Colton Showdown
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Marie Ferrarella
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18
Prologue
Her face haunted him.
Ever since he’d seen her on that DVD, the one that had been made to showcase the “selection” available for purchase by the members of the “discerning” male audience viewing it, Detective Tate Colton had been equally fascinated and sick to his stomach.
Fascinated because Hannah Troyer, one of several young women displayed on the video, was at once hypnotically beautiful and so obviously innocent. And sick to his stomach because he knew what was going to happen to Hannah. Knew what was going to happen to all the innocent young women who appeared on the video. Each and every one of them was destined to become the object of some depraved pervert’s lechery—as long as the right price was quoted and met.
Unless he and the FBI agents on his team got to those girls first.
Someone was kidnapping Amish girls and selling them to the highest bidder because in this jaded age of too much too soon, the idea of an untouched, pure young woman still held an almost addictive allure for some men.
In this case, the “some” were exceptionally wealthy men because innocence had become a commodity that did not come cheap. Instead, it was bade and bargained for like the rare product it had become, only to be forever lost at the hands of depraved men who had no idea how to rightly value such a treasure.
Eyes on the screen, Tate went back over the DVD and played it forward again, watching the same small section he’d viewed before of the girl he’d seen while going undercover as a prospective buyer.
Watching her.
Gray-blue eyes, alabaster skin, hair like flame.
They called her Jade. But she was Hannah Troyer.
He knew her name—her real name, only because Hannah’s brother, Caleb, was desperately searching for his younger sister. The search had created strange bedfellows because, just recently, Caleb had wound up becoming engaged to his sister, Emma, a Special Agent with the FBI. They were working together on a joint task force to find the missing girls. According to what his sister had said, she and Caleb were going to be married once this case was finally wrapped up.
That made it sound so easy, Tate thought cynically. A piece of cake—and it wasn’t.
There wasn’t anything at all easy about this case. Not for the two dead girls they’d already found. Not for the whole of the small Pennsylvania Amish community—ironically called Paradise Ridge—which was holding its collective breath, waiting and praying for their own to be returned to them unharmed.
Tate had an uneasy feeling that wasn’t possible. Even if they found all the other missing girls and they were still alive, they were no longer unharmed. Far greater than the physical scars they might have incurred were the emotional scars that had to run across their young, tender souls.
In this sex trafficking ring, the mostly faceless bastards who were abducting the young women were systematically destroying their innocence so that the girls—all between the ages of 16 and 20—bore little to no resemblance to the sweet young women their families were frantically searching for.
“I’d like to gut each and every one of those bastards,” he muttered under his breath, finally shutting off the DVD player. The large screen he’d been watching went blank.
Emma, the only other person in the room with him, laughed shortly. There was no mirth in the sound. “You’re not the only one who feels that way.”
As she spoke, she put her hand on Tate’s broad shoulder and was surprised by how rigid it felt. Well, maybe not so surprised, she silently amended. Tate, who’d been the one to initially ask her to join his task force, took his work very seriously, but this had to be a new level of intensity, even for him.
“I think that if we ever find the people who kidnapped Hannah, Caleb would be tempted to temporarily renounce his pacifistic ways, just for the time it would take to pummel these worthless scum into the ground. But indulging in fantasies isn’t going to help us rescue these girls,” Emma pointed out. “And we are going to rescue them,” she told Tate with utter conviction, not for the first time.
Failure, as the saying went, was not an option here. There were too many lives at stake, too many families waiting to get their daughters back.
Tate knew he would have felt a personal obligation to bring the girls all back to their families even if the people affected by this heinous ring were not technically his neighbors.
The Colton family ranch in Eden Falls, Pennsylvania, was named the Double C in honor of Charlotte Colton. Charlotte was the woman who, even though she hadn’t given them biological life, had, for all intents and purposes, along with her husband, Donovan, given him and his five siblings a reason to exist, a reason to live.
The couple, whose lives were so tragically cut short along with those of so many others on 9/11, were well-known for their dedication and their generosity. Over the course of two decades, they had adopted six completely unrelated orphans, given them their name and their love and knitted them into a family. A family who never took what they had for granted. The ranch where they grew up was right outside a little village named Paradise Ridge.
Civilization, with all its technological progress, seemed to have stopped at the borders of the tiny town. The hardworking citizens of that town led what was considered an idyllic life that echoed their ancestors’ existence. Until a serpent somehow found its way into Paradise Ridge and stole some of the town’s young women.
Tate was determined to find those girls and the ones from Ohio.
Especially, he silently promised the face that haunted him, Hannah. Find them and free them. Even if it was the last thing he ever did on this earth.
“C’mon, Big Brother,” Emma was urging him. “You and I have a sting to plan and coordinate.”
Snapping out of his mental fog, Tate rose from the chair he’d taken to view the DVD for the umpteenth time, searching for some telltale clue he might have missed before.
He looked at his sister as they got ready to meet the others involved in this undercover operation. “Tell the truth, Tomato-head, you’re going to miss this once you turn in your badge for a butter churn.” He still loved to use her childhood nickname, to her annoyance.
Try as he might, he just couldn’t picture his driven sister in that kind of laid-back, rural setting—not for more than ten minutes.
“No, I’m not,” Emma countered with feeling. Then, when Tate’s eyes held hers, she shrugged. “Well, maybe just a little,” she allowed as they left the office. Because he’d forced the truth out of her, Emma punched his arm.
Tate’s deep laugh echoed up and down the hallway. Maybe Emma wasn’t going to miss this life, but he sure as hell was going to miss Emma.
