She realized suddenly why her mind had veered onto this track. The possible loss of their baby brother had been yet another horrific blow to a family that had already lost so much. The Amish community was like one huge family, and they’d been struck again and again. And no family court hearing could restore their children to them.
It was up to her, and now her brother, to find them and bring them home.
“Thanks, sis,” Tate said again. “Any hassle?”
Emma glanced at her brother. He drove as he did anything physical, with an understated ease. He was six foot one, which meant she had to look up at him, even sitting in the passenger seat of his unmarked city car. He glanced at her when she didn’t immediately answer. His eyes were as gorgeous as ever, that almost turquoise-blue that had sent her female schoolmates into raptures, embarrassingly, when he’d stumble across them giggling in the kitchen of the big ranch house at the Double C.
“No,” she answered. “Not a bit.” She paused. Her brother, knowing her well, waited. “Of course, I left the message on his office voice mail. He would have gotten it while I was in the air.”
“So he couldn’t call and yell until he’d had time to calm down?” Tate grinned at her, then turned his eyes back to the busy street leaving the airport. “You always did know how to get your way.”
“You’re just saying that because you never figured out how to be subtle.”
“You mean devious?” Emma grinned back at him, not offended in the least, before he added, “But at least I learned it’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”
They laughed with the ease of siblings who had grown into a comfortable, loving adult relationship, who looked back on their childhood with fondness. Their lives had been blessed, and even the horrible loss they’d suffered on September 11 couldn’t change that.
“Do you still think about them a lot?” Emma knew she didn’t have to explain.
“Every day,” Tate said quietly. “They saved us all, gave us a life we never, ever would have had.”
“And they gave us each other,” Emma said. “Brothers and sisters we never would have had.”
“Yes.” Tate glanced at her. “They saw to it we would never be alone again.”
Emma sighed. It had taken them a very long time to reach this point. Charlotte—for whom the ranch had been named—and Donovan Colton had been forces of nature, and Emma didn’t think any of them ever got past thinking of them as larger-than-life.
“At least they saw Butterfly Wings come to life.”
“That’s right,” Tate agreed. “They got to see that dream come true.”
The nonprofit organization dedicated to helping inner-city kids was flourishing, and each adult Colton put in their time to make sure it stayed that way. Each one of them knew too well they could have ended up in worse shape than some of these kids if not for the generous, loving couple who had adopted them all.
The thought of kids at risk jolted her back to the reason she was here in the first place. It was time to quit dwelling on her own happy childhood and concentrate on trying to get these innocent girls back to finish theirs.
Chapter 2
Emma had noticed the folders wedged next to the driver’s seat and reached for them.
“These are the full files?”
Tate nodded as he negotiated the transition to Interstate 95 leaving the airport. Emma began to read. Tate had emailed her the basics, but to her dismay there wasn’t much more here. The details on each case were sketchy; either no one had seen much or they weren’t talking.
Or the kidnappers were very, very thorough.
She felt the old chill start to creep up her spine. She fought it down. She knew the old memories colored her reactions, but she refused to let them affect her professional conduct. She’d passed her psych, been declared fit for duty, and she was going to see it stayed that way.
“You okay?”
Damn, did the man never miss a thing? Of course, he was probably haunted by his own memories of past cases, which perhaps made him a bit more sensitive than a non-cop would be. For a guy, Tate was pretty sensitive to begin with. For a brother, he had moments that stunned her.
“I’m fine. Perverted men who target women just make me angry.”
“I know. That’s why I wanted you here. You’ve got the fire for it like no one else. And you’ve got an understanding of the people no one else I know has.”
Emma gave her brother a sideways look. They rarely spoke of her nightmare ordeal anymore within the family—not directly anyway. And she preferred it that way. Those nine horrific days were history, and that’s where they were going to stay. She’d be damned if she’d let that piece of scum she refused to identify by name even in her mind have any effect on her at all.
She’d worked hard for two years to get past what had happened to her. And had almost lost it all when some crazy judge who cared more for the rights of the criminal than the rights of the victims had found a piece of evidence logged in on the wrong place on a form and used it as justification to grant an appeal. So now she was looking at going through it all again, all the testifying, the nightmare of remembering.
But she would do it. She wasn’t a Colton for nothing, and she would put that monster away again. And again and again if she had to.
“Not to mention,” Tate added drily, “you know the countryside like the back of your hand.”
“Hey, hey,” she responded with an automatic protest born out of all the times Tate had been the one sent out to retrieve her from wherever she’d wandered. “It’s not my fault you were always hungry so you were the one in the house pestering Mom before dinner was ready.”
“I just never understood the fascination,” Tate said.
That much was true, she knew. She’d always had a fascination with the land itself that her siblings didn’t have. They did, however, appreciate the ranch and the life it gave them. As a child she’d spent hours studying plants and trees, wondering how they grew, how it was they reached for the sun, how, without a brain, they even knew where the sun was. She’d planned on continuing that study in her schooling, thinking a plant biologist might just be the coolest job ever.
And then, in her first year of college, everything changed. Those crazed men had destroyed so much more than buildings that day. And once she realized they didn’t care, and that there were countless others lined up, hoping for a chance to do more of the same, willing to die simply to murder those who didn’t follow their God, her path had become clear. She’d changed her major, determined then and there she would become part of the line that would stop such horror from ever occurring again on American soil.
She wasn’t sure she was accomplishing that from the field office in Cleveland, although it had on occasion whimsically occurred to her that with their feelings about music, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum could be a target, but her work was involving and satisfying.
And dangerous.
She realized her fingers had crept up to her throat, as if the knife were still there, drawing blood, and for an instant the old memories threatened to swamp her. She fought it down, forced herself to focus on the files in her lap, ordering herself to remember that her job now was to make sure these innocent girls didn’t go through anything like what she’d endured.
She would bring them home. Somehow she would bring them home.
Emma parked