Screaming.
Wrenleigh screaming, but not at me—at someone else, someone in the room. "Don't touch her! Get the fuck away from her!"
A man's voice. Muffled, commanding. "Sit down, shut up?—"
Another scream. Sadie Jo.
High-pitched, terrified, the sound a child makes when the world stops being safe, and it goes through me like a railroad spike driven straight through my sternum.
Then Leah's voice.
Steady under the chaos, the voice she uses in the ER when someone is dying and panic isn't an option. "Don't touch the girls. You want to send a message, you send it through me. Leave them out of this."
The line goes dead.
I'm on my feet before the phone leaves my ear.
The chair goes backward.
The laptop goes sideways.
I don't notice any of it because my body has already made the decision that my brain is still catching up to—keys, Glock, truck, drive, now, now, now.
"Coin!" Ounce is on his feet too. He saw my face.
Everyone in the main room saw my face because whatever is on it right now is bad enough to make grown men flinch. "What's happening?"
"My house. They're in my house. The girls—Leah?—"
Ounce is behind me.
I hear him shouting. At Ruger, at Bracken, at whoever will listen, "Coin's house, now, everyone, move—" and then I'm through the door and in the truck and the engine is roaring.
I'm pulling out of the parking lot fast enough that the tires scream against the asphalt.
I call 911 from the truck. My voice is steady. I don't know how. "Break-in in progress. 417 Hickory Hollow Road. Three men, armed. There are children in the house. Two girls, sixteen and thirteen. And a woman. Send everyone you have."
Twelve minutes. That's how long it takes to get from the clubhouse to my front door.
Twelve minutes is a lifetime when your children are screaming.
The front door is open when I get there.
Not kicked in. Open.
Like someone walked through it, which means they had access, which means the lock didn't stop them, which means they either picked it or they had information about the new deadbolts and how to bypass them and that thought—that thread connecting Angelica's confession to this moment—almost takes me off my feet on my own porch.
I go through the door with the Glock up.
Training takes over. Clear the entry, check the corners, move through the house room by room.
But this isn't a stash house and these aren't drug dealers.
This ismyhome.
These are the walls my daughters touch every day, the floor my youngest walks on in her socks, the hallway where I kissed Leah for the first time.
The living room is in complete disarray.
