Perhaps she’d gone out back with her dad and sister.
It was the next morning. The workmen hadn’t come early. By the time they arrived, we were all up but Logan had gotten up before everyone and he’d gone out to get LaMar’s donuts.
So we were all sugared up too.
When the men arrived, Logan went out back to go over the project with them and oversee the work.
Cleo, daddy’s girl, had gone with him.
Zadie, possibly sugar crashing on the couch in front of some program, probably not wanting to move because Poem had fallen asleep curled into the curve of her little body, had elected to stay in the house with me.
I didn’t suspect she wanted to be with me but instead with Poem as her giving me a shot meant her not avoiding the kittens anymore.
I also suspected that even though this weekend was going great, she didn’t need me up in her face all the time, continuing to try to win her.
She needed to get to a normal with me, her dad, her sister in our house.
So I’d decided to give her some alone time and left her and Poem to hit the shower and get ready to face the day.
It was totally a half-hair-air-dried day. We didn’t have the girls much longer so even if I needed to give them normal, I also wasn’t real fired up they’d be gone the next day. It was awesome to have them around because they were awesome (even Zadie), they filled up the house, and made it feel homey and Logan loved having his girls with him. So I wanted more of all that before it went away, which meant I wasn’t wasting time spending eons on my hair.
I still had to roll out the top.
However, between blasts of the hair dryer to the roller brush, I’d heard the doorbell ring. So I’d quit my preparations to find out who was at the door (with Chaos back in my life, it could be anyone—I was still thinking it was Dot, Alan, and the kids, just so they could checking up on me knowing the girls were there for their first weekend).
When I’d walked by the front door, no one was in the window.
And now Zadie wasn’t answering.
I hit the living room, going to the back of the couch and looking over it.
Poem, obviously, had woken up and decided to play with her brother.
Zadie also had clearly decided to do something else because she wasn’t on the couch.
“Zadie?” I called again, looking toward the kitchen to look out the window of the back door even though I couldn’t see all the way to the end of my property from there.
She didn’t answer.
She must have gone out to check on progress with her dad and sister.
My body moved that way but, for some reason, my head turned the other.
When it did and I saw what I saw through the sheers, I froze, as did all the blood in my veins.
Then, my feet bare, I ran, right through the living room to the hall, the foyer, and out the front door.
Once out the door, I kept running, straight to the two good-looking, well-dressed Hispanic men who were talking to Zadie on the sidewalk.
Benito Valenzuela’s henchmen. The one that held a gun to me and one of the men who stood behind him when he sat in my cuddle chair.
“Zadie!” I snapped.
She turned to me as the men’s eyes came to me.
“Daddy’s friends are here,” she informed me. “I told them he was out back.”
“Get in the house,” I ordered, making it to her and pushing in with my body, at the same time pushing her back and putting myself between her and the men.
“Lookin’ for you,” one of the men said. “Thought we found better. Now we got both.”
Oh God.
I took a step back, feeling Zadie’s body forced to move back with me.
I kept my eyes to the men as I demanded, “Go, Zadie. Run and get your father.”
One of the men made a move toward me. “Now, hang on—”
I pushed back farther even as I whirled and bent to Logan’s girl. “Go! Now! Run and get your father!”
“They’re Daddy’s friends,” she retorted, not bratty, looking confused. “They told me—”
I got in her face.
“Run!” I shrieked.
When I did, her body jerked perhaps due to my tone but also because one man wrapped his fingers around my elbow and yanked me away from her as the other one made his move...?toward Zadie.
“Go!” I screeched, swinging my body still in the other’s hold toward the guy who was moving to Zadie.
She turned and ran.
The other man started to run after her.
I wrenched free and threw myself at him. I managed to take him off trajectory of Zadie, scuttling him to the side.
He wrapped his arms around me and tossed me at the other guy with such force, I flew at him, unable to stop myself.
Far away, I could hear the noises of the trucks working out back.
Still struggling against my captor, I screamed, “Logan!”
“We’ll take her,” the man holding me stated.
The guy I feared would go after Zadie turned to him. “Benito said—”
“We got her. We’ll take her,” the guy I was fighting declared.
“Logan!” I shrieked.
“Shut her the fuck up,” the one coming back our way ordered.
A hand came over my mouth.
I tried to bite it but he felt my intention and moved it away and then right back even as he pulled me toward the curb.
“Let me go!” I demanded, the words muffled. I was swinging my body viciously this way and that, hoping for the desired result.
“Benito told us—”
“To force it,” the guy with me finished for him. “We’re forcin’ it.”
The other guy looked at us a beat before he said, “?’Spose she’ll work.”
Really?
Broad daylight?
Even if Logan couldn’t hear me over the trucks out back, where were my neighbors?
“Move your hand, muchacho,” the guy advancing ordered.
The hand was moved.
I sucked in air in order to scream.
I didn’t get it out when his arm shot back and slammed forward, connecting with my temple, and I was out cold.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Like Any Good Old Lady Should
High
“DADDY, THEY SAID you were friends.”
“Quiet, Zadie.”
“But they said they knew you.”