Chapter 33 #2
I nod too fast and kiss her forehead because if I don’t put my mouth on my child right now just to reassure myself she is physically, actually still here, I might start screaming and never stop.
Mac appears a second later, moving fast enough to tell me she was scared too. She takes one look at my face, then Lexi’s, then exhales hard. “Jesus Christ.”
I nod once, still crouched there, still holding Lexi too tightly. “She just wandered.”
Mac crouches beside us, one hand settling briefly on my shoulder. “Okay.” But her tone says what mine already knows.
That wasn’t okay. Not really. Not after everything. Not when my nervous system is already held together with paper clips and prayer.
I’m just starting to stand when my phone buzzes in my back pocket.
The sound slices straight through me. Every instinct I have goes instantly feral.
Mac sees it happen in real time. Her expression hardens immediately. “Who is it?”
I don’t know yet.
My fingers are shaking so badly I almost drop the phone getting it out.
Unknown number.
No caller ID.
My stomach drops straight through the floor. I know. Before I even open it, I know.
Mac reads enough in my face to move closer without a word, one hand already drifting subtly toward the inside of her property jacket where I know she’s carrying.
I unlock the screen. And there it is. A picture message. No text. Just a photo.
My breath leaves my body in one violent, soundless rush. Because it’s us. Me and Lexi. Right now. Inside the store.
Taken from somewhere behind the racks. The angle is too close. Too intimate. Too recent.
I can see the exact shirt I’m wearing. Lexi’s little pink shoes. The back of my own head bent toward her just seconds before I realized she was gone.
And under the photo, finally, are four words.
Turn around, little bird.
The world tilts. Actually tilts. My knees almost buckle.
Mac catches the shift immediately. “What?”
I can’t answer. Can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t do anything but stare at the screen while every horror I’ve been living with for the last year rises up all at once and says I told you so.
He found us anyway.
“Raven.” Mac’s voice cuts in sharper now.
I turn. Slowly. And that’s when I see him.
Not Cal. One of his men. I know that instantly.
Not because I’ve seen him before. Because he’s got that same polished, clean-cut look all Cal’s world seems to breed into men like a disease.
Button-down shirt. Baseball cap. Sunglasses. Ordinary enough to disappear in a crowd. Except he’s not looking at the clothes. Or the cashier. Or his phone.
He’s looking at me. At Lexi. And he smiles.
My whole body goes cold. Not hot. Not panicked.
Cold.
The kind of cold that means danger has moved from abstract to immediate.
“Mac,” I whisper.
She follows my line of sight. Her whole body changes instantly. No more dry humor. No more casual errand energy.
Just steel.
“Take Lexi,” she says low and hard.
I don’t argue. I scoop my daughter up so fast she squeaks in surprise, Bunny and all, and Mac is already moving, one hand at my back shoving me toward the side exit near the dressing rooms.
The man moves too. Fast.
Too fast.
And that’s when the whole store explodes into chaos.
A rack goes down near the front with a crash loud enough to make customers scream.
Somebody yells. A child starts crying. One of the prospects comes barreling through the front doors just in time for another man I didn’t even see to crack him across the side of the head with something hard enough to drop him instantly. Everything after that happens in violent, flashing pieces.
Mac swears and shoves me harder toward the back. “Move!”
I do.
Heart pounding so hard it’s making me nauseous, Lexi clutched so tightly against my chest I’m terrified I’m hurting her.
The second prospect appears near the side hallway and lunges toward us. Then another body slams into him from the blind corner near the stockroom and they both hit the floor in a brutal tangle of limbs and fists and cursing.
“Mac!” I scream.
“Go!”
The side exit is five feet away.
Four.
Three.
A hand closes around my wrist.
Everything inside me stops. Not metaphorically. Actually stops.
Because I know that grip. I know the shape of it. The entitlement in it. The confidence.
The sheer, sick certainty of a man who has spent too long believing every part of you belongs under his hand.
My body goes rigid before my mind catches up.
I turn. And there he is.
Cal.
For half a second, the whole world disappears. Not the store. Not the screaming. Not Lexi crying in my arms. Not Mac shouting somewhere to my left.
Just him. His face. His eyes.
That same controlled, deadly calm I used to spend entire nights trying to read so I could predict which version of him was about to walk through the bedroom door.
He smiles at me. Like this is a reunion. Like this is intimate. Like I should be happy to see him.
My stomach heaves so hard I nearly gag.
“There you are,” he says softly.
No.
No no no no no.
This is not happening.
He found us anyway.
Lexi whimpers, pressing herself harder into me.
Cal’s eyes flick to her.
And God, that is somehow worse.
Because there’s no love in the look. No warmth. No paternal softness. No real affection. Just possession. Just calculation.
Just a man looking at something he thinks he’s owed.
“Come on, bird,” he says, grip tightening on my wrist hard enough to hurt. “Enough games.”
My entire body reacts at once. Panic. Terror. Adrenaline. Pure animal desperation.
I wrench backward so hard my shoulder screams. “Don’t touch me!”
His smile slips. Only slightly.
The hand on my wrist tightens harder. And somewhere in the chaos around us, one horrible thought keeps screaming louder than all the rest.
He’s touching me while I’m holding my daughter.
That thought does something primal and ugly enough to cut through the freeze.
I move. Not smart. Not graceful.
Violent.
I slam the heel of my boot down onto the top of his foot as hard as I can.
He curses and his grip loosens just enough.
Enough.
I twist free and stumble backward, nearly losing my balance with Lexi in my arms.
Mac is suddenly there between us like a fucking blade, property jacket half open and gun out so fast I don’t even process the motion.
“Back the fuck up,” she snarls.
The entire store seems to freeze for one impossible second.
Cal’s eyes flick to the gun.
Then to me. Then to Lexi.
And the smile that comes back is colder this time. Meaner. More honest. “This isn’t over,” he says quietly. Then he vanishes into the chaos just as sirens start screaming somewhere outside.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t fucking breathe.
My body is still trying to process the fact that he was here. That he touched me. That he got that close. That he looked at Lexi.
That he found us anyway.
The room starts going gray around the edges.
Mac turns immediately, one hand gripping my shoulder hard enough to anchor me. “Raven. Look at me.”
I can’t.
I’m shaking too hard. Lexi is crying into my neck. My vision is tunneling. The whole world feels like it’s sliding sideways.
“He found us,” I hear myself say. The words come out broken. Not even fully formed. “He found us.”