Page 105 of Tracking Safety

Freya had been at her heel all evening. Somewhere between the porch and the driveway, she’d lost her. Hamilton and Good Boy were already in the back, panting with anxiety.

But no Freya.

“Where’s Freya?” Cora had her seatbelt off and one foot already reaching for the ground. “Mama, where’s Freya? I have to⁠—”

“No.” Jenna caught the door before Cora could push past it.

Her daughter’s determined face came up white in the dome light.

Cora would go herself, Jenna realized. That girl would run straight back into the smoke for Freya the second Jenna’s back was turned.

“I’ll get Freya.” Jenna eased her back into the seat and clicked the belt across her. “You stay with Grandma. All three of you. I mean it.”

Ruby was already behind the wheel. “Jenna⁠—”

“Thirty seconds.” She was moving before she finished. “She won’t have gone far.”

She jogged back across the front yard.

As she did, the heat of the fire pressed the right side of her face, and smoke drifted gray through the headlight beams. At the tree line, the men were dark shapes against the orange, and the roar ate every other sound.

“Freya!” She rounded the corner of the house into the side yard, into the deep black between the garage and the porch where the headlights didn’t reach. “Freya, come!”

A low growl answered her.

Jenna went still.

Every nerve flared at once, and she turned.

A figure stood between her and the corner she’d come around.

A man had picked the one black gap on the whole property, the one place no one would look while the fire pulled every face toward the trees.

He’d been waiting.

For her.

And he was holding a gun.

Jenna opened her mouth to scream.

CHAPTER 44

The man was on Jenna before the sound could leave her lips. A gloved hand sealed over her mouth. An arm banded across her like iron, and the scream died against his palm.

She didn’t freeze. She’d promised herself she’d never freeze again.

Instead, she drove her heel into the man’s instep and threw her elbow back into his ribs.

The man grunted, and for half a second his grip loosened.

The distraction was enough to twist out of his grasp. Enough, maybe, to scream.

But the kids . . . they were forty feet away in the car.

If she screamed, Luke would come. He’d run toward a dangerous man holding a gun. If things turned violent, the children might see everything. And this man . . . he might fire at Luke.

Jenna couldn’t let that happen.