“Yes, I do.”
“Grayson.”
“I want a relationship built on trust, Coach. Not on hiding the things I think she can’t handle.”
My throat tightens with emotion. I round the corner into the kitchen, and three heads turn toward me at once.
Derek’s expression warms first, his mouth pulling into a small smile that he aims at me. “He settled all right?”
“He’s asleep.”
“Good.” Derek glances at Grayson. “I should be on my way.”
“You’re welcome to crash here,” Grayson offers. “Spare room’s made up.”
Derek shakes his head and pushes off the counter. “I’ll do another sweep of the perimeter before I head home. Better to know now if there’s a second set of prints somewhere we didn’t check.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Stay.” Derek lifts a hand. “Be with your mate and your son. Keep them safe. I’ve got this.”
Grayson holds his eye for a beat and then nods. “Thank you.”
“Anytime, brother.”
Derek smiles at me on his way past. His hand brushes my elbow, friendly and brief, and then he’s out the side door, and the latch clicks behind him.
Coach finishes the last of his coffee and sets the mug in the sink, and I see the look he gives Grayson on his way past, the silent reminder. He nods at me once before he goes.
The house is suddenly very quiet.
Crossing the kitchen to where Grayson is standing at the island, I press myself against his chest before he can say anything. His arms come up around me, slowly at first, then tight, his chin settling against the top of my head.
“Do you think,” I murmur into his shirt, “that man was just watching us?”
His arms tighten. “No.” His voice is low and dark and not entirely human. “I think he was waiting for a chance to take Ethan.”
I had been hoping I was wrong, but his words make my heart sink.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Grayson
The kitchen has gone quiet enough that I can hear the second hand on the clock above the stove. Miranda went up to check on Ethan an hour ago and hasn’t come down.
I pour what’s left of the coffee into the sink, rinse the carafe, and stare out at the back lawn while the water runs. The grass at the tree line looks ordinary from this distance. A child’s foam ball sits in the dewy fringe where Ethan dropped it. My eyes track the gap in the pines where the man stood and watched my son, weighing him, deciding something. Did he come for Ethan or did he come to observe Miranda and me?
I want to put my fist through the window.
The kitchen door opens, and Derek lets himself in, pulling on his shirt.
“Any sign?” I ask.
“What do you think?”
He doesn’t say it with bite, just the dry exhaustion of a man who has spent the last few hours retracing the perimeter of my property in the dark. There’s a fresh scratch along the back of his hand where a branch probably caught him.
“Nothing useful,” he says, dropping onto a stool at the island. “I went all the way to the south fence and back along the creek. Two sets of prints at the deer trail, but they’re partial, and they end on the rock where the moss starts. No scent past that point either. He knew exactly where to step.”
