Chapter 25
Lakin heard voices, but these were soft whispers, not the shouts from her nightmares or even from earlier… Was it today that she’d heard Troy yelling for help? How much time had passed since she’d slipped and fallen trying to escape from Whitlaw? From her biological mother’s murderer?
She gasped at the sharp jab of pain over the loss. The woman had given Lakin life and had done her best to protect that life.
“She’s awake,” a soft voice said with awe. “Sweetheart, are you all right?”
And she opened her eyes to the mother she knew, the one who’d been there for her as long as she could remember. Who’d loved and supported her unconditionally. “Mom…” Lakin whispered, her throat raspy.
Then she saw her dad leaning over her mother and her brothers and even Hetty and Mrs. Amos and a couple of the other Amos siblings.
Where was Troy?
She didn’t see him even though she looked around for him. He was tall; she should have been able to see him over the others. But instead of asking for him, she forced a smile for all the worried faces staring back at her. “I thought there’s a limit on the number of visitors a person can have.”
She knew she was in the hospital. An IV line was taped into a vein in her arm, and she lay partially inclined in a bed with railings.
“There are too many of us Coltons and Amoses for them to hold us to that limit,” her father said with a grin, but his eyes were damp like her mom’s.
“I think we can break this one law,” Eli said, his voice gruff.
Lakin shook her head and flinched at a jolt of pain near the base of her skull. “No more law breaking,” she murmured. “I’m okay…”
Or she would be when she saw Troy. Where was he? Why wasn’t he with her?
“That’s all we wanted to know,” Mrs. Amos said, “that you would be all right, sweet girl.”
Lakin smiled at the beautiful woman she’d hoped would one day be her mother-in-law. But Troy wasn’t ready to make a commitment obviously. He wasn’t even here for her.
Although he’d been in the ambulance. Had something happened to him? She wanted to ask about him, but first she had to know…
“Did you catch Whitlaw?” she asked her brother.
Eli nodded.
“He killed my birth mother,” she said. “He told me so when he was chasing me. He would have killed me, too, back then if she hadn’t left me in that grocery store.”
“We knew you were loved before we loved you,” her adoptive mother said, tears shimmering in her blue eyes. “And now we know how much.”
Her birth mother had loved her.
“Eli and I need to talk to Whitlaw,” Kansas said and jerked her head toward the door. “We can go now that we know you’re all right.”
Lakin hugged them both goodbye. She was all right physically. Emotionally she was still a mess, especially because Troy wasn’t here.
But when Eli and Kansas opened the door, he was standing there out in the hall.
Had he just gotten here? Or had he been out there the whole time? Afraid to see her? Afraid that she might not want him here like he hadn’t wanted her at his bedside all those weeks ago?
Everybody else followed Eli and Kansas’s lead, hugging and kissing her before walking out into the hall.
While everyone else was walking out, Troy stepped inside the room. He was limping again, and a grimace crossed his face as he moved around the room until he was beside her bed. Finally the door shut behind her last visitor, leaving them alone together.
Lakin stared at Troy for a long while. She felt caught in his green-eyed gaze, her image reflecting back at her. She was bruised and scraped up with a bandage on the back of her head.
He was bruised and scraped up, too, his clothes torn.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
His breath caught for a second, then released in a ragged sigh. “I went into that ravine to find you.”
She wasn’t sure it was a ravine she’d fallen into or if she’d just gone off the side of the mountain. She’d accidentally gone over; he’d purposely risked his life for hers.
“You hurt your back again,” she said, tears rushing to her eyes for the pain he had to be feeling.
He shook his head. “Whacked my knee on a rock,” he said. “It’s bruised but not broken. They think my back will be fine.”
“Good,” she said. And then she had to ask, “Does that mean you’re going to go back to the oil rigs?”
Was he going to leave her again?
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice heavy with emotion.
As her heart broke, she closed her eyes. “Then…just go…” she choked out. She couldn’t keep doing this; she couldn’t keep saying goodbye to the man she loved and not know if he was going to be able to make it back to her.
* * *
Troy’s heart broke from the tears sliding down her face. “I’m so sorry,” he said, and he pushed down one railing so he could sit on the bed and pull her into his arms.
But her body was stiff with rejection. “If you’re going to leave again, just go,” she said. “I can’t keep saying goodbye to you.”
“I’m not leaving,” he said.
Finally she opened her eyes, wet with tears. “What?”
“I’m never leaving you again,” he said. “I’m sorry I was so stubborn and stupid to think that money mattered when the only thing that matters is love.
No, the only thing that matters is you. I love you so much, Lakin, and I’m so sorry.
Can you ever forgive me for putting off our future, for worrying about things that don’t really matter? ”
“I thought they mattered, too,” she said. “I thought we needed more money saved before we bought our business.”
“But you did it anyway,” he said with a smile of pride at her bravery. “When the opportunity came up, you took it. Just like you must have to get away from Whitlaw.”
She shuddered and clutched him closer. “I was so scared.”
“Me, too,” he admitted. “I’ve never been so scared. Not even when I fell off that oil rig. And I realized when you were missing that nothing else matters but us being together. I was just so scared of being a burden to you.”
She pressed her fingers over his lips. “I love you. No matter what. Sickness and health.”
“Will you say those words to me?”
“I just did,” she said, her forehead furrowing a bit.
“I would drop down to one knee, but it would be a little hard right now,” he said.
“What I’m asking, Lakin Colton, is for you to be my wife, my partner in business and life.
I love you so much, and I will do my best to spend the rest of our lives making up for the time we’ve been apart while I’ve been stupid. ”
She chuckled and pressed her fingers to his lips again. “You’ve been stubborn,” she agreed. “But you’re not stupid. I know your family struggled after your dad died, and you worry about security.”
“You’re my security,” he said. “You’re my home. You’re my everything. I asked your dad and mom for their permission to marry you. They said it’s up to you. Maybe they think I’ve already blown my chance. Have I, Lakin? Have I waited too long to start our future?”
She shook her head. “No, our future starts now. Yes, I will marry you. I will be your partner in all things. I love you so very much, Troy Amos.”
Finally she’d said the words back to him again. He had her love back. He had Lakin back.
“And I love you.” He lowered his head and kissed her lips. All the pain he’d ever felt disappeared; he felt only love and gratitude that she was safe and she was his as much as he was hers.
* * *
Kansas was irritated with Asher. He’d wanted to start the interrogation of Jasper Whitlaw without her and Eli.
Sure, he figured they wanted to be there for Lakin, and he wasn’t wrong about that.
Even Scott had pointed that out. But he could have just waited; it was as if he hadn’t believed that Lakin was going to be okay.
Kansas hadn’t wanted to consider the possibility. Anyway, Lakin was fine. And from what Mom and Dad had insinuated when they all left her and Troy alone together, she was probably engaged by now.
Which for some reason made Kansas even more determined to find the Fiancée Killer. There was no proof yet that any of his victims had actually been engaged, though. The ones they’d identified had been single.
Except for Mrs. Whitlaw; Stella, who was undoubtedly Lakin’s biological mom, had been a married woman. But she was dead, and her husband had confessed to killing her.
Facing Jasper Whitlaw, Kansas began, “We have you on your wife’s murder as well as the abduction of Lakin Colton, kidnapping, extortion and the attempted murder of Troy Amos. You have a long list of charges being brought against you. So tell us about the other women.”
“Other women?” Whitlaw asked. “Stella was the tramp. Cheated on me when I was prison and gave birth to that little whiny brat.”
“Lakin was never whiny,” Eli defended his sister. “She was always as sweet and kind as she is now.”
Whitlaw snorted. “People thought the same about her mother, wondered why Stella was with me. She probably thought she could save me or reform me, but in the end nobody was able to save her.”
“Why’d you come after Lakin?” Eli asked.
Whitlaw shrugged. “Figured she might remember what happened, and I didn’t want to go to back to prison.”
“She was there when you killed her mother?”
He sighed. “Stella didn’t die right away. She managed to get the kid to the grocery store. But she died shortly after that.”
“From the beating you gave her,” Eli said. “Lakin used to wake up with nightmares.”
“And she didn’t like shouting,” Kansas remembered. “But what about the other women?”
“What other women?” Whitlaw sounded annoyed now. “I only grabbed Lakin because I figured it wasn’t fair. She got the cushy life as a Colton. I was owed some of that money, too.”
“You were owed nothing,” Eli said. “But you owe plenty to other people. Closure. The truth.”
“I don’t know if Stella’s body was ever found,” he said. “That’s up to you to figure out.”
“What about the other women?” Kansas persisted.
“I haven’t killed any other women,” Whitlaw said. He leaned back and shook his head. “I’m no freaky serial killer if that’s what you’re trying to pin on me. Hell, give me the dates, and I’m sure I’ve got alibis.”
Kansas figured he probably did. He wasn’t the killer they were looking for.
She and Eli left him alone in the interrogation room and stepped into the hall.
“It’s not him,” Asher said as he walked up to join them.
Of course he would have already figured that out.
“I checked the dates of the other abductions, and he was on his parole officer’s radar then. He was regularly checking in with him and wasn’t anywhere near this vicinity until a few weeks ago,” Asher continued.
Eli sighed. “Did you check out Billy Hoover and Eric Seller too?”
“Billy Hoover and Eric Seller?” Kansas repeated. “Why would you check out Billy? And isn’t Seller a RTA client?”
“Troy came up with some other possible suspects when someone was stalking Lakin,” Eli said.
“Maybe we should give him a job,” Asher said.
But Kansas suspected Troy would have one with Lakin soon. She’d heard about the old Shelby Hotel.
“I already checked out Billy and Eric,” Eli said. “Both have alibis for the dates the other women were killed. Bobby Reynolds actually was the alibi for Billy. He locked him up for drunk driving.”
Kansas nearly growled with frustration. “We have to find this killer…”
Before he killed again. She had no doubt that he would keep killing until he was caught.