“Mommy,” Sarah screamed and hugged tightly to Kate’s neck.

Kate was kneeling, holding her daughter close with one arm while keeping her other hand free. She was kicking herself for not arming herself before entering the house. She had completely underestimated how much the people who wanted her dead knew about her whereabouts. Obviously, someone had watched her closely enough to know about Sarah and where Sarah had been staying the past couple of days.

Sarah’s friend, Ashton, was hugging her mother on the other side of the room. Annie looked worried, but strong. They were in the dining room in the front of the house where Jake could watch out the front window while hidden behind thick curtains. Kate could still see to the street through white sheers, but saw no sign of Colt.

Jake was waving his gun around. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. He had just shot at Colt, and was pacing irrationally back and forth in front of the window. Jake had shaved his head and was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that were at least one size too big. His eyes were crazed as he paced; his pupils dilated like he was strung out on something. He had to know he didn’t have much time before police tracked him down, which made him desperate and likely to do anything to not get caught again. And coming here proved to her that his need for revenge was greater than his desire to stay out of prison.

Kate kept trying to see if he’d actually hit Colt. God, she hoped not. She didn’t want Colt or anyone losing his life because of her.

“Jake, I will tell you anything you want to know. Just let these three go.” Sebastian, Annie’s husband, was at work. Kate assumed that Jake had figured out where Sarah was, and since a man was with Kate at her house, Jake came here to wait like a coward until Kate showed up for her daughter.

“Let them go?” he yelled. “I’m not letting anyone go.”

“Just send them to another room so we can talk.”

“No, Mommy,” Sarah cried. “I don’t want to leave you.”

Kate held Sarah away from her body and framed her face gently. “Listen to me. You’re my strong little girl, right?” Sarah nodded as a tear slid down her face. “I need you to help Ashton and Annie, okay?”

“Okay.” Her little lip quivered.

Kate looked up at Jake again. “Jake, I’ll tell you everything. How the FBI jammed me up. How I was pregnant…”

Jake angled his head. “You knew you were pregnant and didn’t tell me?” He held the gun up in the air, tapping it to his head like he just couldn’t wrap his brain around the idea that she would hide her pregnancy.

Kate wasn’t sure what he would do if she told him that Sarah wasn’t his child.

“Jake, you’re scaring Sarah. You don’t want to scare these beautiful little girls. Let’s you and I talk.”

Jake took two steps toward Kate and pointed the gun at her temple. “I should kill you here and now. That’s what the club wants me to do. And it’s what you deserve for keeping this from me.”

“Mommy,” Sarah whimpered.

Jake pointed the gun at Sarah. “Stop your crying.”

Kate reached out her quivering hands, a scream caught in her throat. She bit it back, not wanting to spook Jake. “Please Jake. Don’t point the gun at her.” Her voice cracked, but she held it together. “You don’t want to hurt her.”

He pointed the gun at Kate again. “You’re right. It’s you that deserves to suffer.”

Kate pushed Sarah away gently, while keeping her eyes on Jake’s. “Sarah, you remember the story of Little Red Riding Hood?”

Her daughter stiffened beside her, and her eyes grew big. “Uh-huh.”

Kate hated to scare her daughter further, but she had to pull out the story that Kate had read to Sarah since she was old enough to even remotely understand that people like the big bad wolf existed. Sarah knew that if Kate ever mentioned the story of Little Red Riding Hood, she was to not ask questions, but do as Mommy said, in silence. Of course, that’s all well and good in theory. In reality, her four-year-old daughter was terrified.

“I want you to go with Annie and Ashton. I’ll come find you when Jake and I are done talking, okay?”

Her eyes filled with even more tears, but she nodded anyway.

“Don’t worry about me. I promise, I’m going to be okay. Jake won’t hurt me.” Kate reassured Sarah, knowing she could be wrong. “Now, go with Annie.”

Annie reached out and grabbed Sarah. She pulled Sarah and a crying Ashton out of the dining room and away from Kate and Jake.

Kate’s heartbeat was thumping loudly in her head as the hard edge of the pistol rested against her skin. She vowed right then that given the opportunity, she would kill Jake for pointing that gun at her innocent little angel. The idea that she ever considered marrying the man who was now holding a gun to her head—who had pointed the same gun at a four-year-old child—sent a new level of energy through her.

Jake smiled. “Even your mother wants you dead.”

Kate looked up at Jake. Even though his words didn’t surprise her, they still stung like a knife to her heart.

“That’s right. Who do you think made sure a photo of you and the kid landed in my hands? Who do you think told me where to find you? She’s been following you for weeks. She got your brother all riled up, and she came up with a plan for me to bust out of prison.”

Even with the gun to her head, Kate stood and stared Jake straight in the face. It had been her own mother who put dead rats on her porch. The same way members of the MC had threatened Brooke Fairfax, the FBI agent who had helped Kate fake her own death. “Why didn’t my mother just kill me herself?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“She thought I deserved the chance to see my child—the child you never told me about.”

Jake had his back to the front window. Out of the corner of her eye, Kate saw Annie and the girls running to the street. Annie had a phone to her ear, talking into it as she ran.

Kate heard sirens in the distance.

Jake heard them, too. He straightened. He reached out and grabbed Kate by her hair at the nape of her neck and pulled her toward the doorway. “Let’s go find my daughter.” He looked into the next room. “Where did they go?” he demanded. “The police won’t do anything if they know I have four hostages in here.” He turned right out of the dining room and began checking the other rooms. He threw open doors as he went. “Where’d they go?” he screamed, getting more and more irate.

Jake had never been the sharpest tack. Add his stupidity to the obvious desperation not to get caught again and whatever he’d taken to make him so high, and Kate was facing a very dangerous man.

He dragged Kate into the master bedroom on the first floor of the house and shoved her to her knees on the hardwood floor. He put a gun to her head again, and said in an eerily calm voice, “Come out here right now, Sarah. Your mommy needs you.”

The house was silent except for the distant cries of police sirens.

“Tell me where they went,” he said.

She simply looked up at him with a stone cold look of pure determination. Through gritted teeth and a low voice, she said, “You will never get your hands on my daughter.”

His face grew red. He drew his arm back, and with a closed fist, hit Kate in the side of her temple. The pain in her head exploded like a canon. She fell to the floor. The residual ringing in her ears drowned out all other sounds. Whatever Jake said after that was muffled inside her head.

Kate rolled from side to side on the hard floor. Jake straddled her and held her arms over her head. This time when he put a gun to her head, she knew he would end her life. And the only thing that gave her peace was the fact that her little girl had gotten away. She laughed. “You could kill me, but it won’t change the fact that you’ll be dead soon after.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”