Page 69 of The Unknown Colton
But had he found her too late?
* * *
Eli heard Troy shouting. But he was staring into the barrel of a gun that the man from Lakin’s photograph pointed at him.
Whitlaw was older now, with several lines in his face. The same jagged scar trailed down one side of it. And his mouth was twisted into the same cruel sneer.
“It’s too late,” Whitlaw said.
“It is too late,” Eli agreed. He held a gun, too, pointed directly at Whitlaw who stood a few yards up the mountain from him. Behind Eli were a couple of the SAR team members, holding back the dogs that Whitlaw had already threatened to shoot. Eli heard another gun cocking. Probably Kansas. His cousin would not let this man take him out. “Throw down your weapon. There’s no way out of this, Whitlaw.”
“It’s too late for her,” the older man said.
Eli heard the panic and desperation in Troy’s hoarse voice as he continued shouting. The man was too proud to ask for help for himself. He needed help for Lakin.
“What did you do to her?” Kansas asked, moving closer to Eli.
Whitlaw chuckled. “Not a damn thing. She’s the one who hurt herself. She ran right off the mountain.”
Kansas gasped.
Fear gripped Eli, but he didn’t lower his weapon. He didn’t trust this man for a moment. If they got distracted, Whitlaw was going to shoot one of them. And with his obvious resentment of the Coltons, it was going to be either Eli or Kansas.
He had to take this guy out. Now. Without anyone else getting hurt.
But Eli couldn’t stop thinking about Lakin hurt and needing his help.
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?
