about him, a little dangerous. Mia liked the look of him, found it sexy. The hole in her stomach gnawed a little bigger and wariness whispered through her. This stranger had the kind of looks that had done her in more than once before.

  It wasn’t that he looked particularly like her ex, but something about the sheer, smoldering physicality of this man brought Brad to mind. That, in turn, reminded Mia of her own failures, mistakes. Of her feelings of inadequacy as a woman—of her newfound fears of intimacy. Of all the pain and longing she’d come here to Dead River Ranch to escape and bury.

  And she had buried it. Hadn’t she?

  Over these past twenty-eight months Mia had started to believe she’d finally conquered something inside herself. But here it was again, raw, scratching at her mind from just under the surface.

  The doc’s hands paused suddenly in the man’s hair.

  “What is it?” she said, leaning a little closer.

  “Bring that light over this way.”

  Mia angled the examining light over their patient’s head as Levi parted his hair.

  “A scar,” Levi said, running his gloved finger gently along the length of it. “A nasty one and fairly recent, too. I’d guess about a year ago this guy sustained a pretty serious head injury.”

  Mia knew what Levi had to be thinking, that a fresh concussion on top of an older one could have a compounded effect. It could pose a whole other set of complications.

  “Help me get him out of his wet gear, Mia, we need to get him dry and under a heated blanket. I’ll suture that wound properly once we’ve given the rest of him a thorough once-over.”

  Mia helped roll the stranger onto his side as they proceeded to wrestle him carefully out of his wet denim jacket. Beneath the jacket he wore a button-down chambray shirt in pale blue. His sleeves were pushed up, partly exposing a tattoo on his right forearm.

  Mia thought of the stranger’s eyes as she unbuttoned his shirt. Baby Cole had had blue eyes.

  Peeling back his shirt, Mia exposed another tattoo across the man’s left pec—an image of a dog tag being carried aloft by wings. Underneath, in an unfurling scroll, were the words Death before Dishonor.

  The smaller tattoo on his forearm was an eagle in flight with hooked talons, as if coming in for prey.

  Mia wondered if he was ex-military. The dog tag with wings emblazoned symbolically across his heart might signify the death of a solider, perhaps. Someone about whom he’d cared deeply.

  Death before Dishonor.

  Had he received his earlier head injury in combat?

  There was not an ounce of excess fat on this man. His chest was honed to perfection, his abs like a washboard—an anatomist’s dream, each muscle defined as if for individual study. Mia lowered her hands to unbuckle his belt, suddenly overly conscious of the dark whorl of hair that snaked down his stomach and disappeared seductively into his low-slung jeans.

  Feeling hotter than she should, she realized his boots would have to be removed before the jeans could. She tugged off worn Western boots that had clearly seen the business end of a ranch. She tucked them out of the way under a chair against the wall. On the back of the chair she hung his shirt and wet jacket.

  The cold dampness of his jeans made them difficult to maneuver. Mia was perspiring with the effort now, her cheeks flushing as she tugged the denim down over powerfully developed thighs, strong calves, beautifully curved muscle. As a nursing student she’d always had a keen
appreciation of a human body in its prime. This body was no exception.

  Mia paused. “Another scar,” she said quietly. “Along his inner thigh. Also fairly recent.” And it was a nasty-looking one.

  Levi grunted. He was focused on removing the dressing and temporary adhesive sutures Mia had applied to their patient’s temple.

  She returned her attention to the scar. It ran up the length of his inner thigh, disappearing into the hem of pure white boxer briefs—the way she liked men’s underwear. Sexy in its simplicity.

  This errant thought disturbed her, a nurse. She should remain detached, a professional. Hell, who was she kidding? Professionals had private thoughts about patients all the time, both good and bad, of a sexual nature and otherwise.

  Mia wondered if this ragged scar up the inside of his leg had been incurred at the same time as the scar under his hairline. Whatever had happened to him, he’d taken a beating, and not that long ago.

  She removed his briefs, her heart quickening at the sight of the dark, dense flare of coarse hair between his substantial thighs. She swallowed, unable to look away immediately.

  He’d been blessed where men obsessed about being blessed. Size mattered—mostly to males, she thought. Another memory mushroomed hotly inside her. Making love two days before her wedding day. Straddling Brad, moving naked over him, the room hot. She hadn’t had sex since—not once in over two years.

  Mia suddenly felt molten hot and desperate deep inside. She shot a glance at Levi, worried for a moment that he’d somehow be able to read her mind, or that he’d sense her sudden tension. Because something about this dark stranger now naked on the examining table was unraveling everything she’d knitted so tightly together over the past two years. And it unsettled her big-time.

  Mia covered him quickly with a soft electric blanket, adjusting the thermostat to high, and she began to rub his feet and hands softly to warm them. As she worked, her thoughts strayed back to her wedding day. Or, rather, the wedding day that wasn’t. Brad failing to show at the chapel, leaving her waiting outside with her three bridesmaids and her uncle who’d come from England to give her away. A soft Pacific Northwest rain had begun to fall that day, but as the hours had ticked by, getting her hair wet was the last thing on Mia’s mind. She thought about the gown, wasted. The hairdressers, flowers, caterers, champagne, the venue...the money her mother had spent, money she hadn’t really been able to afford. A ball of emotion swelled, low and painful, in her throat.