Colton Showdown

by Marie Ferrarella

  “The minute he does,” Tate continued, “he’ll go underground and those girls will be as good as dead. We’ll never find them.” Tate took a breath, searching the other man’s face to see if his words had sunk in. Wondering if Caleb suspected that he was also lecturing himself as well as the victim’s brother.

  Lecturing himself because Tate had the exact same reaction, the exact desire as Caleb. He wanted to save Hannah and the girls with her as soon as possible. For two cents, he’d go in, guns blazing, and take down those two worthless pieces of trash guarding the girls with no more regret than he experienced stepping on a colony of ants.

  Less.

  The only problem was, right now there were only two henchmen visible and he knew damn well that there had to be more thugs involved than just Tweedledum and Tweedledee. An operation this big didn’t function with just two flunkies.

  There had to be more.

  He put his hand on the Amish cabinetmaker’s shoulder and looked at him compassionately.

  “I know it’s hard, but you’re going to have to be patient,” he told Caleb. “It’s the only way we’re going to be able to successfully rescue those girls. All of them,” he emphasized.

  Caleb nodded. It was obvious that he was struggling with himself. “You are right. We cannot just go in and rescue Hannah, not when there are other girls being held prisoner as well.” And then he sighed and shook his head. “But this is hard,” he complained.

  Caleb would get no argument from him. “Nobody ever said it wouldn’t be,” Tate agreed. He looked at his watch. The handler should be getting the money right about now.

  It was the handler whose job it was to pick up the funds from Gunnar that were needed for the exchange. At least that part was easy. Securing the funds would have been a great deal more difficult if he didn’t have a billionaire brother who was willing to bring down this sex trafficking ring.

  “So what’s your next move?” Emma asked her brother as Caleb retreated to the far side of the room. There was tension in her voice.

  “I’ve set up a private one-on-one session with Hannah,” he told Emma. “Seems my credentials are so good that the man at the top is allowing me to have a private ‘preview’ with my future ‘purchase.’ I’m going to try to convince Hannah to trust me, but it’s not going to be easy, given what she’s been through.”

  Overhearing, Caleb looked up, suddenly alert. “Call her Blue Bird.”

  Tate exchanged quizzical looks with Emma. “What?” Tate asked.

  “Call her Blue Bird,” Caleb repeated, crossing back to them. “It was a nickname I gave Hannah when she was a little girl. She was always running around, fluttering about here and there, so full of life, of energy. One day when she seemed to be going like that for hours, I laughed and told her she was like one of the blue birds we saw in the spring. The comparison pleased her so I started calling her that. Blue Bird.” A wave of memories assaulted him from all angles and he shook himself free, unable to deal with them right now. “If you call her that, she’ll know you talked to me and she’ll trust you.”

  Tate nodded. It was worth a shot. “Thanks. That’ll help.” As he switched his cell phone to vibrate, he saw the way Emma was frowning. “What’s bothering you?”

  There was a time she would have told him he was imagining things, that nothing was bothering her. But that was when the job was all important to her, and nothing came ahead of that. Now a lot of things did. And she was worried.

  “Frankly, I don’t like you walking back into the lion’s den unarmed.” She knew he was pushing his luck. “You made it out twice unharmed. The third time—” she began skeptically.

  “Will be the charm,” Tate assured her, finishing her sentence in a far different way than she’d intended to finish it.

  But Emma continued to look unconvinced. “The people involved in this sex trafficking ring have already killed twice,” she reminded him. “What’s to stop them from killing you?”

  He shrugged indifferently, as if she were worrying for no reason. “Well, for one thing, killing me off would be bad for business,” he told her glibly. “They’re after the money I told them I’d pay for Hannah. Word gets around that they’ve killed a client and their little virgins-to-the-highest-bidder scheme suffers a serious setback.”

  He put his hands on Emma’s small shoulders. Funny, he never realized how fragile she could feel. Or how touched he could be by her concern. “Look, we’ve both been in law enforcement for a while now and nothing’s ever happened to either of us, right?”

  “That’s my whole point,” she insisted. She put one of her hands on top of his, silently bonding with him. “Our luck’s bound to run out eventually.”

  “Eventually means someday—not today,” he pointed out with conviction. “Now stop worrying—that’s an order,” he told her. “The sooner we get the information we need about whoever’s pulling those strings, the sooner we get to wrap this up and Caleb over there gets to make an honest woman out of you.”

  Emma’s mouth dropped open for a second, and then she shook her head. “I can’t believe you just said that. Do you have any idea how incredibly old-fashioned that sounded?”

  Her choice of words amused him. “You’d better get used to that, honey,” Tate told her, kissing the top of his sister’s head. “Old-fashioned goes with the bonnet and the butter churn.”

  Emma continued to look at him, a knowing look entering her eyes. She wasn’t all that unusual, she thought. “Tell me you wouldn’t give up everything for the right person if she came along.”

  “For the right person,” he echoed, momentarily conceding the point, then quickly qualifying, “If she came along. But until she does, I’ve got work to do. And right now, I’ve got to pick up a suitcase full of money before those thugs get antsy and decide to turn Hannah over to another bidder.”

  The suitcase full of money meant he was seeing Hatfield, his handler. The thought of her brother walking around with that kind of money in a briefcase made her nervous. “I’ll go with you,” she volunteered.

  But he had something else he felt was more important for her to do. “No, you stay here and make sure that your cabinetmaker doesn’t decide to do something stupid and wind up breaking down the hotel suite door and hauling out one or both of those bozos.”

  Emma came to her fiancé’s defense. “What would you do if someone kidnapped me?” Emma asked him pointedly, trying to make her brother see the situation from Caleb’s point of view.

  “Sending his next of kin a sympathy card comes to mind,” Tate answered dryly. And then his smile faded for a moment as he gave her a serious answer. “I’d track the kidnapper to the ends of the earth and gut him seven ways to Sunday—” But he was trained to do that. It was different with Caleb. These were men they were talking about, not cabinets. “But we’re not talking about me,” he pointed out.

  Emma shook her head as she laughed softly. “No, I guess we’re not.” She brushed a quick kiss against his cheek. She was going to worry until she saw him safe again. She couldn’t help it. She was built that way.

  “Watch your back, Big Brother,” she told him.

  “Always,” he said. Crossing to the door, he opened it then paused for a moment to look at Hannah’s brother. Lines of concern were etched deeply into his handsome, young face. “It’s going to be all right,” he promised the other man.

  The expression on Caleb’s face was half resigned, half hopeful.

  It echoed perfectly the sentiment Tate felt within his soul.

  * * *

  The same two men he’d dealt with twice before were waiting for him in the hotel suite when he arrived with the briefcase of used hundred-dollar bills, arranged in nonsequential order, just as instructed.

  The bald man with the goatee opened the door to admit him before his knuckles could hit the door for a second time. Tate walked in, nodding at him and the equally bald African-American. On the latter, bald looked good. The same couldn’t be said about the man with th
e goatee.

  “It’s all there,” Tate told the African-American man eyeing the briefcase suspiciously as he placed it on the coffee table between the two men.

  The man flipped both locks at the same time, then spared him a glance. “You don’t mind if I see for myself, right?”

  It was a rhetorical question. Nonetheless, Tate chose to answer it in his own way. He quickly pressed the lid back down in place before the other man could look inside. Tate met the guard’s hostile gaze.

  “I’d expect nothing less,” Tate assured him.

  “Then what the hell are you doing?” the guard demanded hotly.

  Tate looked at the man with the goatee, then back at Waterford, the African-American. “I’m waiting for one of you to show me Jade.”

  “You’ve already seen her,” Waterford snapped. “Twice.”

  “You’re right,” Tate agreed amicably. “And now I just want to make sure that she’s actually here.”

  “He doesn’t trust you, Nathan,” the man with the goatee jeered.

  “Shut up,” Waterford ordered, obviously angry that his name had been used.

  Tate pretended not to notice the flare-up. “Well, do I see her?” he wanted to know, still keeping the lid down. Tate could feel his biceps straining as he continued to hold the lid in place. It had turned into a contest of strength, one that Tate was determined to win.

  Waterford did not take defeat easily. He looked as if he could snap a neck as easily as take in a deep breath.

  “Bring her in,” he instructed the other guard in the room.

  The latter was angry at being ordered around like that in front of a re1ative stranger, but he was also obviously afraid to oppose the larger man. Muttering under his breath, the man with the mousy goatee went to the back of the suite, threw open the door leading into the bedroom and barked “Get out here” to the lone occupant in the bedroom.

  A moment later, Hannah, her flame-red hair piled up high on her head, wearing a green gown that looked painted on, delicately glided into the sitting room.

  Each time he saw her, Tate couldn’t help thinking, she seemed even more beautiful than the last time. It almost made his soul ache to look at her, knowing what she had to have gone through. Was still going through, he amended.

  He had a gut feeling that Hannah was tougher than she looked. He sincerely hoped so, for her sake.

  “Satisfied?” the African-American barked, flinging his hand out and gesturing toward Hannah.

  Tate withdrew his hand from the briefcase’s lid. “Satisfied,” he replied. Tate took a step back from the table. He smiled and nodded at Hannah before turning his attention to the man he’d made his bargain with the day before. Tate looked into his eyes, his gaze turning almost hypnotic. “And nobody touched her.” It was both a question and a statement that waited to be confirmed.

  “Nobody laid a damn finger on her—or anything else for that matter,” the man with the goatee added when it was obvious that the client was waiting for more of a confirmation.

  Tate looked at Hannah, who kept her gaze lowered, looking down at the rug. With the crook of his finger beneath her chin, he raised her head until she was looking directly at him.

  “Is that true?” he asked her.

  Surprised at being addressed directly without any curse words attached, a beat still passed before Hannah nodded her head.

  “What are you asking her for?” the goatee demanded to know. “I said nobody touched her. I lived up to my half of the bargain,” he declared impatiently. “Where’s my money?”

  “Right here,” Tate said, placing the other half of the torn bill into the man’s outstretched hand.

  “What’s that for?” Waterford wanted to know, eyeing the single torn section suspiciously.

  “Insurance,” was the unselfconscious reply. “Now I’d like some time alone with the girl.”

  “Sure, knock yourself out.” The man with the goatee gestured toward the bedroom. “You paid for her, have at it,” he urged, and then he leered, “Sure you don’t want me to break her in for you?”

  It was a crude play on words. Words that quickly faded away in the heat of the glare that had entered Tate’s eyes.

  “What I want,” he began deliberately, “is for the two of you to make yourself scarce.” Tate looked from one man to the other. Neither seemed to grasp what he was telling them, or made any attempt to leave the room. “You can stand guard in the hall outside the suite’s door if it makes you happy.”

  “We’re not leaving,” the goatee growled.

  “I’m not telling you to leave,” Tate countered. “I’m telling you I want some privacy. There’s only one way out of this suite and it’s through that door.” He deliberately pointed to it. “You can both stand guard in front of it, or take turns—I really don’t care which you decide to do. But I don’t want to feel crowded while I look over what a briefcase full of hundred-dollar bills just got me. Understand?” he demanded.

  Waterford shook his head. “I don’t know about this,” he said skeptically.

  “You’re not leaving the hotel, just the room,” Tate argued. “We’ll still be right where you left us when you walk back in,” he assured them, adding in a voice that brooked no nonsense, “Those are my terms. If you don’t like them—” he made a move to reclaim the briefcase, his implication clear: he either got his way, or he would be on his way.

  The choice was theirs.

  * * *

  The man with the goatee cursed roundly, adding a few disparaging words about having to put up with aggravating people.

  In the end, he grudgingly said, “Okay, we’ll be out in the hallway in front of the door. Right in front of the door,” he emphasized. “So don’t get any big ideas about making a break for it.”

  Tate deliberately looked at Hannah. “I assure you, any ideas I have have nothing remotely to do with the hotel door.”

  The men didn’t look completely convinced, but they walked out of the suite. Once on the other side of the door, they made enough noise that just barely stopped short of waking the dead.

  It was to let him know that they were right outside the door, as specified. Ready to stop him if he had any plans to escape with the girl.

  Tate frowned. He didn’t have time to think about those clowns right now. It was Hannah who commanded all his attention.

  When he turned around to face her, he saw the fear in her eyes.

  The real work, he knew, was still ahead of him.

  Chapter 3

  Finding herself alone with the stranger, Hannah did her best not to give in to the fear that had been her constant unwelcome companion since this terrible nightmare had begun.

  It wasn’t as if this man she was looking at was like the others she’d encountered in this world of outsiders. He seemed different than the two crude, insulting men who were in charge of keeping watch over her and the other girls who’d been abducted from her village and Ohio. Different even than Solomon Miller, a man who her small community had once turned out and who’d sought to avenge himself by throwing his lot in with the men who’d abducted her and the others.

  This man she was with seemed different, Hannah silently reminded herself, but even she knew that appearances could be deceiving and she hadn’t known even a moment’s kindness since she’d been torn away from everything she knew and loved.

  So why did she feel that this man somehow was different?

  The tips of her fingers felt like ice. Her whole body felt as if it was alternating between hot and cold as she struggled to keep fear from rampaging through her like a runaway wild animal.

  What was this man going to do to her?

  And how could she stop him? He looked so much more powerful than she was.

  Her brain was still foggy from whatever it was that the man with the facial hair had tried to force her to swallow earlier. Foggy, but not completely useless because she’d managed to keep the drug hidden in the corner of her mouth, between the inside of her lip and her gum.
Still, some of it had leached into her system. But she’d heard enough to piece things together.

  Even so, she couldn’t really believe it. Didn’t want to believe what she’d heard through the door that separated this new, fancy prison from the outer room where her jailers had sat, talking to the man who was now towering over her.

  Had she actually been sold to him?

  It didn’t seem possible.

  People weren’t sold to other people. Things like that had taken place during a far more barbaric time, a shameful passage in the country’s history that was mercifully a century and a half behind them.

  People didn’t buy people anymore. They didn’t.

  And yet...

  And yet, she’d seen the briefcase before the lid had come down on it. There’d been money in that case. A great deal of money. Was that being exchanged for her? Had this man really bought her?

  What did that mean?

  Hannah could feel her soul seizing up within her as the fear she’d been trying so desperately to contain suddenly broke out of its confines and all but paralyzed her.

  Maybe this was all just a horrible, horrible dream. A nightmare. And maybe, dear Lord, if she just closed her eyes, when she opened them again, she’d be back in her safe little house with her family around her. What she wouldn’t give to hear the voices of her nieces, Katie, Ruthie and Grace—her brother Caleb’s daughters—raised in some silly little inconsequential squabble.

  Tears rose in Hannah’s eyes and she fought to keep them back. She couldn’t cry in front of this man, couldn’t risk it. She’d seen the effect that tears had on these cruel beasts who’d ripped her world apart. Mary Yoder had cried and they’d beaten her for it, seeing tears as a sign of weakness.

  She had no idea where Mary was now, or even if she was still alive.

  These men who had become an unwanted daily part of her life had no respect for weakness, no compassion or even pity. They had nothing but contempt for its display, and if anything, when they encountered weakness, it just made them crueler.