Chapter 19

In case you’re confused, God would never send you someone else’s husband.

-Winnie to her ex-best-friend

Winnie

I watched, for the seventieth time in an hour, as the message chimed on Conleigh’s phone.

Andy: You’ll regret this, bitch.

Andy: I’ll show you what happens when girls stand me up.

The messaging had started at 12:01 in the morning, and even now, at 12:36, they were still going strong.

“Just let him vent, baby,” Steel murmured. “I’ll be there in an hour. Just have to finish up a few searches. Love you.”

I blinked and pulled the phone away from my face, staring at it like it was an alien life form I’d never seen before in my life.

“Love you?” I breathed.

LOVE YOU!

Did he really just say love you?

Oh my God!

I pressed the phone to my chest and tried to contain the freakin’ smile that was threatening to break my face.

“Mommy, can I take this to bed with me?”

I looked at Cody, who was supposed to be asleep over an hour ago, yet was still going strong for some reason. It was like he was high on caffeine or something.

Though, I had a feeling it had more to do with the fact that I still had every single light on in the entire house. Or, quite possibly, it was because we were at Steel’s place instead of our own.

We’d left our place around ten, and I was convinced that there was just something wrong with me. I didn’t want to be in that house for some reason, so we came to Steel’s place because I could breathe easier over here.

To say that I was nervous and scared was an understatement.

There was just something about this boy that was rubbing me the wrong way. Despite Steel’s numerous searches, he couldn’t find a single thing out about him, and it had us both concerned.

“Please, Mommy?”

Cody was wearing goggles and flippers—or mask and fins as Steel referred to them. I’d found out earlier in the day when Steel came by my place that tomorrow was the annual training for his SCUBA certifications. He’d had all of this stuff in his cruiser, but he had to take it out because apparently his vehicle had to be taken in for maintenance.

Cody, Conleigh, and I had helped him carry all of his stuff in. That was when Steel had discussed with both of my children—even Conleigh had listened entranced—what a certified scuba guy like him could do.

He’d showed them portable emergency oxygen tanks. He’d showed them his regulator, and answered Cody’s eight million two hundred seven questions about SCUBA diving. The rest of the night, Cody kept sneaking in there to see the various pieces of equipment and then I’d help him research them online.

Before Steel knew it, Cody would be there in that water right along with him.

“Come on, buddy,” I said and slammed the laptop closed. “Let’s go put that up. Then it’s time for bed. For real. We have a million and two things to do tomorrow, and I can’t have you sleeping the day away.”

“What are we doing?” he asked, walking like a penguin to try to keep the flippers on.

“Mom?”

I looked up to see Conleigh standing in the doorway of the room she was sharing with Cody for the night.

“Yeah?” I asked, still somewhat upset with her.

I say somewhat because I’d had a lot of time to think over the past several hours, and I was no longer as mad as I was when I’d first found her missing.

“There was a loud crash outside the window…did you hear it?”

I shook my head, then gestured with my hand. “Come in here. We’ll take care of this heathen, then we’ll investigate.”

Conleigh followed, her steps mirroring mine as we waited for Cody to shuffle across the carpet toward Steel’s spare bedroom where he kept all of his extra crap.

He also had a gun safe in there the size of a small Texas town, a spare bed, a freakin’ motorcycle, and a toolbox that was nearly the same size as the gun safe.

To say the room was cluttered was an understatement.

I’d just bent down to help Cody get his flipper off when something akin to glass breaking followed by a whooshing sound caused me to jerk upright.

“What was that?”

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

More glass breaking.

“What the fuck?” I breathed.

I walked to the door and looked down the hallway into the house beyond it.

Steel’s place was a lot like mine. It wasn’t an open floor plan at all, but a bunch of defined rooms. So, it took me a little bit to realize that there was smoke in the air.

“Shit.”

Another glass window broke, and I saw a bottle fly through the room.

It smashed against the wall opposite the window with a crash and that was when I saw the fire engulf the entire wall.

“Oh my God.”

I pulled out my phone and dialed 911 as I moved back into the room, slamming the door and locking it.

“Conleigh! Get that comforter off the bed and shove it against the crack at the bottom of the door.”

Conleigh started to move almost before I’d even finished instructing her.

Just as I was about to tell Cody what to do, the dispatcher picked up.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“My name is Winnie, and I’m at Chief of Police Steel Cross’s house. There are…there are glass bottles with something flammable in them crashing through the windows. And the rags stuffed into the bottles are lit on fire so they ignite whatever’s in the bottle as soon as the glass breaks. A man—I didn’t see him, but he yelled something—was throwing them.”

I couldn’t remember what they were called but I knew that the dispatcher would figure out what it was.

“How many, and where are you?”

“I’m in the room at the end of the hall where his safe is located. Both of my children are with me. There are no windows in here, and the last bottle the man threw hit the wall right at the end of the hallway. There’s not another room besides the bathroom for us to go to, and that window is too small for us to get through.”

My voice sounded calm, but I was anything but.

I was literally shaking like a leaf, and the looks of fear on my babies’ faces was enough to haunt me for the rest of my days.

“Units have been dispatched. Is there something you can shove against the door to keep out the smoke?”

“I’ve already done that,” I answered the dispatcher.

“What about something wet you can wrap around your face?”

I didn’t see a damn thing. Out of all the stuff in this room, none of it appeared to be anything that I could use.

Although, there sure was plenty of stuff that was flammable.

That’s when I saw the first tendril of smoke filter through the vent in the ceiling and realized that this might not work out too well.

I looked at my babies, then took another look around the room, taking everything in. The gun safe. The motorcycle.

Steel’s scuba gear.

Then I saw the portable tanks of oxygen, and I had an idea.

Placing the phone on the bed, I walked to the safe, entered the code—grateful to have a man like Steel who thought ahead and made sure I memorized his codes—and started pulling out guns by the handful.