“K-katie,” she stammers.
My entire body goes rigid. “Katie what?” I ask, looking around and seeing no one but us outside.
Tate tips her head back, staring up at me with tears swimming in her eyes. “She was here.”
My heart stutters in my chest, and all the air in my lungs vanishes. “She what?”
Tate pulls back a little, keeping her hands balled in my shirt. “I got here, and the door was cracked open and all the lights were on.”
A sudden sense of dread comes over me. “Is she here still?”
“No. Thumper took her.”
“What?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“She went bananas. When I walked in, she told me she was your wife and came after me with a knife.”
The amount of rage coursing through my system is enough to make me almost levitate off the ground. “She what?” I ask again, because I can’t believe what she’s telling me. “Are you hurt?”
Tate pulls up the sleeve of her sweatshirt, showing me a poorly bandaged wound that has blood seeping out. “Just a small nick.”
I grab her arm, inspecting the dressing. “A nick? That’s more than a nick, princess. Where’s Katie now? And how the hell does my brother fit into the night?”
“I don’t know. He just showed up out of nowhere and took the knife from her. She wasn’t happy about that and lunged at Thumper, and he laid her out. I don’t mean he knocked her down—I mean he knocked her clean out. He left with her slung over his shoulder and told me to clean my wound.”
This is a lot to process in a short amount of time. My bitch of an ex-wife was here, she attacked my girl, and could’ve very easily hurt the kids. Thank God they were at camp and not at the house when Katie decided she wanted back into our life.
“Thumper saved me. The night could’ve ended very differently.”
“Huh,” I mutter, surprised as hell.
“I know, right?
“We need to change that and clean it properly,” I tell her, still holding her arm.
“I scrubbed it with soap. It’s good.”
“Then you need a new dressing.”
“It’s fine,” she tells me again.
“No, princess. It’s not. You’re going to start dripping blood soon, and the girls will have questions. I’m going to dress it for you when we go inside.”
“Okay,” she breathes, collapsing against my chest again. “I was so scared, Wylder. What if the girls had been here when Katie did that?”
“I don’t even want to imagine it.”
“She’s fucking crazy. Like, totally whacked out of her mind.”
“Did Thumper say where he was taking her?”
“He said no cops and that he was taking her to the compound to see if their doc could put her on a psych hold to get evaluated.”
Katie’s lucky she’s in my brother’s hands and not mine. She deserves to be locked up and not just for a little while.
“He said it would be too traumatic for the girls if the cops got involved.”
“Fuck,” I hiss, hating that he is right.
