He had to get that woman out of his head. With a silent curse, Riley Colton scrolled past the photo that had distracted him for no good reason. He moved on to another, trying to focus on the investigation at hand, and instead, wondered why the previous photo had even brought an image of Charlize Kent to his brain.
The unknown female he’d been looking at via photo didn’t bear the slightest resemblance to the flesh-and-blood woman with whom he’d had one night of incredible sex—and walked out on pretty much as soon as they were done. The only thing the two images—his mental one and the one he’d seen on his screen—had in common was that the women depicted were female, about the same age.
The world was filled with thirty-year-old women—all much younger than his forty-three years.
He scrolled back up one. Glanced at that picture again. Looking for a resemblance that would justify the intrusive Charlize image. There was a look about the woman on the screen—trusting, almost. Trusting could have been Charlize’s middle name. From what he’d heard the night he’d met her, Ms. Kent was one tough cookie. A social worker in private practice, she specialized in domestic violence matters and dealt with some pretty tough situations. With him, she’d been charming, smart, sweet, passionate and completely...trusting.
The other woman, the one he was hoping to find by scrolling through internet photos matching her description, had been trusting, too. And then one day she’d just disappeared.
Charlize had left the fundraiser with him when he could have been a criminal. Was that what had happened to Shannon Martin? Had she trusted the wrong guy and met with a painful fate? The missing person cold case was still with the Grand Rapids Police Department, and filed with the FBI, as well, but his client, Shannon’s younger brother, Avis, had hired Colton Investigations to try to find her. Avis had said he’d figured that Riley, with his more than twenty years as an FBI agent, might have some success where others had failed.
Since Riley and his younger siblings were all about finding justice, he’d taken the case on the spot. He had Ashanti, Colton Investigations’ tech expert, and Bailey, their researcher, both working on Shannon’s file, but with them out of the office on separate pursuits that afternoon, and a hunch occurring to him, there he was, alone in the office, poring over photos. He’d honed an ability to listen, study and find the truth, and trusted his instincts above all else.
Shannon, nineteen at the time of her disappearance, had choreographed an award-winning piece for a high school dance class shortly before she’d vanished. Riley knew, through carting his two sets of younger twin sisters to the dance studio years ago, that there were national competitions for choreography. It was possible that Shannon was alive, and, for some reason, could be pursuing her talent under a different name.
Ashanti would be much more capable than he was at finding such needles in the haystack of life, but he’d wanted to play out his hunch privately before turning such an onerous task over to her. No use wasting agency resources if he started looking and got a feeling he was on a dead end.
So there he was, in jeans, a T-shirt and tennis shoes, sitting at his desk in what used to be his dad’s study, scratching at the scruffy growth on his face as he perused photos of dance choreographers, and getting no inspiration at all—except to be reminded of Charlize Kent. A woman he had no intention of contacting ever again.
He had no doubt that he would remain true to that intention.
But comparing choreographers to the age-progressed photo of Shannon, he wasn’t feeling it...perhaps this angle was a bust...
A scurry of claws against expensively finished hardwood floors had him glancing out toward the large living room converted into the main CI office space. He lived in the family home where they’d all grown up, part of which he’d converted into the CI offices. Pal, his six-year-old German shepherd, was taking off outside, heading through the doggy door he’d had installed into the dining room wall beyond the living room. He listened for the second before she let out a bark of alarm, and, hand on the gun at his waist, headed out to see what was bothering her.
It wouldn’t be birds or squirrels. She had a different sound for the wildlife prey she seemed to think were her toys.
“Pal!” he hollered, his tone filled with command. Twenty years as an agent with the FBI had gained him some dangerous enemies. Losing Pal to one of them wasn’t on his list of “to-dos.”
Keeping to the walls, out of direct line of windows, he heard Pal whine—in greeting. Not pain. And stepped outside as Brody Higgins, their tall unofficial foster sibling, came hurrying toward him, in skinny blue jeans, button-down shirt and brown blazer, with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Ignoring Pal completely, Brody glanced behind him and then his spectacled and clearly terrified brown-eyed gaze landed on Riley.
“Thank God you’re home,” he panted, out of breath, as though he’d been running, his brown mop of hair, which was normally gelled, wet with sweat.
Seeing Pal trot over to sniff the gate Brody had come through, and then head back up toward them, Riley, worried for the younger man, quickly pulled Brody inside.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Where’s your car?” Sixteen years older than Brody, Riley had always been a watchdog and big brother figure.
“I left it a couple of blocks over,” Brody said, “I think I was being followed, and ditched my car to head out on foot between houses.”
Pal came running in through the doggy door. Tail wagging.
That meant the backyard was clear of any foreign scent or bodies, Riley translated, giving the dog’s head a few absentminded strokes while he assessed Brody. Though he was now an attorney, Brody had once been on Riley’s father’s radar for murder. A Michigan district attorney, Graham Colton had believed the kid had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, hadn’t murdered the Heritage Park woman he’d been arrested for killing—in spite of the fact that Brody had been in possession of the dead woman’s wallet. He had declined to prosecute the then eighteen-year-old Brody.
The kid had claimed that he’d found the wallet near her body. Graham had believed him and been proven correct two months later when DNA confirmed a meth dealer’s guilt. After that, feeling for the kid, the Coltons collectively had taken the orphaned foster kid under their protective wing.
“You think you were being followed,” Riley said, taking stock of the tall, skinny young man who stood there trembling. And then, saying, “Stay here,” he took his gun in hand and headed outside.
His gun leading the way in front of a muscular build that served him well, Riley protected his back with walls and cover, checking out the entire perimeter of the property, finding nothing amiss. A no-gooder would have a hard time going unnoticed in that elite historic neighborhood, and an even harder time staying unnoticed with the plethora of security cameras everywhere. On his property and others’, too.
“It’s all clear,” he announced, heading in the back door, through the kitchen, to the main office where Brody sat, hunched over, propping himself with a forearm across his knees as he rubbed his eyes.
The hand that lay limp by his knee caught Riley’s attention. Two of the five fingers were splinted and taped.
“What happened to your hand?” Riley might carry some personal guilt for not doing more for the kid after Riley’s parents had died so suddenly, but he’d always kept track of him and had his back.
Sitting up, Brody shoved a couple of fingers from his good hand up under his glasses, rubbing his eyes, and then, hand falling to his leg, gave a quick, hitched sigh.
“I’m in trouble, Riley,” he said, his tone not whiney, but needy just the same. “Big trouble.”
Thinking first of the high paying corporate law firm Brody had signed on with right out of law school, he asked, “What did you do?”
While Brody had a small string of misdemeanors on a juvenile record, left over from life with a drug-addicted mother who’d eventually overdosed, he’d walked the straight and narrow in the nine years since his escape from prosecution for the murder he didn’t commit.
Riley had been front and center when Brody had graduated from college, and then law school and he’d been the first one Brody called when he’d passed the bar.
“I borrowed some money,” Brody said, his gaze dropping away from Riley’s. “I had a chance to get in on the ground floor of a great, can’t-fail deal, with a quick return. Enough to pay off the hundred thousand I owe in school loans...”
Heart sinking, Riley dropped his butt to the corner of Bailey’s desk, facing Brody, who was still slumped on a chair along the wall. Few things that promised huge returns quickly panned out. He knew that. Why didn’t Brody?
Keeping the unproductive thoughts to himself, he went for the facts. Listen, study, find the truth.
“What deal?”
“I passed by this promotional poster, claiming you could make six figures overnight, and attended a seminar. All you had to do was become a part of this exclusive RetivaYou team...”
“RevitaYou,” Riley interjected, not gently. He really needed to work on his patience. Most particularly where Brody was concerned. He expected way more out of the kid than was fair.
Especially considering the fact that when Brody had been in college and would have welcomed a place to call home, Riley hadn’t taken the kid in. He’d been living alone in a place big enough for three people to comfortably stay out of each other’s way. But after spending his teen and early adult years helping to raise five siblings, he’d needed space to himself. Quiet in which to breathe. He had a sometimes dangerous job that required total focus. He’d prized his solitude. He’d let Brody down.
“It’s this new vitamin product,” Brody said, sitting up straighter and looking Riley in the eye. “You take one vitamin a day, and you start to look ten years younger within a week...”
Riley didn’t bother to hide the rise of his brow on that one. Seriously...
“I know it sounds crazy, Riley, but I swear to you, if you’d been there, you’d understand. There were people there who’d taken the vitamins and you could see the difference looking at time-stamped photos and then seeing them up on stage...”
Photos could be manipulated in a ton of ways. Even a child could do it...
“They don’t even have FDA approval yet, so this was the chance to get in before big investors and pharmaceuticals took it over. The ingredients are a combination of minerals and vitamins that promote healthy cell restoration...” Brody reached into his bag and held out a little green bottle. “It’s a dietary supplement,” he said.
Taking the bottle, Riley looked it over. Could have been any of the various vitamin supplements he saw on shelves at the store. Thirty capsules to a bottle. “Have you been taking them?” He recognized some of the ingredients listed.
“No,” Brody said, glancing away again. “I was dating this older woman... I...umm...recruited her to take them because I’d get extra bonuses, but not only did she swear they were making her look older, she claimed they also made her sick, and she dumped me.”
Oh, good God. For such a smart man, Brody exhibited gullibility that was almost pathetic. And not all that surprising, considering that the kid had been needing a mother most of his life.
“I’m telling you, Riley, in the beginning, these guys...the scientist who invented these things was at the seminar, giving, like, a medical explanation for why the stuff works, metabolism and things that react with other things. And there were four investors who all stood up and talked about how they’d already made back double their investment. They even provided bank statements to prove it.”
Riley itched to get his hands on those documents. But had to figure out how much trouble Brody had gotten himself into, first. The kid had evaded his question regarding the splint on his fingers. Had he gotten himself into some kind of fistfight?
And was the victim pressing charges?
He couldn’t let Brody lose his law license over a stupid financial move.
“And it didn’t occur to you that there are already products on the market that promise the very same thing? Or, that if it was such a simple thing to put vitamins and minerals together as a fountain of youth, someone would have done it long before now?” he asked.
“Later it did. When my girlfriend got sick. But at first, I was there to hear about the investment...you know...if people want to buy vitamins because it makes them feel younger, that’s up to them...”
So Brody had been willing to skate on the ethics of it, to invest in selling something that offered false advertisement...on the promise of big return?
Not illegal, certainly, but...
Not the way the Coltons worked, either.
But then, Brody, who’d never known his own father, was raised by an addict and then was shuffled in and out of foster homes. The Coltons had grown up in a lovely home in an elite neighborhood with the district attorney for a father and a wonderful mother who supported him, and them, one hundred percent.
The Coltons hadn’t gotten a hold of Brody until he was eighteen. Had only been able to influence a third of his life.
“Go on.” He needed all the facts, and wished they were coming faster.
“All I had to do to be a part of the exclusive team was make an initial investment, and then for bonuses I could recruit new members and sell the vitamins.”
“How much was the initial investment?” He hated to ask; heard the dread in his voice.
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
Heart sinking, and head going on alert, Riley stood up. “You handed over fifty thousand?” he asked, not quite raising his voice, but getting really close. He couldn’t even get to the part about Brody giving the money to people he didn’t know. He was too busy choking over the amount.
“My girlfriend...she was...a bit older than me. Used to nice things. I wanted to get her this diamond bracelet she’d seen... I needed her to trust that I could take care of her. And...she didn’t know about my school loans. I had to get rid of them before I could even think about asking someone like her to get serious with me.”
Brody, who’d always been on the outside looking in where family was concerned, had been willing to do what it took to get one of his own. Riley’s ire stepped down a notch or two, pushed even further back by the twinge of guilt hitting him where it counted. If he’d been more a real player in Brody’s life, instead of a figure at the head of the table during all of the mandatory holiday meals the Colton siblings shared, the kid probably would have come to him for the money. Or at least for advice before investing in such a cockamamie scheme.
And instinct was telling him they had another, more immediate problem than Brody’s investment choice.
“Where did you get fifty grand?” he asked.
Looking nervous again, his brow creased, his lips thin, Brody glanced toward the back door—whether because he wanted to run again, or because he feared someone might be coming in after him, Riley wasn’t sure.
“Wes Matthews, the banker from RevitaYou, suggested I call this company, Capital X...”
Riley dropped his head. Biting his tongue, almost literally. He knew of the loan shark group from his years with the FBI and had never been able to bust them—its structure was that intricate, that far underground and into the dark web.
They were a “company” that always knew where you were, but no one could find them.
And his family member was involved with them?
Straightening, Riley braced himself, placing his hands on the desk on either side of him. Filled with the calm that came when he was focused on a case. A calm that wiped out emotion. Doubt. That let his instincts guide him and show him the way to protect those he’d sworn to himself to protect.
“This Wes Matthews, where is he now? I’ll need his contact information.” The man had led Brody to Capital X. Which meant he could lead Riley to them, too.
Throwing up both hands, drawing Riley’s gaze to those splinted fingers again, Brody said, “That’s just it...he’s disappeared into thin air!” The younger man’s lips trembled as his voice broke.
“I’ll need to see the transaction data from the check you wrote him,” Riley said, feeling an urgency growing on him that he hadn’t felt in a while.
“I paid him in cash.” Brody was really close to full-out whining. “I called him as soon as I knew the vitamins didn’t work, to report the problem with them, and to get my money back, but he didn’t answer so I left a voice mail. And then I get an email from him saying he never received my money and that I had to be mistaken. Next thing I know, the phone number I had for him is no longer working and the emails come back undelivered.”
“How long ago was this?” His words were short. Succinct. Brody wasn’t just being a kid here. He had a real problem.
One that Riley was beginning to fear was much bigger than his pseudo little brother even realized.
Brody was scared, though. He knew he was in serious trouble.
“Three days ago the guy is in touch with me, giving me all these enticing numbers that were coming my way, excited to have me on board. Two days ago I tell him the vitamins made my girl sick, and then this morning, the day I owe my first big chunk of the payment to Capital X, the emails bounce back, the phone number is no longer in service and the RevitaYou website is down, too.”
Quelle surprise.
Brody had done what he could, though. He’d tried.
“And it turns out that if you don’t pay back the money you owe to Capital X when you owe it, including interest, two goons will show up at your place of business, request a meeting, and then break two of your bones, with a promise to break two more each time you miss a payment.” Brody held up his newly taped ring and pinky fingers. “This was the handshake that happened in the lobby of the professional building where I work.” Brody worked as a very junior corporate attorney, and Riley had gotten the implication that Brody’s position was tenable. He wouldn’t have it for long if thugs continued to show up.
Riley’s gut clenched. He consciously relaxed it. Brody needed him focused. “How sure are you that they were following you here?”
“Honestly?” Brody shook his head, his cheeks drooped and his gaze beaten. “I have no idea. I’m pretty sure they were, but I can’t really say if it was real or just fear that had me thinking so. As soon as they left, I got in my car, stopped at a drugstore clinic, had my fingers taped and came here.”
Brody pulled some brochures out of his bag, handed them to Riley. “I got these at the seminar I attended,” he said. “I was a class ‘A’ idiot. I get that, but I need the family’s help, Riley. Professionally. Please. You have to find Matthews. Get my money back. Capital X is charging me thirty percent interest on top of the fifty grand. There’s no way I can pay all that back...”
Riley sure as hell didn’t have a quick sixty-five thousand dollars sitting around in liquid cash. And was fairly certain none of his siblings did, either. What he did have was a family team of part-time investigators, full-time lawyers, a crime-scene investigator, too, all with their own accesses to databases and contacts.
“Stay right here,” he said to Brody. “As in, don’t move from that seat. I’m going to make some phone calls to the others and see what we can find out.”
Riley moved swiftly to his office, had his phone at his ear and already ringing through by the time he made it to his desk. And while he talked to his sister, Sadie, a twenty-eight-year-old crime-scene investigator, he was scrolling through a password-secured list of his own contacts from the underbelly of the criminal world. Sadie, who had a particular soft spot for Brody, told Riley she was going to see what she could find out about either Wes Matthews or Capital X. She planned also to call her twin sister, Victoria, a JAG attorney. They both had a lot of law enforcement connections.
He called Kiely next. At thirty years old, the full-time professional investigator sister worked freelance for the FBI and various police departments. Kiely assured him that she’d see what she could find out. She also asked Riley to tell Brody to be careful and said she’d call her twin sister, Pippa, also an attorney.
When he was satisfied that he had all four of his biological siblings on board, he phoned Griffin, their officially adopted brother. He didn’t call Griffin last because the thirty-two-year-old was any less a family member, but because, as an adoption attorney, he had fewer skills to help solve the immediate problem—keeping Brody safe. Griffin also asked some questions he wasn’t yet prepared to answer—he had some hesitation about getting Colton Investigations involved with something as big as Capital X. But he agreed to attend a meeting that evening with the rest of the siblings to discuss the situation.
As satisfied with his progress as he was going to be, Riley sent off a quick email to a former confidential informant with ties to white-collar crime, asking for a meeting as soon as possible.
And, fewer than ten minutes after vacating the main office, he was heading back to Brody.
Pal was there, sitting by the archway through to the dining room and kitchen.
There was no sign of Brody. Or his bag.