Peter shook his head. “I’m not leaving you here without protection.” He reached out to pull something from her hair—yup, it was a piece of mulch from his front flower bed.
Point taken. She turned back to Tiffany. “Come with us. It scares me that they knew this address. That they knew you and Carter are connected to me, and that I’m connected to Peter and…We’re going to have round-the-clock guards back at my house—Navy SEALs. So please, stay with us, at least until Carter gets home.”
Tiffany looked at her car, and then back at Shayla, her brown eyes narrowing. “Navy SEALs?”
Shay nodded. And Tiff went inside to pack a bag.
Tevin was friendly despite their weird introduction, but Shay’s youngest son, Frank, was not happy at the news that, over the course of just a few days, his mother had started dating Pete.
“So, Pete, your daughter’s a hot mess,” the kid said as Pete unlocked the trunk of Shay’s car, so the two boys could load in their backpacks.
Shay was standing a few yards away, still waiting for Tiffany to come out of the house and exchanging texts with Izzy. He’d sent a couple of really awful photos of Daryl Middleton—his face bruised and stitched and swollen as he lay, still unconscious, in that hospital bed. She’d already emailed them to Maddie, and gotten Lindsey to text them, too, in hopes that the girl would turn her phone back on sooner rather than later.
“Well, I think it’s fair to be a mess when your mother dies in a car accident,” Pete told Frank.
“Yeah, well, if my mom died, I sure as shit wouldn’t start selling drugs.”
“Language.” Tevin policed his little brother.
“We don’t know that Maddie’s the one selling the drugs,” Pete said evenly.
“Well,Iwouldn’t have a boyfriend or a girlfriend or even just a friend who sells drugs,” Frank insisted.
“You have no idea what you would or wouldn’t do if Mom died,” Tevin chastised his brother. “Don’t be so judgmental.”
“We don’t even know that it’s drugs that’s behind these threats,” Pete said. “We’re making an assumption.”
Frank veered into new hostile territory. “So when did you and Maddie’s mom get divorced?” he asked.
“We split when Maddie was a baby. Her mom and I weren’t married,” Pete said. “I asked, but…She didn’t want to marry me.”
“Why, because you’re, like, a serial killer?”
“Frank,” Tevin said. He rolled his eyes at Pete. “Sorry. Frankie’s in a douchey mood. He had a hot date with Dad’s flatscreen TV. Tiffany lets him watchGame of Thrones,and Mom doesn’t.”
Boom.
Fuck, was that a gunshot?
Peter sharply looked up and a truck—black, big—was at the end of the street, moving in their direction at much too fast a clip.
“Get down!” he shouted and the two boys, no doubt well trained by life in this sorry world of potential school shooters—immediately sheltered behind their mother’s car.
But Shay was still standing in the middle of the yard, her phone in her hands. She was caught up in her task and oblivious, and Pete ran toward her—it was possible he’d never moved faster in his entire life. He threw himself forward just as the vehicle went past, putting his body between her and whoever was in that truck, as he grabbed her and shielded her, and took her with him down to the ground.
Boom.
And this time, he heard it for what it was—an engine backfire. And as he turned to look, he saw that yeah, the truck that had passedwasbig and black, but it was far older, with sharper angles and an ancient, obviously shittier engine, than the truck he’d seen, and the truck Mrs. Quinn had described to the police.
“Oh, my God, Peter!” For the second time in just a few hours—the third time in two days—Shay’d been knocked off her feet.
This time, though, Pete hadn’t tried to do what he’d done on that sidewalk outside Daryl Middleton’s old apartment, and land between her and the ground. This time he’d landed on top of her, intentionally, to protect her from an active shooter.
She still hadn’t realized that the noises they’d heard were from a malfunctioning engine, and now she feared he’d been hit and wounded. Probably because he was lying there motionless, like a fool. She scrambled out from beneath him—it was possible he was more stunned than she was—checking for blood even as she called out to her sons. “Tevin, Frank, are you okay?”
“Yeah, we’re good, are you?” Tevin asked as Frank squeaked, “Mommy!”
“I’m okay, baby,” she called back.
