But I wanted to protect this. Shield it. Keep it from any outside threat.
Maybe I felt it even more because the bullshit I was in was coming up quick. What I’d set into motion was getting ready to play out. A squall of agitation thrashed at my spirit because I didn’t know what that was going to look like, but there was no other option.
Not when the choice I’d made was the only one I could make.
By the time the movie had made it halfway through, Kayden was asleep in the crook of my arm with his cheek pressed to my chest, his breaths deep and his little mouth parted where his precious face was tipped up toward me.
Dakota was wrapped in the other, and she’d fallen asleep, too.
I wondered if I’d ever felt a greater significance than I did right then.
Recognizing the treasure that I was holding.
One I could never deserve, but one I would defend for the rest of my life.
Careful not to disturb Dakota, I shifted her around and rested her head against a pillow then stood and carried Kayden upstairs. I laid him in his crib and spread my hand over his back. “Tiny Tornado. The perfect kind of havoc in my life. I’m going to do everything in my power to do right by you. By your mom. I love you more than should be possible. With the kind of love that doesn’t exist. Not until the two of you created it.”
I crept back downstairs with plans to carry Dakota to my bed. Only I stilled when I heard the clank of what sounded like metal from the backyard. It wasn’t loud, but it was enough to make me still and incline my ear, listening through the muted volume of the movie that continued to play.
I swore I heard shuffling and a creak over the wind rustling through the branches of the trees.
I moved quickly but quietly through the living room and into the kitchen where I went to the back door. I peered out through the square window that took up the upper section. Darkness howled back, only the faintest illumination from the slivered moon seeping into the shadows that danced through the yard.
When I couldn’t make out anything amiss, I flipped on the light switch, flooding the porch and three feet into the lawn with light. It was at the edge of it that I saw the outline of a shape—one that shouldn’t be there, one that suddenly dashed deeper into the cover of the trees.
Without wavering, I fumbled through the lock and flung open the door, and I darted out, taking the porch steps in one leap and racing into the lapping darkness.
“Hey!” I shouted, not sure what I was shouting at.
It took me a second to be sure it was a person.
The shape of the shadow that raced through the night.
Footsteps thudded in a frantic beat, and the sound of them pounded through me like a drum, driving me faster. I wasn’t about to let whoever this bastard lurking in my yard was get away.
Part of me wished I’d taken the time to get my gun from the safe in my room, while the other knew this might be my only chance to stop what was creeping over me like an omen.
The sticky awareness that made my stomach bottom out.
Did Dare know? Had he found out? We’d been so fucking careful. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. Still, I pushed myself harder, barreling across the soft grasses that dented below my feet.
“Stop right there!” I shouted.
The fucker didn’t slow. He tossed himself right over the top of the wooden fence at the back of my property.
Behind my house was a section of woods before it opened up into another neighborhood on the other side. I only had a split second before he would disappear, a million places for him to hide in the overgrown bushes and brush, and I threw myself over the top of the fence, too.
I landed crouched on my feet, ready to spring back into the hunt, only when I propelled myself forward, I was met with the blunt force of a metal rod. It whirred through the air so fast that I had no time to prepare myself.
Pain splintered through my brain.
Piercing.
Blinding.
It dropped me straight to my knees.
Blood poured from the wound at the side of my head, weaving an erratic web across my face.
Another crack landed low on my back. I cried out as it bowed me forward, and I slumped onto the ground on my stomach.
I struggled to stay lucid.
To fight the darkness that pressed in at the edges of my sight.
Consciousness ebbing in and out.
My nostrils filled with the acrid smell of damp soil and newly fallen leaves that had just begun to decay.
But it was the scent of the foul and the filthy that crawled over me, the treacherous voice that uttered the warning at my ear. “Just a friendly reminder from Dare not to forget your place.”
The boot that landed in my side came swift and from out of nowhere, and I wheezed in agony as the breath was knocked from my lungs.