Goddamn rusty fucking knee.
If I’d just been able to catch them—
No, they might’ve gotten away even if my knee hadn’t flared up.
And were they armed? How would I have handled the second man hiding while I got Thing One down and out?
Worry knifes through me, mingling with the pain.
Sweat drenches my shirt as I close in, mentally putting my shit back together, focusing on the factors I can control.
First, make sure Kit and Cleo are safe.
Everything else comes later.
The house looms out of the gloom, which must’ve thickened in the five or ten minutes I’ve been outside. Everything appears buttoned up except for that damn balcony door—which now has two women standing there, staring as I step into view.
“Get back inside!” I roar, already dialing 9-1-1.
They’re safe for now, thankfully.
Kit’s face looks pale with terror, but it’s Cleo who scares me when I get one good look at her.
Kit doesn’t know what’s going on, but Cleo does.
She understands.
That’s why she’s frozen, watching me, arms folded tightly and trying not to panic in front of the little girl.
Dammit, she knows what’s at stake.
And if she caught a hint of these men, she knows what they came for. Just like she knows I didn’t get them, I—
I can’t protect them.
“Hello, police?” I growl into my phone. “I need to report a break-in on Cormorant Drive…”
I knewthe second I heard the alert that it was going to be a shitty morning.
I just didn’t knowhowshitty.
It only takes fifteen minutes for the cops to show up, long enough for me to walk the house and make damn sure there are no stragglers around.
Then it’s the usual tedium, questions and statements and lots of waiting. Only this time, there’s something rotten underneath it all.
Fear.
A foreign emotion.
I’m not used to fighting a threat that’s so fucking close to home just hours after I brought my daughter into it.
My job always carries risks, but as I walk the officers through the evidence I’ve already noted—a tampered lock, a few boot smears in the mud, and a faded blood spatter on the lawn—I’m already spent.
Barely sunrise and I’ve had enough.
It’s not that the cops don’t take this seriously. Now, the treasure that’s caused all this trouble is doubly compromised.
Cleo has to tell them what the men were after. They don’t understand the egg’s significance, but they do know it’s valuable.
