Page 55 of The Unknown Colton
But she didn’t call back to him. Was someone holding a hand over her mouth? Or was it worse than that?
“Lakin! The police are coming!” he yelled again. But he hadn’t called them yet. Hopefully someone had who’d seen her lights flashing and heard her horn honking.
But if not…
There was no help coming but him. He had to find her.
It was too dark for him to track footprints unless he pulled out his phone. He heard no sirens in the distance. He needed to call the police himself.
He flashed his cell light on and immediately heard a gun cock. Then, seconds later, the blast of it being fired.
His first fear was for her, that Lakin had been shot.
But before he could call out to her, she screamed his name. Leaves rustled, and branches snapped near his head as bullets fired at him.
He ducked down, trying to take cover. It was clear whoever had been after her was willing or maybe even determined to kill him so that he didn’t get in their way.
But he wasn’t as worried about his life as he was hers. He had to figure out a way to stay alive and make sure that she did, too.
CHAPTER 17
The person pursuing her had been so close that for a second Lakin had felt his breath on the back of her neck, his hand reaching for her hair. She’d screamed and ran harder, faster, more desperately because she hadn’t thought anyone would hear her scream any more than they’d heard the blare of her vehicle alarm.
But then Troy had called out to her. She should have been relieved, but now she was afraid for both of them.
Instead of calling back with the man so close to her, she’d ducked under some low-hanging pine boughs. She held her breath, terrified.
Until she heard the gunshots.
She screamed Troy’s name. But the shots weren’t as close as she expected. Had the man turned around and gone back toward the office? Or had he gone after Troy instead?
Like the white knight he’d always been for her, Troy had rushed to her rescue, putting his own life in danger.
She didn’t know what to do. If she ran from herhiding place, she could get shot, too. And then she wouldn’t be able to help Troy. If she turned on her phone, the light or the sound of it could give away her location. But she had to get help.
Pulling her RTA shirt out of her waistband, she concealed her phone inside it, then texted an SOS to her sibling/cousin group chat. Her fingers were trembling so badly that all she managed was in factSOS. She couldn’t text that she was afraid Troy was hurt.
That he might have been shot…
She didn’t even want to think it, as if putting her fear into words would somehow make it come true.
Tears burned her eyes, and so many regrets rushed through her. She’d been so frustrated with him since he’d come back, so disappointed with his stubbornness. She’d wasted so much time being angry when she could have been with him like she’d been last night. Like she wanted to be now, wrapped up in his strong arms, feeling his heart beating against hers.
Was his heart still beating? Was Troy alive?
Or had one of those gunshots stopped his heart? If it had, Lakin suspected hers would stop, too.
* * *
The SOS scared the crap out of Kansas. It wasn’t like Lakin to ask for help ever. Not even back when she was being bullied in school. She’d just ignored the bullies until one of her brothers or Kansas or the Amoses had put a stop to it. Of all of them, Troy had been the most effective at ending the bullying.
Where was he that Lakin had sent out an SOS?He was back from the oil rigs, so he should have been where he usually was when he was in Shelby, at Lakin’s side.
“Can’t you drive any faster?” she asked Eli, even though he probably already had the accelerator pressed to the floorboards of his ABI SUV.
He didn’t even spare her a glance. Was he mad at her? If she hadn’t talked him into the trip to the lab, he would have been here with Lakin, protecting her from whatever compelled her to send that SOS text.
“Scott really thought he might be able to get something off the photograph,” she said. “And if this Whitlaw guy is the Fiancée Killer…” He was even more dangerous than they’d thought.
