Chapter 4
Troy was hurt. Lakin knew it even before she found him gasping for breath in the middle of the forest. She’d recognized pain on his face as he took off after the intruder. His entire long body looked as if it had protested every step he took.
“What’s wrong?” she asked when she found him. “What’s happened?”
She would have thought that the intruder had turned the tables on Troy and attacked him, but there were no visible marks on his smooth chocolate skin, no swelling on his handsome face.
He looked as perfect as always but for the pain in his beautiful green eyes.
His mouth twisted into a grimace, and finally he released a long breath and straightened up.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “You were supposed to go to Parker, to the office, to safety…” He glanced at the trees around them, as if expecting the intruder to be hiding nearby.
Maybe they were; Lakin could smell something other than the pines, something like stale cigarette smoke. She felt that strange sensation again, like she was being watched. She shivered and whispered, “We should go back to the cabin.”
“You should,” Troy said, and he put his hand against the small of her back, turning her away from him. “Go back to the cabin. Now.”
“Not without you,” she said. “You’re hurt. What happened?” Why wouldn’t he just admit that he’d been injured and tell her how? Not that they had time to talk here. They needed to get out of here, but Lakin wasn’t leaving without Troy.
“I’m fine,” he said. But his jaw was so clenched, she was surprised he managed to get out the lie. He clearly wasn’t fine.
“Troy!” she exclaimed with exasperation.
Branches rustled around them; something was moving in the trees.
Troy pulled Lakin into his arms and wrapped them around her, as if using his body to shield her from whatever was coming.
But no person appeared.
Maybe when she shouted at him, she’d startled a bird or something. Or maybe it had been just a sudden gust of wind.
She could feel Troy’s heart beating fast and hard, could feel the heat of his skin, the hardness of his muscled body. This was where she should have been, in his arms, the minute he got back into town.
But he hadn’t come straight to her. And then someone had been inside her damn cabin. Doing what?
“I called Parker and Eli,” she assured him and whoever might be out there listening to them. She felt that strange sensation again, that creepy awareness of someone watching her. Who was it?
The intruder in her cabin proved that she wasn’t just imagining things. Someone could really be following her around. If not for Troy showing up when he had, they might have gotten her.
She wound her arms around him now and held on. But as she tightened her grasp around his back, he flinched.
“You are hurt,” she said. “Troy—”
“Lakin!” Parker’s voice echoed around the woods. “Troy! Where are you?”
“Here, we’re here!” she called back to her brother.
“The police are on their way,” Parker said loudly, as if warning off whoever might be hiding in the woods with them.
Lakin was pretty sure that someone was out there, watching them, waiting… For what? For her to be alone?
Branches rustled again, but it was Parker who pushed them aside. “Thank God you two are all right,” he said. “Who was it? Did you see them?”
Troy shook his head.
“I saw the front door of the cabin was open,” Lakin explained, “so I didn’t go inside. And when the intruder ran out the back, I just saw a shadow heading toward the woods.”
“It was a good thing you noticed the door was open,” Parker said. He shuddered as if horrified over what could have happened to her.
“I’m sure it wasn’t…” The serial killer, she thought.
But she didn’t say the words out loud. She didn’t want to think of him or give him any more attention.
Wasn’t that why serial killers killed? They wanted the notoriety and attention?
The press had already given him a name, had already reported too much about him.
But not everything.
They didn’t know what had happened years ago within the Colton family. They didn’t know how eerily close the crimes felt to one that had almost destroyed her family before she’d even become part of it.
Her family was strong and resilient. They had not allowed that tragedy to define them. But if someone brought that tragedy to the attention of the press, they might make her family relive it all over again.
“Let’s head back to the office,” Parker said. “Shelby PD’s finest, Bobby Reynolds, is on his way, and Eli and Kansas are, too. We’ll leave the policing to all of them.”
“And leave the chasing after bad guys to them, too,” Lakin said pointedly to Troy. “You shouldn’t have gone after him. What if he’d had a weapon?”
He shrugged. “I just wanted to see who it was.”
“Eli will figure that out,” Parker said.
Lakin worried that everybody expected too much of her oldest brother but nobody more so than Eli himself.
He had so much responsibility bearing down on him; she didn’t want to add to his burden.
But she did want to know who the hell had been in her place, just not badly enough to chase after them herself.
With her arm around Troy, she urged him from the woods.
Parker fell behind them, as if making sure that nobody could sneak up on them.
Proof that Parker wasn’t any more willing to leave everything up to his older brother than Lakin was.
He was trying to protect her, too, just as all her brothers had always done, Eli, Mitch and Parker.
Troy had always wanted to protect her, too. But she wondered now if the one she really needed the most protection from was him.
Going so long without seeing him or even communicating with him had hurt her. Badly. And it had hurt their relationship to the point where Billy Hoover and Eric Seller weren’t the only ones questioning it.
Like those men, she was also wondering if there was a future for the two of them. Did Troy love her as much as he once had? Did he love her enough to start their future now instead of waiting? Because Lakin was tired of waiting.
The deaths of those young women, including the aunt she’d never met, proved to her that life could be cut much too short.
* * *
“What the hell happened to you?” Parker asked. It was the same question that Lakin had asked Troy in the woods.
The three of them had made it back to the RTA office, even locking themselves inside the building. But despite the sound of sirens growing louder, Troy didn’t feel any safer than he had in the woods. Because now both Lakin and her brother were staring at him.
The muscles in his back were cramping up again, making him flinch despite his best effort to ignore the pain. He didn’t want Lakin to find out about his fall off the oil rig like this. He wanted the time and the privacy to explain why he hadn’t called her or his family.
“Did the guy get the jump on you out there?” Parker asked. “You said you didn’t see him but…”
“I didn’t see him, and he didn’t attack me,” Troy said. “I don’t even know if it was a man or a woman.”
“Troy was already limping before he ran after the intruder,” Lakin said. “But he won’t tell me what happened to him.”
Drawing it out was just making her angrier, he could see that. She would also be angry that he hadn’t told her when it happened, just like Hetty. His mom and other siblings would probably also be pissed at him.
“I fell off the oil rig several weeks ago,” he said. And he’d missed all those weeks of pay. Hopefully Mitch could help him get reimbursed for those lost wages.
Lakin’s dark eyes widened with shock. “You fell into the water? How? What happened?”
He shrugged and flinched again at the twinge of pain in his back. “I don’t know. I thought my safety harness was secure, but the cable or something snapped when I was up on one of the towers, and I fell and hit the water.” So damn hard.
Parker gasped. “You could have died.”
Troy knew that all too well; it was how his father had died. “I didn’t. I’m fine,” he said, trying to reassure Lakin. Her dark eyes were still so wide, and her face was pale.
“You’re not fine,” she said, sounding like she was gritting her teeth. “You’re limping, and you’re obviously in pain right now.”
Running on uneven ground hadn’t been good for his back. But hopefully the physical therapy he’d signed up for in town would make it easier for him to use his muscles again.
“I’m better,” he said. “For a while…” He trailed off and not just because the sirens were even louder now as the police pulled into the parking lot.
He didn’t want to say any more about his accident, at least not until he and Lakin were alone. Knowing how protective her family was of her, he wondered if he would get the chance anytime soon. But keeping her safe was more important than anything else, even their relationship.
And let alone keep her safe, right now, he didn’t know if he could help her achieve all those dreams she had, not without knowing how well he might heal.
But why was she in danger? Who the hell had broken into her cabin? Was the serial killer targeting Lakin now?
The thought horrified him more than anything else. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt Lakin. And he didn’t want to imagine anyone succeeding.
* * *
Eli looked at his sister and saw Dawn Ellis’s lifeless face instead. The color drained from her skin, the blue around her painted red lips and that garish ring on the finger of her exposed hand.
Then he blinked and saw Lakin again. She was moving carefully through the cabin that Eli and his team had already searched with the help of the local police department.
Officer Reynolds wasn’t really thrilled that they’d taken over, but he hadn’t argued.
He knew how close the Coltons stuck together; he just didn’t know why.
He didn’t know what they’d already been through and how many loved ones they’d already lost, albeit nearly three decades ago.
“Is anything missing?” Eli asked Lakin.
She stopped in the kitchenette; the doors of the few hickory wood cupboards stood open.
The refrigerator door had been open, too, but someone had closed it after processing the handle for prints and DNA.
Probably Scott Montgomery. The tech was detail-oriented like that and wouldn’t have wanted any of her food to spoil.
“When I saw my front door was open and heard someone inside, I thought of the raccoon who got through the window last year,” Lakin said with a small smile.
“It wasn’t a raccoon who jimmied open the door,” Eli said. Though, since she hadn’t dead-bolted it, the lock wouldn’t have been hard to open.
“But this seems like someone scavenging, doesn’t it?” she said, pointing at the food that had been dropped on the floor as well as on the small table. “Maybe they were looking for something to eat, not for me.”
Eli hoped like hell that was the case. After all, none of the other crime scenes had been left a mess like this. Not that the women had been murdered where their bodies were found. He had yet to find the actual crime scenes. He shrugged. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Kansas nodded in agreement.
Officer Reynolds sighed and pushed a hand through his short brown hair.
“There have been a couple other break-ins like this in the area,” he said.
“People who are out of work and desperate to make ends meet. Like I said, I don’t think this is a case for major crimes or search and rescue.
” His dark eyes narrowed as he shot a glance at both Eli and Kansas.
“There are food banks,” Eli said. He didn’t believe there was any excuse to commit a crime.
And if someone was desperate for food, why break into a small cabin that might have only been used for vacationers?
It could have been empty or poorly stocked.
Unless they’d been watching it for a while, watching Lakin.
“Well, some people are too proud to admit they need help,” Kansas said.
“Some people are too proud for their own damn good,” Lakin muttered just loudly enough for Eli to hear and wonder. She was staring through the window to where Troy stood outside next to Parker.
He’d noticed the tension between them from the minute he walked into the office over an hour ago. Usually when Troy was around, the two of them couldn’t stop grinning and laughing; it was like love bubbled out of them.
“Are you mad because he tried to chase down the intruder?” he asked.
She hesitated a moment, then nodded.
Was that really the reason for the tension between them? Eli could understand her being upset that Troy had put himself in danger like that. Eli would have been upset, too, but he understood why Troy had gone after the guy. Troy loved Lakin as much as her family did. Maybe more.
Troy really looked sick, his face twisted with a grimace. Probably because he hadn’t caught the guy. Eli understood that feeling all too well, too. He had to catch this damn serial killer before he took anyone else’s life, anyone else’s loved one.
Fortunately, Eli didn’t think that was who’d broken into Lakin’s place. “What do you think, Kansas?” he asked his cousin. “Is Officer Reynolds right? This intruder is just somebody down on their luck looking for food or cash?”
His cousin nodded.
But Eli caught a look passing over Lakin’s face, like she had something else to say.
“What is it?” he asked her. “Is something else bothering you?”
She shook her head. “No, I think I’m just letting all the press about that killer get to me.”
“Sometimes it’s good to be scared,” Kansas said. “It makes you more aware and cautious. You noticed that door before you got too close to the cabin. That’s good.”
It was good to be aware and cautious, but that didn’t mean it would keep a person safe.
Eli had a horrible feeling that this killer might just consider awareness a challenge.
But hopefully Officer Reynolds and Kansas were right and that was not who had broken into Lakin’s place.
Finding another body had probably just put Eli too on edge to accept a simple explanation for the break-in.
Hopefully nobody was after Lakin at all. And the only thing she needed to be concerned about was whatever was going on between her and Troy.