Page 60 of The Unknown Colton
Troy knew Lakin would do anything to protect the family she loved so much. He cursed.
“I’m on my way to catch up with her,” Eli said. “She can’t have much of a head start. She called me just a few minutes ago.”
Hopefully she didn’t have much of a head start on Troy either then. “Where?” he asked. “Where is she meeting him?”
“She didn’t wake you up because she doesn’t want you getting shot again,” Eli said. “So I’m not going to be the one who puts you in danger.”
“No, you’re not,” Troy agreed. “I am.”
But he realized he didn’t need Eli’s help to find her. He disconnected the call.
Years ago, he and Lakin had shared their phone locations with each other. Because he was out of cellular range so much when he was working on the oil rigs, he had nearly forgotten. He checked it now.
A little dot blinked within a circle close to a riverbank just a short distance from RTA.
He would be able to find her. Hopefully hewouldn’t be too late to help her. Because he didn’t think Jasper Whitlaw was just a threat to her family.
He was a threat to her, too.
* * *
He’d put fear in her; he knew and relished that fear. Now all he had to do was wait. When people were afraid, they didn’t think rationally. They were too emotional, too panicked, to think clearly. To make a plan.
Like the plan he’d made.
The plan he was going to carry out so that he would finally get what was owed to him.
And so would the Coltons.
CHAPTER 19
Lakin knew she was taking a risk sneaking out on her own, but she didn’t want Troy to get hurt again. She didn’t want her family hurt, either, but she had called Eli for help. She glanced at her phone, checking the time. He should have been here already.
He’d told her to wait for him before she got out of her vehicle, but she was impatient. She needed to record Jasper Whitlaw’s threats and extortion attempt. Then she could use that to make him leave Shelby and her family in peace. She couldn’t wait any longer for her brother. Maybe he was already here. He’d told her that he would stay out of sight so Whitlaw wouldn’t know he was there.
But where was Whitlaw?
Lakin walked around the area where he claimed to be camping, but she didn’t see even a place where a sleeping bag might have lain let alone remains of a fire. It got cold at night in September. Maybe he was sleeping in his truck and just parking it here.
But she didn’t even see any tire tracks.
Had he lied to her?
But why? She couldn’t give him the money she’d promised him if she couldn’t find him.
Had he realized she was lying and trying to set him up? That would explain why he’d given her a phony location.
She might have been relieved that he wasn’t here if she wasn’t more worried about where he might be. Had he accosted her dad like he had her? Was he trying to get money directly from the Coltons? Why did he seem to resent them for adopting her anyway? She’d been abandoned. It wasn’t like Whitlaw or anyone else had wanted her but the Coltons.
And eventually Troy had wanted her, too. Or so she’d thought. Of course, now she wasn’t as confident of having a future with him as she had been. Actually, after the shooting last night, she wasn’t as confident of having a future at all.
But nobody had been shooting at her. They’d been shooting at Troy. Was he the real target in all of this?
She’d left him back at the cabin, alone and asleep and completely vulnerable.
What the hell had she been thinking? Could she get back to him in time to make sure that he was safe? Or was she already too late?
* * *
