Chapter 49
The elbow caught Wes across the jaw hard enough to blur his vision for one white second.
He shook it off and drove forward, strapping his arm across Window Man’s chest before he could use the opening.
The man was strong—stronger than his build suggested—and he’d been trained to absorb punishment and keep working. That made him exactly the kind of opponent Wes least wanted to be wrestling in a small kitchen with no room to maneuver.
“No one move!” Rowan yelled.
Everything seemed to stop all at once.
Window Man went still beneath him.
Wes turned to see what had happened.
Rowan stood against the far cabinet, a gun raised in both hands. Her arms shook and her jaw was set with a determination that made his chest clench.
She’d found a weapon. And it wasn’t his.
His gun still lay near the door.
Across the kitchen, Remington had Beefy Man pinned to the floor, one massive paw on his chest and his muzzle inches from the man’s throat. A low, menacing growl warned the man not to even flinch.
Beefy Man had gone completely still. He knew Remington wasn’t making an empty threat.
Wes kept his forearm across Window Man’s chest and didn’t move.
“Rowan.” He kept his voice low and steady. “You’re doing great. Hold your position.”
Her eyes flicked to him for just a second. Something moved through them—relief, fear, the effort of holding herself together—before they went back to the man in front of her.
“I’ve got this one,” Wes said. “Don’t move the gun. Don’t lower it. Just keep your eyes on the room.”
She gave a single tight nod.
“You’re okay. I’ve got you.” Wes meant it in more ways than one.
Wes shifted his weight and reached for Window Man’s wrist, working to get control of his arms before he could think about using them.
The man resisted with a short sharp push against Wes’s grip. But with his partner immobile and a gun trained on the room, he was running a different calculation now.
“Lauren.” Wes kept his voice even. “I need you to look around the kitchen. Is there something—a cord, a belt, anything—we can use to tie his hands?”
Lauren blinked. Looked around.
“My mom has a junk drawer,” Rowan said. “Beside the sink. To the left. There might be zip ties in there.”
“Find them.” Wes told her.
Lauren pushed herself off the refrigerator on unsteady legs and moved toward the far end of the counter. She pulled the drawer open with shaking hands.
Wes kept his attention divided between the two men and the room.
Rowan hadn’t moved. Her arms still trembled, but the gun stayed level. The look on her face had shifted from terror into something quieter.
She was holding her own.
He almost had Window Man’s wrists controlled when he caught the movement.
Not from his man.
From the beefy one on the floor.
The one Remington had pinned.
The man had been still. His gaze was latched onto the gun in Rowan’s hands. In the fraction of a second that Remington’s attention shifted toward Lauren crossing the kitchen, the man’s body coiled.
“Remi—” Wes started.
But the man was already moving.
He came off the floor faster than anyone pinned under a hundred-pound dog had any right to. One arm drove up hard to knock Remington sideways.
Rowan’s eyes went wide.
The man lunged across the kitchen toward her.
And Wes knew he couldn’t get there in time.
The man crossed the kitchen in three strides.
Rowan didn’t back up.
Every muscle in her body screamed at her to move, to run, to put something between herself and the man coming toward her. But her feet stayed planted and the gun stayed up and some part of her that was past fear and past thinking held its ground with a stubbornness that surprised even her.
He was two steps away when Lauren moved.
It wasn’t much. It wasn’t heroic. She simply stepped out from the corner near the refrigerator and put herself partially in his path. The unexpected presence of another body in the space between them made him check his stride for just a fraction of a second.
It was enough.
Rowan sidestepped hard to her left, keeping the gun up. She put the kitchen island between herself and the man as he adjusted course.
He came around the end of it fast, reaching for the weapon with one hand.
She drew it back and drove the butt of it into the side of his head.
The man hissed and pulled back with a moan.
Across the kitchen Wes used the distraction to get his man’s arm twisted behind his back. The sound that followed told her it hadn’t been gentle.
The man went down to one knee and stayed there.
Remington was back on his feet, placing himself between the first man and Rowan with a low, continuous sound in his chest that needed no interpretation.
The first man looked at the dog.
Then at Rowan and the gun still raised in her shaking hands.
Then he went still.
The kitchen settled into a taut and brittle silence broken only by everyone’s breathing and the distant sound of tires on gravel coming fast up the driveway.
Then multiple sets of tires.
Rowan kept the gun up and didn’t take her eyes off the man in front of her.
The front door flung open hard. “Police! Nobody move!”
Two officers she didn’t recognize came through first, weapons drawn. They took in the room in seconds. Wes with his man on the floor, Remington standing guard, Rowan with the gun, Lauren pressed against the refrigerator. Then they began moving with practiced efficiency.
“Ma’am.” One of the officers moved toward Rowan, his voice careful and deliberate. “I need you to lower the weapon slowly and set it on the counter.”
Her arms shook so hard she was surprised she’d held it this long.
She lowered it. Set it down.
Her hands felt strange without it.
More voices sounded from outside. Radio static. The sound of another vehicle.
Then footsteps stomped across the porch.
Micah appeared.
His gaze found hers. “You okay?”
“Yes.” The word came out steadier than she expected.
She meant it this time. Maybe for the first time on this entire trip.
Within seconds officers had both men on the floor, handcuffs in place.
Rowan watched it all from beside the island.
She was fine. She kept telling herself that. She was fine, and it was over, and the men were restrained, and Micah was here, and the police were here, and it was over.
Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
She pressed them flat against her thighs and breathed.
Then she heard a voice behind her. “Rowan.”
Just her name. Nothing else. But the way Wes said it—low and rough and like he’d been holding it in since forever—undid something she’d been holding together for the past hour.
She turned.
Wes crossed the kitchen in three steps. Rowan met him halfway, and his arms went around her.
She didn’t cry. Not yet. She just leaned into him and let herself be held until the shaking in her hands gradually began to still.