Colton Destiny Read online

  He hesitated just long enough for her to realize he might not have any idea where switches were traditionally put.

  “There should be one by the door, so you can get it right when you come in.”

  Without a word he walked in that direction, and after a moment, she heard a faint click. She blinked at the sudden flood of light from an overhead fixture, but she never took her eyes off the object that had come through the window.

  That it was a rock was obvious. Large and heavy enough so that it wouldn’t take a tremendous amount of force for it to break the glass, yet small enough to be easily thrown. What was wrapped around it, secured by two loops of a twisted rubber band, wasn’t so obvious.

  It appeared to be fabric of some kind. A dark blue, plain, no pattern.

  She rose and crossed the room to get her kit. She opened the small aluminum case and quickly took out several things, then donned a pair of latex gloves she took from the box in a back corner of the case. Then she unfolded a sheet of plastic onto the floor next to the rock.

  A few moments later, it was all spread out before her. The rubber band was the ubiquitous tan of millions used in offices across the country. The rock was odder, very black and rough, except for one completely flat side. The edges around that side were sharp, uneroded. And there were bits of what looked like mortar or cement on the flat side, as if it had been part of something larger. But she would start with one thing that was unique, that scrap of blue fabric.

  She flattened it out as best she could. It was stained, one spot round and brownish like dried mud, the other darker and irregular.

  She sensed rather than saw Caleb crouch beside her, sensed he was staring at the three things laid out there.

  “Hannah,” he breathed.

  She flicked a glance at him. “What?”

  He indicated the cloth with a rather sharp nod of his head. “That cloth...she was wearing a dress of that cloth. That day.”

  She looked at him full-on then. “This cloth? Or at least, cloth like this?”

  He nodded.

  “Is it unusual?”

  “It is...bright.”

  Emma looked back at the fabric. It didn’t look bright to her. It was a deep, dark royal blue. A very nice color, actually, she thought. She supposed that next to the blacks and grays that were more typical of his community, it might seem bright.

  “Hannah has...a weakness for such things. She loves making clothes for herself, for the girls.”

  “She’s good at it?” Emma struggled to sew on a button, usually ending up with bloodshed.

  “She is an accomplished seamstress. But she is always pushing the boundaries.”

  “And this—” Emma gestured at the blue cloth “—is pushing the boundaries?”

  “Yes. It is not plain.”

  She tried to visualize a dress of this color among the drabber backdrop of the women she’d seen so much of in the past ten days. And had to admit it would stand out. Which would push the boundaries, as Caleb had said.

  “Did she get in trouble for it?”

  “She was not warned, not officially. But...disapproval was expressed.”

  “And how did she handle that?”

  “She always chafed under the restrictions. Other things she accepted without complaint. But the dress...”

  “Maybe she should make clothes for outsiders.”

  “She has thought of it, I believe. She has always drawn pictures, and once she was caught with a magazine full of English clothing.”

  A fashion magazine, Emma guessed as she turned her attention back to the cloth.

  She didn’t explain what she was doing as she tested the stains, taking care to disturb everything as little as possible, so that the lab could get more detailed results from a full gamut of tests if necessary.

  But there was one test she needed to do right here and now. Moments later she was staring at the cotton swab giving her the grim truth.

  Blood.

  “Well, damn it all.”

  Emma nearly jumped at the sound of the voice from outside. She took a few seconds to secure the swab, then picked up her sidearm, rose and stepped to the broken window.

  There stood Mr. Rinaldi, staring up at the damage with a frown. When he saw Emma at the window, he called out to her.

  “You all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wife told me she heard breaking glass. I thought she’d been dreaming, but she nagged at me until I had to get up and take a look.” His expression turned glum. “Guess I’m gonna have to tell her she was right.”

  He looked almost more upset about that than the damage, Emma thought.

  “I better come in and take a look, get it cleaned up for you.”

  To her surprise, the man didn’t seem at all startled to see Caleb.

  “Figured a pretty girl like you wouldn’t be alone,” he said with a smile that took any snark out of the comment. Then, to Caleb, he gave a male-to-male wink. “You’re a lucky young man.”

  Emma opened her mouth to explain, to deny the assumptions he was making, but Caleb spoke first, startling her.

  “I have not been called that in a long time.”

  He said it quietly, musingly, as if he were having trouble comprehending.

  “Well, that’s odd,” Mr. Rinaldi said.

  Emma shifted her attention back to the older man. He was staring at the rock.

  “What’s odd?” she asked.

  “That rock. Looks like that stuff old man Carter used to build that fancy fire pit of his. He’s a little off center, you know. Wanted it to look like a volcano or something, like they got in Hawaii.”

  “Lava rock?”

  “Yeah, that’s the stuff. I mean, it’s not really—he was too cheap to pay to get the real thing. He got some outfit over in Philly to color up some concrete and make ’em.”

  “Who is this Carter?”

  “Was.”

  “Was?”

  “He died a few years back. He left the place to his grandkids, but they moved to Jersey, don’t get up here anymore.”

  “So it’s...empty?”

  “Yeah. They’d sell it, I think, but with the way things are...” He shrugged. “Plus, it’s kinda off the beaten path, if you know what I mean. Out there a ways.”

  “Isolated?”

  “Yeah. Too much for most people.”

  But perfect for hiding what you were doing.

  “Can you give me directions?”

  “Sure. You going out there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. If you find who did this, tell ’em they owe me for a window.”

  Emma didn’t tell him that if she found whoever had thrown that rock, a window would be the least of the things they’d be paying for.

  Chapter 25

  Caleb was at the car before she gathered up her gear and got there.

  “Maybe you should—”

  “You think Hannah and the others may be there,” he said.

  He obviously hadn’t missed a thing in there, had followed her thought process perfectly. He also obviously wasn’t about to listen to any suggestion that he stay here and wait for her to check it out.

  “Maybe.”

  “That test you did, on the cloth. It was for blood, wasn’t it.”

  It wasn’t really a question, and she gave him a sidelong as she tacitly gave in to his insistence on going and got into the truck.

  “I am not of your world, but I am not ignorant of it,” he said, interpreting the look accurately.

  She pulled out her phone and checked for a signal. It was weak, only one bar, and she was glad she’d called the resident office last night, although they’d said no one could get out here until noon. Then the bar vanished, and when she tried to call Tate, it wouldn’t go through. So she sat for a moment, typing in a text message explaining she had a solid lead and including the lengthy directions. The place apparently had no address to enter into the GPS, and since they had no exact coordinates, she had to just
do the best she could. In case anything happened, she wanted some record somewhere of where she—they—had gone.

  The sun was fully up now, which made following the rather lengthy directions a little easier. As was often the case in the country, the directions were by landmark—a certain tree, a bridge over a creek, even a frog-shaped rock. There was no “turn right at the convenience store” out here.

  But Caleb proved a more than able navigator, always warning her of the next course change enough in advance that they only had to backtrack once, when she overshot the entrance to the rough gravel road that was their last turn. But now they were on their way again.

  “Last night,” he began.

  Her stomach knotted as she negotiated a particularly rough patch. She didn’t know what to say about last night. It had been simultaneously the sweetest, hottest and most painful night of her life. Having him so close and yet not being able to—

  “You went outside, not knowing what—or who—was out there.”

  Well, that blew a hole in my sails, she thought, realizing he hadn’t been thinking of those heated moments at all.

  “It’s my job,” she said, trying to keep her voice level.

  “A terrible job.”

  “A necessary job.”

  “In your world.”

  She glanced at him. “And occasionally in yours.”

  “Only when your world seeps over into ours.”

  “Claiming perfection?”

  “No. Only striving for it. It is the best man can do, to continually strive.”

  “Caleb,” she began, then hesitated, not sure what she wanted to say, and ended finally with a simple, “I’m sorry.”

  “I am sorry you must do such a job. You are very brave.”

  “I’m trained.”

  “Are the two mutually exclusive?”

  She shot him a longer glance that time, as long as she dared on that road. Was he actually making a joke?

  She caught the faintest twitch at one corner of his mouth. And she couldn’t stop the grin that spread across her face. She’d love to spend the rest of her life making sure that happened more often. That his devastating smile appeared more often. That his wonderful laugh echoed in her ears—

  She stopped her own thoughts dead in their tracks. That way lay more than folly; that way lay insanity. Yet when she stole another glance at him, she could have sworn she saw her own inner turmoil reflected in his face, in his eyes.

  Is it just me, Caleb?

  No.

  For a moment he looked away. But then he turned back, and this time it was all there, in his face, in his eyes, unmasked, open for her to see.

  She nearly forgot she was driving and had to wrench the wheel to get them back on the gravel and keep them out of the drainage ditch that ran beside the road that had now become little more than a rocky dirt track.

  She didn’t dare look at him again after that. It had to have been a conscious decision to let her see that, to let her see that he was feeling everything that she was feeling. But knowing that didn’t make any difference, didn’t make things any less impossible.

  Because it was impossible.

  Wasn’t it?

  Caleb would never leave his world for hers. And she couldn’t blame him for that.

  That little voice she so often relied on chose that moment to pipe up and say, as if it were the most obvious thing, But you could leave yours.

  There it was. The thought she’d been denying had even been in her mind for days now. The thought that should be ridiculous, should be patently absurd.

  And yet...

  She forced herself to watch the road, which had gotten even narrower. It seemed to wind on and on, and soon

  remote didn’t seem a strong enough word for it. Mr. Rinaldi had said it was about three miles back in, give or take, and she was about to decide his assessment had been off by quite a bit when Caleb spoke.

  “There it is.”

  She glanced at him, saw he was looking ahead to the left. It was up ahead enough and so far back in the trees it took her a moment to see the straight lines of the roof on the building painted the same green as the trees. She guessed he was right, since it was the only building they’d seen for the past mile and the distance was about right based on Mr. Rinaldi’s directions.

  “Foolish,” Caleb said.

  “What?”

  “The solar panels on his roof.”

  She’d noticed, wondered if that was what Mr. Rinaldi had meant when he’d said “old man Carter” was a bit of a nut.

  “What about them?”

  “He would not get enough sun where he has them. The trees are too thick. A cleared space to the west or south would be better.”

  She nearly gaped at him. “You know about solar panels?”

  “I have a cousin who is beginning a business of building them. Many Amish communities are exploring the possibilities.”

  “Electricity from solar power?”

  “It is not electricity itself we avoid. It is being connected to the world that would provide it in the conventional way. Solar would make us more independent than relying on gas for our generators, to power our refrigerators and stoves.”

  It made sense, she supposed. In an Amish sort of way.

  She couldn’t deny their ingenuity. And she was finding their simple lives more and more appealing every day. Just as she understood more and more about why they kept themselves apart.

  Just as her attraction to this man grew more powerful every day. Powerful enough that she was actually, in a serious way, thinking about abandoning everything she knew, everything she’d grown up with and lived with as an adult. If she’d been a teenager, her mother would have cautioned her about changing who she was for a boy. But she was an adult, and on some inner level she knew that she had already changed, that her work had changed her, that what she’d been through two years ago had changed her, in ways that were deep and permanent.

  But, she told herself sternly now, if she wanted to be around to ponder that change, to make the huge decisions facing her, she’d better pay attention to the here and now of her current world.

  She found a wider spot in the narrow road and pulled the truck over. They were about a hundred feet away from the cabin, which was now almost invisible through the thick trees.

  Emma turned off the truck. Automatically she checked her sidearm, verifying it was secure but moved freely in the holster. She rolled down the window partway so she could listen for any sounds from the cabin. She heard nothing.

  She could almost feel Caleb’s gaze on her. She turned to look at him.

  “Stay here. I’m going to go take a look.”

  “But it is my—”

  “Please, Caleb. Stay here. I can’t be distracted.”

  “Distracted?”

  “Yes. And I would be. I can’t do my job properly if I’m too worried about you.”

  “You do not need to worry—”

  “Let’s not talk about what I need,” she said pointedly enough that he flushed. “Last night may have meant nothing to you—”

  “No.” This time he interrupted her. “It did not mean nothing.”

  He lowered his gaze. She looked at him, at the thick sweep of his lashes, dark against his cheeks. “It meant too much,” he said, his voice a low, rough whisper that sent a shiver up her spine as if he’d touched her.

  And she couldn’t deny the feeling she had that in that moment, with his reluctant admission, her life had just changed, irrevocably and forever.

  Chapter 26

  For a long moment Emma just sat there looking at him. And then he lifted his gaze to her face. And what she saw there both thrilled and frightened her.

  “What are we going to do?” The whispered question broke from her before she could stop it.

  “This is...impossible,” he said.

  “Yes. And yet,” she said shakily.

  “And yet,” he repeated. “I have not felt this...wanting before. I wish to be
with you all the time. It is so powerful that I fear it will consume me.”

  As bald admissions of want went, this one was pretty impressive, Emma thought, trying to fight down the whirl of feelings his words had roused in her.

  “I know. I feel it, too,” she said, wondering if she was doing this, admitting all this, because she really thought something might go wrong up there. True, she was on her own, without backup, but she was trained and fairly skilled with a handgun.

  She should be focusing on her job, not the fact that she had fallen like a stack of his lumber for a man who, even though he’d admitted he felt the same, might never be hers.

  “I wish,” Caleb said, his voice almost a broken thing, “that there was a way.”

  “Yes,” Emma said, thinking she could live on that wish, if she had to. “And I want nothing more than to stay right here and hash this out, fight through all the barriers between us, until we find some way to be together. But this must come first.”

  “I will come and—”

  “Caleb, please. Worrying about you, where you are, if you’re safe, could get me killed.”

  He went a little pale. Perversely, she felt another little thrill at this instant sign of worry.

  “I only meant to come partway. In case you needed help. And if someone runs...”

  She drew back a little. “But you don’t fight.”

  “No. I will not. But I do not think in this case simply stopping an escape would be frowned on. And if it is, so be it.”

  She had a feeling she didn’t yet fully understand the size of that decision. But she couldn’t waste any more time thinking about it or talking about it.

  “They may be armed,” she warned.

  “I am determined, but not a fool.”

  “There’s a rifle in the back of the truck,” she began.

  Something flashed across his face, a weary sadness that tore at her. “I would never use it on another human being.”

  “I know that,” she said. “But they don’t.”

  He blinked. And then, looking as if it were almost in spite of himself, one corner of his mouth lifted.