Page 50 of Take A Chance

I had the car in gear, ready to move as Emma climbed over the seat and strapped her seatbelt on. The wipers hardly kept up with the downpour, and the darkness of the night swallowed the glow from my headlights, but I pulled onto the road. “Greta, I’m going to hang up. We’ll be there in about an hour. Go to Katelyn’s room and stay there with her. Keep her calm. Wilem will handle things.”

“Yes, sir...” She hung up, but a deep uneasiness settled in my stomach.

“What’s wrong?” Emma asked, sounding frightened. She slid her feet back into her shoes then pushed her wet hair out of her eyes.

“Something happened at home. I’m not sure. We have to get there quickly.” I sped toward the highway, splashing through large puddles that jerked at the wheel.

Emma shivered, so I turned on the heat and held her hand. I’d never been so relieved and enraged at the same time. The idea that a father would kidnap his own child and lock her up was outrageous. The thought of him forcing her to kill someone to prove her worth was detestable. I was going to make this bastard pay.

“You look angry.” Emma’s shivers were starting to lessen as the heat warmed the car, but I got the feeling they weren’t all from the chill. “Do you think the thing at your house is retaliation for my escaping from him?”

I shook my head, trying to squint my eyes to see through the rain to turn onto the entrance ramp. “I’m not sure. I don’t know the extent of what happened, but it can’t be unrelated.” My mind raced, flashes of rage coloring my vision. If these idiots thought they’d walk right into my life and take what was mine, they were in for a surprise.No one touches my things and gets away with it.

“Please be careful, Blake. My father owns the police around here. If you get pulled o—”

“No one owns the police, Emma.” I gave her a stern look. I could see fear flash in her eyes, and I knew she was hurt. I didn’t want to be like them, to scare her that way, but my monster was coming out. The monster I’d tucked away years ago after sending Katelyn’s mother away. When Katelyn appeared in my life, I changed. I had to.

All of this, it was dredging up the past. The wall was coming down. Colin was right. I did change, but it wasn’t when I met Emma. It was when I found out I had a daughter. My dark passenger was locked up. Katelyn’s presence demanded it. But these men, these foolish men who'd toyed with my people—they broke the lock, and the key was useless. I could feel that darkness seeping back into my soul, enveloping me, clouding my thoughts. Emma didn’t deserve this me. She didn’t know it existed. I’d stuffed it so deep in the hole inside my mind, even I thought it was gone.

“Blake...” she said, softly and I looked up just in time to see the exit sign.

“God!” I swerved, barely making it onto the ramp for our turn off.

Emma muffled a yelp of fear and clung to the armrest. I slowed, coming to a stop at the end of the ramp. My heart was pounding. I’d been lost in thought, so lost I almost missed our exit.

“Blake, what’s going on?” she asked.

“Not now,” I grumbled. She didn’t deserve this, but it was all I could give right now. Seeing her, the bruise on her cheek she hadn’t even mentioned yet. She probably thought I hadn’t noticed, but I noticed. She didn’t speak again until we were turning into the driveway, where a few unmarked police cars sat near the security gate.

Wilem flagged me by, and Emma whimpered. “It looks bad.” She pointed at the coroner's van near the west wing. “God... that’s the medical examiner. Someone died.”

She didn’t have to tell me. I knew what that meant. I’d seen it many times before, just never this close to home. Never around my Katelyn.

“Stay in the car,” I told her, climbing out. She didn’t listen. I didn’t have time to worry about it. With this many security guards and police around, Bonetti would be stupid to try something. Emma vanished into the house, and I found Wilem speaking to a police officer near the coroner’s van.

“What the hell happened?” I asked him. He pursed his lips and nodded at the cop. I knew the man, annoying as it was, but he’d do a good job on this.

“Sir, there was an intruder. They breached the fence in back. We don’t know what they were looking for. There were two of them. One took a bullet in a firefight with Ryan. Ryan killed the guy, but his buddy shot Ryan.” Wilem’s head fell. “He didn’t make it. And the other guy jumped the fence and got away.”

“The guy... what do we have on him? Who is he?” I glanced at the van as they loaded a sheet-covered body into the back on a gurney.

“Nothing yet. He had no ID on him. Coroner will run prints back at the morgue, sir.” The cop—Smith, if I remembered his name correctly—tipped his hat. “We’ll find out who’s behind this. No worries.”

“Oh, like you found my partner who was taken?” I growled. Smith took a step backward. Too many times, we’d done this dance, and the man knew I took nothing from anyone. “I’d rather you stay out of my way and let me do the job myself.”

“Sir,” Smith said, voice quavering as I marched toward the house. I had to see if Katelyn was okay, if she’d seen or heard any of the chaos. “Sir, you can’t get involved. This is a police matter now.”

I whipped around on him, ready to take his throat in my hand, but I didn’t. I held back. A few of these faces around me were new. They didn’t know who I was, what I was capable of. What I had done. Smith knew, and his eyes flashed with the fear I’d seen a dozen times. A pussy of a man, he was, but he did good detective work, even if his failure to find Emma had tarnished his reputation in my eyes.

“You stay out of my way and let me handle this. Because if you get in my way, you’re going to find skeletons. If those skeletons start talking, you know as well as I do that it’s not just my head.”

He blinked hard, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Sir...”

“You heard me, Smith.” I glared at him one last time and retreated into the house.

The beast was out, and there was no caging it.

29

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