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I was pushed aside with an order of, “Stand back.”
I did as told.
“Are you a good guy or a bad guy?” I belatedly asked in order to confirm.
“Even if I was a bad guy,” he said while positioning in front of the door, his eyes aimed at it, “I’d tell you I was a good guy.”
Excellent point.
He lifted a beefy (those thighs!), chocolate-brown-cargo-pants-clad leg and landed his boot solidly by the door handle.
The door popped open.
I slipped in front of him to enter the dark room.
I immediately tripped over something, but stopped, righted myself and called into the darkness, “Elsie Fay?”
No movement. No sound.
Chris Evans entered behind me,closebehind me. So close, I could feel his heat and the natural badassery that wafted off him (this apparently happened with guys who knew how to bust open doors with their boot), and I felt him move.
On instinct again, I spun and whispered, “Don’t turn on the light.”
The other guy was standing in the doorway.
I turned back to the room, and gingerly, my eyes adjusting to the dark with weak light coming in from down the hall (trying to ignore the fact this room would be pitch black without the door open, and how that would affect the mind of a little girl), I called, “Elsie Fay? It’s me. From outside? You know, the window? You’re okay. We’re gonna get you out and call the cops and your parents and?—”
I didn’t finish because a six-year-old hit me like a bullet. She slammed into my legs so hard, I nearly went down. And I would have if I didn’t run into Chris Evans and his hands didn’t span my hips to hold me steady (told you he was close).
I didn’t have time to consider how those hands felt on my hips.
Elsie Fay was clawing up my chinos.
I bent and pulled her into my arms. She was heavy, as six-year-olds were wont to be, too big to be held, too young to realize it, though in this instance, she needed it, and I didn’t have time to consider her weight as she clamped onto me with arms and legs. She, too, fisted her hand in my hair and she did it tighter than the bad guy. She also shoved her face in my neck.
“It’s okay,” I whispered to her. “You’re okay. You’re safe now. Okay?”
She said nothing.
I turned to Chris Evans and his hottie partner.
“Is he neutralized?” I asked.
“Yes,” the hottie partner answered.
“Then let’s get her out of here,” I stated, and didn’t wait for their response.
I pushed through them and got that little girl the hell out of there.
TWO
CITADEL OF DENIAL
Iwas in denial.
Of a lot of things.
The first part of that denial was what had happened an hour earlier, when Elsie Fay’s parents showed at the police station, haggard, harried, both of them in tears of joy that their nightmare had ended, and that end didn’t lead them to another nightmare. Also, they were tears of fatigue and residual terror because the nightmare they’d endured was hideous.
