Chapter 39
The scream shredded through the cabin like a knife, shrill and ear splitting.
I was on my feet before my brain caught up, jumping over Eli’s body as the sound of Emmie’s wails tore me out of a dead sleep and yanked me down the hall toward her.
The guys were right behind me, bare feet pounding up the stairs to her room and crashing through the door to her new room all together as one.
She was curled into a ball in the center of her brand-new bed, thrashing in her blankets and sobbing as her little hands clawed at the air like she was fighting off invisible hands. “No!” She cried, “No, don’t! Mama! Please, Mama!”
My chest caved in as I sprinted across the room to her, throwing myself onto her bed as I wrapped her up, whispering his name over and over, trying to break her free of her nightmare.
“Baby girl,” I cooed, trying to hide the fear in my voice. “It’s okay, it’s Mama. I’ve got you. You’re safe, baby. You’re safe.”
But she wouldn’t stop screaming, even as she clung to me like she would drown if she let go. Her tiny voice hiccupped through the sobs, broken words spilling out. “I—I saw him. I saw the monster. He was here.”
The room was silent except for her cries.
I felt Travis’s presence at my back, solid and steady as Eli crouched on the other side of the bed, turning the light on. His face was tight and pale in the warm light as he held Emmie’s hand in his big one.
The word monster hung between us, heavy and sharp.
I brushed Emmie’s hair back, kissing her damp forehead as I rocked her against my chest. But my mind raced, cold dread trickling down my spine until it felt like my heart was going to burst through my ribs.
“Who baby? Who did you see?” I whispered, praying for some fictional villain to be the star of her nightmare.
“Him.” She sobbed, “The man who locked me in the closet.” Her chest rattled as the memories assaulted her. “The man who made you scream from the other side of the door.”
My blood ran cold, and I could feel every single molecule in the air around me as time stood still.
Danny. Her father.
One of the last nights I spent with him before I had Toby was one of the worst nights of my life.
The night I thought he was finally going to kill me for good. He had locked Emmie in the closet when she wandered from her bedroom and found him on top of me, choking me. I had been so pregnant I couldn’t fight back, even if I was stupid enough to try.
But then he locked her in our closet, and I couldn’t get to her as he beat me. I couldn’t ease her fears and cries as she clawed her little fingers under the door, screaming for me.
What if she didn’t just dream it?
What if somehow, someway, Danny got close enough for her to see him?
It didn’t fit.
That wasn’t how he worked. He was a coward who slithered in the shadows and played games. But the way she screamed sounded like recognition, not just fear.
“I’ve got her,” I whispered, holding Emmie tighter as I looked from Eli to Trav. “I’m staying in here.”
Travis didn’t move, standing over us with his sweatpants on and his big bare chest rising and falling with power and strength. Eli’s soft voice was low but lethal. “Lockdown starts right now.” He held my stare. “The kids don’t go anywhere without us. Ever again.”
I looked at him and shivered from the fire in his stare. It matched the power radiating off Travis’s hot skin. They meant it.
Finally, Travis spoke, his voice quiet like a growl. “This isn’t just some bad dream, Frankie. We can’t keep brushing this off. If that bastard is circling closer, we need to put this on record. We need to go to the authorities and tell them what’s happening.”
I wanted to argue, to tell them they’re overreacting—but Emmie’s cries broke through my skin again, raw and terrified. My little girl saw something, maybe someone.
Even if she doesn’t remember her father, she could have recognized him in person if she had seen him.
Silently, I tucked her against me, laying back on her pillow as my heartbeat stuttered, rocking her through the echoes of her fear. One thought clawed its way through the chaos, one I didn’t have the bravery to say out loud.
If Danny really showed himself, then he wasn’t just after me anymore.
He was after all of us.
I worked on autopilot, stuck in my head, the same way I had been since Emmie woke up in the middle of the night, screaming about the monster in her nightmare.
Eli had gone to work for a half shift to cover someone else, and Trav stood at the front door at six thirty in the morning, like he couldn’t quite convince himself to leave, to leave us.
But we couldn’t live like that.
I had to be strong.
For my kids.
For them.
Which meant I finally had to go to the police.
I had to file a report and give them all the things I had to start building a case against the father of my kids.
It would be hard, and people would doubt my word, and second-guess my integrity and my character, and I’d have to convince them I was a good mom before they ever treated me fairly.
It was all the things that kept me from going to the police any of the other times Danny abused me when we were together. Or any of the times after I finally left when I felt like the walls were closing in around me because of his little games.
But I had too much to lose to just be complacent in his abuse any longer.
The rink bar was buzzing the way it always did on a Wednesday night, beer league guys swapping chirps, locals hooting and hollering at the TVs as hockey played out across the country.
Rick poured drafts, living his best life as I wiped down the bar top, ready to start kicking people out so I could go home.
Home.
The serenity I found in the beautiful cabin in the woods, tucked into bed between Travis and Eli, with my kids tucked into their beds upstairs, happy and safe.
Safe.
Even thinking the word left anxiety crawling across my skin.
Trav and Eli were sitting at the bar with their friends, pretending to stick around to watch the game, instead of heading home like they usually did after practice. When in reality, they were waiting for me.
Watching me.
Waiting for me to crumble.
So they could catch me.
I was so distracted by my own thoughts that it took a second to notice that something had happened around me, the noise in the bar cut out like someone hit the off switch on a speaker.
Glancing up from the bar, I watched as everyone in the place turned and looked toward the front door, at the newcomers standing there looking over everyone.
A man and woman, wearing dress clothes and matching jackets with some sort of badge on the breast pocket I couldn’t make out from across the room. Each of them had file folders in their hands, as if they were ready to conduct some sort of official business.
Clearly, they had the wrong place if they were looking for something official. There wasn’t an official in the place. Or at least that was what I had thought until three uniformed police officers walked in behind them. Two I recognized as locals, the third was the chief of police himself.
Shit.
Something was wrong.
My skin prickled as I wiped my hands on a rag as the chief pointed toward the bar and the two officials headed our way.
My way.
“Franchesca Blake?” The woman asked, voice echoing too loud in the silence.
Every eye in the place swung toward me, and my stomach dropped.
They were close enough now that I dared to glance at the emblem on their jackets.
The badge.
The title.
Department of Children and Families.
“Right here.” Rick said, stepping up beside me, placing his hand on my shoulder in solidarity as I fought to speak like I had suddenly forgotten how.
The man didn’t even flinch as he pulled a thick envelope out of the folder and laid it on the bar in front of me.
“My name is Agent Andrews, of the Department of Children and Families. You’ve been named in a petition, and we’re here to conduct a full investigation into the criminal charges claimed against you. ”
The air left my lungs as Rick tightened his hold on my shoulders. “For what?” I whispered.
“Child neglect. Child Endangerment. And Child abandonment.” The woman next to him said with a haughty sneer as my world crashed down around me, with every eye in the room staring at me like I hadn’t been friends with everyone in the room for the last three decades of my life.
“There has to be some sort of mistake.” I said, grabbing the envelope and ripping it open.
But there in black bold ink on the first page were the allegations and words I never wanted to read about myself.
Unfit mother.
Neglect.
Abandonment.
Risk to minors.
My hands shook so hard the paper rattled.
“Bullshit.” The growl came from beside them, making both agents flinch across the bar.
Travis.
Stepping up so fast, his stool screeched across the floor. His chest rose and fell as if he were holding himself back by a thread.
Eli wasn’t holding back at all. He was already behind the bar, slamming his fist down on the bar top, “You walk in here, in front of the entire fucking town, and you throw this at her. Who the hell would make up these claims?”
“Sir, we’re just—” The man in the official jacket that mocked me held his hands up, stepping backward toward the armed guards they brought with them for their late-night visit.
“No,” Travis’s low, lethal voice interrupted him as he came to my other side, “You’re not doing this here. Not like this.”
“Now, Travis,” The chief of police, a man my mother went to school with, stepped forward with a fatherly tone dripping with authority and disappointment, “Let the agents do their job. They have to investigate the claims; they’re too compounding to be brushed off.”
“I don’t understand,” I cried, closing my eyes as tears welled up in them. I felt like I had landed in some alternate universe and couldn’t get my feet underneath me. “What exactly is being claimed against me? By whom? My kids aren’t neglected. I haven’t abandoned them.”