The white guy did as he said, but as soon as he stepped on the porch he jumped back, crashing into his buddy. Lily-Grace looked around and spotted Lilah in the middle of the cul-de-sac holding a shotgun.
“Lilah, we’re all coming out!” Jesse yelled.
“Yeah, okay.” She swung the gun back around and pointed at someone she couldn’t see. Lily-Grace couldn’t see the dogs, but she could hear them barking wildly.
Jesse jabbed the white guy in the back with his golf club. “Go.” Then he turned his head a bit, his eyes still forward. Lily-Grace knew better than to take her eyes off the men too, but she could just feel the way Jesse’s body was trying to check in with hers. They both needed a split second of grounding. “You okay?” he asked.
“No. You?”
“No. Come on.”
Lily-Grace didn’t take his hand, but followed with fingers on the small of his back. They slowly walked outside, keeping a golf club’s length between themselves and the intruders. She saw the dogs then as they came around the edge of the garage. The dogs’ shockingly vicious barking focused on the two men, who stuttered to a stop, caught between a club, two dogs, and a shotgun. She followed Jesse’s lead, coming around the cars to edge closer to Lilah, who had a third man on the ground at gunpoint. What in the whole fuck was going on?
“This one was snooping around the front. You think there’s more?”
“This it, or do you have any more buddies?” he asked.
“It’s just us, man! Call the dogs off.”
Instead, Jesse glanced back at Lilah. “Where’s Miss Leona?”
“Corie’s with her. I told Zach to stay with Evie. I had it handled.”
Almost on cue, Zach stepped out on his porch. The fact that he was in his boxers absently reminded Lily-Grace that she wasn’t wearing pants, but it didn’t seem important at the moment.
“Stay inside, Zach!” The booming baritone of Jesse’s voice made Lily-Grace jump. He whipped back around to the three assholes cowering as Euca and Clementine growled at them. She would never want to be on the receiving end of the murderous look in his eye.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Jesse said, his hands flexing on the handle of the golf club. “Talk, or I’ll tell her to shoot you. It won’t be fatal, but I don’t think recovering from a shotgun blast to the nuts is fun. Talk!”
“Okay, okay! We were just supposed to come scare you,” the white guy who’d been inside the house said.
“Scare who?”
“You, man! You’re Jesse Pleasant, right?”
Lily-Grace looked up as she saw lights and heard their accompanying sirens in the distance. They were still a long way off, but it looked like at least three cruisers were making the near mile-long drive down Pleasant Lane.
“Keep talking!”
“We just came to scare you. He didn’t tell us you were seven fucking feet tall and jacked as shit.”
“Who?”
“Shut up, man!” the Black guy said.
“There’s still time to shoot you and claim self-defense. Answer him,” Lilah said. “Who?”
“Dane. Dane Locklear.”
Lily-Grace knew she was hearing things. There was no way she’d heard that name correctly. “Say that again?” she said.
“Dane Locklear. This hedge fund douchebag. Something about you taking what was his. He told us to come scare you. That’s it.”
“Who the hell—”
“My ex.” Lily-Grace felt like her chest was caving in. Jesse looked over at her, that homicidal look now focused in her direction.
“What?”
