The Missing Colton Page 5

  Names, words, scenes, voices...circling...dizzy. He put his hand to his throbbing head.

  Who in hell was he?

  Anxiety crackled and sparked through him. His head hurt like hell. Pain—it was familiar to him, a constant. He knew pain. Why? He reached up and carefully fingered the bandage on his temple again. Mia reached for his hand, stopping him. “Don’t. You shouldn’t touch,” she said softly, eyes strong, unwavering. “At least, not yet. Give it time to heal a bit.”

  The skin of her hand was soft and warm against his. He could detect a scent of...Spring Breeze—was that the name of a shampoo? Panic, confusion, tightened in his chest. His heart thumped faster.

  What was he doing here? How had he gotten here?

  Roads—many roads had led here. Clouds of sand whipped suddenly up in his mind, swirling, violent dust dervishes. He could feel the sting of driving grains, like glass, sandpapering his skin. A turban was wrapped over his face. The desert mountains were dry. Cold. The grit of sand was getting between his teeth, up his nostrils, caking between his eyelashes. The sound of an explosion whumped through the air.

  He winced, closing his eyes tight and clenching his fists.

  A boy—it was just a boy coming over the sand, the wind flapping his dun robe against skinny legs. Brain matter spattered suddenly across his face and over the backs of his hands. He could feel it, the warm wetness of a boy’s brain on his hands. What was happening? Why in hell did he not know who he was?

  He sucked in his breath, his heart slamming, gaze flashing around the room as he tried to sit up, get moving. Get out.

  “Hey, hey, don’t try and rush things,” she said, holding his shoulder down. He looked into her face. Her features were calm. She smiled and it lit her eyes. “It’s okay,” she said. “Anxiety, agitation—even fear—are normal when someone comes around after being unconscious. The longer the coma, the worse it can all feel. It’ll come back, just give it time.”

  The pressure of her hand against his shoulder was reassuring, and real, and he willed himself to calm. He told himself he wasn’t trapped—he was just in some doctor’s rooms. With increased focus, he re-assessed his surroundings. A drip stood near his bed. A blood-pressure machine was affixed to the wall. He was on some kind of cot, naked under the blanket that covered him. He caught sight of a pile of clothes folded on a chair, cowboy boots underneath. A gun holster was draped over the back of the chair. His stuff?

  “What happened to me?” he said, throat sore. “Where did you find me?”

  “We don’t know what happened yet,” she said calmly. “All I can tell you is that on my ride this morning I came across you lying injured and unconscious in a ditch out in the back fields. You had a nasty gash on your head and you were mildly hypothermic. You must have been out there for some time during the night judging by the moisture in your clothes.”

  Night...why was that so sharply familiar? No, Knight...

  McKnight.

  “You had no ID on you, just the photo and the piece of baby blanket.” She hesitated, her gaze shifting to the chair with the clothes. “You had a holster but your gun was gone.

  Shots...he could remember shots. Had he fired them?

  She moistened her lips, which drew his attention to her mouth. Full lips, pink, kissable lips. His gaze lowered farther, taking in her Western shirt, the fine gold chain that slipped down into her cleavage.

  He raised his eyes back up to meet her gaze. “I had no ID? But I did have a piece of blanket and a photo?”

  “I think you were mugged, that someone took everything of value. The police should be here soon to take a statement.”

  “Can I see it, the photo and baby blanket?” he said.

  “Dr. Colton has taken them up to show Jethro, his father. I’ll go up and get them for you in a little while.”

  “And the name on the scrap of blanket was Cole?”

  She nodded.

  He frowned. Cole. The name felt so familiar. Important somehow.

  Kidnapped—she’d said that Cole had been kidnapped, in a blue baby blanket after his mother’s funeral.

  The thought made his heart gallop and his skin go hot. Memories, names, spiraled suddenly through his brain, different threads twisting upon each other like double helix DNA strands winding tighter and tighter upon themselves.

  “And you said that Cole was abducted thirty years ago, while wrapped in a blue blanket?”

  She smiled again. “Clearly nothing wrong with your short-term memory, then. That’s a good sign.”

  His mouth went dry as the strands of memory suddenly began unraveling themselves, and his confusion clarified into two hard lines.

  He’d come here looking for answers. For justice for Cole and to find a way back into journalism that didn’t involve war.

  He was Jagger.

  Jagger McKnight.

  Ex-foreign correspondent. Most recently embedded with the United States military in Afghanistan...he stopped himself right there, not willing to go back any deeper.

  “You’re remembering?” she said, watching him intensely.

  He was a storyteller. He got the kinds of news stories that others could not, or would not, because they were afraid to take the kinds of risks he took. But Jagger would take those risks, not only because he fed off the adrenaline, but because he believed passionately in providing a voice for the underdog, the silenced, the abused, the disenfranchised. The starving and the persecuted. He’d go into totally foreign countries, all alone. And once on the ground he’d run with whatever the story handed him. He’d learned to improvise, to go under cover when needed.

  It’s how he’d found acclaim.

  And now, this particular assignment had just handed him a tool he’d never have dreamed up—amnesia. These people thought he might be Cole Colton. He had to run with this, for as long as he conceivably could.

  “You do remember, don’t you?” she whispered, her eyes lightening. “You are Cole Colton?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t remember a damn thing,” he whispered. “I have no idea who I am.”

  And as he lied to this beautiful nurse who had probably saved his life, a chilling thought struck Jagger. Someone had tried to kill him out there—someone wearing a mask and a hunting spot, and riding a black horse.

  He’d quite possibly been left for dead.

  But why had his assailant taken his ID, yet left that photo? Why plant a piece of baby blanket on him?

  Did his attacker want people to think he was Cole—a dead Cole?

  Why?

  An icy chill washed over his skin. There was more to this story than he’d thought, and now he was even more determined to expose it. But Jagger could not trust a soul on this ranch—not even this nurse—because his attacker was still out there.

  And might try to finish the job of killing him.

  Chapter 3

  Mia knocked. When no one answered, she quietly opened the door to the sitting room off Jethro Colton’s bedroom. It was empty, the fireplace cold. Dark wood shelves lined the walls, hosting framed pictures of the Colton family along with a collection of books. But it was a large photographic study positioned above the fireplace that always immediately drew Mia’s eye—a portrait of Jethro as a young rancher in his prime, watching over the room.

  In the image, Jethro was standing in front of a fence—tall, dark, honed, his cowboy hat in hand, his stallion beside him. The photographer had managed to catch an intensity of light and purpose in the ranche
r’s eyes and a command in his posture.

  Mia stilled in the middle of the sitting room as a sudden feeling of recognition rippled through her. The John Doe she’d left sleeping quietly in the infirmary looked startlingly like Jethro in his younger days.

  Again she wondered if the stranger was Jethro’s first-born son. If so, where had he been all these years? And of all ironic fates to befall him right now, to have his memory dashed from him right on the doorstep of his biological father’s home.

  The door leading from the sitting room into Jethro’s bedroom was slightly ajar, and voices came from inside—Levi’s and Jethro’s, a tone of quiet urgency. It made a change from all the yelling that had emanated from that bedroom a mere few weeks ago when Jethro was refusing any treatment at all after he’d suffered his first major health setback from the leukemia.

  Mia went up to the door, knocked gently.

  “Come in!” It was Levi, taking charge. This meant Jethro had taken a turn for the worse. The old codger rarely ceded an opportunity to lord it over both family and estate staff.

  Mia entered. The room felt hot and close and smelled of a sick person. Jethro was propped against pillows, a moss-green duvet up to his neck. He looked like a pale and sunken Scrooge being swallowed by his linens, as if the large four-poster bed was actually growing in stature as the man inside it shrank physically away, bit by bit each day. As if the bed might yet consume Jethro Colton wholly in the weeks to come. It was a bit of a shock to see him so suddenly frail.

  Levi stood at his father’s bedside, silhouetted against the stormy light coming in from the window behind him. Next to the bed was an oxygen machine and a drip that contained morphine. Because of Levi’s coaxing, Jethro had finally allowed Mia to administer pain meds and oxygen, and to monitor his vitals. Beyond that, she’d been told hands off.

  Jethro’s attention was riveted on the piece of baby blanket and photo clutched in his hands. The old man’s eyes shone with emotion and were rimmed with red.

  Mia went round to Levi and drew him quietly aside. “Everything all right?” she whispered.

  Levi nodded. “I told him about the stranger, showed him what the man had in his pockets—it’s upset him.”

  “He’s come around fully,” Mia said of their patient. “But he has no memory of who he is or why he’s here.”

  Jethro’s head snapped up as he was jerked out of his memories. “Nurse Sanders, go to my sitting room—fetch me that framed photograph on the middle bookshelf.” His voice was thin and wheezy, but no less commanding. His arrogance had not yet been fully sucked out of him.

  Mia went into the sitting room as ordered. She knew exactly which frame Jethro was talking about—it held the same image she’d found on their John Doe this morning. She brought the frame to Jethro’s bedside and he took it from her hands without glancing up at her face.

  “It’s the same,” he said hoarsely, the fingers of his left hand absently working the soft scrap of blue blanket, his eyes going distant again.

  Jethro sat like that, silent, his eyes haunted, as if he’d been sucked down some dark and tormented memory hole.

  Finally he looked up at his son. “Brittany was already unhappy by the time Cole was born, you know.” Another beat of silence passed as Jethro appeared to gather up more memories. “Her sister, Desiree, embroidered this baby blanket. She gave it to Brittany the day Cole was born. The embroidery is distinctive.”

  Jethro closed his eyes. Outside, in the distance trees were bowing as the increasing storm winds tore yellow leaves from their branches and scattered them free across the fields.

  “So, you do recognize the piece of blanket, then?” Levi prompted.

  Jethro nodded, his eyes still closed. “Cole was swaddled in it when he was taken, shortly after Brittany’s funeral. That’s what I told the police—that Cole was abducted with this blanket, right out of his crib.”

  Mia glanced at Levi to see if he’d picked up on Jethro’s curious phrasing.

  That’s what I told the police....

  She’d overhead Levi asking his father last month about a rumor that Desiree had been spotted in Jackson with an infant almost three decades ago. But shortly after the rumor surfaced, Desiree had been found murdered. No baby in sight, if there ever was one. Jethro had gone into apparent medical distress when Levi had broached this matter, but after Levi had left the room Jethro seemed fine again.

  It had fed Mia’s suspicions about how much Jethro Colton might actually know about the abduction of his son and what he might be hiding. Levi’s half sisters, however, had quickly shut down this line of thinking. They loved their father too much even to consider that he might be hiding something about his own child’s kidnapping.

  But whatever secrets Jethro Colton might harbor, they seemed to have him in their grip now, as he clutched the scrap of blanket so tightly that his knuckles were going white.

  “Brittany started drinking because of her depression,” he said. “It cost her her life—driving drunk.” He opened his eyes and glanced up, a shadow of remorse twisting his features, emotion glazing his eyes. “Before the depression she was different. I did love her, you know.”

  Mia swallowed.

  Jethro refocused abruptly, as if he’d made up his mind about something. “Go fetch him, Mia,” he ordered. “Bring my son up here, now. I want to see him. Now.”

  “Jethro,” Levi said, stepping forward. “The man has no identification, no memory. We don’t know that he is Cole—neither does he.”

  “Even if he did have identification, it wouldn’t say ‘Cole Colton,’ now would it?” snapped Jethro. “Of course not! He’d have been living under some other name. But he did have these—” Jethro held up the piece of blue flannel and crumpled photo, his breath starting to wheeze as his stress level rose.

  “And you said yourself that he has the right coloring, Levi. You said he’s the right age...” He faltered as he struggled for another breath. “It’s him.” He coughed. “It’s Cole. My son—my first-born son. He’s come home. Everything’s going to be alright.”

  Levi reached quickly for the oxygen machine and turned it on. A loud beep emanated from the machine as Levi brought the tubing and nasal cannula up to his father’s face. Jethro shoved Levi’s hands away. “Just bring me my son. I want to see my Cole.”

  And it hit Mia right there—Jethro Colton needed this stranger to be his missing child, and that psychological need was rising inside him like a desperate tide. He needed things to be right again at this dying phase of his life.

  “Jethro,” Levi countered firmly as he brought the oxygen tubing up to Jethro’s face once more. “You need the oxygen.”

  Jethro pushed his son’s hands away again. “First I want to see Cole. And I won’t have him see me attached to some goddamn breathing machine.”

  “He has amnesia, Mr. Colton,” Mia said, stepping forward. “I must caution you, even if we bring him up here, he won’t know who you are.”

  Jethro swung his head round as if noticing Mia for the first time. His eyes were still piercing despite his frailty. Or perhaps because of it.

  “You’re saying Cole will never know where he’s been all these years—that his memory won’t come back?”

  “It could be short-term amnesia, Jethro,” Levi interrupted. “I’ve organized a CAT scan for him tomorrow morning at Cheyenne Memorial, and a consult with Dr. Rajit Singh, a neurologist. We’ll know more after that.”

  “How did he reach my ranch? Someone must have seen him. Did he come through Dead River? Did anyone in town see him, talk to him...?” Another fit of coughing and wheezing forced Jethro to double over and his face went red with pain as he clutched his chest, struggling to breathe.

  “We’ll find out,” Levi said. “Trevor has put in a call to the Dead River P.D. The police are on their way.” The doc glanced at Mia
in frustration. “Mia, how is our John Doe? Is he capable of a short trip upstairs? Because as soon as Jethro has seen him we can connect up this oxygen and the drip.”

  “I’ll go check—he was looking okay, otherwise I wouldn’t have left him alone. He wanted to see the blanket and photo we found on him, thought it might jog his memory.”

  But Jethro gathered the blanket tightly to his chest. “It better be Chief Drucker who’s coming—” he wheezed between coughs “—and not one of his imbecilic officers. I’ve got no time for those two...” Another spasm of coughs wracked the sick man’s body.

  Levi’s jaw tightened as he once again tried to coax Jethro to take the cannula. Mia left quickly to fetch their patient.

  But the dying patriarch still managed to yell after her. “Nurse Sanders! Fetch my daughters, too! They need to know he’s come home!”

  As Mia exited the sitting room she almost collided with Mathilda Perkins carrying a tray with orange juice. The head housekeeper gave a startled exclamation of shock.

  Mia caught her breath, equally surprised. “I’m so sorry, Mathilda,” Mia said with a laugh that released the tension that had been building in her since her discovery this morning. “I didn’t see you coming.”

  Mathilda straightened her spine and tilted her chin up. “I have Mr. Colton’s orange juice. I...I like to bring it to him myself.”

  “Yes, of course. I—” But before Mia could finish Mathilda swept past her with an efficiency honed by decades of service to this family.

  Mia hurried down the wide passage, making for the curved dark-wood staircase that would take her down to the employee wing where the infirmary was located. Persian rugs swallowed the sound of her footfalls. And it struck her suddenly—how long had Mathilda been standing outside that bedroom door? She could have heard everything. News of “Cole’s” return and Jethro’s reaction would ripple through the ranch employee grapevine like wildfire now.

  It would be nothing new for the staff to eavesdrop on family dramas. In fact, it was hard to avoid. Servants were constantly required to be underfoot and because of it, the mansion was continually alive with some gossip or other. Mathilda, in particular, liked to be in the know so she could nip any nefarious whisperings about the family in the bud. She was fiercely protective of her long-time employer.