Colton Threat Unleashed by Tara Taylor Quinn

Author:Tara Taylor Quinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2023-11-07T14:02:56+00:00

Chapter 14

With Fletcher home, Jenny Colton had insisted on having Sunday afternoon dinner with all her kids at the table. There was no way Ruby had been able to get out of going. Everyone was worried about her, and they needed to see that she was fine.

Her dad and oldest brother, Chase, who was vice president at Colton Properties, talked business. Fletcher and Wade took the boat out for a while. Her mom and two younger sisters talked cooking and food and coffee drinks. And Ruby played with Lucy.

She’d been worried that Hannah or Frannie would blow her secret somehow, even by trying to talk to her alone and being overheard, but neither one of them sought her out. Jenny had been too busy helping to plan the food for Buck’s birthday celebration and both of her sisters were deeply involved with that. Apparently, Frannie was providing a full bar of coffee drinks to go along with dessert.

Sebastian had taken Elise and gone home shortly after noon. Della had been planning to train, but with the police there, she had fed the dogs and worked inside the kennel instead. And from what Fletcher told her at dinner, Sebastian had decided not to do any more training until he had someone out to check every inch of the other courses.

Fletcher insisted on having Colton Veterinary Clinic inspected as well. He brought in a K-9 officer, which Ruby saw as total overkill, but she had to admit she felt safer going into work Monday morning knowing that the place had been checked for any booby traps.

She wasn’t so much afraid of being physically hurt. But living with the constant threat of criminal activity disrupting daily life and hurting dogs was taking its toll on her. She could only imagine what it was doing to Sebastian.

And she figured that the stalker had intended the emotional distress as much as anything physical he’d done.

Which meant, she thought, that the unknown assailant was after Sebastian, not her.

Sebastian had asked her to text when she got home Sunday night. She did, hoping that he’d call. He just texted back instead.

And she figured that was just as well.

He thanked her for letting him know and telling her that Elise had been out in the exercise yard several times and was doing just fine. He kept things on a less personal level.

More their usual style.

Other than the vein bleed, the retriever’s wounds had all been fairly superficial. Because Sebastian had been out there to stop the dog from digging any further for the blood-covered meat she’d found.

Fletcher had let her know quietly after dinner that the blood on the meat had tested as human.

But as gruesome a warning as that sounded, he, Steele and Sebastian all figured it was the sign of a thorough stalker, someone who knew that human blood would be most likely to attract a search-and-rescue animal, not a warning of more human bloodshed to come.

They were testing the blood for a DNA match, though. Hoping that they’d have a lead on the assailant within a few days.

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