“The kids are really quiet,” she whispers, lifting her head, tilting it to the side in that adorable way of hers when she’s in thought.
Or maybe she’s listening for sounds? In any case, it’s cute as hell.
Hot, too.
Before my mind goes down that path again, she straightens. “I’d better go check on them.”
“Wait.”
“It’s what you pay me for.” She winks at me, but I frown.
“Fuck that. You’re my girl first.”
She smiles, a bright, open smile that has me grinning, too. “Then let’s go check on them together.”
So we do that, my arm around her, her arm around my hips—after I get rid of the condom and stuff my hard dick back into my sweats—and go up the stairs to see what the brats are up to.
Cold shower, Matt. Cold shower. The only way to get through the rest of the day with the sounds Octavia made and the memory of her pussy around my dick playing on a loop in my brain. Walking around with a boner like this will be a challenge.
But oh so fucking worth it.
The door to the kids’ bedroom is open. It’s so quiet.
So damn quiet my hackles rise, and my muscles tense. “Mary! Cole!” Letting go of Octavia, I stride right into their room and turn in a circle. Empty. “Where are they?”
Octavia peeks inside. “Maybe they’re hiding.”
Awesome. Now is not a good time for hide and seek, and the bad feeling makes me feel sick. “Cole! Mary! Come out now, Octavia is here.”
No sound.
No reply.
“I’ll check around,” she says, moving away from the door, the tension in her voice telling me I’m not the only one worried. “Can’t see them in your room. Or the bathroom.”
Fuck. I follow her, opening my closet, checking under the bed, behind the door. Jog into the bathroom, look around, in case she missed two kids hiding behind the shower curtain.
“Is there an attic?” she asks.
I shake my head. “This is it.”
“Okay. Why don’t you check downstairs while I look some more? I bet they’re playing some new game.”
But neither of us believes that. I fly down the stairs without another word and run through the rooms, calling out their names, checking any hiding place I can think of.
Fucking hell. My kids. They’re not in the house.
Since when?
Where are they?
I can’t breathe. My lungs do that no-breathing thing, and I brace a hand on the wall of the kitchen where moments ago I was fucking Octavia while my kids were taken.
Blackness seeps into my vision, and I slam my other hand on the wall, too, struggling to draw oxygen.
Not now, dammit. My kids need me. Fuck this shit.
I slam my fist into the wall again, and again, until the pain radiating up my arm clears some of the black haze and lets my lungs expand again.
Staggering out of the house, I check the garden, just in case, but as expected, nobody is there.
I go back in, get my phone and call the police.
What I feared most has just happened, and I’m numb, not feeling much of anything. My kids were kidnapped by a psycho who wants to get back at me for something I hadn’t known about until now, and I feel nothing.
Too much pain, fear, anger, sadness, tugging at me from every direction, and the ice spilling in my veins is the only defense I have, the only way to keep going.
I keep looking. Keep calling out their names. I knock on the neighbors’ doors, ask if they’ve seen them. Ask to look into their backyards. Ask to help me look.
At some point, as I lurch down the street, yelling, my voice already hoarse, I find Octavia walking beside me.
And we look together.
Later, I find John and a bunch of other cops, both from the police station and the sheriff’s department, milling outside my house. John is asking me questions, but it’s all an annoying insect buzz in my ears, and I ignore them.
My nightmares are coming true.
Four police cars are parked outside my house, lights flashing. It’s surreal. It’s déjà vu, from when Cole followed that kitten, and we couldn’t find him.
Had it been a kitten? Is someone playing with my mind? My thoughts are made of dark glass right now, and there are fissures, fucking cracks going right through.
If this doesn’t break me, I don’t know what will.
“You didn’t take me seriously,” I tell John when I find him in front of me again. “What will it take for you to do something? Fuck you all.”
If he replies something, I don’t sit around to hear, instead walking away to keep searching.
Going crazy. Out of my mind.
I’d probably be already down the rabbit hole if not for Octavia. She takes my hand, and she’s talking to me. I don’t know what she’s saying, but the sound of her voice keeps me from tumbling headfirst into the dark pit.
She keeps me grounded, keeps me here, even when all I wanna do is sink and shut the world out. Hide, like I did when Emma died.
“We’ll find them,” she says, and that’s all I hear.
We will. No other option.
Blood of my heart. Part of my soul.
If I lose them, too, I don’t think there’s a way back for me.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Octavia
I’m walking around in a daze, my heart heavy as a rock in my chest. Matt looks like he’s sleepwalking, caught in a nightmare, his gaze bleak and empty, his lips white.
He looks like a man about to drop off the face of a cliff, and I can’t imagine what he’s feeling right now. I’m so scared, and I’ve only known his kids for a couple of weeks.
They are his kids, for God’s sake. He’s already lost his wife, and now this.
I’m scared for them, and I’m scared for him. I hold his hand and fight the urge to trace the scar inside his wrist, the scar that says he already almost lost the battle against his demons once.
Behind the beard and the tousled, overlong hair, despite the broad shoulders and powerful body, there’s a guy who has been through a lot, who has found love and lost it, who is at the end of his tether and teetering.
I hope he’ll let me catch him if he starts to slip, before he falls all the way.
I hope we’ll find the kids, that they’re okay, before I lose both them and him forever.
Shivering despite the warm morning, I tug Matt back toward the house where the cops seem to be having an impromptu meeting, heads bent together.
“What’s going on?” I call out. “John?”
He gestures for us to approach and we start to run.
“What happened?” Matt calls, his voice a rasp, and I think he’ll wrench his hand away from mine, but he only tightens his grip, hauling me along. “Found anything? Talk to me.”
“One of your neighbors says he saw a guy with two children pass by earlier. A Mrs. Garcia. She says she knows you. She always greets you when she walks her dog past your house in the mornings.”
Matt’s mouth curls into a snarl. He reaches out and grabs the front of John’s shirt, twisting his hand in the fabric. “Where are they, dammit? Where are my kids?”
“It’s okay.” John nods at the other cops whose expressions have darkened and who seem about to grab Matt and throw him behind bars until he cools down.