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I was woken by the sound of the bedroom door opening. Lying with my back to the door, I couldn’t tell if someone was coming or going. Slowly, I searched the bed with my hand to feel for Jamie, but the rest of the bed was empty. The floor creaked, confirming that someone was in the room. It could have been Jamie, but my instincts were yelling at me that it wasn’t. I slipped my hand under my pillow and just as I grasped my pistol, the blankets were thrown off of me and I was yanked out of the bed by my legs.
I kicked and screamed as loud as I could to alert the rest of the house. I was pulled until I fell to the floor. I did my best to catch myself with my hand, but I still slammed down onto my stomach. I tried to roll over toward my attacker with my gun aimed. A boot rammed into my lower back before I could and pinned me on my stomach. I thrashed and wriggled, trying to roll out from under him to no avail. He shifted and pushed both his knees into my back, making sure I stayed put. Unable to move, I did the only thing I could think of to get help and that was to be as loud as possible. I pointed my gun behind me and started firing, hoping to hit him, hoping the grounds security would hear it in this big house.
I fired as many rounds as possible until my attacker wrestled the gun out of my hand and tossed it out of reach. He then got a hold of my hands and wrangled them behind my back, forcing from me an angry growl.
“What the fuck is going on in here?!” I heard a familiar voice demand as my hands were zip-tied behind my back.
The lights flipped on and I turned my head to see my traitor of a cousin storm in. Dylan stared down at me with a triumphant, sinister smirk.
“Sorry, Boss. I didn’t know she had a gun in bed with her,” my attacker said.
“Of course she would,” Dylan said to him, annoyed. “Do you think you can get her downstairs or can you not handle one woman?”
“We’re right behind you,” my attacker assured him, and Dylan stalked out.
The guy holding me down tangled his hand in my hair and yanked on it until my head lifted off the carpet. “You’re going to behave, unless you want to get hurt.”
I let out a strangled laugh that made me sound rabid. “You obviously don’t know me.”
Ignoring me, he yanked me to my feet by my hair.
“Pull harder. It’s a turn-on,” I demanded with a crazy smile as I tried to get a look at him. Right away, I recognized him as one of Dylan’s goons.
“Stupid bitch.” He pulled on one of my arms to force me to walk toward the door.
“Fucking traitor,” I snapped as we left Jamie’s room. “You won’t make it out of this house alive.”
The goon pulled my hair harder to try to shut me up.
“That’s it, baby, harder,” I goaded.
The goon stopped pushing me forward. “You’re one crazy bitch.” He sounded disgusted and his hold on my hair loosened.
I took advantage of that and dropped to the floor. I lost a few hairs in the process as he tried to catch my hair and arm. On my knees, I yanked myself out of his hold and I fell onto my side. Knowing he was going to grab for me, I rolled onto my back and kicked at him. He struggled to grab my legs as I kept kicking and kicking. With my hands bound behind my back, I didn’t have a lot of options. The moment he captured both my ankles, I saw Brenna come up behind him, gun in hand. She aimed at the back of the goon’s head and a shot echoed in the hall.
The goon crumpled to the ground and Brenna quickly helped me to my feet.
“The nursery,” I whispered, and she ran ahead of me to open Kieran’s door. As soon as we were inside, Brenna cut the zip ties from around my wrists with baby nail clippers that were on Kieran’s dresser. Immediately, I went to Kieran’s crib, but it was empty. The panic that burst through my darkness nearly crippled me. “They took him. They took my baby.”
Hearing the hysteria in my voice, Brenna grabbed me by my arms. “We’ll find him.”
A noise came from the closet, making us freeze.
“Maura?” a voice said from inside.
I rushed over and ripped open the door. Inside, curled up in the back corner hiding was Caroline. Because it was the middle of the night, she was wearing a floral robe over her nightgown and had rollers in her white hair. Then I saw that Kieran was asleep in her arms.
The relief I felt almost made my knees give out. “Stay here until I come back for you,” I ordered. She nodded and I closed the door.
“We need to move,” Brenna said as she peeked out into the hall. “We have to assume that they took over the control room. Which means they’ll know where we are in the house.”
“There are guns in Jamie’s room.”
Brenna poked her head out to check if the hall was clear. “Let’s go.”
We both ran down the hall back to Jamie’s room. Brenna locked the door as soon as we were inside. I went to Jamie’s walk-in closet and started pulling gun cases and boxes of bullets off the top shelf. We both armed ourselves with AR-15 rifles and a pistol each.
