Page 13 of The Unknown Colton
* * *
“What the hell happened to you?” Parker asked. It was the same question that Lakin had asked Troy in the woods.
The three of them had made it back to the RTA office, even locking themselves inside the building. But despite the sound of sirens growing louder, Troy didn’t feel any safer than he had in the woods. Because now both Lakin and her brother were staring at him.
The muscles in his back were cramping up again, making him flinch despite his best effort to ignore the pain. He didn’t want Lakin to find out about his fall off the oil rig like this. He wanted the time and the privacy to explain why he hadn’t called her or his family.
“Did the guy get the jump on you out there?” Parker asked. “You said you didn’t see him but…”
“I didn’t see him, and he didn’t attack me,” Troy said. “I don’t even know if it was a man or a woman.”
“Troy was already limping before he ran after the intruder,” Lakin said. “But he won’t tell me what happened to him.”
Drawing it out was just making her angrier, he could see that. She would also be angry that he hadn’t told her when it happened, just like Hetty. His mom and other siblings would probably also be pissed at him.
“I fell off the oil rig several weeks ago,” he said. And he’d missed all those weeks of pay. Hopefully Mitch could help him get reimbursed for those lost wages.
Lakin’s dark eyes widened with shock. “You fell into the water? How? What happened?”
He shrugged and flinched again at the twinge of pain in his back. “I don’t know. I thought my safety harness was secure, but the cable or something snapped when I was up on one of the towers, and I fell and hit the water.” So damn hard.
Parker gasped. “You could have died.”
Troy knew that all too well; it was how his father had died. “I didn’t. I’m fine,” he said, trying to reassure Lakin. Her dark eyes were still so wide, and her face was pale.
“You’re not fine,” she said, sounding like she was gritting her teeth. “You’re limping, and you’re obviously in pain right now.”
Running on uneven ground hadn’t been good for his back. But hopefully the physical therapy he’d signed up for in town would make it easier for him to use his muscles again.
“I’m better,” he said. “For a while…” He trailed off and not just because the sirens were even louder now as the police pulled into the parking lot.
He didn’t want to say any more about his accident, at least not until he and Lakin were alone. Knowing how protective her family was of her, he wondered if he would get the chance anytime soon. But keeping her safe was more important than anything else, even their relationship.
And let alone keep her safe, right now, he didn’t know if he could help her achieve all those dreams she had, not without knowing how well he might heal.
But why was she in danger? Who the hell hadbroken into her cabin? Was the serial killer targeting Lakin now?
The thought horrified him more than anything else. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt Lakin. And he didn’t want to imagine anyone succeeding.
* * *
Eli looked at his sister and saw Dawn Ellis’s lifeless face instead. The color drained from her skin, the blue around her painted red lips and that garish ring on the finger of her exposed hand.
Then he blinked and saw Lakin again. She was moving carefully through the cabin that Eli and his team had already searched with the help of the local police department. Officer Reynolds wasn’t really thrilled that they’d taken over, but he hadn’t argued. He knew how close the Coltons stuck together; he just didn’t know why. He didn’t know what they’d already been through and how many loved ones they’d already lost, albeit nearly three decades ago.
“Is anything missing?” Eli asked Lakin.
She stopped in the kitchenette; the doors of the few hickory wood cupboards stood open. The refrigerator door had been open, too, but someone had closed it after processing the handle for prints and DNA. Probably Scott Montgomery. The tech was detail-oriented like that and wouldn’t have wanted any of her food to spoil.
“When I saw my front door was open and heard someone inside, I thought of the raccoon who gotthrough the window last year,” Lakin said with a small smile.
“It wasn’t a raccoon who jimmied open the door,” Eli said. Though, since she hadn’t dead-bolted it, the lock wouldn’t have been hard to open.
“But this seems like someone scavenging, doesn’t it?” she said, pointing at the food that had been dropped on the floor as well as on the small table. “Maybe they were looking for something to eat, not for me.”
Eli hoped like hell that was the case. After all, none of the other crime scenes had been left a mess like this. Not that the women had been murdered where their bodies were found. He had yet to find the actual crime scenes. He shrugged. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Kansas nodded in agreement.
