Colton Showdown Read online

  “We are leaving?” she asked him.

  He nodded. “We have to. They’re going to be looking for us.”

  She didn’t ask him who they were. She knew. She also knew something else.

  “For me,” Hannah corrected.

  That sounded much too isolated. She wasn’t a lone wolf and, for the duration, neither was he.

  “Since I’ll be with you every step of the way, it’s really us, not you,” he pointed out.

  For once, she dug in, maintaining her position. Having Tate risk his life for her once was hard enough on her. More than that made her feel an obligation she worried she could never be able to repay.

  “But you would not be in danger if you didn’t go with me,” she pointed out.

  He shrugged indifferently. “Makes no difference,” he told her. “I am going with you so there’s no point in talking about it.”

  He didn’t expect her to continue trying to get him to change his mind, but he also didn’t expect what happened next.

  Hannah rose up on her toes and brushed the very lightest of kisses against his cheek.

  On his end, it felt as if the wing of a butterfly had lightly grazed his skin.

  When he looked at her quizzically, his fingers just barely brushing against his cheek, Hannah smiled at him. The smile crinkled into her vivid eyes. “You are a good man, Tate Colton.”

  “Just doing my job,” he murmured self-consciously.

  She nodded, taking that into account. “You are still a good man,” she insisted quietly.

  Just then, he thought he heard a commotion directly below them coming from the street level. Hurrying to a window, he looked down and saw that a sleek black Mercedes had pulled up in front of his building.

  Several men came pouring out, all dressed in dark suits, as if they had come to pay respects to the dead, rather than try to add one more to Death’s numbers. Even from his present vantage point, he could see they were intent on getting their job done.

  He didn’t have to guess what that “job” was.

  He recognized one of the men from the warehouse.

  Taking the fire escape to elude them was out of the question. The fire escape outside his apartment faced the front of the building and one of the men was left standing guard by the Mercedes.

  But he wasn’t about to stay here, waiting to be taken down. Ultimately, the fire escape was the only chance they had to get out.

  Grabbing Hannah’s hand in his as he slung the backpack over his other shoulder, he ordered, “Let’s go.”

  Hannah wordlessly fell into step beside him, ready to follow him to the gates of hell and beyond, if need be, because of all that he had done for her so far. For this very reason, she felt that she owed him her allegiance and her loyalty.

  Besides, she knew in her heart that Tate would keep her safe.

  Chapter 8

  Tate threw open the window leading out onto the fire escape. A quick glance down told him that Maddox’s guard was still there. He just hoped that the man wouldn’t decide to suddenly look up until they had cleared the area.

  “Are we climbing out the window onto that?” Hannah asked, her eyes widening at the very thought.

  He realized that she’d probably never encountered a fire escape before, certainly never climbed one before. “It’ll hold us,” he assured her. “We’re going to be going up to the roof.”

  Rather than question him any further, she stoically said, “All right,” and followed him out onto the structure.

  “You go first,” he instructed softly, pointing to the stairs that led up to the roof. If the guard did look up, the henchman would see his back first. And if the guard fired, then he’d be the one hit, not Hannah. “Nothing to be afraid of,” Tate assured her. He tapped the handrailing. “Everything’s solid.”

  Hannah offered him a wan smile as she made her way up the fire escape of the forty-year-old, six-story building. She kept her eyes trained on the next rung and tried not to think about what a long, long way down it was.

  Her fear of heights kept her from even climbing into the hayloft in their barn back home, but she couldn’t impose her fears on Tate. It wouldn’t be right. Besides, he wouldn’t be asking her to do this if there was any other way to make their escape. So, with icy hands, Hannah clung to the black metal handrails and made her way up the metal steps of the fire escape, praying she wouldn’t fall and embarrass herself—or possibly worse.

  An eternity later, her heart pounding in her chest, she finally reached the roof. Her legs numb, she made herself move out of the way so that Tate could climb onto the roof as well.

  Taking a deep breath to help steady her throbbing pulse, she looked at the man who had rescued her, utterly confused. “We are going to hide up here?”

  He shook his head. “No, with any luck, we’re going to go down the back fire escape.”

  Before Hannah could think to ask him why hadn’t they just climbed down to begin with, Tate swiftly crossed the flat, gravel-paved roof. Leaning over the side of the building, he looked down to the ground below. The rear of the building was facing the alley and it was empty.

  No witnesses to give them away.

  So far, so good, Tate thought.

  Turning toward Hannah, he waved her on. “C’mon,” he urged. “Follow me.”

  Hannah did just that, climbing down six flights without uttering a single word, either in protest or in fear.

  Even in the midst of a situation that could become explosive at any moment, Tate had to marvel how incredibly trusting Hannah was.

  He’d never met anyone quite like her, he caught himself thinking again.

  Focus! Tate upbraided himself sharply.

  Now wasn’t the time to let his mind wander, making peripheral observations about a girl who was way too young for him. And way too pure. She deserved someone who wasn’t nearly as jaded as he had become.

  What mattered here, he reminded himself, was for him to remain alert in case one of Maddox’s men spotted them or unexpectedly showed up. If Tate slipped up and got distracted, even for a second, it would be all over for them.

  All over for her.

  And all the risks that had been taken would have been for nothing.

  Silently indicating that she was to remain behind him, not beside him, Tate stopped dead when he got to the side of the building.

  The street was just beyond that—the unprotected street that offered no shelter until they reached the other side.

  Tate slowly edged out, his backup piece in his hand, loaded, cocked and ready to fire if he needed to.

  The street was clear. And almost eerily empty. Hazy yellow-white light from the towering streetlamps pooled on the ground, crisscrossing and touching in several places.

  “Run,” he ordered, taking her hand again and leading the way.

  They ran for two long city blocks, passing storefronts, pizzerias and shops that had long since closed their doors. Only the bars had glimmers of muted light emerging through their darkly tinted bay windows, but their doors remained firmly closed. Whatever patrons were left inside were far too involved with their personal brand of poison to give either him or the young woman with him even a first thought, much less a second one.

  It was there.

  A dusty, navy blue—almost black—sedan that wouldn’t have caused anyone’s head to turn, either in curiosity or admiration, was parked unobtrusively, just a little beyond the crosswalk.

  Tate realized after the fact that until he saw the vehicle parked at the curb, he’d been holding his breath. He released it now.

  When he was less than ten feet away from the dusty sedan, he pressed down on the key in his pocket—the one he’d grabbed as they vacated his apartment—and it made a minor high-pitched noise.

  The next second, the car’s locks were all jumping to attention, opening at the same time.

  “Get in,” Tate ordered gruffly.

  They didn’t have a second to spare. Just because he didn’t see them didn’
t mean that Maddox’s men weren’t closing in on them.

  Hannah obeyed without question, sliding in on the passenger side and closing the door just as Tate got in behind the steering wheel.

  “Whose vehicle is this?” she asked.

  Since her kidnapping, she’d lost count of the cars she’d been forced into. Because they all ran together, she hadn’t been able to tell one from another.

  Riding in cars was still a relatively new phenomenon for her since, up to this point, she had spent all her life around carriages and the horses that pulled them.

  This vehicle seemed to look more used than the others, she thought. That made it appear different to her.

  “Mine,” he told her as he started up the vehicle. It came to life immediately. He paid a local teenager to keep an eye on it and to make sure that the car was started regularly when he was out of town.

  This, he thought in satisfaction, was where foresight—and paranoia—paid off. He kept the car here in reserve for just this sort of an unexpected twist—to make good his escape if need be.

  “You have two cars?” Hannah asked in wonder as he tore away from the curb.

  Any second, he expected to see Maddox’s men descending on them. Or, at the very least, the black Mercedes trying to chase them down. One thing he knew for certain. There was no way he was about to hang around and press his luck.

  “It’s a backup car,” he explained, then realized Hannah probably didn’t know what that meant. “I have it parked away from my apartment just in case I can’t get to the car I usually keep in the parking structure.” He didn’t add that the car also had a host of emergency supplies stored in the trunk for different contingencies. There was also enough cash in the trunk to see him through whatever initially had sent him on the run. Cash rather than credit cards because it couldn’t be traced.

  Hannah looked duly impressed by his abbreviated explanation.

  The vehicle continued eating up the road, putting distance between them and his apartment.

  “You are very prepared. Like a scouting person,” she concluded, pleased with her analogy.

  “I think you mean Boy Scout,” Tate corrected gently, taking care not to hurt her feelings. He didn’t want her to think he was talking down to her.

  By her expression, the thought had never even occurred to her. Instead, she looked cheerful as she nodded at the term he’d supplied that had eluded her. “Yes, like a Boy Scout.”

  Sitting back in her seat, Hannah watched the road as it whizzed by, merging into the darkness and disappearing behind them. It occurred to her that the world outside her village was a very large place. Did anyone get the opportunity to explore all of it?

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  He couldn’t risk going back to his place, since Maddox obviously knew where he lived. Turning up at some small, out-of-the-way hotel or motel didn’t appeal to him. It was too isolated and too easily found.

  Their best bet, he decided, was to hide in plain sight and there was no better place for that than Manhattan, the very heart of New York City.

  Tate couldn’t help wondering how Hannah would react to that news. Slanting a glance in her direction, he said simply, “We’re going to New York.”

  “The state?” Hannah asked uncertainly.

  “The city,” he answered.

  Tate waited, but she made no comment on the information. Instead, Hannah grew very quiet. So quiet that it began to make him uneasy. He could feel her tension.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  Hannah merely shook her head in response and continued to say nothing.

  Rather than ask what was wrong again, he made the assumption that something was wrong and instead began to coax her to share her thoughts with him. He felt responsible for her and if he’d said anything to upset her, he needed to know so that he could make it right again.

  “Hannah, you can tell me,” he told her earnestly. “You can tell me anything.”

  Hannah looked down at her short, unadorned, rounded nails without really seeing them. She had no right to bother him with her fears. He was the leader out here in this world of outsiders. It wasn’t for her to contest his judgment or challenge his choices.

  Still, he was asking her to speak and to ignore his request would have been rude of her.

  The tug-of-war in her head went on for only a minute. After it was over, in a very small voice she told him. “People die in New York City.”

  “People die everywhere, Hannah. Are you talking about someone specifically? Did someone you know die when they came to New York?” he added, hoping to prompt her to tell him the source of her fear.

  Before he had gotten involved in the case, his notions about the plain-speaking people of the Amish community were admittedly preconceived and incredibly limited. He had no idea that when Amish children reached their later teens, they were allowed—even encouraged—to leave the village and live among the outsiders for a time. It was a test devised to see if they were truly meant to live out the rest of their lives in the village or if life in a large metropolis was what they really wanted.

  Solomon Miller belonged to the latter group and, as Tate had come to know, there was obviously a price to pay for that choice. Being ostracized by the community was the heaviest burden. Miller had been willing to risk Maddox’s wrath to get back into the good graces of the community he missed so much.

  “I had a friend,” Hannah began. “Her name was Eva. Eva went to New York City.” Hannah turned to look at him. “She never came back.”

  “Maybe she liked it better there,” he suggested. It was, after all, the logical conclusion.

  It might have been logical to him, but not to her. Hannah shook her head. “When her mother and father went to see her, to make sure the choice was hers and not made for her by someone else, they found her dead in her small room. She had a noose around her neck.”

  That sounded like something Maddox might have been mixed up in. Or, if not him, than someone of his ilk, Tate thought.

  “She was murdered?” he asked.

  Hannah folded her delicate hands in her lap and stared straight ahead at the inky road. “We were not told. No one spoke her name again.”

  “Well, they’ll speak yours,” Tate assured her with feeling. “Because nothing’s going to happen to you. I promise,” he added, his eyes briefly holding hers. “And I haven’t broken a promise to you yet, have I?”

  “There has only been one,” Hannah reminded him politely.

  He grinned, knowing that she was going to say that. Predictability sometimes had a nice feel to it, he thought. Like now.

  “Yes, but I kept it, didn’t I?”

  His answer made her smile at him. She looked back at her hands with approval. Her knuckles no longer white and tense.

  “Yes, you did,” she agreed. He deserved to receive better treatment at her hands. “I am sorry. I did not mean to be such a pull on you.”

  “Such a—?” And then the light went on in his head as the right word occurred to him. “You mean drag, don’t you? You didn’t mean to be such a drag,” he reiterated, piecing together her real meaning. He laughed as what he’d just said played back in his mind. “You’re not a drag, trust me.”

  “I do,” she told him solemnly. “I trust you very much.”

  And that, he knew, meant a great deal to him. Perhaps even a little too much. After all, he was just protecting her the way a bodyguard might.

  Nothing more.

  * * *

  Tate drove all night, arriving in the heart of New York City well past dawn. Specifically, he’d arrived at the Old Vic Hotel. The landmark hotel, remodeled more than a handful of times, stood guard over a section of Central Park. He was partial to it.

  A valet popped up the second he pulled up before the hotel. He hurried over to the driver’s side, ready to take possession of the vehicle from Tate.

  But the latter shook his head. Rolling down the window on his side, he told the eager valet,
“I’d rather park it myself, thanks.”

  The valet’s disappointment quickly turned to happiness when Tate slipped the man a tip, even though no service had been rendered.

  Parking the sedan himself, Tate knew where to locate the car at a moment’s notice. It also enabled him to take a small packet out of the trunk before he secured it again. He tried the trunk a number of times right after that until he was certain that it was locked and no one else could access its contents.

  There were a couple of passports in the trunk as well. Just in case...

  Hannah watched in silence, curious, as he slid the packet open, then withdrew several crisp hundred-dollar bills and pocketed them.

  “For the hotel bill,” he told her.

  She understood money, but she also knew that people in the world beyond her village used something she had heard referred to as “plastic.” They used it for everything.

  “You do not have plastic?” she asked.

  The question amused him because he’d never thought that she’d be the one to ask that.

  “This is simpler,” he said, nodding at the cash in his hand.

  That was the simple answer. The more specific one was that money couldn’t be traced while credit cards—even those obtained under a different identity—could. And once they were traced, they could easily set off alarms.

  He needed to buy them as much time as he could—literally.

  Getting out of the vehicle, Hannah suddenly became very self-conscious. She looked down at what she was wearing. In the world she resided in, no one went visiting looking like an orphaned urchin. She didn’t want to embarrass him.

  “Won’t someone object to the way I am dressed?”

  For a long moment, Tate looked at this young, beautiful, unassuming woman he had stumbled across, then smiled.

  “Don’t worry. No one taking one look at you is going to object to the way you’re dressed,” he promised.

  Hannah appeared unconvinced. “Are you certain?”

  “Very certain,” he replied, slipping his arm through hers. “Tell you what, after we get a little food into you, why don’t we go shopping?”