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"He's trying to get in!" was all she could think to say. "Oh God, Chase, hurry! He's going to kill me."
"Willow? What the hell is going on?"
But Willow was too busy screaming again because a big enough hole had been cut in the door to allow a long menacing arm to reach in and grab a handful of her hair.
~ * ~
Camped in front of his television, watching sports and guzzling a beer, Raith told himself this was the life. No woman around to nag him about putting pants on. No one to interrupt the game or make him change the channel. And no one to call him a big, conceited pig.
He took another drink and sighed. And no one to strip naked and feast upon.
Didn't matter, he told himself. The woman was pregnant with his baby, he'd have to see her again, even if it was just to take her to court to get a little daddy time. And if that's what he had to do to get her attention, then that's what he'd do.
He'd called her twice, but she hadn't answered the phone either time. He knew she'd been home because he'd been sitting in his truck down the block watching her place. Damn it. He was really starting to lose it. All he knew was DeVane couldn't avoid him forever. They would have their talk and get this resolved if it was the last thing he did.
His cell phone rang.
There, he thought. That was probably her right now, telling him she was ready to discuss their situation in a calm, rational manner.
Not.
Pigs would fly before DeVane initiated contact.
"Malloy," he answered after checking the caller ID and seeing Deputy Hinton's name flash across the screen.
"Man, Malloy, you were right about that lawyer lady," Hinton said, blowing out an unsteady breath.
Raith sat up, spilling beer in his lap. "Right about what?"
"Someone just tried to kill her. I mean, really kill her."
Raith stood so fast he nearly passed out. His vision went black and the world spun around him. Tucking the phone in his ear, he demanded to know what happened even as he jerked on a pair of jeans.
"She's okay though?" he insisted.
"Pretty shaken, but she's fine. She locked herself in her bathroom and called her brother. Guy was still there when DeVane arrived."
"Where's the perp now?" Raith asked as he sprinted out the door and hopped into his truck. "Has he already been brought in or is he still at the scene?"
"He got away. Jumped out a window. Dispatch put an APB out on him."
Raith cursed. "I'll be right there," he muttered and hung up.
He pulled into Willow's drive behind Chase's Bentley within five minutes.
Merely seeing the two police cruisers with their lights flashing made his stomach turn over. When he stepped from his truck, he leaned against it a moment until his equilibrium returned. Then he blew out a breath and straightened. Someone had tried to kill his woman, and he'd been sitting on his fat ass at home, watching TV. What was worse, this wasn't the first time and still he'd been sitting at home, as if there was no reason to worry.
For a horrible moment, he thought he might puke. Willow had almost died, and it was his fault. He should've listened to her the first time, searched for her intruder until he found the guy and pulled his tongue out through his asshole.
Roger Purcell, a deputy Raith had worked with for ten years, stepped onto the front porch and paused when he saw Malloy approaching.
"What're you doing here?" he asked, crinkling his brow. "I thought you were off tonight."
"Hinton called me," Raith answered. He motioned toward the house, barely keeping it together. What he really wanted to do was bulldoze his way inside and see Willow. But he still felt a little too unsteady. "What do we have?"
Purcell blew out a breath and shook his head. "Someone was pretty determined to take out our lovely lawyer lady. I've never seen such madness."
As Purcell described the hack marks left in Willow's bathroom door and gave a brief review of the details, Raith followed him around to the other side of the house where they could take blood samples from the broken window their subject had jumped through to escape.
