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His face softened and he smiled as he said, “Love you too, baby. Stay safe for us.”
“You too,” I looked to the others behind him, including Nico’s guys. “All of you stay safe, please,” I added.
They nodded and started disappearing into the trees. In seconds they were gone, with no sign they were ever there.
“Come on. Let’s wait in the car. It’s getting cold out here,” Tyler suggested as he opened the door of Hunt’s Range Rover and ushered me into the passenger seat. I wasn’t cold, the adrenaline surging through me keeping me warm, but I got in the car anyway. If I stayed out there I’d struggle to fight the urge to run after my guys and towards my daughter, and I knew it.
The minutes that ticked by as we sat in the car in silence felt like hours. Tyler had his cell in one hand and a hand gun in the other, only increasing my nerves as I sat fidgeting and trying to keep breathing. Everyone I loved was in danger as I sat there doing nothing, and it was killing me.
“It’s been too long!” I cried when it just got to be too much in my head.
“Maddie, breathe. It’s only been ten minutes. They had to get up there and scope it out. They’re fine,” Tyler assured me.
I looked out of the window again, even though I knew it was too dark to actually see anything out there, then growled in frustration because I couldn’t see anything.
“What if they’re all hurt and they can’t call us? What if Edward had some guys with him? He’s an attorney. He must know some bad guys,” I panicked.
“Bad guys?” Tyler laughed. “God, you’re cute! No wonder Nico fell for you.”
“I’m serious Tyler!” I snapped. “We should go up there, or at least call the cops!”
“We’re staying here, just like they told us to. They’re fine. They have faced much worse situations than this and come out of the other end,” he assured me.
Before I could argue further the sound of three shots echoed through the silence. My heart beat, which was already racing, beat even harder as I looked to Tyler with horror. Was that my guys? Had they been shot? Had Edward seen them coming and shot my daughter? me
“Oh God!” I cried, then I was throwing the car door open.
“MADDIE!” Tyler yelled, but I was already in the woods, running as hard and fast as my body would go to get through those trees and to the house. I had to get to them. I had to save my child and the guys I loved, and nothing was going to stop me!
CHAPTER 28
CAMERON
The first two houses we had circled had been empty, with no signs of anyone having been in them for a decade or more, but as we approached the third we saw a light move through the window – clearly a flashlight.
Now we were all circling the place, Nico, Kai, and me at the front, Parker, Hunter, and Linc at the back, and the others covering the windows at the side. There was no way this fucker was getting away from us. This ended here, that night. Edward Foster would not live to threaten Maddie or Willow ever again.
“We’ve got movement in the front again. He’s definitely in there,” Nico said through the comms.
“What are you thinking?” Parker asked.
“Surprise him. I doubt he has Willow in the room with him. He doesn’t have that much patience,” Hunter suggested.
“I agree. I have a flash bang. We’ll breach and take him down fast,” Nico ordered, and we all agreed. I just hoped the flashbang which would give off a bright flash of light, didn’t send me spiraling into a damned flash back, The guys didn’t need me losing my shit.
I had been working hard to get myself together since Maddie arrived. I saw my therapist every week and talked about all of the hard shit I had never wanted to rake over again. I took the meds he gave me, and they did seem to be working most of the time. My nightmares happened less often, and I hadn’t had a panic attack once, despite me leaving the house to go out several times. I was far from healed, and I had a lot more shit to overcome, including what happened to my brother, and the abuse I suffered as a kid, but I was on the right path now, and with Maddie and Willow in my life, I felt optimistic I could get there one day.
First we had to get Willow back though, because if anything happened to her, we would lose Maddie right along with her. Hell, I wasn’t sure there would be any coming back for any of us if that beautiful, clever little ray of light were taken from us by this no-good piece of shit.
Nico moved ahead of us. He was the biggest, and we knew one kick of the old wood door from him and we would be in. He had his gun in one hand, and the flashbang in the other.
“Three,” he started the countdown as we silently moved up the porch steps and approached the door. I had my M18 in hand, ready to take the first chance I got to end that motherfucker. “Two, one!” Nico gave the go signal as he kicked the door wide open, slamming his foot into the handle with huge force.
We looked away as the flashbang lit up the room momentarily, temporarily disabling anyone who was in there.
Edward Foster was relaxed back on an armchair that looked centuries old, his cell phone in hand and a gun on the rickety old table at his side, beside an open bottle of scotch.
The room around him was dimly lit with a camping lantern that sat on a sideboard to the side, and I scanned all around me quickly for any sign of Willow. We didn’t want her to witness what came next.
