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Chapter Twenty
Laurel and kids had yet another discussion about Zack when she picked them up from daycare. She was at her wit’s end about what to do. On the one hand, it wasn’t their fault that Laurel was having issues with Zack. Or more specifically, having issues about moving in with him. She’d brought him into their lives—smack dab in the middle of their lives, not just peripherally, as he’d been before. They simply didn’t understand why Zack couldn’t be with them. All the time. Forever.
But oh, my God, didn’t they ever quit?
She shifted around the bags of groceries she held in her arms and that were hanging off of her forearms. Damn it, she’d have to make two trips. With her apartment on the third floor, she almost always managed to get everything in one trip, but today she’d had to leave her computer locked in her trunk and the rest of the groceries piled in the middle of the back seat. As she reached the apartment door, she said, “I understand you two like Zack and want him to be with us all the time, but for now that’s not going to happen.”
“But, Mommy,” Katrina said. “We love him.”
Unlocking the door and pushing it open, Laurel stepped across the threshold with the kids following.
Two steps inside and she halted. Something’s wrong. The kids were chattering, trying to get past her but Laurel blocked the way. The sliding glass door opening to the tiny balcony had been shattered. Broken glass lay everywhere. Before she could fully comprehend the scene, two men walked out of the hall into the living room.
She didn’t register much about them except for the gun—black and lethal—in one man’s hand.
“What the fuck? What are you doing here?” the unarmed man said. “You’re supposed to be gone.”
Even as he spoke, Laurel dropped the bags in her arms, turned and pushed Cody and Katrina out the door, slamming it shut behind her. Seconds later she heard a crack like the sound of a car backfiring and then another as something whizzed over her head. She ran across the concrete walkway between her neighbor’s apartment and hers, shoving the kids in front of her, plastic grocery bags still hanging from her arms. They were crying and asking questions but she ignored them and beat on Edith’s door, praying she was home.
Edith opened it, took one look at them and pulled the children inside. “You too,” she said. “Hurry.”
Laurel came in, closed the door and immediately locked it. She took the bags off of her arms and put them on the floor, then peered out the peephole but saw nothing. Holding her breath, she waited and watched. They hadn’t followed. Thank God, they hadn’t followed. Her children were both crying so she gathered them close. “It’s okay. We’re okay.” She was shaking with delayed reaction. That noise. They’d shot at her. More than once. At her and her children. She knew the sound of a gunshot. She checked her children for wounds but thank God they were all right, other than being scared to death.
Where was Edith?
Just then Edith returned, carrying a big-ass gun. Laurel thought of her own gun. The one her brothers had insisted she buy and learn to use once they knew she was adamant about living in a place she could afford. The gun that now resided in a gun safe under her bed. Safer for the kids that way, but not very helpful in a case like this. She’d never needed it before. The Texan apartments hadn’t been the greatest when she moved there but in the two years since they’d degenerated. Still, armed robbery was a new one, as far as she knew.
Edith pulled out a chair from her table, turned it to face the door and sat down with her gun, grim-faced, locked and loaded.
With shaking hands, Laurel pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed nine-one-one.
“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”
Laurel sucked in a breath and tried to talk coherently. “I’ve—I’ve been robbed. Burglars. Two men—they were in my apartment. Just now. I think—I think they’re gone, but I don’t know for sure.”
“Who am I speaking to and what is your address?”
“Laurel Lewis.” She gave her the address.
The dispatcher repeated the address. “Is that correct?”
“Yes. Are you sending the police? Hurry, please. I’m not sure they’re gone.”
“What kind of weapon did the intruders have?”
“A gun. They—they shot at me. At me and my children.” Her throat constricted again at the thought that she or her children could have been hit. “Twice. I think it was twice.” This couldn’t be happening. But it was.
“Are you or your children injured?”
“No.”
“Are you in a safe place?”
“Yes. At my neighbor’s. Her name is Edith Denton.”
“Can you give me a description of the suspects?”
“Are you sending the police?” she asked again.
