All in all, Brooks Colton felt that he was doing rather well for himself. Oh, nowhere near as well as he might have done had he gone into the family business the way his father had wanted and expected him to, but he definitely wasn’t falling on his face the way his father had predicted he would.
As a matter of fact, he was rather successful in his chosen field and building up a solid reputation.
Still, Brooks sensed that his father, Fitz Colton, the head of Colton Construction, which was currently doing extremely well in its third generation of existence, was waiting for him to stop “playing PI” and get serious about his life. Colton Construction was a large and generous employer, having built many of the offices and factories in Wichita as well as in Braxville, which was where the Colton family resided.
His father, a solid workaholic, couldn’t accept that he was very serious about being a private investigator, just like he couldn’t understand why all of his six children had gone into vocations that had to do with some form of public service rather than become part of the family business.
As far as Brooks could tell, all five of his siblings seemed rather suited to their career choices and were quite happy with their lives. And as for him, well in true detective form, he was blessed with that little voice in his head, the one that would occasionally raise points that seemed to defy logic, but nonetheless existed, nudging at his conscience and telling him that something just didn’t seem “right.”
Sometimes it was just a small thing. Other times it seemed to involve his whole case.
That was what he was feeling at the moment.
Something was “off.”
For the most part, his cases fell under three categories. He worked missing persons cases. Those, on occasion, required working with the Braxville Police Department as a consultant. Brooks also worked cases of identity theft. And, once in a while, he took on cases that involved cheating spouses.
Truth be told, Brooks didn’t like working those, but they did help to pay the bills on the few occasions when he found himself short on funds and needed to fill in the gaps.
But right now, he was hearing something from his prospective client that wasn’t sitting right with him.
“Let me get this straight,” Brooks said, interrupting the man on the other end of his phone who seemed enamored with the sound of his own voice. “You’re not currently married to this Gwen Harrison?”
“No, I never was,” Daniel Shelton snapped, obviously irritated that he was being interrupted by “the help.”
“But—”
“And you’re not even engaged to this woman?” Brooks asked, wanting to make sure he hadn’t accidentally missed something.
“No, I am not engaged to Gwen,” Daniel retorted, his irritation growing by leaps and bounds. He was unaccustomed to being interrupted and having to explain himself. “Now, one more time. Gwen moved to Braxville after I expressly told her that I didn’t want her to leave.”
The man’s high-handed tone was really beginning to irritate Brooks, but more than that, he didn’t care for his character. He was not about to help Shelton track down his former girlfriend or whatever the woman was to him.
“And she didn’t live with you or have you paying the rent for her apartment?” At this point, Brooks was certain he was just going over what he felt was established fact.
“What the hell difference can that possibly make to you doing your job?” Shelton demanded angrily.
It was obvious to Brooks that the man expected to be obeyed, not get into a debate over this with someone Shelton obviously considered beneath him.
“The difference is that if you didn’t enter into any sort of an arrangement with this woman, then you have no expectations of her obediently coming when you call,” Brooks informed the man, biting back a few choicer remarks. Most likely they would have been lost on someone like Shelton.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” the angry voice on the other end demanded.
“It means, Mr. Shelton, that I’m not taking the case, which in turn means I won’t track down this woman for you. A woman who is within her rights to go off and live her life as she sees fit, not as you see fit,” Brooks concluded.
“You’re turning me down?” Shelton asked, his voice rising and growing shrill. “Listen, you sanctimonious, two-bit jerk—”
“Goodbye, Mr. Shelton. Very nice not doing business with you,” Brooks said just before he disconnected the call.
Brooks took a deep breath as he put his phone back down on his desk. He wasn’t so well-off that he could afford to just turn down jobs at will, but he had his principles. Besides, there was just something about this particular one that told him it was all wrong.
So much so that he did feel he needed to track down this Ms. Gwen Harrison, not for Daniel Shelton but to warn her that the man was looking for her. Brooks was certain that Shelton could very well go on to hire someone else to find her. And then, who knows? He didn’t want that on his conscience.
From the information he had gotten from the overbearing man, Brooks was confident that he could find this woman with a minimum of effort. After all, he knew Braxville like the back of his hand. Ordinarily, since he had turned down this job, he would have walked away. But that same little voice that told him something was off about Shelton’s scenario also made him realize that if anything did happen to this Gwen Harrison, a newly transplanted elementary schoolteacher, he would wind up feeling guilty as hell because he hadn’t warned the woman.
And considering the impatient urgency he’d heard in Daniel Shelton’s voice, Brooks figured he didn’t have that much time to lose. Daniel Shelton had struck him as an angry man who didn’t just let matters drop if they didn’t go his way. Instead, Shelton gave every indication that he focused on getting revenge.
This Gwen Harrison needed to be warned.
Copyright © 2020 by Harlequin Books S.A.
Keep reading for an excerpt from No One Saw by Beverly Long.