Second Chance Colton. Marie Ferrarella

opposite sides all but ten feet tall with neon lights dancing around them.

      He didn’t have time for this, didn’t have time to deal with any regrets, small or, in this case, large. What was done was done and he had to focus on the present. Just possibly, he had a sister to bring back to the fold. A sister that he had to take care not to alienate as he tried to subtly question her about her part—if she had played a part—in these bizarre, random attacks of vandalism and destruction that were occurring on the ranch.

      A sister who just might never forgive him if she proved to be innocent of any wrongdoing and thought that he was accusing her of the exact opposite.

      There were times when he scolded himself for not having chosen a simpler, easier path in life. But everyone had to follow their strengths, he reasoned, and his involved ferreting out the truth and taking down the bad guys.

      “Thanks for all your help,” he said to Susie as he started to leave again.

      She looked up at him. “I’m sure you don’t mean that, but you’re welcome.”

      He was about to take exception with the way she had phrased that—it sounded as if she had stopped just short of calling him a liar—but he caught himself just in time. There was no point in attempting to contradict her point of view about the immediate matter at hand. She had a right to her opinion, even if she was dead wrong. Because he had meant what he’d just said.

      He was deliberately wasting time. Every minute he stood here was another minute that he was delaying the inevitable because it was going to be, at best, awkward and uncomfortable. He didn’t want to think about what it would be like at its worst.

      Squaring his shoulders, he left the lab. He needed to get this over with. Now.

      And then, he thought as he went down the corridor, he could move on to something else.

      Hopefully more successfully than the last time he’d told himself he was moving on.

      He sincerely doubted that he could do any worse.

       Chapter 3

      Ryan knew that as an investigating detective with the Tulsa PD, even if he was questioning his own sister, because he was doing it in reference to a current active case he was working on, it was in everyone’s best interest to keep things businesslike and official. Among other things, that meant that he should be making this call from the phone on his desk at the precinct, not from his personal cell phone while he was sitting in his car.

      He supposed that he could argue that he was doing it for the quiet, because the precinct was usually almost too noisy to allow anyone to hear themselves think. But the truth of the matter was that his real reason for making the call from inside his vehicle was that he didn’t want to be overheard.

      It was bad enough that he had to ask his sister painful, probing questions like this without having everyone within a ten-foot radius hearing him asking. He was a Colton. One of the Coltons. The family that had, through absolutely no fault of their own, their very own serial killer in their family tree, thanks to his father’s brother, Matthew.

      Granted, it all had happened a long time ago and his uncle had been locked away in prison for a while now, but he was well aware of the fact that people loved to point an accusing finger and watch people of prominence come tumbling down. They loved watching their fallen-from-grace sinners every bit as much as they loved cheering on their saints and heroes.

      Sometimes even more so.

      He wanted no part in supplying those people with any sort of ammunition, especially if there did actually turn out to be a reasonable excuse for all this.

      He supposed a tiny part of him hadn’t turned cynical yet and still believed in miracles.

      So he sat in his vehicle, trying not to notice how stuffy it seemed with the windows rolled up and his doors locked, and he called his sister’s number.

      After a short delay, he heard the cell phone start to ring. Waiting for Greta to answer her phone, Ryan counted off the number of times her cell rang. After four, her voice mail kicked in. Impatient, he was about to terminate the call and try again in a couple of minutes when he heard Greta’s breathless voice as she came on the line.

      “Hello?”

      Rather than relax, he felt his shoulders stiffen. “Greta? It’s me. Ryan.”

      “Hi.” And then he heard her ask guardedly, “What’s up?”

      Was that just his imagination—or her guilty conscience stepping up? “I’m coming up to the ranch to see you.”

      He heard her laugh softly. “Well, you can come up to the ranch, but you won’t see me.”

      Was he tipping her off with this call? Was she planning on taking off? He needed more to work with. “Why?” he asked.

      “Why do you think?” Not waiting for him to respond, she gave him the answer to her own question. “Because I’m not at the ranch. I’m not in Tulsa at all. I’m back in Oklahoma City.”

      Ryan frowned to himself. Ever since Greta had gotten engaged, she’d spent more and more of her time in Oklahoma City, where her fiancé lived. She’d even taken on horse training jobs there.

      “I thought you’d stick around the ranch for a while, you know, because of Mother.”

      There was silence on the other end of the line and for a moment, he thought that the call had been dropped. But then Greta said, “Yes, well, I wasn’t really doing her any good just hanging around the house. Especially since she kept looking at me as if she was afraid of me. As if she thought I was going to do something to her. I don’t know what’s with that,” Greta complained, sounding as if she was at a complete loss.

      “Did you ask her about it?” Ryan asked.

      “Yes. But when I asked her why she was looking at me like that,” Greta went on, obviously upset about the matter, “she denied it.”

      “So what’s the problem?”

      He heard Greta sigh. “I got the feeling she denied it because she was afraid if she didn’t, I’d do something to her.”

      He couldn’t believe that things between his mother and sister had actually degenerated down to this, but then Abra was prone to mood swings. “You’re imagining things, Greta.”

      He heard Greta sigh. “I suppose that maybe I am, but just the other day she asked me if I was doing any recreational drugs. Me, who’s never taken anything stronger than an aspirin. I think that beating Mother took might have been even more serious than any of us suspected.”

      It was Ryan’s turn to sigh. No one was more frustrated about not being able to find whoever had hurt his mother than he was. But right now, he had the break-in to deal with.

      The break-in with the evidence mounting against Greta. There had to be an explanation for all this, he thought, but he needed to talk to her in person to get at the truth.

      Growing up, Greta had been a tomboy almost in self-defense. She’d been outnumbered by her brothers five to one and had learned to hold her own at a very early age. At five-nine she was tall and willowy, and at first glance, very feminine.

      But she was also tough to the point that he was certain no one could easily push her around. As far as he knew, his sister didn’t really have much of a temper, but then he supposed everyone could be pushed to their limit. What was Greta’s limit? he couldn’t help wondering.

      Was there something that could push Greta over the edge?

      His thought process suddenly took him in a very new direction, almost against his will. What if, for some reason, their mother had suddenly taken exception to Greta’s pending marriage to Mark Stanton? Handsome and glibly charming, it was no secret that the younger