75. Leo
LEO
“I’m going to find her,” I growled, turning back toward the blaze.
The image of Kiera trapped in the burning house, afraid or worse…. My chest tightened enough to burst my heart. I squared my shoulders and prepared to run back into the heat.
But Dom stumbled to her feet, gripping my shoulder to stop me. “She’s not in there, Leo. What are you not understanding?”
Anything.
I furrowed my brow as I tried to make sense of it. “If she’s not here, where the fuck else would she be?”
“No, she’s gone.” A laugh like glass ripped from Dom’s chest as she turned her eyes up to the sky. “They took her. Zeus, Isaac. They found us.”
Despite the blazing heat, a chill of fear ran down my spine. “No…”
But Spencer was already on the move. “They can’t have gotten far.”
We didn’t need to exchange words. Spencer stayed close to the glow, watching the kids and Lady while Dom and I moved toward the perimeter of the property.
Zeus had been bold in their attack. It was a matter of moments before Dom cried out, “Here.”
I turned to see her standing over a knocked down section of wrought iron fencing, cursing the sky, flinging an abandoned angle grinder against a nearby tree.
“We have to go,” I locked eyes with Spencer, who nodded furtively.
“Go. I’ll handle the fire department.” Spencer kept an arm wrapped around Caleb’s shoulders while Abi wept into Lady’s fur. “Find our girl.”
Sprinting over to the carriage house, I grabbed two helmets and the spare keys for mine and Dom’s bikes. Dom was on my heels like a murderous shadow, pure lethal rage emanating from her body.
As we pulled down the driveway, columns of smoke painted over the stars and blotted out their light. The Valemont Fire Department was quick to the scene, a truck full of some of the most competent lesbians I’d ever met whipping down the dark road in the opposite direction of our search.
Maybe there will be something left of the house after all.
But it didn’t matter. That place wasn’t a home without Kiera in it.
We drove the backroads first, searching for tire tracks or signs of life up in the woods, but there was nothing.
Circling out from the house, we moved to downtown Valemont, and then to the winding country roads beyond town.
We even drove past Feverpoint, looking desperately for any sign of Kiera beyond their chainlinked fences.
Nothing.
With each mile we drove, my mind caught up with the impossible nightmare we were living.
This wasn’t an accident. Sure, the house was old. But Dom had so much work done on it. There wasn’t a fucking inch of faulty wiring in the place. Someone had broken into our sanctuary and torched it to the ground. Someone had stolen our girl.
And it sure wasn’t an amateur job: overriding Dom’s security system, getting through the gate… There was only one man with the means and motive to smoke us out like this.
My fists tightened around my handlebars. His name pulsed through my mind with each hateful beat of my heart: Isaac, Isaac, Isaac…
I hadn’t thought my resolve could have hardened any further. But as we zipped through that dark night, I knew one thing to be true: I wouldn’t rest until that demon was dead at my feet.