Chapter 18
Lakin should have been exhausted, but maybe there was just too much adrenaline coursing through her body.
From the close call she and Troy had had and from how they’d made love again.
While he’d fallen asleep afterward, she lay awake next to him, listening to his even breathing and the beat of his heart beneath her cheek.
She loved him so much even when he frustrated her with his stubbornness. But was he the only one being stubborn?
She’d thought she didn’t want him leaving again because she didn’t want him getting hurt on the oil rigs, but as he pointed out, he’d been hurt here, too. Was his safety just an excuse she was using because she wanted him with her?
She did want him with her. Always. But she also didn’t want him getting hurt, and in trying to protect her like he had tonight, he had been. The bandage on his chiseled cheekbone made her feel queasy with regret and fear.
Her cell vibrated against the bedside table with an incoming call. Not wanting to wake up Troy, she grabbed it from the nightstand and slipped out of bed. Maybe it was one of her siblings calling. Or one of the officers watching the cabin.
But when she stepped out of the bedroom and looked down at the number, she recognized the one Jasper Whitlaw had scrawled on the back of the photograph.
He wasn’t her father, but why had he been in that picture with her and her biological mother?
Wanting answers, she slid her finger across the screen to accept the call, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. She had no idea what to say. Even if she asked the questions she had for him, she doubted he would tell her the truth.
“Hey, little girl,” he greeted her. He sounded amused. Was this all some sick joke to him?
“I know you’re not my father,” she told him.
He snorted. “What? You trying to pretend you’re really a Colton now?”
“I am,” she said. “But I know you were in prison around the time I would have been conceived and born. You’re nothing to me.”
“I’m a link to your mother,” he said. “If you want to know the truth about her…”
Her heart yearned for the truth, to know more about the woman she looked so much like. The woman who had left her in that grocery store all those years ago.
“I’ll find her on my own,” she said. That way she would trust what she found out. She wouldn’t be hearing it from a man who’d already lied to her.
“You won’t find her,” he said.
A heaviness settled on Lakin’s heart. She was dead. That had to be what he meant. But again she didn’t trust him for the truth. “I’m not going to pay you for information on her,” she warned him. “So if you’re after money, you’re not going to get any out of me.”
“Then maybe I will go to your Colton daddy,” Jasper threatened.
“Or maybe I’ll go straight to the press.
They buy stories. They might be interested in one about a serial killer stalking Shelby, Alaska, the way Caroline Colton was stalked and murdered years ago along with her parents.
I’m sure the press would love to dig up that family tragedy, probably set up their vans and stuff right outside Will and Sasha Colton’s house.
It’s a nice one. I can make sure they find it like I did. ”
So he had been outside their house that day. Had he also driven Troy off the road?
“Stay away from my parents,” she said. “And don’t go to the press.”
“Why?” he asked, as if he was only idly curious. “Are you going to make it worth my while?”
“I… I…” Lakin had no money of her own anymore. She’d put it all into the hotel. She couldn’t go to her dad for more, not for this. Not for blackmail.
“I’ll get some money,” she said. But what she really intended was to get Eli and Kansas to track down and arrest the blackmailer. They would probably have to have a recording of him actually blackmailing her, though, so it was more than her word against his.
“It better be more than I can get from the press for selling this story,” he threatened.
“It will be.” She wished she’d been recording this call. If only that had occurred to her sooner… “Where do I find you when I get the money together?” she asked.
“Since all you’ve given me was forty bucks, I’ve been camping outside, not far from your place,” he said. “I couldn’t afford a hotel.”
From the way he said hotel, she wondered if he knew about the Shelby Hotel. Had he been there that day the window was broken? He had to be the one who’d been stalking her. He knew too much, like where her parents lived. It made her sick that she might have been the one who led him to them.
“Were you here tonight?” she asked. “Did you shoot at Troy?”
He snorted. “Why would I shoot at anyone, girl? That’s not going to get me what I want, which is money enough to start over somewhere. And since I’m still on probation, I can’t have a firearm. It wasn’t me.”
What he said made sense but also made her more uneasy. If not him, who had taken those shots at Troy and why?
“Where can I find you?” she asked.
He named a road that had a riverbank on one side where people often camped. He probably wasn’t alone out there. She would make certain that she wasn’t alone when she met him.
But she was also going to make sure Troy wasn’t with her or anywhere near her. She didn’t want him putting his life in danger trying to keep her safe.
* * *
Troy jerked awake, imagining he felt that sting against his cheek all over again. But it was just a dull throb, unlike his pulse that was suddenly racing when he realized he was alone in bed.
“Lakin!” he called out.
Maybe she was just in the bathroom. But he jumped out of bed to find it and the rest of the cabin empty. She was gone.
He didn’t think she would have headed to the office this early. Dawn had only lightened the sky a bit; the sun had yet to rise. So where was she?
He grabbed his cell and called her, but her voicemail immediately picked up. She either wasn’t taking his call or she couldn’t.
He called Eli next. “You’re supposed to have someone watching Lakin.
Do you know where she is?” He braced himself for Eli to point out that Troy had said he was watching her.
He already felt so damn guilty for falling asleep.
More than once she’d slipped out of the cabin without him noticing. Good thing he wasn’t a real bodyguard.
“She called me,” Eli said. “And told me where she’s headed.”
“Where?” Troy asked. But part of him already knew and dreaded what her brother was about to tell him.
“To meet Jasper Whitlaw,” Eli confirmed his worst fear.
“Why the hell would she do that?” They’d told her the man was dangerous. He’d been in and out of prison for assault for years.
“He threatened our family,” Eli said.
Troy knew Lakin would do anything to protect the family she loved so much. He cursed.
“I’m on my way to catch up with her,” Eli said. “She can’t have much of a head start. She called me just a few minutes ago.”
Hopefully she didn’t have much of a head start on Troy either then. “Where?” he asked. “Where is she meeting him?”
“She didn’t wake you up because she doesn’t want you getting shot again,” Eli said. “So I’m not going to be the one who puts you in danger.”
“No, you’re not,” Troy agreed. “I am.”
But he realized he didn’t need Eli’s help to find her. He disconnected the call.
Years ago, he and Lakin had shared their phone locations with each other. Because he was out of cellular range so much when he was working on the oil rigs, he had nearly forgotten. He checked it now.
A little dot blinked within a circle close to a riverbank just a short distance from RTA.
He would be able to find her. Hopefully he wouldn’t be too late to help her. Because he didn’t think Jasper Whitlaw was just a threat to her family.
He was a threat to her, too.
* * *
He’d put fear in her; he knew and relished that fear. Now all he had to do was wait. When people were afraid, they didn’t think rationally. They were too emotional, too panicked, to think clearly. To make a plan.
Like the plan he’d made.
The plan he was going to carry out so that he would finally get what was owed to him.
And so would the Coltons.