Colton Showdown Read online

  For the first few hours, the situation was touch and go. Tate felt as if his emotions were attached to a yo-yo string, going up and down so much and so frequently, he felt dizzy.

  The prognosis, when it was finally delivered after the surgery was over, was very guarded.

  “But there is some room for optimism,” the surgeon told Tate. A hint of a sympathetic smile faintly curved the man’s thin lips as he said, “I suggest, Mr. Colton, that if you’re a praying man, this just might be the right time to call in some favors from an authority higher than mine.”

  Praying made him uneasy. It meant the situation was entirely out of his hands. Tate didn’t like losing control. It made him feel helpless.

  “When can I see her?” Tate pressed.

  “She’ll be in recovery for another hour, then she’ll be transferred to her room. I’ll have a nurse come get you after she’s settled in,” the doctor promised.

  “I’ll be right here,” Tate replied, leaning against the wall again. He felt more drained than he could ever remember being.

  She wasn’t doing him any good, hanging around here, Emma thought. But she could deflect some of the things he was responsible for doing.

  “I’ll go tell Villanueva you got Maddox,” Emma said abruptly. Tate nodded, but she had a feeling that he really didn’t hear her. She wished she could make him feel better, but she knew that only he could do that.

  She gave his shoulder a squeeze. “She’s going to be all right, Tate. Hannah’s tougher than she looks. And when she comes to, tell her that we found her friend Mary Yoder and that she’s all right. That should make her feel better,” Emma told him with a smile.

  “Yeah.” His voice echoed in his head, hollow. Nothing was going to make any difference to him, wasn’t going to matter to him, until he could see Hannah opening her eyes again.

  * * *

  Restless, Tate maintained a vigil by her bed. Though he knew he could do more good back in the field, tying up the myriad of loose ends taking Maddox down had created, he couldn’t make himself go anywhere, do anything other than what he was doing.

  Holding up a wall.

  He belonged right here, waiting for some sign that Hannah was going to be rejoining the living.

  “I’ll spell you for a while,” Emma offered the next day, popping her head into the room to see how both Tate and Hannah were faring. One was unconscious, the other might as well have been. She didn’t know who her heart ached for more.

  “Go, stretch your legs,” she urged. “Get something to eat. Wash your face.” She felt a sense of desperation as each suggestion seemed to fall on deaf ears.

  Tate shook his head, rejecting her offer. “I’m fine,” he told her stoically.

  No, he wasn’t, but she knew she couldn’t argue with him about that. She’d only lose.

  Emma tried another approach, one with a little humor laced through it. “I think the department has some kind of rule against wearing the same clothes for three days in a row.” She nodded at the shirt and slacks he had on. She didn’t have to ask if he’d changed his clothes, she knew he hadn’t. “You don’t want to smell gamy when she wakes up.”

  “If she wakes up,” Tate corrected darkly.

  “When she wakes up,” Emma insisted firmly. “Tate, you have to have faith and believe.”

  He nodded, too tired to get into a discussion about it. All he knew was that he’d made his deal with God and Hannah still hadn’t opened her eyes. How could a man go on believing after that?

  * * *

  Tate shifted in the plastic chair he’d pulled over to Hannah’s bed eons ago. He’d lost track of how many days he’d been sitting there, watching Hannah. Keeping vigil. Emma brought him regular updates, as well as forcing him to eat the food she’d smuggled in. Sandwiches mostly, but she refused to leave until she saw him consume at least half of what she’d brought.

  Tate tried to take solace in hearing that Maddox had been charged and jailed without any possibility of bail until his trial. The date wasn’t set yet.

  He knew that he should be happy to hear that the girls Maddox hadn’t had murdered were all safely returned to their families and homes. For all intents and purposes, the case seemed to be all over except for the trial, which, a D.A. had assured Emma, was a slam dunk.

  The upshot was that Maddox was going away for several lifetimes.

  “It’s over, Hannah. We got him. He’s not going to hurt anyone ever again.”

  Holding Hannah’s hand as he spoke, Tate felt as if his heart was breaking. It had been breaking over and over again these past few days and he wasn’t sure just how much more he could take.

  “Open your eyes, Hannah, please,” he pleaded. “I miss your eyes and the way you looked at me. Like I mattered. Like you loved me.”

  Unable to hold back any longer, Tate laid his head on the sterile white hospital blanket and cried.

  At first, when he felt the light pressure of a hand on his head, he thought that Emma had returned and was trying to comfort him.

  He didn’t want comfort, he wanted Hannah to wake up. But if that couldn’t happen, then he wanted to be left alone. Alone to share what would probably be the last moments he had with Hannah.

  “You don’t have to stay here with me,” he said hoarsely, thinking he was talking to Emma.

  “But I want to stay with you,” the small, perplexed voice replied.

  The second he heard her voice, Tate jerked his head up. He was afraid that his imagination had taken off again.

  But when he looked, he saw Hannah looking back at him. Was he dreaming?

  No, no, this was real.

  He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He did a little bit of both.

  “Welcome back, stranger. You gave us quite a scare there.” Almost giddy with relief, Tate pressed his lips against her hands, first one, then the other, kissing each in turn.

  Hannah started to nod, but stopped and winced a little.

  “My throat hurts.” The moment she said that, she remembered. Fear entered her eyes as they moved about wildly—searching.

  Tate instantly knew who she was looking for—and why there was fear in her eyes. “He’s not here, Hannah. Maddox is in a prison cell. He’s never going to hurt you again.”

  She seemed not to hear. In her weakened state, she only had enough strength for one thought at a time, one person at a time. And she needed to tell that person something.

  “You found me,” she said, her smile widening slowly. “I knew you’d find me.”

  His instincts had been right all along. If he’d waited for backup, he wouldn’t be having this conversation with Hannah. She would have been dead.

  He nodded in response to Hannah’s simple words of gratitude.

  “Sometimes things work out.” He slipped his hand through hers and changed the subject. “The doctor said it was going to take a while, but you’re going to be all right,” he assured her. “Caleb’s been by to see you every day. He’s really been worried about your not waking up. He told Emma that he’s going to stay in the city until he can take you home.”

  Home.

  The word had been so comforting to her only a little while ago. It had been a goal she focused on to get her through her ordeal at the hotel. But now, what he’d just told her left her feeling very cold.

  She looked at Tate, her heart in her throat. She’d lost years, she wasn’t about to beat around the bush and lose another second of precious time.

  “Do you want me to go home?” she asked in almost a hushed whisper, afraid that if she spoke any louder, her voice would crack.

  “I want you to be happy,” he told her. “And safe.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” she insisted weakly. “Do you want me to go home?”

  Had he not been so tired, so completely worn-out, he would have had the presence of mind to couch his words and proceed tactfully and slowly. And lie.

  But he was tired and worn-out and in that state, he said the first thing
that came to him in response to her question.

  “No. No,” he repeated more strongly, discovering that the word felt right on his tongue even though he knew he should have focused on what was good for her. But he had to tell her what was in his heart. “I don’t.”

  “Good,” she whispered. “Because I don’t want to go back. It’s not home anymore, not like it used to be,” she said, trying to find a way to explain what she was feeling.

  Her eyes held his for a long moment as she searched for the right words. And then she finally just told him what was in her heart.

  “You’re my home now, Tate.”

  Nothing, he knew, would ever make him happier than what he’d just heard her say. But along with the happiness came a measure of guilt. Guilt because he knew that Hannah was very vulnerable right now and as much as he wanted her, as much as he’d discovered he loved her, he didn’t want to take advantage of her like this. It wasn’t fair or right.

  “Hannah, I love you, but, honey, you are in no condition to make this kind of a life-altering decision right now.”

  He was wrong about that, she thought. Her condition, as he called it, had nothing to do with how she felt. She’d been grappling with this decision for a few days now—or at least the few days that had come before her last kidnapping. Tate had introduced her to a brand-new, wonderful world—two of them, actually. The one within his arms and the one that existed right outside those arms, out on the streets of the city.

  “I won’t be feeling differently tomorrow, or the day after that. Or the day after that,” she told him in a voice that was growing more firm by the moment.

  He’d heard the trite line about eyes being the windows of the soul and in this case, he thought as he looked into hers, whoever had come up with that line was right. Because looking into her eyes told him that she believed what she was saying.

  Still, he needed to hear it one last time. “You’re sure about that?”

  She nodded ever so slightly, her head still aching fiercely. “Just as sure as I am that I love you.”

  He didn’t want her getting gratitude confused with love. He couldn’t bear it if she realized the difference years later. “Because I rescued you—”

  “Because your heart has spoken to mine,” she corrected.

  He couldn’t bring himself to argue with her any longer. When she was better, and released from the hospital, enough time would have gone by for her to carefully think through her choice one last time. And when she came to the same conclusion and told him she was staying with him, that was when he intended to ask her to marry him.

  And, he thought as he took her into his arms, she would say “yes.”

  He had a good feeling about this.

  Epilogue

  It was, truthfully, an oddly harmonious blending of people who were, for the most part, complete polar opposites: the peaceful Amish community was mingling with special agents from the Bureau and members of the Philadelphia P.D., as well as members of his family—extended and immediate.

  It should have made for a bizarre sight.

  And yet, somehow, it didn’t.

  In a strange way, it made perfect sense. They were all coming together to celebrate the recovery of the kidnapped girls—and to honor the memory of those who would never be back.

  Tate glanced at the young woman next to him. He had a lot to be grateful for himself, a lot to celebrate. Having his family here just made it that much more significant.

  Hannah’s recovery—once she’d finally regained consciousness—had been so quick, the attending physician at the hospital deemed it as close to a miracle as he’d ever witnessed. He pronounced her well enough to travel, which left the way clear for her to return to Paradise Ridge—not because she’d changed her mind, but because she was eager to see all her friends back where they belonged—and trying to regain the peace they had once known.

  There was no way that Tate was going to let her go alone. After what he’d gone through to find her—and the hell he’d endured waiting for her to wake up again—he was not about to let her out of his sight for more than a couple of hours at a clip for the foreseeable future.

  Hannah more than welcomed his company, eager to show him where she had grown up. It was, after all, the place that had made her the person she was now. The place that had formed the survivor that she had turned out to be.

  They arrived just in time to take part in what turned out to be a combination of new and old: an old-fashioned barn raising with the celebration of what was considered to be an outsider tradition: Christmas.

  Tate looked around for the typical signs of the holiday season and found none. “Do the Amish actually celebrate Christmas?” he asked Hannah, curious.

  “Oh, yes, we do,” Hannah assured him with enthusiasm. “I mean, we just don’t have a Christmas tree or all those shiny decorations that outsiders tend to put such importance on, but we do honor the day.”

  His mouth curved. “About those ‘shiny decorations we outsiders tend to put such importance on,’ I seem to recall a certain young Amish woman being completely mesmerized by the giant Christmas tree she saw in Rockefeller Center,” he whispered against her ear, reminding her of the occasion. The memory of her transfixed expression was one he was going to cherish for the rest of his life.

  Rather than blush, as he expected her to, Hannah smiled broadly. “Who would not be mesmerized? It was such a beautiful thing to behold.”

  The area where they were, at a newlywed couple’s farm, seemed to be filling up with more and more people. Taking Hannah’s hand, he stepped to the side to get out of the way of several carpenters, bringing in the already crafted sides of what was to be everyone’s project for the entire day.

  “Do you exchange presents?” he asked her.

  Hannah nodded. “Small ones. We give them to each other.” She thought of the man she’d seen in the department store dressed as Santa Claus and the endless line of children waiting to sit on the man’s wide lap and make their heart’s desire known. “There is no jolly fat man to distribute them.”

  Tate nodded, doing his best to look serious. He failed. “Cutting out the middleman. Very economical of you,” he teased.

  Looking around the ever-growing gathering, he spotted Emma. With the case wrapped up, his sister was free to leave the Bureau, and she had. She was talking with Caleb. Her fiancé’s three little girls were surrounding them.

  Funny how his sister seemed to fit right into this life. If he hadn’t known better, he would have said that she was born in this community.

  There would be a wedding to attend soon, he thought.

  Two, he amended silently—once Hannah set a date. He’d left picking a date up to her because he didn’t want Hannah to feel that he was crowding her in any way. Although she’d immediately said yes to him, he wanted her to be sure. Very sure. Sure that she not only wanted to marry him, but to be in his world as well.

  Sure that she wanted to be with him.

  But he wouldn’t have been human if he didn’t try to tip the scales a little in his favor. To that end, he’d bought a little insurance. He had it with him now and decided to give it to her before the “festivities” officially started.

  Since that could be any second now, he put his hand into his jacket pocket and took out an envelope. He held it up before her.

  She eyed it quizzically, then shifted that look to take him in as well. “What is this?”

  “Only one way to find out,” he told her with a smile, offering the envelope to her.

  Taking it, she opened the envelope slowly. Hesitating because she didn’t know exactly what to expect.

  As she began to open it, he set her mind at ease a little by saying, “It’s an early Christmas gift—although not that early,” he amended, “given that Christmas is tomorrow.”

  A Christmas present. That meant it couldn’t be anything bad, like a pretty card saying he had to go, or that he was taking back what he’d said to her in the hospital when she first
woke up.

  Tearing the paper away, she found herself looking down at a form that informed her she’d been enrolled in the Parsons School of Design for the purpose of obtaining a degree in fashion design.

  It was like being in the middle of a double dream. Her dream prince was granting her fondest wish—to study professional fashion design.

  Speechless for a moment, Hannah raised her eyes to his.

  “Classes start the second week in January,” he told her, suppressing his own excitement. “I thought you needed an outlet for all that designing talent of yours.”

  Thrilled, overwhelmed—no one had ever been this generous to her before—joy all but bursting out of her, Hannah threw her arms around his neck.

  “I love you very, very much!” she cried.

  He laughed. “If I knew it would get this kind of reaction, I would have enrolled you in that school a lot sooner.” But he had to be completely honest with her. “I have to admit that I got the idea indirectly from Violet Chastain. I overheard her tell Mary Yoder that she’d pay for her schooling if Mary wanted to go to college. After everything that’s happened,” he said, referring to the actress’s near-fatal stab wound when the woman had been left for dead while Maddox’s men had kidnapped Mary, “Violet felt that Mary should have something good happening in her life as a result.”

  Hannah nodded, understanding. “Violet is a good person—just think, when her movie comes out, I’ll be able to see it.” The idea was incredibly exciting to her. She’d never seen a movie before. “And your sister Emma is equally as good.” The immediate past forgotten, she was fairly beaming as she spoke. “Already Caleb is happier than I remember seeing him in a long, long time. His girls love Emma,” she confided, pleased to be able to tell Tate something positive.

  She was trying to make this easy for him, he thought. But there was no need. He was pleased Emma had found someone she loved so much.

  “I know she’ll be happy here,” he told her, then added, “And you, I hope you’ll be happy in my world. I know I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to make sure you are.”

  “No woman could ask for more,” Hannah assured him with a smile.