Deadly Colton Search

By Addison Fox

A woman asks questions…

…and finds answers that threaten her unborn childYoung and pregnant, Nova Ellis arrives in Mustang Valley, determined to find her missing father, Ace Colton. In her search, she uncovers that Nik Slater—the PI she’s just hired—is looking for the very same man. Immediately, Nova falls for Nik’s protective nature, a man who cares for her and her baby. But will unexpected danger and long-kept secrets draw them together…or shatter their dreams?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harlequin Romantic Suspense
• Release date: May 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781488064043

Addison Fox

Addison Fox is a lifelong romance reader, addicted to happy-ever-afters. She loves writing about romance as much as reading it. Addison lives in New York with an apartment full of books, a laptop that’s rarely out of sight and a wily beagle who keeps her running. You can find her at www.addisonfox.com, facebook.com/addisonfoxauthor or on Twitter (@addisonfox).

Book preview

Prologue

Nova Ellis lay in misery on the small leather couch in her boyfriend’s office and prayed for death. Anything—the horror of a firing squad, the terror of being snared in a noose, even contracting some flesh-eating bacteria—had to be better than this.

Roiling waves of nausea that suggested she’d somehow gone from the rock-solid streets of New York City to the high seas of the Atlantic mere hours before a hurricane hit assaulted her system with ruthless abandon. At the mere thought of a wavy ocean her stomach rolled once more and Nova held tight to the couch, praying she’d be allowed to keep what little was left in her stomach.

Like its lining.

Because that was all that was left, and after the past three weeks of abject afternoon sickness she was even starting to wonder about that.

It was her fault. Realistically, she knew that. The bagel smothered in whitefish salad she’d inhaled that morning had tasted great at the time but the fish had had its revenge. So had the tapioca pudding she’d snagged at the deli on her walk over to Ferdy’s office. And the small bag of gummy bears she’d dug out of the bottom of her purse—shocked and grateful when she’d found that prize—had been the last thing to seal her fate. She’d even eaten the lime-flavored ones, something she’d avoided her entire life.

Who even liked lime?

Why did they even make lime?

That hateful flavor she should have avoided, as lime-flavored whitefish made a rather unpleasant combination when one couldn’t keep anything down.

She closed her eyes, willing the dancing images of gummy bears and bagels out of her head and vowing that all she needed was a few more minutes. She’d come to tell Ferdy the good news of her pregnancy and she wanted to look nice when she told him.

She wanted him to be as excited as she was.

Even if the small voice that kept whispering he wasn’t going to be excited seemed to be winning as of late.

Oh, sure, it wasn’t the most ideal time. They’d only been dating a few months but their relationship had been a whirlwind from the start, and she knew he was looking toward having a family of his own. He’d told her as much on their first date. He wasn’t a man trying to play games or keep diving into the dating pool.

He wanted a future and he was seeking a woman who wanted the same.

They’d talked about everything that first night. Their love of music and movies, their dreams and aspirations, and their equally challenging childhoods—his with parents who couldn’t seem to make up their minds between overbearing and absent, and hers with a mother whose idea of encouragement and support was shopping on the Champs-Élysées to solve any problem.

Ferdy had seemed to understand and she’d been so happy to find that in her significant other. Even if he hadn’t shown the same understanding since then, his own behavior oddly like that of the father he spoke of with disdain. He seemed to be overbearing or absent far too often.

But could she blame him? He had a busy job and was often out for days at a time working on real estate deals. And it wasn’t like she’d been totally honest with him, either. It wasn’t a complete lie that her father had died, but it wasn’t totally true, either.

The dead man she’d always called Dad wasn’t actually her real father. She’d spent most of her life believing Paul Ellis was her father and her mother’s deathbed confession—that Allegra Ellis had gone out and found a more attractive man after her ill-fated relationship with another had resulted in the pregnancy with Nova—couldn’t change that.

Even if it had changed everything.

But no, she wouldn’t give in to that line of thinking. There might be some man named Colton all the way out in Arizona who was her biological father, but he hadn’t been her real father. Hadn’t been the person who’d raised her. Her mother might have believed she was getting her revenge on the man by never telling him that she was pregnant, but Nova couldn’t see how. Now that she was pregnant with a child of her own, she understood the difference.

A door opened in Ferdy’s outer office and she mustered up a wan smile to herself, thinking of his face when she told him. She’d settled on surprising him in his office, taking some strange comfort in her mind’s eye that there would be others nearby. Of course, because he’d be so excited he’d want to share his joy.

Of course it would be excitement.

His dark brown eyes would crinkle at the corners, before his strong lips pursed in thought. He was always like that, considering the world around him before he let his emotions come through.

Before his dazzling, bright white smile would take over his face and he’d pull her close in happiness at the news he was going to be a father.

She struggled to sit up, desperate for the sweet image in her mind to will away the nausea that still had her stomach quaking. Slowing her movements, she gingerly laid her head back against the thick leather cushions.

Just a few more minutes with her eyes closed... That was all she needed.

Nova had no idea how long she’d been out, drifting on the blessed wings of sleep, when she heard a heavy crash from the outer office. Was that a glass? One of the pretty crystal tumblers Ferdy kept on his credenza?

Come the hell on, Ferd. I expected that shipment three days ago!

Port’s on lockdown, Gino. My contacts there can’t do nothing about it.

Eyes popping open, Nova struggled to sit up. She didn’t know all the ins and outs of Ferdy’s business but she knew enough to know that something wasn’t right. He worked in real estate, not shipping. And she’d never heard that terse tone in his voice before.

It was...nasty, somehow. Dark.

An involuntary shiver ran down her spine, the blessed cool of the room she’d reveled in a few minutes earlier suddenly making her skin clammy.

My business partners and I trusted you with that shipment!

And I’m telling you I can’t do a damn thing until the Feds ease up their sniffing around the docks. It was bad luck all around the Russians lost that shipment a few weeks back. Got the Feds on high alert, especially after they found a thousand kilos of smack nestled inside all those cheap nesting doll souvenirs.

The nausea that had coated her stomach like battery acid changed in that moment. The roiling upset was still there, but something had changed. Fear coated her tongue, leaving a bitter, metallic taste behind that had nothing to do with lime-flavored gummies.

Ferdy was a real estate developer. Yet from the sounds of it, he knew how shipments came in and out of port and which ones held drugs or other illicit substances.

Scrambling off the couch, she grabbed her purse and ran to the private bathroom off the side of his office. When he came in she’d claim she’d gotten sick off her lunch and had been huddled in there feeling miserable. For the first time since arriving twenty minutes ago, she was grateful for her pasty white visage and bloodshot eyes.

She just might convince him she had food poisoning.

And if he thought she’d been in the bathroom he wouldn’t know what she’d heard through the door.

It would buy her some time to figure out what to do. And would give her a small window to plan her next step.

The door to his office clicked open and she heard voices grow louder as Ferdy walked into the room with the man he’d been talking to. Nova was tempted to peek through a crack in the door but she stayed where she was, convinced things would go easier if she was discovered huddled over the toilet instead of watching through the door.

Thick footsteps traversed the outer office, moving around as the conversation continued. More talk of shipments and an expected delivery and estimates of when issues at the port would calm down.

Each word more damning than the last.

And each syllable like a bullet to the chest, convincing her that the man she’d believed herself in love with—the man whose baby she carried even now—was a liar and a cheat.

And a drug dealer.

Good Lord, who had she taken up with?

She laid a protective hand over her stomach, suddenly grateful she hadn’t had a chance to share her news of the baby.

Once again, footsteps came perilously close to the bathroom door before the shrill ring of a cell phone filtered through the partially closed door.

Adler, Ferdy snapped out.

Nova heard a few mumbled yeses, noes and even a not my fault, before she heard the distinct sound of his phone hitting the glass top of his desk. The string of curses that followed suggested the call hadn’t gone as planned, but it was the added taunt from the other faceless voice she’d heard that had her wincing.

Told you the boss wasn’t going to be happy.

After another muttered curse, Ferdy’s voice came loud and clear through the door. Looks like it’s our lucky day. Bastard wants to see both of us. Now.

Those thick footfalls vanished nearly as quickly as they’d come, the door to his inner office slamming closed. Nova counted to a thousand, willing herself to stay right beside the toilet. It was her only defense in the event Ferdy came back and the only way she could brazen her way through a confrontation if he questioned what she might have heard.

Picking herself up off the marble tile, she reached for her purse and slung it over her shoulder. She forced herself to walk back out of the office with the same calm she’d walked in with, and offered a silent prayer of thanks as she passed his secretary’s desk. The woman had been out for lunch when Nova had arrived and was still gone.

Small miracles.

Pieces of a heavy crystal tumbler lay in a pile on the floor beside the credenza, further reinforcement of all she’d heard.

She kept her walk steady and easy, breezy even, as she walked to the elevator and on down to the lobby. Her purse swung from her fingertips as if she had nothing to lose.

As if her entire world hadn’t just cratered.

It was only when she was outside once more, the fresh air blowing in her face, that Nova made her decision.

Whatever Ferdy was into, sticking around and trying to get to the bottom of it with him wasn’t going to end well. If it hadn’t been for the baby she might have tried it. Might have given him the slightest benefit of the doubt and brazened her way through a conversation, but not anymore. She had a child to look out for.

With that sole thought pounding through her mind, Nova made her decision.

And ran.

Chapter 1

Five months later

Mustang Valley, Arizona

Nikolas Slater rubbed the bridge of his nose as he reread his contract with Selina Barnes Colton. The woman had a temperament that would make a rattler turn tail and slither away, yet that hadn’t stopped him from making a deal with the she-devil.

Which meant he was either really good or miserably foolish.

He preferred smart over fool any day but knew that, in order to stay afloat, a PI with an expensive set of services needed to take the big fish when they knocked on his door.

And Selina Barnes Colton was a big fish.

Coldly beautiful, the second—and now ex—wife of Payne Colton was a piece of work. And while she might be seriously high maintenance, she wasn’t asking anything out of line.

Besides, the ink was well and dry on the contract and he’d already cashed Selina’s up-front payment, so really, he had nothing to worry about. Something he kept reminding himself of even as he went over the agreed-to work and considered how he was going to approach the case.

Things did not look good for Ace Colton. The man had had a solid, upstanding reputation, but recent events had seriously tarnished it. A gun discovered in his apartment—one definitively proven as the one used on his father—was bad enough. The fact the man fled when the cops went to charge him was just bad news all around.

And then Selina had come calling.

Selina had hired him to prove that Ace Colton had shot his father, former oil exec Payne Colton, in cold blood. While it was a handy story and one that had kept Mustang Valley talking since the January shooting, something didn’t fully play for Nikolas. Even if it had played for the local press like a well-tuned piano. The golden boy. The powerful father. And a family name that had plenty of notoriety. Hell, a distant cousin of Payne’s had served as president.

Nikolas suspected the recent escapades of the Arizona branch weren’t finding too much favor with such illustrious relatives, no matter how distant, but they didn’t call certain branches of families black sheep for nothing.

Even now, Payne remained in a coma over at Mustang Valley General Hospital, the victim of a gunshot wound late one night in his office at Colton Oil. A situation that had kept the local press busy for nearly nine months and that ebbed and flowed in and out of the national news, as well. While they might no longer be husband and wife, Selina was still a bigwig at Colton Oil. And while it wasn’t a secret she carried no soft feelings for Old Man Colton, she was also clearly not interested in losing her cash cow.

Despite the cynicism, Nikolas had played various angles in his mind. Was it so hard to believe she wanted to do right by him as well as the company? Or that she wanted a guilty man caught, especially if the whispers were true and it was Payne’s oldest son, Ace, who had done the deed?

Maybe yes, maybe no.

Nikolas kept his ear to the ground and he knew there was more going on than even what Selina had briefed him on. The entire town had discovered over the past few months that Ace Colton wasn’t actually Payne’s son. Selina had confirmed that by showing him the result of a DNA test. The Mustang Valley rumor mill was working overtime, fixated on the notion that Ace had been switched at birth. If it was true, it gave Ace a possible motive for murdering the man who wasn’t really his father, after having been ousted as the CEO of Colton Oil when it was proven that he wasn’t really a Colton.

Add on the fact that Selina’s desire to find Payne’s shooter didn’t seem fully altruistic—especially since she already had a candidate in mind—and Nikolas knew to watch his back. He might not have a particularly large reserve of restraint in the face of a beautiful woman seeking his professional help but he did have standards. Which meant he needed to stay focused and keep his nose clean.

And do whatever he could to determine who had put Payne Colton in his or her crosshairs.

In the meantime, he’d given Selina his agreement to work the case. The long-term success of Colton Oil depended on happy stockholders and a healthy leadership. If Payne didn’t recover and the investment community caught wind of so much drama at the top, the stock prices would fall and all the Mustang Valley Coltons would suffer. As PR director for Colton Oil, Selina had the job of making sure that wind never swirled above a whisper. And Payne’s daughter Marlowe, the current CEO, had managed to keep a firm finger in the dam, despite her own danger earlier in the year and the arrival of her new baby.

Even with the effort, there were cracks.

And it was his job to find answers before they split wide open.

---

Nova walked through the main downtown thoroughfare of Mustang Valley and thought longingly of the breakfast bar she’d buried in her purse. She’d been trying to ration the food she had left, and the two boxes of breakfast bars she’d stumbled upon in a buy-one-get-one deal at a convenience store just over the line into Arizona had been too good to pass up. But she was always hungry now and the baby had her burning food like crazy. She was worried whatever passed as strawberry filling wasn’t the healthiest approach to eating during pregnancy, but hadn’t figured out any other choice.

She took some solace that it hadn’t been like this the whole time. After the whole debacle in Ferdy’s office, she’d run from New York, doing little more than grabbing a suitcase full of stuff from her apartment before she took off. Her mother’s occasional notes of wisdom had come surprisingly handy and Nova was suddenly grateful she’d paid attention.

Her entire life her mother had always kept cash in the house. Enough to pay a month’s worth of bills had always been the ever-eccentric Allegra Ellis’s motto. Nova had often thought it an odd juxtaposition to a woman who’d willingly spend the same amount on a wild bender of a shopping trip, but some things stuck and she’d done her best to maintain that stash since going out on her own. It was only after she’d needed to go off the grid that she’d come to recognize the wisdom in her mother’s teaching.

Between the five thousand she’d squirreled away and the odd jobs she’d taken at diners across the country, she’d gotten by. The diner owners she’d worked for hadn’t cared that she was pregnant, only that she could work, and they’d been more than willing to feed her three square meals from the kitchen.

She’d been more diligent then, eating a proper balance of protein and fruit, keeping away from anything unhealthy and taking vitamins. Her first few weeks on the road she’d fallen love with the sticky buns on the counter in one of the diners where she’d worked and had quickly realized that there was no way she could fuel her growing baby on just sugar and carbs. So since then, she’d adhered to a strong eating regimen and even found ways to conserve gas in her car while walking around whatever town she’d worked in, getting some solid exercise in the process.

Even as kind as most everyone had been at all her stops along the way, she’d refused to stay anywhere for too long. The cell phone she’d stuffed in her bag had remained resolutely off and she’d finally given in and spent the money to get a burner phone in Iowa so she’d have some link to help if she needed it. Luckily, she hadn’t needed it. Nor had she seen any sign of Ferdy or his colleagues, even as she’d kept careful watch every one of the one hundred and fifty days since she’d run.

Throughout that time, she’d questioned her initial panic. Would Ferdy really hurt her? Especially once he knew about the baby? Sure, he’d seemed different after that first date, a bit more hot-tempered and emotional than she’d expected. But wasn’t that life? He had a big job and that meant big problems.

She’d nearly convinced herself to turn back about two weeks in, but something had ultimately held her back. That discussion of shipments and problems at the port sticking in her mind on an endless loop.

Ferdinand Adler was a real estate developer. Not a drug dealer. And yet...that exchange she’d overheard through the door suggested he was exactly that. Could she really expose her child to that?

So she’d stayed on the run. After a circuitous path out of New York, she’d headed straight for Tennessee before heading back north to Michigan, steadily weaving south and west from there. Somewhere deep inside of her, she’d known where she’d end up. The idea had nagged at her since her mother had shared the news of her real father’s identity so many months ago.

But the search for Ace Colton—and her belief in his ability to help her—had grown deeper and more intense as she checked one state after another off her list.

She needed his help and she had to believe that he’d give it. And once safe, secure in the knowledge her child would be protected, she had to find a way to get word back to the authorities in New York.

Because there was no way Ferdy Adler was a good guy.

She’d finally given in and done an internet search at one of the towns she’d passed through. She’d noticed signs for the local library and had gone in to use the public computer terminals, curious to see if she’d find anything to help her understand the real personality of the man she’d believed herself in love with.

The man who had fathered her child.

What she’d found was full of suspicion and innuendo and a few all-out accusations, and it all reinforced the suspected drug dealer angle. Several articles had comment sections underneath and the anonymous notes were not favorable. One mentioned he was a real leg breaker, and another had flat out accused him of putting laced dope on the streets.

God, how could she have been so stupid?

Like, bone-deep stupid with a side of flighty airhead on the side. She knew better than to give her heart that easily. After all, what had she really known about Ferdinand Adler? Other than the good conversation they’d had on that very first date, his behavior after had been modestly kind at best. But oh boy, had he hooked her good.

She’d had a lot of time to think over the past months and one thing had become embarrassingly clear: Ferdy had played her like a fiddle. He’d somehow keyed into her deepest needs and desires on that very first date and had pushed and played every button she had from that moment on. Which didn’t excuse her role in any of it, but it had given her a sense of how she’d found herself in such a raging mess.

And how she needed to protect herself—and her child—moving forward.

Although she hated coming to town feeling like she had her cup in hand, the idea to find her father had been a persistent flame since her mother had first told her of Ace Colton and their brief teenage love affair. The research she’d done on the man had turned up more than a few surprises, especially the notion that the man was suspected of trying to murder his own father and was recently ousted as the CEO of Colton Oil. There was also a blog post she’d read that gleefully shared all the Mustang Valley gossip and said that the man wasn’t even actually a Colton.

Was it