Chapter 22
Lakin closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep when the shadow moved from the corner of the cave over to where she lay. She knew it was best to not see the face of her abductor. He was more likely to let her go if she couldn’t identify him.
That was her father’s voice she’d heard in her dream. It had been coming from this man’s cell phone. There was only one probable reason for that: a ransom call.
Dad had already loaned her so much money. She didn’t want him paying out more for her. She definitely didn’t want him to pay it only for her not to be released.
She intended to release herself, though. She’d managed to roll to her side and get one of those twigs near her wrists. She would be able to use the sharp end that had been jabbing into her back to fray the duct tape. If the man left her alone…
He stood for a long moment over her. Then he murmured, “Like looking at a damn ghost…”
Her skin chilled, goose bumps rising as she recognized the voice and simultaneously what he meant. Her birth mother was definitely dead. He wouldn’t have called Lakin a ghost if she wasn’t.
She schooled her features to remain relaxed, her breathing deep and easy. Finally he stepped over her. She lifted one lid just a fraction of an inch and watched as he exited the cave, which suddenly seemed brighter without Jasper Whitlaw inside it.
He was the dark shadow. The person who’d been stalking her. Just for money? Or was that nightmare about shouting and slapping and crying more than a dream? Could it be a memory? One Whitlaw might not want her to remember again.
Had she been there when her mother died?
In that case, even if her father paid him the ransom he demanded, Whitlaw might not have any intention of releasing her. She had to act fast.
She grabbed the stick and contorted her body so she could tear through the tape around her ankles.
Then she wedged the sharp tip back between her wrists and managed to tear through the tape binding them as well.
Once her hands were free, she reached up and eased the tape from her mouth, swallowing the cry of pain that wanted to slip out as the tape pulled at her skin and her lips.
She didn’t want to alert Whitlaw that she was free. But she wasn’t actually free yet. She pushed herself up from the ground, but her legs were shaky, and dizziness had black spots dancing before her eyes. She blinked and steadied herself, then moved to the mouth of the cave.
He was standing out there, near a battered old truck parked in a stand of pines.
She hadn’t seen that truck at the cabin when she came home earlier.
Had it already been parked here? How had he managed to get it through the thick forest of trees that covered this side of the mountain?
Was this the mountain behind RTA? Was she close to home?
She tried to consider which direction to go, but again dizziness threatened to overwhelm her. She really didn’t have time to think. The man was just standing there smoking. If he turned and saw her…
She slipped out of the cave and started moving as quietly as she could away from him and that truck. Holding even her breath so that she wouldn’t alert him, she placed each foot softly against the ground. But a twig snapped beneath the sole of her hiking boot.
He whirled toward her. “Damn it, girl. Stop! Stop right now, or I’ll shoot you!”
She did the opposite. She ran like she had that night he’d been waiting for her outside the office.
She knew now that it had to have been him that night. He’d lied when he told her on the phone that he didn’t have a gun. But of course she shouldn’t have expected him to tell her the truth about anything. The man was a liar and probably a killer as well.
“You are just like your worthless mama, girl,” he shouted as he ran after her.
“No matter how many times Stella ran from me, I always caught that faithless wife of mine.” He coughed, probably from all his smoking and the exertion of running.
“I’m going to catch you, too, and then I’m going to kill you like I did her, like I would have killed you all those years ago if she hadn’t dumped you in that grocery store. ”
Tears stung her eyes. Her mother hadn’t abandoned her; she’d saved her. She must have already been wounded when she’d left her at the grocery store.
“Before I could find you, social services got involved, and then those damn Coltons adopted you,” he said, his breathing getting more labored as he chased after her.
Her lungs burned with the need for more air as she wound higher up the mountain. Her feet slipped on rocks and sand, and she clutched at tree branches to pull herself up.
But he was so close that she could still hear everything he said.
“Rich people like the Coltons think their money can buy them everything they want. But after that mess they went through back in California, they should know the one thing it can’t buy ’em is life.
It can’t buy your life, little girl. Nothing can. ”
So even if her dad paid him the ransom, Whitlaw had no intention of letting her live any more than he’d let her biological mother live.
Lakin tried to run faster. She knew she was literally running for her life.
* * *
Troy had been pushed back to the perimeter of the crime scene around the cabin now that the SAR team had finally arrived.
Kansas, her face pinched with the same fear Troy and Eli were feeling, led one of the dogs to the door of Lakin’s cabin. It sniffed at the boards on the porch and then the door. As it sniffed the floor, it whined and backed off.
“The scent of chloroform might be lingering yet,” a man with dark blond hair called out to Kansas. “I’m sure that’s what was on the handkerchief.”
So was Troy, and he had never smelled chloroform before. He just knew it was something used to make people lose consciousness. That was probably the only way the kidnapper would have gotten Lakin out of the cabin without a fight.
Troy didn’t really believe people had stopped bullying her just because of her family and his. It was because Lakin had gotten stronger; she’d learned to fight back. She would have done that today if she’d been able.
But the chloroform would have made her as helpless as he’d been after falling off the oil rig. At least he’d had his coworkers around to jump in and save him. Lakin had no one.
They’d waited so damn long for search and rescue to show up, or so it had seemed, that the scent of the trail to her might have gone cold. She could be many miles away by now. And waiting around had only increased those miles.
But then the dog started barking and pulling Kansas across the front porch toward the woods. “He’s got a scent!” Kansas yelled, and her face didn’t look quite as pinched. She was hopeful.
Eli had been on the phone coordinating with the surveillance team setting up at his parents’ for the kidnapper’s follow-up call, but he hung up and started after Kansas.
Troy had overheard the ABI lieutenant earlier telling Kansas about the ransom request.
“Every kidnapper has to know that the person will want proof of life before turning over any money,” Kansas had said. “That’s good. That means she’s alive.”
Troy wanted to believe that, too, so badly. But he was too damn scared to think rationally at all. He waited just until Eli rushed into the woods after the SAR team before he ducked under the crime-scene tape and started after them.
The crime tech who’d identified the chloroform saw him but looked away, letting him go.
He must have noticed how upset Troy was, how determined he was to find the woman he loved.
And the guy hadn’t just looked away from Troy—he’d looked off in the direction Kansas had gone.
Maybe he understood what Troy was feeling because he cared about someone like that, too.
Troy stayed back a bit from the team, so that the officers and the dogs didn’t notice him like the tech had. He didn’t want to get in the way or cause a distraction. He didn’t want to detract in any way from the search for Lakin. He just wanted to help.
And he wanted to be there when she was found.
She had to be found. Alive.
* * *
Will held onto his wife’s trembling body, trying to comfort her while seeking comfort himself.
He was so damn scared. They’d gotten together a lot of money.
Sasha’s pottery business was doing well, and Will still had a lot of investments from selling the real estate business in California that he and his brother had inherited after losing the rest of their family.
His brother, Ryan, who loved Lakin like she was his own daughter, had chipped in some of his inheritance investments, too.
Everybody wanted to get their girl safely back where she belonged: with them.
“Why hasn’t he called yet?” Sasha asked, her voice muffled as her face was buried in his throat. Her tears wet his skin.
“He’ll call back,” Will said. “He has to call back…” If he wanted the money.
But was this really about money? Or was there another reason Lakin had been abducted?
Did her kidnapper really have any intention of letting her go?