Ahh, shit.
A few hours later, Izzy and I are staring at the mess we’ve made in the kitchen. It was homemade pizza night, and when I explained to the girls that all the ingredients needed to go on their pizza, what they heard was to put the ingredients anywhere but on the pizza. On the bright side, they absolutely loved it. There might be a few greasy fingerprints smeared across the couch, but Knight doesn’t need to know about that, and when he inevitably finds it, I’m blaming Hunter.
“You might as well make yourself useful,” Izzy tells Hunter as we stare down the kitchen like a bunch of newborn kittens that have just been handed to a bunch of toddlers. It’s terrifying, but if we all get in and work together, we could have it done by next Christmas.
Rolling up my sleeves, I get to work, and as Izzy tells me all about her nonexistent relationships with Ace and Diesel, we listen to the heartwarming sounds of Haylee and Taliah jumping around in their bed. They’re supposed to be getting into their pajamas, but from the sound of it, there is absolutely no getting dressed happening in that room.
Our movie night is up next on the agenda, and wanting to play it smart, the plan is to sweet-talk Hunter into dragging the mattress from the spare room into the living room and set it up in front of the TV. That way, when the girls get tired halfway through the movie, they can simply pass out without us having to worry about carrying them to bed and accidentally waking them in the process.
With the three of us putting the kitchen back together, we get it cleaned up in no time, and after putting the final plate back inside the cabinet, I head for the hallway. “Come on, Hunter,” I say, smirking to myself, knowing damn well that if I reallyput my mind to it, I could probably do this myself, but why go through that kind of stress when I have a perfectly capable man to boss around instead? “You’ve got a mattress to move.”
Hunter sighs and follows me down the hallway, and as I approach the very last room on the right side and push the door wider, I find it completely empty, not a sound coming from the room.
A grin pulls at my lips. “Girls?” I say, my gaze darting around the room, trying to figure out where they’re hiding as I tiptoe over to the small closet, more than ready to dominate hide-and-seek. I yank the closet door open, my eyes widening as I call out, “Gotcha.” Only, there’s no one to get.
The closet is empty.
“Girls?” I call, quickly checking under the bed before glancing back at Hunter in the doorway. “They weren’t out there, were they?”
He shakes his head before crossing the hallway into Knight’s and my bedroom before quickly glancing inside. “Not here.”
I start making my way back up the hallway, stopping by the bathroom to glance in. “Haylee? Taliah? Where are you guys?” I get nothing, and panic begins pulsing through my veins. “Iz. Are the girls out there with you?”
“No,” she yells back from the kitchen. “Just me out here.”
“Fuck.”
My heart starts pounding, and I double back to the spare room. Where the hell could they have gone? Barely thirty seconds ago, I could hear them giggling to themselves down here, and now they’re just . . . gone.
I meet Hunter’s stare across the room as Izzy barrels down the hallway. “Where are they?” she asks, alarm thick in her tone, but I keep my stare locked on Hunter, knowing that every second of his training is flashing through his head. “Did they go out back?”
As if on cue, the three of us break into a sprint, racing up the hallway. Izzy checks the bedroom, calling out for them as I barrel through the rest of the house, checking the garage, the living room, and every fucking cabinet in the kitchen.
Hunter takes the perimeter of the house, scanning up and down the street as I yell for them so loud that the neighbors begin peeking through their blinds.
Barely a minute has passed before Hunter finishes his perimeter check, a grimness filling his eyes. He clenches his jaw, and the slight shake of his head makes me feel sick.
A hollowness blasts through my chest, and I drop to my knees, helplessness eating at me. “They’re gone,” I cry, my voice cracking with terror. “Someone’s taken them.”
38
KNIGHT
The early-evening breeze whips through the open window of my truck as I sail down the highway, grateful that tonight’s call wasn’t anything too excessive. I love my job just as much as any of the guys on my team, but there’s nothing I hate more than leaving for work while Harper is home. But that’s life, I guess. It comes with the territory, and she understands that just as much as I do with her job. Only difference is, now that she’s in charge, she can kiss her peaceful night shifts goodbye. Not that they were really offering her much peace anymore.
It stopped raining a little over an hour ago, but the downpour has left the roads soaked, and under the soft moonlight, there’s something so damn peaceful about it. It’s got to be my favorite thing about a storm—the aftermath.
An incoming call sounds through my truck’s Bluetooth system, and as I find Harper’s name across my screen, a smile kicks up the corner of my mouth. “Hey, doll,” I say, putting my windowup so I don’t have to strain to hear her over the breeze whipping in. “I’m on my way home, I should be—”
“They’re gone,” she howls, the terror in her tone not something I’ve ever heard from her before. “They’re gone. Someone’s taken them.”
“What? Doll. What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The girls,” she cries, her words almost impossible to decipher over the sound of her heaving sobs. “One second they were playing in the guest room, and the next . . . they’re gone, Knight. I . . . I don’t know what happened. I can’t find them. We’ve looked everywhere.”
“Fuck,” I mutter, stepping on the gas and flying down the highway, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. “How long have they been missing?”
“I . . . I don’t know. A few minutes at most.”
