Colton Destiny

by Justine Davis

  There was a lot of wisdom in those words, she thought. But then, she’d been raised knowing that the path these people trod was not easy. But to them, rewarding in a way few outside could understand.

  A sudden memory came to her, and she smiled.

  “I remember once when my parents were particularly exasperated with me, they threatened to send me to spend the summer with an Amish family. At the time, the very idea of doing without my computer or my music player or my cell phone struck terror into my heart.”

  “At the time?” he asked.

  She nodded, wondering why he’d seized on that out of all she’d said. “Yes. Now I see the appeal.”

  He looked at her so thoughtfully it made her uneasy. But then, just having those eyes focused on her, just having this man’s full attention, made her uneasy.

  “You deal with the worst ugliness in an ugly world,” he said finally. “How do you keep it from polluting your very soul?”

  Something about the tone of his voice, as if he were

  actually feeling pain for her, moved her deep inside in a way she’d never known before. “Sometimes,” she said, “you don’t.”

  Memories rose up in a swamping tide, vicious memories uglier than anything a man like Caleb Troyer could imagine. She’d been warned by the agency shrink that despite her every effort, they would break through now and then, and that she must accept that she had been traumatized and that there would be aftereffects.

  “Agent Colton? Are you well?”

  She gave herself a fierce mental shake. “I’m fine.”

  But she was not. She could feel that tonight the images were not going to be simply quashed as usual. Tonight, they were going to win, and she had a rocky road ahead of her for the next few hours.

  “Thank you for letting me speak to the girls,” she said formally, trying desperately to hold on.

  He didn’t remind her that he’d told her she would learn nothing, and she appreciated that. Especially just now. “Yes. Are you all right? You look ill.”

  “I’m fine,” she said quickly, almost desperately, as if saying it could make it true.

  “You are not,” he said bluntly. “What is wrong? Is it something you’ve learned? Something about Hannah?”

  “No. No, I’m sorry.” It was gaining on her, rapidly.

  His voice changed then, became softer, more gentle. And it almost undid her. “Tell me what’s wrong. What can I do?”

  “Nothing,” she whispered.

  She made some sort of mumbled excuse and fled. And fled was the word for it; at that moment she wanted away from that man more than she wanted to keep breathing. It wasn’t until she was pulling through the ranch gates that she confronted the truth that had been driving her.

  She didn’t want Caleb Troyer to know what had happened to her.

  The agency knew, her coworkers obviously knew, since it had happened in the line of duty. Her family knew, although Derek and Tate were the only ones who knew the whole of it. Tate had found out through his connections as a cop, and Derek had demanded the full truth from her as a doctor as well as her brother.

  She didn’t understand this. Not the hammering of the images, the torturing of her mind, the pain of her body in this moment as real as it had been then; she had come to expect it and viewed progress as the fact that it happened less and less often. But even that hope was undermined by her silent, unconfessed fear that the shrink hadn’t certified her okay for duty because she truly was, but because her last name was Colton. Fear that she truly wasn’t mentally strong enough for her job, even after two years.

  But she understood all that, she wrestled with it daily. What she didn’t understand was why she had just been nearly torn in two by the need to keep Caleb from ever finding out and the need to pour it all out to him.

  He might be one of the most quietly strong men she’d ever met, but the kind of evil she’d confronted was foreign to him.

  She didn’t want him to know she’d been abducted and held by a brutal serial rapist for nine horrifying days. She didn’t want him to know how frightened she’d been, afraid she would die...and then afraid she would not.

  ...how do you keep it from polluting your very soul?

  She didn’t want this devout, moral man to know that she was very much afraid she’d lost her soul.

  Chapter 8

  Gunnar would understand, she thought as her headlights lit the narrow road that led to his cabin on the most remote part of the ranch. He understood about memories that wouldn’t leave you alone. Her big, strong brother had come home from the Middle East a changed man. A tortured man they all worried about.

  He could use some of that Amish peace, she thought.

  But for that very reason, she didn’t feel she could or should turn to him. She was a little afraid of what might happen if they took their individual hauntings and rubbed them together. So she drove on past, heading for the big, main ranch house.

  She could see the stable off to her left. She felt a sudden urge for a long ride—and a pulse-pounding run—across the ranch’s open reaches. Maybe she’d have to make time for that. It would do wonders to settle her suddenly tangled emotions. In fact, perhaps she’d even ride to Paradise Ridge from here once or twice.

  She liked the idea. Every Amish home and shop had a hitching post anyway; surely they wouldn’t mind if she showed up on a horse.

  Of course, if she had to go in pursuit of a car for some reason, she’d have some explaining to do. There was that.

  She’d managed to make herself smile, feeling calmer as she made the last turn and the big house spread out before her.

  Home.

  For a long moment after she parked, she just sat there, looking at it. She had grown up here, knowing every day how lucky she was. Shortly after their parents’ deaths, she and her siblings had gathered here in a shocked numbness that would soon turn to anger. Their emotions were raw, and their reactions ranged from wanting to sell the ranch to be rid of the reminders of what they’d lost, to wanting to hole up there as a family and never set foot in the outside world again.

  In the end, it was Derek’s choice to make, for their parents had left the decision making in the hands of the most levelheaded and responsible of the six of them. Even at a young age it was clear that Derek was their rock, the unwavering core that held them all together. He’d only been in his early twenties at the time of the September attack, but that they were still together as a family and the ranch still prospered was a testament to the wisdom of Donovan and Charlotte Colton’s decision.

  She needed to give her brother a big hug next time she saw him.

  The front door popped open, light from the entryway spilling out onto the large covered porch.

  “Hey! It’s the feds!”

  Emma rolled her eyes at her baby brother, even though he couldn’t see her from here. Sawyer Colton was full of sass for his family—especially his long-suffering sister Piper—and yet at the same time the boy was deeply thoughtful and sometimes surprised them all with the ideas he came up with after long contemplation of something new.

  She was grinning at him when she got out of the car. He’d been in school when she’d arrived so this was the first she’d seen him. Sawyer flew at her, and she braced herself for the slam of his agile little body and his fierce hug. She didn’t mind; she was glad he was still young enough to want to hug his big sister.

  “A little respect,” she said with mock severity as she hugged him back. “That’s federal agent to you.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Sawyer said with a laugh.

  “I thought you wanted to be one of us,” she said. “Or is it back to doctor this week?” She knew Sawyer idolized Derek and hung around the clinic often after school. But he also idolized Tate and, she admitted, her, and wanted to be in law enforcement.

  “I’ve decided I want to be both. A doctor and a cop.”

  Emma laughed. “Hey, I could use a medical examiner in the family. And if anybody’s got the energy
to do both, you do, bro.”

  “And I wish he’d burn more of it off at school and give us a break.”

  The wry words came from the doorway. Emma turned and smiled at the sight of her little sister. Little being a chronological reference only, since Piper at sixteen was already two inches taller than Emma’s own five-seven. Taller, and impossibly blonde with bright blue eyes. She looked as if she’d walked out of an advertisement for travel to Scandinavia. And woe be unto the unwary person who thought blonde meant dumb; Piper was wise well beyond her years and would make mincemeat of anyone who assumed otherwise.

  “Hi, sis,” Emma said with a smile as Sawyer made a snorting sound at his closest sibling. As the baby of the family, he had no one younger to pick on, so tried to make up for it by aiming with regularity at the only Colton still living at home with him, Piper. Piper, in turn, often retreated to

  Derek’s ranch house for respite, or Gunnar’s more remote cabin if Sawyer was in particularly rare form.

  “You’re home late. Any progress?” Piper asked. News of the abductions had spread rapidly from Paradise Ridge through the small town of Eden Falls, and Piper was concerned. Not simply because the girls were near her own age, but because she was by nature a generous soul and worried about the plights of others. As they all were.

  Emma wondered, not for the first time, if her parents had had some sort of special radar that told them which of the kids they encountered had that same sort of urge to help that they themselves had. Because they all had it, in one form or another. How it would manifest in these youngest two remained to be seen, but Emma had no doubt that it would.

  “Just getting the lay of the land, as it were. Talked to the families.” An image of Caleb Troyer shot through her mind, unbidden. And a responding heat shot through her body, and she groaned inwardly. This had to stop.

  “And the church leaders.” She made herself go on. “They’re calling a meeting in the schoolhouse tomorrow so I can talk to everyone. Then I’ll start digging in.”

  “They shouldn’t have waited so long,” Sawyer said.

  “It would be easier if they hadn’t,” Emma agreed. “Evidence and leads are easier to find and follow when they’re fresh.”

  “Not a cold case, you mean,” Sawyer said.

  “Gotta love TV,” Emma said. Then she added, before Sawyer got set in the idea he was in a position to judge, “The Amish are used to handling things themselves. It’s as hard for them to ask for outside help as it is for you to quit teasing Piper.”

  Sawyer looked appropriately sheepish. “Yeah, yeah,” he said again. “C’mon, dinner’s ready. Margie was about to serve up without you.”

  The boy darted back inside. Emma turned to follow, only to find Piper studying her intently with those cornflower-blue eyes.

  “What’s wrong? Besides the case, I mean.”

  In addition to the Nordic looks and generous heart, Piper was also very perceptive. But explaining that she was distracted beyond belief by the brother of one of her victims, a man she had no business even thinking about, was something she wasn’t about to share with her sixteen-year-old sister.

  “It’s just a tricky community to work with,” she said.

  “But you’ve always admired them.”

  Perceptive indeed, especially since Piper was thirteen years younger than she and had been barely six when Emma had headed off to college. But she’d come home at every possible school break and every summer, and as her little sister grew older, that perceptiveness grew with her.

  “Sometimes,” Emma said wryly, “I even envy them.”

  Piper grimaced, her face full of a teenager’s horror at the thought of giving up her electronics. She was glued to her music player as often as Sawyer was glued to his game console, playing the latest in some series of exceptionally noisy video games. She’d be worried about the violence of it if he didn’t also immediately ask to borrow her phone to play with those silly birds and pigs and get just as excited.

  “Dinner is ready,” Piper said. “We should go in. I don’t want Margie mad at me, or we’ll have brussels sprouts for a week.”

  “Shiver,” Emma said with a laugh and followed her sister inside.

  Margie had been their part-time cook and housekeeper since Derek had sent her home, pulling her out of an abusive relationship that had gone on for years. She wasn’t the first patient her brother had sent home to work at the Double C, and Emma doubted she would be the last. And Margie was a prize; the woman could turn the simplest of ingredients into the best-tasting dishes. She’d always said Emma had the knack, too. But the interest was lacking, Emma knew, and she too often ate out or on the run.

  Except for the occasional drop-in by an adult Colton hungry for her cooking, Margie had only the younger kids to worry about now, and herself and Julia, the nanny who had helped raise all six Coltons and was still there part-time for Piper and Sawyer. Both women, considered part of the family, would be welcome even if there was no one left to cook for or care for.

  After a meal that blatantly featured her favorite dishes, lots of chatter from Piper and Sawyer, a phone call from Derek welcoming her home and promising to see her soon—Gunnar, as usual, remained his reclusive self—and a message from Tate that he was back in Philly pursuing what was probably another dead end, Emma retreated to her room to try and get some rest so she could begin fresh in the morning.

  It wasn’t going to be easy. There was too much rolling around in her mind—being back home, catching up with everyone. Enough to keep anybody whirling.

  “Right,” she muttered to herself as she finished brushing her teeth and climbed into her wonderfully familiar bed. “That’s all it is, just the usual chaos on the home front.”

  As she sat there looking around at her room, which was much as it had been when she’d gone off to college, she even almost convinced herself it was just a normal day in the Colton house, a bit crazed. That’s all.

  When her gaze fell on the family photograph that hung in a spot of honor, as it did in all the kids’ rooms in this house, whether still occupied or not, she felt the usual stab of sharp agony, not at all dulled by time, only shorter in duration. And as always, her eyes focused on the beautiful couple at the center of the array: Donovan Colton, tall, lean, with his rakish grin, and Charlotte beside him, her blond hair windblown, her smile serene and happy, baby Sawyer in her arms.

  It was the last photo taken of them all together, just after Sawyer had come to them. And just before that September day that had nearly destroyed them.

  She turned out the light and lay back against the pillows, although the image was still clear in her mind’s eye. She was luckier than the kids had been; she’d had their parents until adulthood at least. She just wasn’t feeling lucky right now.

  She was feeling confused.

  And just like that, Caleb Troyer was back in her thoughts. In a way he reminded her of her father; not in looks, but in the competence he exuded under the handsome exterior. She’d learned that Caleb was considered the best carpenter and furniture builder in the entire county, and that his pieces sold for amazing prices to the English, or outsiders. Her father would have appreciated that. He had appreciated anyone who was the best at what he did.

  But what she felt when she looked at Caleb, what she felt when she was close to him, when he turned those steady eyes on her, was anything but familial.

  And that, she told herself sternly as she pounded her pillow into shape with more enthusiasm than was really necessary, was something she was just going to have to bury. And bury deep. This case was too important, and her impartiality too crucial.

  Caleb was the brother of one of her victims. That was all he was. All he could be allowed to be.

  She went to sleep resolute. But that didn’t stop her unconscious mind from producing some dreams that made her sleep restless and mocked her determination to keep one dark-haired furniture maker out of the private reaches of her mind.

  Chapter 9

 
Emma watched as people filed into the one-room schoolhouse, pausing to sign the paper at the table set up just inside the door. Deacon Stoltzfus assured her every person who could be there would be, and promised her a list of those who were too ill or infirm to come. Since she’d already spoken to the families of the missing in depth, they’d been excused if they wished, but Emma noticed they had come anyway. Except Caleb, as yet anyway.

  She saw babes in arms come in, cuddled and cooed to. She saw toddlers who would never be trusted to remain calm and silent in her world, but who were quietly obedient as they took seats on the long benches that had been moved in for this gathering.

  Some of the men looked around as if they’d never been inside the building before, and she wondered how recently it had been built. It seemed solid, well constructed. Which took her mind right back to Caleb. She wrenched it away, making herself look around the room again. This time she noticed the various things on the walls: a chalkboard, shelves for books, and every few feet a poster or placard on the wall with a Bible or children’s verse extolling the virtues of an obedient life. Not quite the nursery rhymes she’d grown up with. Of course, those were forever tainted in her mind. At least these were unfamiliar.

  The children seemed puzzled by the change in their usual surroundings, but their parents looked mostly worried. She decided to start there. When all were seated, she walked to the front of the room. After thanking them for coming, she spoke simply and clearly.

  “I know you are all worried. With good reason. I want you to know that I, the local authorities and detectives in Philadelphia are all working on this case.”

  She hesitated for a moment, but she’d heard enough to know they were aware of the cases in Ohio, so added, “And my colleagues in Ohio are working on that end, determining if there is indeed a link between these two horrible situations.”

  There was a stir in the room as a latecomer arrived. She knew who it was without even having to look. Crazy. That’s what it was. How could her pulse leap without even seeing him? How could she be so sure it even was him? How would she feel if she looked to the door and saw elderly Mr. Miller instead of the man who, in a community of men who strove to be the same, still managed to stand out?