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“Demanded with a gun?” Ace asked, thinking that if Kyle had approached his father differently, with a job application in hand maybe, Payne Colton would have surely, under the circumstances, shown compassion for the clearly troubled and newly bereaved young man.
“You know what he did? Your f-father?” Kyle was sobbing now, snot and tears making a mess of a face twisted with anguish. “He laughed at me, told me this wasn’t one of my stupid video games when I pointed my pistol at him. Said I was nothing but an embarrassment, a damned waste of potential. Th-that my mother—the mother he’d used until he had no more use for, had confessed she was ashamed of what I had be-become...”
Sobs punctuated the confession, at once piteous and revolting.
“And that was when I shot him,” he burst out, sticking out his chest and telling Ace triumphantly. “When I shot him and I shot him—only this was so much better than any game I’ve played.”
As he explained it, Kyle’s eyes went so wide with excitement that Ace made out the rings of white around the darker irises. It was that detail that would haunt him later, whenever he thought back to the final words of O’Neill’s confession. Words he knew would stay with him forever.
“The hot spatter of your enemy’s hot blood on your skin—the smell of it, the taste of that red mist on the air,” O’Neill said, his voice going deadly calm. “There’s freaking nothing like it, Colton. Nothing like it in this world.”
* * *
Sierra pressed her hand to Ace’s back, where she felt the pounding of his heart, the shaking in his muscles. At any moment, she feared, his control would snap and he would launch himself at this unhinged little nut job who had caused his family so much pain.
“Take a breath. Step away now,” she murmured.
At the same time, Spencer pulled Kyle backward. “Okay, O’Neill. We’ve heard plenty from you for now.” He then proceeded to advise him of his rights before adding, “We’ve got a bit of a walk back to our SUVs—since a Porsche is blocking the road just downhill.”
“That’d be our ride, broken down, I’m afraid,” Sierra explained to the officers, since Ace seemed too stunned to respond. “O’Neill’s in the yellow Camaro over behind that wall—”
“I’m betting that’s gonna turn out to be that stolen classic, Sergeant,” said the younger officer. “Remember that ’69 Fred Newcomb reported missing from his garage?”
“It’s a ’69 for sure,” Sierra confirmed, holding on to Ace’s arm as the two of them followed both officers, who escorted their defeated-looking charge toward the police vehicles.
“We can sort that all out back at the station—”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you pigs,” the prisoner blurted.
Neither officer responded, but Sierra suspected that both were smiling inside, since, from what she understood of the law, O’Neill’s uncoerced, recorded confession was more than enough to hold him while they gathered physical evidence from the hospital and ghost town crime scenes to shore up their case against him.
Trailing behind, Sierra nudged Ace, keeping her voice low as she asked him, “You hanging in there all right? I know it must be hard, hearing how—”
“I have to tell them. All of them. My—my family needs to know. They need to understand what happened, that it was all—I don’t know—misplaced grief mixed up with resentment for—” He shook his head. “But I still don’t understand how any of this could be related to the email sent about the switch-up in the hospital with the real Ace Colton or my birth mother being Micheline Anderson—”
“Micheline Anderson,” Sierra echoed, not letting on for the moment that she’d already heard of the woman from Ainsley and his brothers at Ace’s condo.
“Ainsley told me earlier they’d figured it out while I was still in hiding.”
Sierra heaved a sighed, wondered how he was holding it together. “That’s a lot to absorb, I’m sure, but let’s say we table that discussion for now and focus on watching our steps walking through here. I don’t know about you, but I’ve taken enough tumbles for one day.” She wrapped her arm around his waist, realizing that he needed her support now more than ever to deal with the emotional shock of these revelations. At least until she could get him back to his family, so he could digest O’Neill’s confession and the identity of his biological mother before taking stock of the questions still hanging over him.
Questions whose answers she wouldn’t be around to help him deal with. But he had his siblings, a wealth of them, and a daughter, too, now. So why were her eyes filling at the thought of her own absence?
She didn’t have long to focus on that before they reached the two police vehicles and Spencer asked Officer Donovan to transport O’Neill back to the station.
“I’ll be taking these two separately,” he told the younger officer.
“Yes, sir,” Donovan replied before loading the still-cuffed and silent prisoner into the rear of his own unit.
“You, in the front with me,” Spencer said, pointing to Sierra with a look that had her stomach tightening. “We have some things we need to talk about.”
“I see my running off from the hospital hasn’t much improved his opinion about bounty hunters,” she said to Ace after he strode toward the driver’s side. “He looks plenty mad.”
This time it was Ace who clapped a hand onto her shoulder before leaning down to kiss her, just above the ear. “He does have reason. You have no idea what he went through, getting permission to run that phony press event to announce your supposed murder last night. All to ensure you wouldn’t really end up on a refrigerated slab.”
Grimacing, she shrugged off his touch, gritting her teeth at the reminder that he still thought he knew best how to protect her.
“Hey,” Ace said. “I’m still on your side, remember?” As he opened the door for her, the SUV’s interior light lit his face. Though in need of a shave and lined with strain, it still held traces of the confidence and optimism of the man who’d once led a billion-dollar oil corporation. The man who’d claimed to love her. “Still hoping you’ll give me another chance to convince you that I meant what I said before, about wanting to make a life with you. We don’t have to rush things if you don’t want, but I’d still love nothing more than—”
