Lydia struck out before Remi could move a muscle.
The hit landed against her chest, just below the collarbone. It hurt. Remi staggered backward from the force and surprise. She didn’t have a chance to catch herself. Her backside hit the hardwood just as her periphery was filled with the bulk of her father and Jonah.
They hadn’t seen the hit.
Remi heard her father say her name just as Jonah called out to Lydia. Neither had a chance to finish their thoughts or get answers in return.
Lydia pulled out a gun and aimed it at the men.
Remi reacted on reflex.
From her angle on the floor she couldn’t do much, but she was close enough to do something. She brought her fist up and paid the woman in kind for the hit she’d been given. But Remi could only get as high as her stomach from where she was on the ground.
It did the job well enough.
A gunshot exploded inside the house, pushing pain through Remi’s ears at the sound just as fear rang through her heart, but Lydia gasped for different reasons.
She hadn’t counted on the hit to the stomach, just as Remi hadn’t counted on the hit to the chest.
Lydia stumbled but didn’t fall. She kept the gun but lost her aim.
Remi took advantage of the distraction. She pushed up off the ground and right into the woman. Lydia completely lost her footing this time. Like a rag doll, the woman fell back and out onto the front porch.
Then Remi did the only thing her adrenaline and slightly good sense would let her do.
She slammed the door shut and threw the dead bolt.
The sound of Lydia cursing became the soundtrack behind the next important, life-altering thing in Remi’s world. She turned, heart in her throat, and hoped to every god there ever was that none of her family had been shot.
Her father was rushing over to her. Josh and Jonah watched wide-eyed from the doorway.
No one was bleeding, no one was on the ground.
It was a relief that didn’t last long.
“Get away from there,” her father grunted out, grabbing her wrist. Another explosion went off as Lydia shot through the door. It barely missed them as her father slung Remi around and pushed her to the stairs. Remi didn’t hesitate in running up them, out of line of the door.
“Stay low, boys,” he yelled over his shoulder.
Remi hit the landing as another gunshot went off. It was followed by two more. She spun on her heel, but her father pushed her farther onto the second floor.
“There’s a gun in my room,” he said. Remi would have marveled at how calm he was being if not for the directive he gave her as he pulled her along with him to the bedroom at the end of the hall. “Call for help, Remi. Do it now.”
Remi went for her phone only to have her stomach drop. Just as she had done with her phone after being hit by Lydia.
“I—I don’t have it.” She heard it then. In her voice. A waver of terror, strengthened by adrenaline and confusion.
They ran into the master bedroom and made a U-turn to the closet.
“That’s okay.” He was using his soothing voice. The one she’d once heard when she’d accidentally cut her hand with a knife and needed stitches. He’d brought her nerves down simply by the cadence of his voice.
Whether or not he agreed with her leaving town, there was a comfort in knowing that, with just the sound of his voice, her father could make her feel better.
“What about the landline?” she asked, hopeful. It didn’t last long.
“I took the cordless to the kitchen yesterday. Haven’t put it back.”
Remi doubled back to the bedroom door as her father opened his safe in the closet. He’d always been diligent about keeping all weapons locked up, even when his children had grown, but what he had in there Remi had no idea.
She watched the hallway and the top of the stairs with a twist in her gut. Her brothers hadn’t attempted to go for the second floor. She hoped they had fled through the back door as soon as the shots kept coming and that one of them had called for help.
“The front door open yet?” her father asked, rushing back to her side.
They both paused.
The house around them was eerily silent.
Remi opened her mouth, ready to call for her brothers, but her father grabbed her wrist.
“Shh, keep quiet,” he whispered. “We don’t know if she’s alone or not, and we don’t want to let her know exactly where we are.”
He had shut the bedroom door and locked it when two things happened at once.
First, she heard glass shatter downstairs. The living room windows maybe.
Then she felt a peculiar wetness against her arm.
“I need you to listen to me,” her father said, but Remi stopped him when she realized what that wetness was.
“You’re bleeding.”
The last few shots hadn’t missed them.
At least, not her father.
“I’m okay,” he tried, pulling her again. The wetness grew against her arm. He stopped when they were in the en suite, and turned to shut and lock the door.
Remi turned her attention to his bullet wound.
“Dad.”
There was no denying he’d been hit. His button-up was turning dark at the side of his stomach. He was trying—and failing—to keep his left forearm pressed against it.
“I’m okay,” he repeated.
Remi was devastated to hear the waver in his voice this time.
Instead of fear, she heard pain.
He swung around and showed her something else she hadn’t had the mind to notice yet. It was a revolver. He held it out to her. Remi took it with a sob stuck in her throat.
“Do you remember how to use that? No safety and no cocking it between shots. Just shoot. Understood?”
“I don’t want to use it. I want you to use it.”
He shook his head and moved to the window.
“If there’s more than one of them and they come up here, I want you to use the lattice next to Josh’s room to get down to the ground. Then, only if it’s clear, make it to the stable. That’s where you’re all supposed to go if bad stuff happens in the house. Josh and Jonah will be there.”
Remi watched, her heart nearly crushed with helplessness as the strongest man she knew fell against the wall and slid to the floor.
“Dad.” It was all Remi could do not to yell. She knelt down in front of him, the hand not holding the revolver, trying helplessly to grab onto a part of him as if her touch alone could help heal him.
It did no such thing.
Dark eyes searched her face. His expression softened, but his words were stern. Harsh.
“That was a good move you made with that woman downstairs, but bullets count for more than courage. You can take on one person—don’t try to take more if there are more. Promise me, Remi. You run if there’s more than one person out there and use that thing to protect your brothers. Don’t be afraid to shoot.”
Then he gave her that look.
That look of unconditional love. The same one her mother gave them. The same one her grandmother had given her mother before she’d passed away.
The love of a parent for a child.
The same love Remi already felt for hers.
She nodded.
And then, in the simplest of terms, she told her father the news she should have already told him.
“I’m pregnant.”
Gale Hudson took all of two seconds to respond.
“Shoot to kill, baby girl.”
Remi wanted to say more, to do more, but an awful sound cut off any conversation.
Wood splintered. A thud sounded.
Then a man spoke. Followed by another.
“We know you’re in there,” he yelled.
It wasn’t her brothers.
Which meant Lydia wasn’t alone.
Which meant Remi was supposed to abandon her father.
The doorknob shook.
Her father touched her stomach. Blood transferred to her shirt, but he got his point across with it.
He was trying to protect her.
And it was her turn to do the same for her child.
Remi looked at her father one last time and then slid the window up. She was up and out of it within a breath. Her shoes hit the roof that hung over the wraparound porch. The backyard was, at a glance, empty. No one shot at her. No one yelled.
She ran.
Josh’s room was at the corner of the house. Attached to the overhang outside of his window was a thick lattice their mother had built herself. She’d wanted it for decoration. Her children had used it to sneak out of the house.
Now her daughter was using it to escape.
Why was Lydia there for her?
Who were the men?
Were there more?
Remi didn’t have any answers. She knew only that she didn’t want to find them by letting Lydia get ahold of her or her brothers. Sibling protectiveness combined with maternal protectiveness drove Remi’s hands and feet as she got to the edge of the roof outside of Josh’s room and onto the top of the lattice.
She slipped twice as she tried to find footholds not completely covered in vines, then dropped the last two feet to the ground. Pain radiated up her shins but she didn’t stop.
Hudson Heartland had several stables. Some were at the front of the acreage, others were tucked toward the back. The stable they had been taught to go to if there was ever a fire, break-in or other disaster in the main house was a faded red barn a hundred yards or so from the back porch. It had housed Heartland’s personal horses and had never been used by clients.
It also had a landline.
Remi ran full tilt toward it, knowing if anyone was on the roof or in the bathroom looking out, they’d see her. If anyone came after them they could just keep running until they made it to the woods.
The Hudson children knew the ranch.
She doubted Lydia and whoever was with her could claim the same.
At least, that was her hope as she struggled to breathe while running away from the house.
From her father.
Remi ignored the ache in her heart.
She had to protect her brothers.
She had to protect her baby.
* * *
“LYDIA CARTWRIGHT DIDN’T exist until five years ago.”
Declan should have felt something at hearing the words out loud, but a part of him was going on autopilot. A routine created out of necessity for being sheriff. A detached acceptance of what he was learning. A bridge between throwing his hands in the air with anger and confusion and complete silence. An in-between where he could stay for a while until he figured out how he needed to, as sheriff, react to whatever news he received.
Caleb ran a hand through his dark hair and then hung his hand on the detective’s badge on a chain around his neck. Jazz was sitting in the chair he was hovering over while both looked at the computer screen.
“Why do you say that?”
Caleb touched the computer screen, but Declan couldn’t see what they were looking at.
“First of all, that’s when all of her social media accounts popped up,” he answered. “Secondly, that’s also when her car was registered and she moved into an apartment in Kilwin…” He slid his finger across the screen. Jazz pulled it off the glass as if she’d done it countless times in their partnership. It didn’t stop Declan’s brother from continuing his explanation. “All within the span of a week. Before that there seems to be no trace of her. At least not on the internet or through the databases we have access to.”
“But just because she isn’t showing up on either doesn’t mean Lydia didn’t exist before then.” Declan had to be the devil’s advocate. Caleb looked up. His eyes were just as blue as Madi’s and Des’s.
“And yet you still think something’s off with her,” Caleb guessed.
Declan eyed the desks around them. A few deputies were in, their heads bent over paperwork. There wasn’t any use in lying to his brother. Or Jazz, for that matter. They both were sharp as tacks when it came to reading someone. Even sharper when it came to their family and friends.
“I think Cooper Mann is telling the truth,” he admitted. “I think Lydia either initiated the attack or carried it out against herself.”
Caleb cringed. Jazz’s sour expression wasn’t too far off.
“Victim blaming is an absolute nonstarter, you know that, right?” Caleb pointed out. Declan didn’t need the no-brainer statement. But, in this instance, his gut was starting to kick up a fuss.
Declan lowered his voice, leaning in so only they could hear him for sure.
“Which is why I want to be certain we check her out. If I’m wrong, then we’ve helped her case by shutting down any opposing argument Cooper’s lawyer could put up in court. And if I’m right?” He shook his head. “Then we might start getting some answers around here. Some answers we desperately need.”
Caleb kept his stare for a moment before sharing a look with Jazz. Declan remembered the first case they’d worked together as partners. Oil and water. Now? They could communicate in looks alone if they had to.
The look they shared must have been an agreement.
Both nodded.
“So what do you want to do?” Caleb asked. “Want us to go talk to her?”
“What’s her last known address? She said she lived in Overlook when we spoke in the hospital.”
Jazz went back into the computer. It wasn’t long before she had an answer. All three recognized the location. They’d passed that house countless times in the last year or so since Desmond’s wife, Riley, used to live in the neighborhood with her twin and her son. Jenna and Hartley still resided in the house but Lydia’s address, if memory served, was more toward the front of Willows Way.
Declan had to remind himself that just because he’d grown up in Overlook didn’t mean he knew everyone who lived there, especially those who weren’t longtime locals.
“Okay, let’s divide and conquer on this.” Declan looked at Jazz. “Keep digging here and see if you can find her employer. If you do, give them a call and feel them out about her. Caleb, I want you to go to Cooper’s house.” Declan pulled a key out of his pocket. That earned a questioning look from both detectives. “Cooper gave me permission. He lives alone and in an apartment over where Delores stays. The number is on the key.” He tossed him the key. Caleb caught it with ease. “See if you can’t find something that helps us see if he’s innocent or if he’s playing us.”
“And you?”
“I’ll head over to Lydia’s house to see if anything jumps out at me.”
“I’m assuming you don’t have a key to that one?”
“I don’t.”
Caleb and Jazz shared another look with each other and didn’t comment out loud on whatever conclusion they’d reached. Instead, they all went about their tasks immediately.
Declan looked at his phone before jumping into Fiona.
No missed calls or texts from his chief deputy, Cussler. Which meant no news or leads on the two men and woman who had been a scourge against Main Street.
That should have concerned him more than the other nagging thought prickling at the back of his mind.
There were also no missed calls or texts from Remi.
He’d gone years without any contact whatsoever.
Yet, there he was. Thinking about her. Wondering what she was doing now. Craving more contact.
He knew her car was gone from his house and she was probably back at Heartland. Usually knowing that much would have been enough. Now he found his thoughts circling the woman.
Declan pulled her number up on his phone. He nearly called it right then and there. Then he tossed the cell onto the seat next to him and started toward the neighborhood of Willows Way.
The best thing he could do was rein in the chaos and sift through it until he could make his home, his county and the people within it safe.
If he couldn’t do that?
Then what good could he ever be for his child?