Page 78 of Fatal Vision

Colton squeezed her hand. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call the doctor?”

“No doctors. Just coffee.” At least for now. “I want to go over the case and those files we stole from my office.”

“You stole files?” A smile teased Sabrina’s voice.

Not seeing any of their faces made Shelby a little nuts. She reached for her braid, remembered it wasn’t there any longer. Colton had unbraided it and combed his fingers through it during the night. “That’s a secret that doesn’t leave this house.”

“My lips are sealed.”

After a change of clothes and Colton brushing her hair, he carried her downstairs to the dining room. A cup of coffee was waiting for her and Colton made sure she got it to her lips without spilling any. “Okay, so where are we?”

Sabrina brought her up to date on the wrapper and partial print. Shelby didn’t hold out much hope about that, although the alternate options about who had left it there weren’t great either—kids or a homeless person. Those weren’t solid leads.

While it was unlikely a bunch of kids would hang out in an abandoned house skeleton outside of town to begin with, it was even more unlikely the only thing they’d leave behind was the wrapper from a granola bar. Chip bags, empty beer bottles? Sure. Drug paraphernalia? You bet. But a granola bar wrapper?

Ditto went for any homeless person. “It’s most likely a piece of garbage that blew across the way from one of the neighbors.”

“I looked through your paper file on the serial killer,” Colton said. “I didn’t see anything we didn’t already know. There were no interviews or photos of me or any other guy who matches my description. If you give me your password, I can hop onto your computer and tell you what’s on that USB.”

“You stole a paper fileanda computer one?” Sabrina asked. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a spy, Bells.”

Colton chuckled.

Shelby heard papers shifting around, then Connor’s voice. It held a definite edge. “So you think there’s a connection between this killer and my rescue mission?”

“That’s correct,” Shelby said. “Two of them have direct ties to Colton outside of Mission Liberate Green Frog as well. I believe the third crossed paths with him at some point, but I have no direct link to him and your rescue.”

“So I’m the common denominator,” Colton said. “As well as a suspect.”

“You’rea suspect?” Sabrina’s chair creaked as she sat back abruptly. “Is that true, Shelby? The FBI thinks Colton is a serial killer?”

Did they? She couldn’t remember. It had obviously crossed her mind and the evidence was damning enough for Theo to think the same thing.

But she was still trying to wrap her brain around all three men being on Connor’s rescue mission. “Wyatt Evers wasn’t on our taskforce in Baghdad.”

The heavy silence that followed made her skin itch. She could see Colton and Connor in her mind’s eye exchanging a weighty glance.

“What aren’t you guys telling me?”

“Wyatt Evers was not part of the rescue taskforce,” Colton said.

He was lying, but why?

“Sorry, I…” Connor didn’t finish the sentence but a thought tickled her brain.

“Colton, the day you arrived, Theo had my file, and your picture was in it, that’s how he recognized you. What happened to that?”

“Maybe after you cleared me,” Colton said, “he removed it.”

Maybe, but she was starting to think a bunch of her work on the case had simply disappeared. Colton was lying to her, her case file was incomplete…what was going on here? “That’s probably the photo I showed to Lori that day. Not to incriminate you, to try to find the link between you and her husband. You said earlier that you crossed paths, but you never did tell me how.”

“On one of my rotations back to the States, I trained him.”

And ho-boy, Colton’s voice had gone almost frigid.

“And?” Shelby asked, shrugging her shoulders.

“And what? The guy was as smart as they come. Accurate, tough, passed every test with ease.”