Page 90 of Clean Slade
“God. I’ve got two kids now, it seems.” He shook his head and walked away.
Or tried to anyway because I grabbed him by the arm and turned him back around.
“Hey! Don’t say that. Ever,” I whispered.
He stared into my eyes with parted lips and heavy breaths for a few moments before nodding.
“So-sorry,” he said.
I let him go but kept my gaze on him.
I don’t want you thinking of me as a kid, King. I want you to think of me as your equal. Your partner.
But how could I make him?
TWENTY-ONE
SLADE
Acrack splintered through the quiet, and I opened my eyes.
I lay still, barely breathing, trying to define what had woken me, unable to understand why it had put me on edge.
It was probably King waking in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Or even Mac. The little one had a bladder the size of a walnut most nights.
I heard it again. An unfitting crack.
Unfitting because it didn’t match any sound I was used to hearing when I lay in bed and everyone thought I was asleep.
The floor a few steps outside the bathroom creaked when they walked over it, but that wasn’t the crack I’d heard.
Mac’s bed smacked the wall every time she switched sides, but again, that wasn’t it.
I reached for my phone and opened my surveillance app, immediately jumping out of bed.
There were multiple movement alerts around the house.
The cracks weren’t just the sounds of the house in the dead of night. There was someone here.
No. Correction.
There was someone in Mac’s room.
I tiptoed to the door and opened it slowly and carefully, keeping my eye on the camera in Mac’s room.
The masked man stood still over Mackenzie’s bed while she slept.
When I edged out of the room, he cocked his head toward the noise, minimal as it were, but I didn’t waste a moment. I reached Mac’s door and rechecked the images on my phone.
I could see his chest as it rose and fell, waiting. I couldn’t tell if it was a stranger or if I’d seen him before, but he looked of average build.
He put his hand behind him and retrieved a roll of tape before leaning over Mac’s body.
Oh no, you don’t.
I opened the door under the same breath as I threw my phone to the floor, leaped across the room in two strides, and wrapped an arm around the intruder’s neck and the other around his chest.
He didn’t have time to react or draw a weapon, but he struggled against me. Not that he stood a chance. I was taller and stronger. As much as he struggled, he couldn’t get out of my grip.
