“Not after the last one,” the girl said, still clutching her weapon tightly.
He wasn’t going to ask her to put it down.At least not yet.It was clear that the tool represented a sense of security, and he had no idea what these three children had been through.
“We were taken by mistake from our foster home.Well, me and Ben were taken by mistake.Lily was the one they wanted.”
“What’s your name?”Jude asked.
“Scarlet.”
“What makes you think someone only wanted to take Lily?”he asked.
“Ben and I were in the way, so the men took us, too.We’ve been guarding Lily so no people can take her.”
“That’s very brave of you both.”
“We’re siblings.Just because we don’t have parents doesn’t mean we don’t want to stay together.”Scarlet looked more like a soldier than a little girl, and that made his chest squeeze.
“I hear that.You did good staying together.”Lily began pulling at Jude’s earlobe, and the baby’s deep belly laugh filled the cabin.
“I have a favor to ask of you.”Scarlet licked her dry lips and looked toward the cabin door, like she might bolt.
“What is it?”Jude stopped bouncing Lily to give Scarlet his full attention.
“Our last foster home decided they couldn’t keep all three of us.They wanted Lily to stay and Ben and me to go somewhere else.That’s not going to happen.If you plan on taking us back there, the favor is to turn around and pretend you didn’t find anyone in this cabin.”
He tilted his head, considering the old soul in front of him.“You plan to live here?”
“I can make weapons, and Ben is really smart.He knows what things are edible in the forest and what isn’t.We can learn to fish, and no one will ever split us up again.”
He considered the little girl’s words.Ones that resonated far deeper than she could ever understand.He hadn’t wanted to be separated from his family either.Jude blew out of breath.“I was in the foster system, too.Sucks, doesn’t it?”
“It does.Ben and I have a rule, though, that we don’t use bad words around Lily,” Scarlet said effectively chastising him.“Did you have a brother or a sister?”
“I had a brother, but he passed away.”A wedge lodged in Jude’s throat.
“So, you got split up, too,” she said.
“Yeah.We did.”Lily began to wiggle, and Jude set her down on the cabin floor.She went to Ben and sat in his lap.
“You understand, then, why we can’t go back.”Scarlet speared him with her gaze.
“I understand.”
*
Three hours later,Jude rolled his stiff shoulders and picked up his phone to call Ivy.Christ, what was she going to think when he asked her to make up the spare bed and the couch?Seems like she wasn’t the only one bringing home strays.He gave the three kids now packed in the SUV with Cameron and Ross a little wave.He’d gotten emergency clearance from a judge to obtain temporary custody.Cameron was carrying on an animated conversation with Ben, whose fingers were flying across the tablet, which Scarlet had told him to refer to as an AAC device—Augmentative and Alternative Communication Device to be exact.She explained that Ben had autism and was nonverbal, and Jude shared that his girlfriend’s brother, Ash, was also autistic.That piece of information seemed to put her mind at ease, but she was still observing everything he did.
The phone rang once, then went right to voicemail.He stared down at the phone and a feeling of dread settled over him.Jude dialed Ivy’s number again.Again, the call went right to voicemail.Willing himself to calm down, he started to pace.There could be any number of reasons why Ivy wasn’t picking up her phone.She did say she was going to take a bath.Maybe she had gone outside to use the hot tub or was watching television and her phone slipped into the couch cushions.The side window of the SUV rolled down, and Cameron looked out.
“What is it?”Cameron asked.
“Ivy’s not picking up her phone.I’ve got a bad feeling.”
Chapter Nineteen
Ivy had spentthe past hour opening the doors and windows to air out the apartment.She wasn’t sure how she was going to tell Jude she’d nearly burned down his apartment trying to make them a simple dinner of spaghetti and garlic bread, but she figured if she had most of the charred smell out of the house by the time he got back, he might laugh it off.She certainly wasn’t going to try to cook again and had done what she should’ve all along and ordered them a pizza.She hadn’t heard from Jude in several hours, and she hoped that meant he’d found what he was looking for.The doorbell rang, and she looked at her watch in surprise.The delivery driver was certainly expeditious.Ivy looked out the peephole before opening the door, smiling when she saw a man holding a pizza with the restaurant’s logo on his hat.She unlocked the dead bolt and swung open the door.
“Boy, am I glad to see you.Thanks for saving dinner.”She reached out to take the pizza and yelled in surprise when the man used the box to shove her back inside the apartment.
