Page 43 of Cash

“I’m gonna hang up now, sweetheart, but I’ll see you soon.”

“Okay, Cash.”

A twinge of something I couldn’t place banded around my chest.

“Okay, Cara, be there soon,” I repeated.

I stabbed the screen to disconnect the call and that band tightened.

“Stay left,” Jonas instructed.

I followed his directions and parked where he pointed.

I grabbed my phone but didn’t bother with the fob.

Jonas guided us around the side of the school—a long building to the right, a chain link fence to our left. A dense woods was directly on the other side of that. Finally, Jonas stopped jogging and jerked his head toward the trees.

“Her backyard is through there.”

I made short work of the fence that was meant to keep small children contained, not grown men out. Jonas followed with the same ease with his phone to his ear.

“We’re coming in the back now.” I heard him report.

Thankfully, we only had the underbrush and thistles a couple of hundred feet before the wooden area opened up to a neatly kept backyard.

My gut clenched at the sight of a swing set, complete with a mini climbing board and rope platform. As hard as I tried to visualize Lore sitting on one of the chairs on the back patio keeping watch as a little girl played on the swings, I couldn’t call up the picture.

Nothing made sense.

Lore didn’t want children.

How in the hell did she come to be in care of a child?

One that she would hide away in a secret room and give her a phone with my number programmed into it with instructions to call me if something happened to her.

Thankfully, Jonas had taken point, or I would’ve just walked up to the house without bothering to make sure we were clear for entry.

What the hell was wrong with me?

Cash is King, in a sweet, scared voice was seriously fucking with my head.

“Easton said there’s no sign anyone’s in the living room, but from what he can see the place has been tossed,” Jonas whispered as he made short work of the side door’s lock.

“That was too easy,” I pointed out.

Lore wouldn’t have cheap locks on her exterior door.

I pulled my Glock out of my concealed holster. The familiar weight that normally settled something in me, that over the years I’d refused to give precious headspace as to why a weapon in my hand made me comfortable, did nothing to calm my heart.

“Dude, have you forgotten who she is?” Jonas muttered, while sending a text to Easton. “I’m shocked she has locks on her door at all. An intruder would be an excuse to shoot someone.”

He had a point.

But there was a child in the house she obviously cared about. I would think that would quell her thirst for blood.

Apparently not.

Jonas pocketed his phone, stepped to the side, and dipped his chin.