Page 35 of Piece You Saved

“Kade?” I whisper as the need to sleep creeps over me. I’d thought I’d had enough, but I could suddenly do with a couple more hours.

“Angel?”

“What happened last night? Aden said Rylan would never get past you two. That he was just the last line of defense.”

His arm tightens briefly around me, and he releases a slow breath, ruffling my hair. “Go to sleep, angel.”

I yawn again as sleep tightens its grip on me. “Will you tell me later?”

“Sleep, or I’ll put that mouth of yours to better use.”

My eyes flutter closed, and I relax against him. “You sleep as well, okay? Don’t wait for me to sleep and get up.”

“When did you start throwing orders around?” he asks.

“When I realized you take terrible care of yourself. Sleep, okay?” I press.

I’m drifting off, already more asleep than awake, when he squeezes me and says, “Sure thing.”

* * *

“You know, I’d have thought you cops had criminals to arrest, not girls to pick up.” Amusement warms Kade’s voice, but the rich undercurrent of anger simmering beneath the surface has me blinking my eyes open.

The light in Kade’s room has changed, and shadows stretch across the floor.

Must be afternoon.

The banging has stopped as well, so the contractors must have finished boarding the windows and left. Is that why Kade went downstairs? To let them out?

His laptop is missing, so he must have taken it down with him. If there’s a cop downstairs, then downstairs is absolutely the last place I want to be after my police station experience at the hands of Detectives Ferdinand and Bradley.

If I could pluck that memory right out of my mind and set it on fire, I’d do it in a heartbeat, but memories don’t work out that way, no matter how badly I wish they did.

“It’s important that I speak with her,” an unfamiliar male voice says.

“She’s not here,” Kade snaps.

“Now, we both know that isn’t true,” the cop replies with a steely determination that wasn’t there before. “I’m not going anywhere until I speak with her.”

I hold my breath, and my muscles tense. Kade doesn’t do well with orders, so I can almost guess what’s coming. Nothing good.

“I won’t tell you again to get your foot out of the door before I do something about it,” Kade says. I can hear the hint of the smile, but also a threat, so I forget all about my bruised belly and scramble out of bed, shoving myself to my feet.

If Kade does what he promises, he’ll either end up with a bullet in the head or locked up in a cell.

My hair streams out behind me as I tear out of the room, ignoring the creak of a door somewhere behind me that must be Dariel, and fly down the stairs.

Halfway down, I grind to a halt, gripping the banisters with both hands as the front door comes into view.

Kade is standing with his back to me, and directly in front of him is a cop I’ve never seen before. I don’t need to see his gun belt or even his badge to know he’s a cop. He’s in a smart blue shirt—not a uniform—so he must be a detective.

Just like Ferdinand and Bradley.

To intervene before things get messy, I would have to go the rest of the way downstairs. But that isn’t something I can do. The thought of a cop dragging me back to the police station and snapping on a pair of rubber gloves is making me break out in a cold sweat.

The cop’s large brown eyes slide past Kade and settle on me. “Saige Leo.”

I nearly spin around and bolt up the stairs.

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