The Colton Ransom Read online

  Amanda surprised her by what she said next. “Don’t see what good you can do. He hasn’t regained consciousness. We’re just standing around, waiting for someone to tell us something.”

  Gabby knew there was nothing she could accomplish by being there, but she still felt she should come and keep vigil, at least for a little while.

  “I can help you wait,” Gabby told her sister just before she terminated the connection.

  The moment she did, she caught sight of Trevor out of the corner of her eye. He was just walking by in the hallway and had automatically glanced into the room when he’d heard her voice.

  “Anything?” Gabby asked eagerly as she crossed to him.

  “Nobody’s called asking for a ransom, if that’s what you mean,” he told her.

  Anyone looking at the man would have said he was being incredibly calm, but Gabby knew better than that. She could read between the lines, and it seemed evident to her that his handsome, rugged face was more drawn than usual. Trevor was apparently just barely able to hold on.

  “Was the chief any help?” she asked hopefully. Drucker had certainly stayed long enough, talking to the various staff members—making them all feel as if he suspected them of being the ones who’d pulled the trigger and had then handed the baby over to an accomplice.

  Her question was met with a short, dismissive laugh. Trevor didn’t bother saying anything.

  “I guess that’s a no,” Gabby surmised with a sigh. Because she needed to talk, she told him, “I’m about to go to the hospital to see if my father’s going to be admitted to the hospital or not, but I could stay here instead with you if you—”

  Trevor didn’t bother to hear her out or allow her to finish making her offer. Although he found the young woman attractive—more attractive than he was happy about—her father had made it very clear that there were lines not to be crossed. The Coltons were on one side of those lines and he, along with every other staff member here at Dead River, was on the other.

  Maybe at some other time, he would have given serious thought to thumbing his nose at those lines, but right now, he was far too concerned about what might be happening to his daughter to waste time over such adolescent reactions.

  “Your place is there, with your father,” Trevor told her. With that, he walked away, hurrying off to some other destination he didn’t bother sharing with her.

  Watching him go, Gabby shook her head. For a little while back there, when she’d gone with him to see Dylan, she’d thought she’d made a breakthrough, but apparently she was back to square one with Trevor. He was just as distant, just as removed as he had been when this all began.

  He was a hard nut to crack, even if his daughter hadn’t been taken.

  With a sigh, Gabby left the house.

  * * *

  She drove like a woman possessed, having little patience with speed limits that were posted in desolate areas. Their only purpose was to whimsically slow her down even when there wasn’t any sign of anyone else on the road for miles.

  She arrived at Cheyenne Memorial Hospital in record time. Armed with a room number that Amanda had given her, Gabby quickly made her way to her father’s bedside.

  Anxiety was her close companion as she walked into the room. She had no idea what to expect. The first thing that struck her was that the air within the room was thick with animosity and unspoken confrontation. The reason for that became instantly clear: Darla had insisted on being there along with Amanda and Catherine.

  But Gabby’s heart leaped up when she saw that her father was conscious again. There were tubes inserted in both his arms, attached to monitors as well as an IV that was providing fluids.

  For the moment, she saw beyond the punishing tubes and the gaunt face. Her father’s eyes were open. He was back and that was the main thing.

  Taking his hand in hers, Gabby struggled to maintain her composure. “Dad, you’re awake.”

  “Looks that way.” Her father’s gravelly voice was weaker than normal, but his expression was as dark as ever as he looked at her.

  For once, she ignored his tone. All that mattered to her was that he was awake. “You gave us quite a scare, Dad,” she told him.

  “Yeah, sure,” Jethro retorted weakly. And then, because he found himself growing emotional, something that was completely unacceptable to him, he grumbled, “You were all probably hoping I’d croaked so that you could start dividing up the money.”

  “I wasn’t, darling,” Darla spoke up, all but sealing herself to his other side. She paused for a moment to dab at eyes that appeared conspicuously dry. “I was beside myself with worry.”

  “Beside yourself.” Jethro snorted at the image. “You were probably just looking at yourself in the mirror after that third drink.” He turned his attention back to his daughters even as Darla was sputtering denials. “I’d like to tell you all that it’ll be a cold day in hell before you see any of my money, but the truth of it is it’ll be a lot sooner than I’m happy about.”

  Gabby exchanged looks with her sisters. Was he just being despondent, or was there something going on that they weren’t aware of?

  “What are you talking about, Dad?” Amanda asked, then assured him with feeling, “You’re going to be just fine.”

  “Easy to see why you’re an animal doctor, because you’ve got no instincts when it comes to human patients,” Jethro retorted dismissively. He glared at his daughter, angry because he was confronted with a situation he couldn’t control, couldn’t do anything about. “I’m dying.”

  While both her sisters began to protest that he wasn’t, that his feelings were undoubtedly just the result of temporary low blood sugar or something of that nature, Gabby had an eerie premonition that her father’s words carried some truth to them. He knew his own fate, but they hadn’t been privy to the same information. What had the doctors told them?

  “Dad, what are you saying exactly?” Gabby asked him. She studied his face carefully, waiting for him to answer her.

  “What I’m saying,” Jethro retorted, becoming steadily more agitated at the blow fate had dealt him, “is that the doctors said I’ve got leukemia—the kind that takes you out fast. They gave me six months, maybe less.”

  Gabby’s eyes widened in disbelief. For a second, she felt sick to her stomach. She heard her sisters gasp in stunned surprise. “No,” she cried.

  “I don’t pay them to lie to me,” her father bit off angrily.

  “Okay,” she said, her mind desperately trying to sort things out and focus on a positive course of action. “There’re different treatments to try,” Gabby insisted. “It’s not an automatic death sentence—”

  “It is for me,” Jethro said, cutting in impatiently. “I’m not going to spend what little time I have being a guinea pig, having them poke and prod me with their needles and making me puke up my guts.”

  “Dad, there are cures—” Amanda began.

  Bitter, Jethro cut her off as well. “It’s my body, my choice. No discussion,” he snapped. He looked at Gabby accusingly. “Don’t you ever listen? I don’t want any treatment. I’m taking this like a man and you...and you can’t...”

  For the second time within the space of half a day, Jethro Colton slumped forward. When Gabby quickly attempted to help him sit up, she saw that he was unconscious again.

  Darla instantly seized his hand in hers and uttered a swarm of endearments. “My baby, oh, my poor baby. I’m right here, honey. Don’t you worry—I won’t let them do anything to you that you don’t want done.”

  Maybe it was everything that had happened today. Maybe she had just finally hit her breaking point. Whatever the reason, Gabby looked at her father’s ex-wife and issued a warning. “You let go of my father’s hand and back away, Darla, or I swear that I’m going to punch you out.”

  This time, however, Darla tossed her head and stood her ground. She hadn’t managed to get to where she had in life by following any rules of decorum. She was a street fighter and proud of it.
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  “You and what army?” Darla sneered at her former stepdaughter.

  Amanda moved to stand beside her younger sister. Her eyes narrowed as she uttered, “Guess.”

  The single word, coupled with a malevolent tone, was enough to make Darla drop the hand she was clutching to her breast. Muttering something unintelligible, she stepped away from her unconscious ex-husband.

  Catherine had missed the potential fray because the moment her father passed out, she had run to bring a nurse—and corner a doctor if she came across one. She managed to find both.

  Entering, she saw the way her sisters were looking at Darla. Something clearly had gone down. “What?” she asked Gabby.

  “I’ll fill you in later,” Amanda promised as they backed up, allowing the medical team to have the access they needed to Jethro.

  Darla deliberately moved to the other side, choosing to be away from her former stepdaughters.

  For a while, bedlam appeared to have ensued. But, as with the scene at the house, the mood eventually calmed down again.

  The prognosis the doctor gave Gabby and her sisters agreed with what their father had told them. He had leukemia.

  “But you can treat it, right?” Gabby pressed, looking from the doctor to the nurses who had been called in to assist.

  “We could try,” the doctor replied cautiously. “And there might be a slim chance of recovery. However, according to our records,” he continued, looking at the three young women and glancing at the rather gaudily dressed woman with them, “your father made it perfectly clear that he didn’t want any treatment, and I’m afraid I have to abide by his wishes.”

  Frustration flared through Gabby’s veins. This was completely unacceptable. “Can’t we overrule him?” she asked.

  The doctor shook his head. “Only if Mr. Colton were to be deemed incompetent by the courts.”

  Gabby exchanged looks with her sisters and it was clear what she was thinking. Desperate times made for desperate measures.

  But Amanda shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking but we’d never be able to prove that. Unfortunately, he’s as sharp as a tack.”

  “No ‘sharp tack’ accepts a death sentence,” Gabby insisted. “They fight it and do anything they can to get better.”

  “This is Dad we’re talking about,” Amanda reminded her. “Look, we’ll try to reason with him when he regains consciousness again.”

  Gabby’s natural optimism failed her when it came to that. “What if he doesn’t?” she posed.

  “Let’s just deal with this one step at a time,” Amanda suggested. “How’s the search for Faye’s killer and Avery’s kidnapper going?” she wanted to know.

  There was no solace in that department. Gabby shook her head. “They hadn’t made any progress when I left the house.”

  It was obvious that Amanda thought her sister needed to be busy doing something and this was certainly a worthy undertaking. “Trevor’s going to need help and you’re the closest to him.”

  Gabby laughed shortly. “Depends on your definition of close.”

  “Look, the man needs someone in his corner right now and it looks like you’re elected,” Catherine said, adding her two cents’ worth. “Standing around here isn’t doing any of us—or Dad—any good, and you might as well see if you can accomplish something on that front.”

  “If we can pool together all the money we do have,” Amanda suggested, joining in again, “maybe we can buy us some time.”

  “If the kidnapper ever calls,” Gabby reminded them. As of yet, there had been no contact made.

  “He or she will call,” Amanda assured her. “They’re just messing with your mind. It’s called trying to get a psychological advantage. Go,” she instructed. “And keep us posted,” she added.

  Her sisters were right. Standing around in her father’s hospital suite was just making her more and more anxious. She had to be doing something, making herself useful. It was either that or slowly lose her mind, thinking about all the things that were happening, things she couldn’t seem to stop or change.

  There was also the fact that a part of her felt so deeply for Trevor and that he needed her. He didn’t realize it, but she was his only hope to get through this horrifying ordeal.

  “I’ll call,” Gabby promised her sisters just before she left.

  Chapter 9

  “Anything?” Gabby asked as she quickly walked into Trevor’s office and found him there.

  She’d managed to catch him off guard.

  For the most part, since Gabby had left the ranch, he’d spent the time allaying the staff’s fears that there was a killer on the loose who was a threat to their lives, while trying to get to the bottom of who had killed Faye. If he found that out, he was confident that he would find the person who had kidnapped his daughter and who still, hopefully, had her.

  He’d just returned to his office less than five minutes ago to make a few notes to himself—he always thought more clearly when he saw the facts written down in black and white. He certainly hadn’t expected to have the youngest Colton woman come bursting into his office like this.

  Rather than answer her question, he asked one of his own.

  “What are you doing here?” And then an answer suddenly occurred to him. “Your dad’s not—?” As much as he held Jethro Colton in contempt right now, he still didn’t wish him dead.

  “No,” she cried, cutting Trevor off. After everything that had happened today, she really couldn’t bear to hear Trevor ask if her father was dead. The very word made her ill. “They’re keeping him in the hospital for now. He regained consciousness for a few minutes, but then he lapsed back.”

  He was trying to gauge her mood—was there something she was holding back?—and found that he couldn’t. The youngest of the Colton sisters was not as uncomplicated as he’d initially thought. And she was far more than just a beautiful, empty-headed rich girl. He would have rather have it the other way. He wouldn’t have been attracted to her if all she was was just a shell.

  “But he’s going to be okay?” Trevor asked, feeling that it was only proper to ask after the health of the man who ran the ranch and paid his salary. The fact that he thought of Colton as a cold-blooded SOB was beside the point.

  Gabby blew out a breath that was more like a shudder. She was having trouble coming to terms with her father’s diagnosis—and his reaction to it. Ordinarily, she would have kept his condition a secret, as she sensed her father would have wanted her to. But the burden of it was just far too much for her. She needed to share it with someone.

  “No,” she replied quietly, “actually, he’s not.”

  Trevor’s eyes narrowed. “Why? What’s wrong with him? What did the doctors find out?” he asked, thinking that any diagnosis that had been ascertained at this point had to be premature. The old man hadn’t been in the hospital long enough for any definitive tests to be run and evaluated.

  Gabby’s answer confirmed his feelings on the matter.

  “They’re still running tests, but during that short space of time when he did regain consciousness, my father told us that he had been diagnosed with leukemia.” It hurt her throat just to say the word, and she could feel her eyes stinging. It was a struggle not to cry.

  “Leukemia?” Trevor repeated, stunned. He tried to remember if he’d ever heard of anything specific concerning the disease’s prognosis. “They can cure that, right?” he asked uncertainly.

  “They can cure some strains,” Gabby qualified, then added, “if they catch it in the early stages.” And then she went on to say the most important part. “And they get to treat it.”

  There was something in Gabby’s voice that told him the situation was less than hopeful. “They caught it too late?” Trevor asked.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, feeling helpless and aggravated at the same time. “My father didn’t say. What he did say was that he didn’t want to be treated for the disease.”

  “What?” That didn’t sound right. W
ho wouldn’t want to try to beat a disease they had? “Maybe he doesn’t know what he’s saying,” Trevor speculated. “When he passed out earlier, he might have hit his head and he’s not thinking clearly right now—”

  She would have loved to believe that—but she couldn’t. She knew her father far too well for that.

  “Oh, he knows what he’s saying. My father was pretty adamant about it,” she recalled as she shared the information with Trevor. “He said he didn’t want to spend his final days being poked and prodded—and sick to his stomach,” she added, paraphrasing her father’s words.

  Final days sounded rather ominous to him. “That means that your father probably doesn’t think the treatment will take.”

  Gabby frowned. She’d never allowed herself to give up all hope about anything before.

  Her optimism was obviously not a trait she’d picked up from her father, Trevor thought.

  “I guess,” she murmured.

  “So what are you doing here?” Given the circumstances, he still didn’t understand why Gabby had returned to the ranch. “Why aren’t you back at the hospital, trying to talk him into getting treatment?”

  Attempting to convince her father to take action right now would really fall on deaf ears. “Because the doctors said that my father is now in a coma. I can’t talk to him and I can’t just stand around, doing nothing.” Her eyes met his. “I’ll go crazy that way.” It suddenly occurred to her that Trevor hadn’t answered the question she’d asked when she’d first walked in. “Have you heard anything from the kidnapper yet?” she asked, phrasing her question more specifically so that he was forced to give her some sort of an answer.

  “Nothing so far,” he told her, all but grinding the words out. There was a measure of anxiety mixed in with his annoyance, although he tried to hide it.

  “Don’t kidnappers usually get in touch with the parents or guardians by now?” she asked, trying not to think about the very real possibility that somehow the kidnapper or kidnappers had got wise to the fact that they had the wrong infant, that this child was not going to bring them any money, let alone the hundreds of thousands they were undoubtedly anticipating.