Page 103 of Her Defiant Warrior

“Mateo, you should have come. We’re in overtime. Ryker owes me money.” Gideon was laughing.

“I’m at your place, and Lucy is acting strange.”

“What the hell do you mean, strange?” Gideon’s voice was instantly sharp. “Describe it to me. It’s important.”

“Putt putt got rained out. The women and kids got here before I did. When they got here, Lucy was barking up a storm and scratching at the sliding glass door. She’s even clawed your leather sofa. When Bonnie let her out, she didn’t take a dump. Bonnie called her back in, and she was still barking. Bonnie said it was tough, but she managed to wrangle her into the mudroom.”

“Fuck! She’s on alert. Shit, man, I need to be there.”

“What would she be on alert for?” Mateo started counting how many kids he’d seen in the TV room, the game room, the kitchen, and the dining room.

Fuck.

Too fucking many.

“I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all. I left her inside. She must have seen someone fucking with the backyard. I want everybody out of the house. I know I’m over-the-top right now, but these are kids, Mateo. Get them the fuck out of there. Dammit, I need to be there!”

Mateo thought of Lachlan, Amber, and Nolan’s baby girl. “That makes two of us who are losing their shit. I’ll get them out of here.”

Gideon had disconnected and Mateo slid his phone in his back pocket as his hand hit the door knob of the mud room.

“Mr. Mateo, are you getting Lucy out of time out? I want to play with her.” Mateo looked behind him and saw Lachlan had followed him and winced. Pray God he had heard nothing that scared him.

“Where’s your mom?”

“She’s making everybody sing, since you weren’t there.”

Mateo let go of the doorknob. “Well, I’m headed there now.” He didn’t go as fast as he would have liked, because he wanted Lachlan to keep up. Damn, he wished he knew the headcount of all the kids here at Gideon’s house. As soon as he stepped into the room, Bonnie looked up at him and quit singing.

“Hey kids. Now that you know the song, why don’t you sing it on your own? Mr. Mateo would love to hear you sing.”

She got up off the couch and rushed over to him. “Lachlan, go back to the couch.”

The kid didn’t whine, he just did what she said. It must have been her tone of voice. “What’s wrong, Mateo?”

“Gideon wants us to get everyone out of the house. I want you out and down the drive to the street. Lucy doesn’t bark that way unless something is wrong. Since she was clawing at the door to the yard, he thinks she saw somebody doing something, and she was trying to alert you.”

Bonnie’s face paled, but she nodded her head. “I’ll get everybody outside,” she promised.

“Do you know the headcount?”

“Yeah. Besides Lachlan and Amber, we have eleven little girls, six boys, Amy, Maggie, and her two-year-old daughter, then there is Fern Ericson, she’s one of the boys’ mothers. Laura’s dad is due to pick her up soon. I’ll ask Fern what Laura’s dad’s ETA is. Laura and one boy went upstairs to go look out a window to wait for him to show up.”

“You tag all the women and round up the kids and load them into the cars and go down the drive until you hit the street. Wait for me there.”

She stared up into Mateo’s face for a brief moment. She must have seen something, God knew what, but she nodded. “Time for coats?”

Mateo shook his head.

“Got it.”

She turned back to the room full of children.

“Hey kids, we’ve got another game we’re going to play. You know the grown-ups are going to come here with pizza, right?”

“Yay!” one girl yelled out with a fist pump.

“Well, we’re going to go outside right now, and go hide in our cars so we can make them think we’re gone. Won’t that be funny?”