“Don’t think anyone is out there,” he said as he backed me toward the steps, a gun in one hand and the other outstretched toward the side as he shielded me.
“He was at the club. I…I felt him.”
“I know.” Cash’s voice seeped with regret. “We’ll get him.”
The roar of motorcycles echoed in the distance. Rolling like waves up the mountainside. An approaching army that bellowed in the night.
Cash took one more glance around before he grabbed me by the elbow and hurried me to the front door. Serrated breaths heaved from him as he thumbed into his phone and turned off the alarms, his attention continually darting behind him as he worked through the locks.
The second the door was open, he ushered me through and flew through the locks again, reengaging the alarm and punching in whatever code that caused the security screens to roll over the windows.
“Stay right here,” he growled as he began to move through the house, sweeping each room to ensure no one was there.
By the time the thunder of motorcycles roared up in front of the house, Cash appeared at the end of the hall.
Rage etched into every line on his face. The man written in mayhem and murder.
“Cash.”
At the sound of his name dropping from my mouth, he erased the space between us. His mouth crashed against mine. His kiss frantic and desperate, but desperate in a way it hadn’t been earlier.
This was fear and regret and that ultimate promise he had made.
“I won’t let anything happen to you. I will end this. I promise you.”
He jerked away when his phone rang.
“Yeah?” he answered. I couldn’t make out the garbled voice on the other end of the line, but I was sure it was one of the guys.
“Get everyone inside. Station six around the perimeter and the rest of us ride,” Cash told him.
He ended the call, then a big hand gripped me by the back of the neck and yanked me to him again.
His kiss hard and unrelenting. “Nothing, Daisy. Nothing will stand between me and you. Nothing between you and your happiness. Nothing.”
With a sticky knot in my throat, I nodded, and he peeled himself away when a loud knock thudded on the door.
He killed the alarm again and worked through the locks.
A disorder of fear and dread spilled into the room as Raven, Charleigh, Piper, and Emery piled inside, followed by the guys.
“Oh my God,” Raven wheezed as she came directly for me. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. You know this. There is a freaking brigade here to protect you, and the other half of them are at Ms. Liberty’s with the kids.”
A toil of worry spun through my middle. Through all of us. Pulsing and pummeling. We all hated that we were separated from the children, but the guys thought it was safest to leave them there. That we were inviting in too many variables by taking the chance of moving them, and we might be luring danger to their door if any of us went there.
An additional group of Silas’s men had been sent there to watch over them, while everyone else came here.
To be with me.
“I…I don’t want you all involved in this.”
Raven huffed. “Are you kidding me? You’re our family. There is nowhere else we’re going to be.”
“That’s right,” Charleigh said. “We come together when one of us is in need.”
Piper squeezed my hand, her face soft with understanding. “We’re all here.”
“And we promise, it’s going to be okay,” Emery urged, clearly trying to get me to calm down since I was close to hyperventilating.
