Chapter 24
Shouting pulled at Lakin in the darkness. Was Whitlaw yelling at her mother in her nightmare? Her mother was crying. Lakin was crying.
Or were the shouts from the man she loved? Troy?
“Help! I found her!”
It was him. She hoped.
Whitlaw couldn’t find her, or he would kill her for certain, just like he’d killed her mother. That thought was so unbearable, like the pain, that she slipped back into oblivion. But not into the nightmare.
Instead she dreamed of Troy, of their first dance, of their first kiss. Of all of their kisses.
She’d loved him for so long.
“Come back to me,” his deep voice, gruff with emotion, pleaded. “Come back to me…”
Where was she? She couldn’t tell. Couldn’t see beyond the darkness.
“I love you…”
The words pulled at her more than the shouting.
“I love you,” he repeated, his voice cracking. “Please come back to me…”
Where was she? Was she dead? But she could feel. Her love for him and the pain. It pounded so hard inside her head, reverberating off her skull. She flinched from the intensity of it. But she didn’t want to leave him.
Not Troy.
She fought her way from the blackness, opening her eyes. She squinted against the light and the pain. Why so much pain?
“What happened?” she asked in a whisper. Her throat was raw, and her voice muffled by the mask over her mouth. It wasn’t the tape or the handkerchief. It was plastic and full of oxygen.
The grasp on her hand tightened, and she peered up to find Troy leaning over one side of her while a stranger sat on the other. Wherever they were, they were moving, bouncing along a road. Sirens blared, making her flinch again. The pain intensified so much that she couldn’t hang on.
She had to let go of Troy.
Had to let go of the pain.
Of consciousness.
* * *
Ignoring the pain in his back and his knee, Troy paced the waiting room. “How long does it take to do a CT?” he asked Eli.
Leaning against a wall, Eli shook his head. “I don’t know. They need to make sure there’s no bleeding or swelling on her brain.”
Troy flinched at the thought. “She regained consciousness in the ambulance,” he reminded her brother. “She asked what happened.”
Was that a good thing or a bad thing, though? Didn’t she remember what had happened, that Whitlaw had abducted her? Or was it the fall she’d forgotten?
She’d gotten hurt because of that horrible man. He was in custody now; he couldn’t hurt her.
But a brain injury could. Even though she’d regained consciousness, the bleeding or swelling could still take her life. Troy knew that many people, even movie stars and celebrities, had lost their lives because of traumatic brain injuries like that.
His breath caught in his lungs with the panic pressing on his chest. For a second, he couldn’t move.
Eli reached out and grasped his shoulder. “She’ll be all right. She regained consciousness. My little sister is tough. She’ll be fine.”
Troy wasn’t sure if her older brother was trying to convince him or himself. “Lakin is tough,” he agreed.
She’d gotten away from that creep. And she’d put up with Troy for years, with the long-distance relationship so many other people, besides Billy Hoover and Eric Seller, must have pointed out to her was going nowhere. Troy had been such an idiot.
“You’re an idiot!” Kansas exclaimed.
Troy jerked his head toward the door to the waiting room, expecting to see Kansas pointing at him. But she was talking to another man. Troy had seen him around enough to know that he was Eli’s partner with ABI. Asher or something like that.
Eli groaned and levered himself away from the wall as if he needed to break up the fight. But then the tech with the dark blond hair stepped between the two of them.
“Ah, Scott Montgomery to the rescue,” Eli remarked.
Unlike Asher who’d obviously upset her, Scott spoke softly to Kansas. She offered him a faint smile before glowering at Asher again.
Troy focused on them for a moment, mostly so he would stop worrying about Lakin and how badly she might be injured. “What’s the deal with all that?” he asked Eli.
“I think both my partner and the brilliant tech have crushes on my beautiful cousin,” Eli said with a chuckle that sounded almost pitying. “But Kansas is too focused on finding the serial killer to give either of them the time of day.”
It was true; Kansas walked away from both men and headed toward Troy and Eli. “What have you heard? How is she?” she demanded.
“Nothing new yet,” Troy said.
“Uncle Will and Aunt Sasha were pulling into the lot as I was walking into the lobby,” Kansas warned Eli. “They’re going to want news.”
“We all want news,” Troy said. The longer it took for this damn CT scan, the more worried he got. What was taking so long? Had they found the very things they were worried about? Bleeding, swelling… Was she going to be okay?
If only he’d found her sooner…
Once he had, it hadn’t taken the SAR team long to get them up from the ravine and down the mountain to the ambulance. Hopefully they’d gotten her medical attention fast enough. He couldn’t consider the alternative.
He couldn’t consider losing her.
But even if she recovered, he might still lose her. He’d been the idiot that Kansas had called Eli’s partner. Troy had been waiting for his future to start instead of living it. Instead of just focusing on his love for Lakin and not worrying about anything else.
Now, he was worried only about her.
* * *
Ever since he got the ransom call, Will had been scared to death that they might lose their daughter. He’d held onto the hope that if he paid the ransom, they would get her back. Or that Eli and Kansas would find her.
But Troy Amos had.
Eli had told them when he’d called them. Troy had found Lakin, and they were in an ambulance on their way to the hospital.
“Why?” Will had managed to choke out.
Eli knew better than to sugarcoat things with him. He’d replied honestly, “She was running to escape her kidnapper and fell.”
Will hadn’t asked any more questions. Maybe because he hadn’t wanted to know how badly she was hurt. He just wanted to see his daughter.
So did Sasha. Together, they rushed into the hospital waiting room, holding onto each other.
“How is she?” Will asked his son who stood next to Troy and Kansas.
“We’re waiting for them to come back from CT and let us know,” Eli replied.
“CT?” Sasha whispered. “She hit her head?”
His face grim, Eli nodded.
“She regained consciousness in the ambulance,” Troy said, his voice gruff.
“She’ll be fine, Uncle Will. Aunt Sasha, she’ll be fine,” Kansas said, but she sounded as desperate to believe that as they were.
“Lakin’s strong,” Eli said.
Will knew that, but he still remembered the sweet little toddler who’d woken up with nightmares so often after she came to live with them. She wasn’t the only one who had nightmares back then. He and Eli had had some, too, after finding the bodies of his parents and Caroline and her killer.
But Lakin was alive. And she would stay that way. She had to…
Will couldn’t lose anyone else he loved.
“Sir,” Troy said. Tears shimmered in his green eyes. “May I speak to you and Mrs. Colton for a moment…alone…?”
Troy had found her; he’d ridden with her in the ambulance. Maybe he knew more than the others. Will was almost afraid to talk to him.
But Sasha, probably knowing that Troy needed comfort as much as they did, released Will to hug their daughter’s longtime boyfriend. “Thank you for finding her, Troy,” she said, tears streaming down her face.
Troy deserved their gratitude, let alone some of their time. So Will walked with the young man and Sasha toward a quiet corner of the waiting room that was beginning to fill up with Coltons and Amoses.
So many people loved Lakin, but no one more than Troy. She had to be okay for his sake as much as for hers and theirs. She had to be okay.