I ducked into the bedroom quickly to get changed even though I couldn’t see any blood on the clothes I’d been wearing. Liam and Rowe took care of the clothes and the fire while I dressed Ripley in the snuggliest pajamas he had, then lay down with him on his bed. His fingers twisted in the lengths of my hair, seeking comfort. I curled my body around his little one and waited for his breathing to even out into the deeper pulls of sleep.
The scent of smoke from the fire drifted in the open window, and slowly my panic eased. In the darkness, a calm settled over me. One that told me I was exactly where I needed to be. And that this little boy needed me as much as I needed him.
In the whisper of the breeze outside, I felt Rory’s blessing. I felt her handing over the reins, and her soft smile as she gifted me her child.
My child.
The one I would never have been able to birth but who I already loved like I had.
“I’ll look after him,” I whispered to the darkness. “I’ll take care of both of them.” It was a promise to the woman who had loved them first.
I would love them last.
I didn’t move until Rowe and Liam appeared in the doorway.
Liam squeezed my foot from the end of Ripley’s bed. “Hey, you need to get up.”
I retracted my arm from beneath Ripley’s head and pushed up off his mattress. Liam and Rowe flanked my sides, and the three of us walked into the darkened living room together.
Through the windows that overlooked the clearing, red and blue lights flashed silently.
The yard was full of police, more cars than I’d ever seen before. Officers swarmed about everywhere.
Two of them mounted the porch steps, their boots heavy on the brittle wood we’d talked about replacing. Their knock was loud and sharp.
None of us moved.
There was nowhere to go.
Nothing left to do.
Standing between them, I picked up Rowe’s and Liam’s hands and held them tight.
“It’s open,” Rowe said in a voice so quiet I was almost sure the officers wouldn’t hear it.
But they did. The door opened hard and fast, and then they were standing in front of us. I narrowed my eyes when I recognized Johnson.
There was pure, sick amusement in his. “Mae Donovan, Liam Banks, and Rowe Pritchard. You’re under arrest for aiding and abetting a known criminal…”
His voice faded out as blood rushed in my ears, drowning everything else.
They’d caught him then. He hadn’t made it out. Heath was either lying dead somewhere, with a police bullet in his chest, or he’d meet the same fate via lethal injection.
And now we’d go down, too.
Johnson grabbed me, his fingers biting around my upper arms. But the pain shocked me into action. I struggled with him, jerking my arm, trying to fight him off. “No! Stop! Our son is here!”
Rowe stopped and stared at me, but then Johnson’s partner was slapping cuffs on his wrists. The cold metal encircled my own, too tight, instantly cutting into the skin.
“Don’t say anything,” Liam directed, cuffs on his own wrists. “Not one word.”
“My son!” Rowe roared. “There’s no one else here. We can’t just leave him!”
“An officer will stay with him until Child Protective Services arrives to take him into foster care.”
“Foster care!” Rowe turned panicked eyes on me.
I shook my head frantically, watching the entire thing spiral out of control. “No. Johnson, please. You knew my sister. Please. She wouldn’t have wanted this. Let me make a call. I’ll find someone to take him. Don’t put him in the system.”
His eyes were cold. “Yes, I knew her. What a disgrace you are to her name. You’re kidding yourself if you think she would have wanted you whoring around with the man convicted of killing her.” He spat the words in my face. “You people disgust me.”
I recoiled but there was little I could do to wipe the spit from my face with my hands cuffed behind my back.
“Please,” I begged the other officer. “He’s only four.”
He looked bored by the entire thing. “You’ll get your one phone call at the station.”
“No!” Rowe yelled again. “You can’t!”
Johnson shoved him into the wall of the cabin. “You want to keep going? I’ll add resisting arrest to your list of charges. Now fucking move.”
There wasn’t anything we could do. Johnson and his partner shoved us out the door. I tripped on the bottom step and fell face-first into the ground. Without my hands to break my fall, the unforgiving dirt and grass was like hitting stone. Blood dripped from my lips, and I was unceremoniously yanked up by the shoulders and shoved into a police car.
Separated from the other two.
Around my tears, I made the mistake of looking back at the house. Ripley was held back in the doorway by a uniformed officer.
Even with the windows rolled up, all I could hear was Ripley’s screams of terror as he called for me with a single word.
“Mommy!”
I’d only seen the inside of Providence Police Station once before, when I’d taken my first graders on a field trip. But we’d been escorted straight into an education room, well away from the main entrance, where my sister and Boston had given a talk about stranger danger and personal safety.
I’d sat at the back of the room grinning at the two of them, proud as heck of my sister. I’d never visited her at work, because I was busy working, too, and most of the time she was out on patrol anyway. She’d never liked sitting behind a desk, so there’d been no reason for me to come here other than that one day.
She’d hate that I was here now in handcuffs, sitting on a hard plastic chair in a holding cell, with red marks around my wrists from the cuffs I’d had on.
I shared my cell with another woman who snored loudly from a bench on the other side. I suspected she was actually passed out, because she hadn’t even flinched when Johnson had thrown open the door and pushed me inside.
Anxious nerves rioted around my stomach, but none of them were for me. They had a combination of names printed across their fluttery wings. I battled worries for all of my guys, but Heath’s and Ripley’s were the ones that took up the most space.
I couldn’t bear the thought of Ripley scared and alone.
Couldn’t even think about Heath lying dead in Liam’s car or on the side of the road. How far had he gotten? Had he tried to run, or had he surrendered quietly? Was he alive or dead?