Page 9 of The Unknown Colton
Neither was Lakin but her brother didn’t know that yet. She wasn’t ready yet to leave, though. Or maybe she was, but Troy wasn’t ready yet to help her leave the family business to start their own. If only he’d been able to save more money, but with helping his younger brother with college and his mother with living expenses, he hadn’t been able to save as much as they needed yet. And now…if he wasn’t able to work on the rigs anymore…
He couldn’t even let himself think about that yet, about how he would make the kind of money he needed if he couldn’t go back to work. Hopefully Mitch would come up with a plan for him to at least hold the oil company responsible for disability pay while Troy fully recovered from the fall.
“I don’t care where Lakin is,” Troy said. “I just want to see her.”
Parker chuckled again. “You have been gone a long time.”
“And Hetty’s brought me up to speed on what’sbeen happening around Shelby while I was gone,” Troy said to further explain his urgency to see the woman he loved.
Parker’s smile slid away, and his body tensed. “Yeah, it’s not been good.”
“Or safe. So I really want to check on her, make sure she’s okay,” Troy explained.
Parker smiled again, but then he shivered as if he was chilled. “She just left a little while ago. She wasn’t feeling well. I offered to see her back to her cabin, but she insisted she would be fine.”
While her big brother might have believed that, Troy wasn’t so sure. Nobody was safe with a killer on the loose in Shelby.
* * *
Eli Colton stared down at the young woman’s body, but instead of seeing her, he saw his sister’s face and his aunt’s and his cousin’s. Then he blinked away the horrors of his imagination and his memory and focused.
Dawn Ellis was someone’s sister, someone’s cousin, someone’s daughter, and now she was dead.
He’d hoped like hell that she would be found alive, but just forty-eight hours after she’d been reported missing, she was found here, on the outskirts of Shelby. The town where Eli’s dad and uncle had moved their families because they’d believed it would keep all of them safe from harm.
But here, just off the road, she’d been found—her body staged just like the other victims, with all buther head and left hand buried. She wore a gaudy fake ring, and she had the telltale marks around her neck from the hands of whoever had strangled her. When the rest of her body was uncovered, Eli had no doubt she would be wearing a little black dress. Like she’d just been at her engagement party.
But Dawn Ellis hadn’t been engaged.
Three other bodies had been found buried just like this, wearing similar gaudy rings and black dresses. Only one of them had been identified, leaving two other Jane Does whose families were undoubtedly still looking for them.
Hopefully they would find DNA matches soon, so those people would have some peace, some closure, if there was actually such a thing.
Was it only Eli’s imagination that had him comparing Dawn to the women he loved? All the victims had long, dark brown hair like his sister Lakin and his cousin Kansas and were roughly the same age. A lot of women had dark hair and were in their age range, though, so it was probably just a coincidence. Maybe it was just his fears making him draw comparisons to the women he cared about.
Thinking of Lakin and Kansas, Eli stepped away from the crime scene that the techs were meticulously processing to make some calls. To make sure that everyone he loved was safe.
Kansas picked up immediately. “You found her?” she asked. She was in law enforcement, too, and clearly knew why he would randomly check up on her.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
He gave her the location. “I’ll talk to you when you get here,” he said. He glanced at his partner Asher, wondering if he should warn him that his nemesis was going to be here soon. Kansas and Asher did not get along, often putting Eli in the middle of their squabbles. He loved them both too much to take sides, but he often tried to point out at they were all actually on the same side.
Enforcing the law. While he and Asher were lieutenants in the major crimes division of the Alaska Bureau of Investigations, Kansas was a state trooper and member of the search and rescue unit.
But he would warn Asher in a minute that Kansas was on her way. Right now he had another call to make.
But his call to Lakin went unanswered.
Lakin always answered her phone. Where was she?
And was she okay?
CHAPTER 3
Her cell ringing startled Lakin, but she wasn’t the only one. A clang rang out from behind the partially open door to her cabin. She gasped. Somebody was definitely inside.
