Page 46 of Oddly Fine

With a pleased smile, she patted his arm as she walked by. “Good boy.”

With that settled, Donna departed, heading towards the basement. Beckett sighed and leaned forward to bang his head on the tabletop.

“Shoot me now,” he begged his partner, words partially muffled by the tabletop. “Please just—”

“You didn’t kill her,” Hayes pointed out, as if that made everything alright in the end.

“I held her at knifepoint,” he argued.

“Yes, but you thought she was—” he paused. “Who did you think she was?”

Beckett whined and then looked up at Hayes. “It was dark—really dark, and she’s—” he paused to find the right words. “Built like Riley. I thought she was breaking in! I didn’t really question it further than that!”

Hayes didn’t bother holding back his laughter. Gently, he ran a hand over Beckett’s head, carding his fingers through his hair.

“You were protecting the children,” Hayes replied sympathetically.

Beckett wasn’t convinced his actions were justified—not even a little—as he thumped his forehead against the table again.

“Come on,” Hayes said with a snort. “Time for bed.”

“You’re still wearing make-up,” Beckett reminded him cheerfully.

Hayes shot him the finger over his shoulder as he detoured to the hall bathroom in search of soap and water.

At times, Beckett could be a fucking moron. He’d actually believed that there was a simple plan of action in place. Meet grandma—threaten her at knifepoint—go back to bed, wake up, fix pancakes, the end. Done and dusted. But of course, life, when Beckett Thérault was involved, was never quite that simple.

He’d been sleeping—somewhat—deeply, when something nudged him to consciousness. Beckett, who’d been stateside nearly ten years now, was getting better about controlling his war zone lethal reactions when startled awake by something other than his fucking alarm. So, fortunately, he successfully restrained the urge to deck the owner of the finger poking him in the cheek, but it was a close fucking call as he looked up to see Lilac hovering next to the couch.

“There’s a monster under my bed,” she said quietly.

Beckett took a few seconds to process this, struggling to calm his heartrate while still dealing with the instinctive and powerful urge to punch whoever had gotten the drop on him, as he sat up and rubbed his cheeks briskly.

“What?” he whispered, since Hayes still sleeping a few feet away.

“Under my bed,” she repeated, quite seriously. “There’s something under my bed.”

Maybe it was the fact that she didn’t say monster, or the fact that she looked like a politician taking a solemn oath of office, that made Beckett believe her. Reaching over, he nudged his partner. He might have been able to handle this situation on his own, but he preferred to have some backup.

“Going upstairs to do a monster check,” he told a still half-asleep Hayes. His boyfriend blinked slowly and stared blankly at him, then closed his eyes to go back to sleep, clearly unconcerned. Beckett didn’t blame him; he would have done the same thing.

Holding Lilac’s hand firmly in his, he lead her silently up the stairs. When he got to her bedroom door, he was startled to full wakefulness by the sounds of industrious scratching on the floorboards of her room.

“Do you hear that?” Lilac whispered as she hid behind his leg.

“Yes—” he said, scanning the room as he tried to identify the source of the noise. Scratching. Loud and frantic. Like a mouse on steroids. Across the room, Lilac’s curtains moved gently from the wind coming in through an open window, but he saw nothing to explain the noises.

“Can you wait for me in the hallway?” he asked her, reaching for the brass knuckle switchblade in his side pocket for the second time that night.

Lilac gave a firm nod as she stepped away and pressed herself against the wall outside her door.

“If I scream or yell, run straight to Hayes, alright?” he told her, as the scratching noises got louder.

She gave a sharp nod, but her bottom lip quivered. “What about Nathan and Jameson?” she asked, clearly worried.

“He’ll look after them,” Beckett assured her with a wink.

She looked doubtful but nodded anyway.