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Kate held Griffin’s face in her hands. Declan’s eyes stared back at her. “Stay with Gran. Stay quiet and do everything she says. Do you understand?” He nodded and she bent to kiss him. “I love you buddy. Don’t be afraid. Everything’s going to be okay. I’m going to get Aunt Beth, and Daddy will be heresoon.”
She stepped out of the closet and shut the door, not trusting herself to say more, not trusting herself to leave them if she didn’t gonow.
Turning away was the hardest thing she’d ever done. She did it anyway, hurrying for Beth’sroom.
* * *
Declan expectedthe house to show signs of forced entry, but whoever had breached the gate had been more careful here. It looked like it always did, a hulking mass of glass and painted cedar, looming through the storm that bent trees almost in half, the wind a living thing that roared from the jaws of thesea.
The under-cabinet lights that stayed on in the kitchen barely registered through the drivingrain.
“At the front,” Declan said, glad they’d brought the comms system even though they hadn’t thought they’d need it atFerguson’s.
They’d been right, but they needed itnow.
“Just hit the terrace,” Ronan said through Declan’s earpiece. “One of the guards is here.Dead.”
Declan didn’t have time to think about that, about what it meant for Kate and Griff, for Beth and Kate’smom.
Fucking Beth. It wasn’t productive to be angry but he couldn’t help it. Ferguson’s men were here because Beth was here, because she could tie him toNeil.
He couldn’t afford to think about that now. He opened the front door and stepped into the foyer, his eyes immediately dropping to the dead man on the floor at the side of thestaircase.
The man’s booted leg was flung out in front of the bottom tread. Declan stepped over it and started up the stairs. Ronan and Nick would have to clear the firstfloor.
Declan was getting hisfamily.
* * *
Adrenaline floodedKate’s body as she woke up Beth. “Someone’s in the house. We have tohide.”
The man who’d been coming up the stairs was in the hall. She could hear the slow movement of his footsteps as he traversed the wood floors, and relief flooded her body when the footsteps continued past the masterbedroom.
He wasn’t here for Griffin, for Kate’smother.
Notyet.
Kate had locked the door when she’d entered Beth’s bedroom, but it was flimsy, nothing more than a privacy lock, and there was no time to move the dresser in front of thedoor.
Better to stayquiet.
Hide.
Beth’s eyes were wild and Kate pulled her to her feet. “Hurryup.”
Beth stumbled after Kate, moving toward the closet. It was too obvious a hiding place, but they were out ofoptions.
Please hurry,Declan.
She knew he was coming. She just hoped it would be intime.
They were almost to the closet when the door flew open with a crash. The man standing in its frame was nothing more than a shadow as he stepped over the threshold, raised his gun, and pointed it atBeth.
Kate didn’t even think before stepping in front of hersister.
The gun in the man’s hand exploded in a burst of fire as more gunfire sounded from somewhere else in the house. Kate had time to register with relief that it was coming from the firstfloor.
Not her mother’sroom.
