My hands are on Nash's arm. Nash is reaching for me, his face wet, his mouth open.
Behind me Dakota's voice, "Hadley!"
Dakota has her pistol up but she can't fire because Nash and I are in her line.
I look at my son.
I look at Hartley.
I look at the gun.
Hartley repeats himself. "Mrs. Cross. Let him go."
I don't.
Nash is in my arms. My grip on him is the kind of grip a mother makes that you'd have to break her fingers to undo. I am not letting go of him. I'd take the bullet first.
Hartley reads my face. Something almost like respect passes through his eyes and is gone.
He flips the pistol in his good hand.
The grip comes down across the side of my head.
* * *
The kitchen tile is cold against my cheek.
There's a high whine in my left ear and my mouth tastes like a penny and I can't get my eyes to track the ceiling.
Voices. Dakota, somewhere over me. "Hadley. Hadley. Stay down, stay down?—"
A door slamming. Footsteps on the porch boards. A man's voice fading into the gravel.
Then Nash. Nash crying my name from somewhere outside the kitchen.
I push up off the tile and the kitchen goes sideways. My hand finds the table leg. There's blood in my hair. The ring on my finger is dim with it.
I get to my knees.
Dakota's hands are on my shoulders. "You stay with me. Hadley. Hadley, look at me?—"
I find Dakota's face. She's wet. Her stepmother is on the floor behind her, not moving.
"He took Nash," I say. My voice doesn't sound like my voice. "Dakota. He took Nash."
"I know, honey. Don't stand up yet. You got a head wound. Help me with Marlena. Towels—get me towels."
The only thing causing me to not lose my mind is what I know.
Hartley doesn't want my son. He wants my fiancé. He wants him alive, to work with him.
He'll trade him for Rogue… but Rogue will kill Hartley to get our son back.
Dakota looks at me for a split second, "He wanted me to tell you Rogue has six hours."
The bunkhouse is quiet for one moment.
Then Dakota is on the floor next to her stepmother and Grace is coming out of the safe room with both babies still in her arms.
