Walk Through Fire (Chaos #4)(166)

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 f*ck 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.”

“Quiet!”

His words were a roar and he saw his baby jump in fear.

He f*cking hated that.

But he and his girls had just gotten back inside from going out front, where Zadie told him two men had Millie.

When he finally sprinted to her front drive, a neighbor was standing in their yard looking down the road. Catching sight of High and his girls, that neighbor yelled that he’d seen someone shove Millie, who appeared unconscious, into an SUV.

Then he’d asked, “You want me to call the police?”