Page 70 of Ruthless Possession
I pull the Sig from my waistband and keep it low.
I don't say anything. There's no point. Men who break into houses at two in the morning with tools aren't looking to negotiate, and I'm not interested in giving them time to think.
The taller one turns first. I don't know what tipped him, maybe a shift in the air, maybe he caught my shape in his peripheral vision. His mouth opens, but I'm already moving.
I drive my left foot into the back of the shorter one's knee. He folds. The sound he makes is small and surprised, like the air got punched out of him before his brain could figure out why. He goes down on the gravel hard, hands out, and I'm already past him.
The taller one swings. I see it coming a half second before it arrives: his shoulder dipping, the weight shifting, the arc of the bar starting wide. I drop under it. The bar whistles past the side of my head, close enough that I feel the air move. My free hand catches his wrist on the follow-through, locks it, and I use his own momentum to carry him around.
His back hits the siding of the house. I feel the wall absorb the impact through his body. The bar drops from his fingers and skitters across the porch.
He tries to bring his knee up. I turn my hip into it before it gets there and the angle kills it completely, his leg just sort of gives, and I feel him realize, in real time, that he's not going to win this.
I press the Sig under his jaw. Not hard. Just enough.
"Don't move."
He doesn't move.
Behind me, the shorter one is trying to get back to his feet. I can hear the gravel shift under his hands, hear the shaky pull of his breath. I keep the Sig where it is and look over my shoulder.
"On your stomach. Hands behind your head. Now."
He looks at me. Looks at the gun. Looks at his friend pressed against the wall of my house with my forearm across his throat. I can see the moment he gives up, falling to his knees.
I reach back and find the zip ties in my back pocket without looking. One for the guy on the ground, cinched tight around both wrists. One for the guy against the wall, after I've walked him down the steps and pushed him onto his knees next to his friend.
Neither of them speaks. That's the smartest thing they've done all night.
I pat them down. The taller one has a folding knife in his back pocket, and the shorter one has a phone, though it's not his personal phone but a cheap prepaid one.
I pull up the camera feeds on my phone. The east side is clear. Matthew's got his guy. Caiden's was supposed to be on the front, but I beat him to it, which means he's going to be pissed at me, which I'll deal with later.
Matthew texts me with: E. One contact on my side.
I text him back: 2 back. I have them.
I look down at the two men kneeling in my driveway. The taller one's lip is bleeding where I caught him with my elbow during the turn I don't remember doing it, which means it was muscle memory, which also means my body made the call before my brain finished processing the threat. Old habit. Good habit.
The shorter one has stopped shaking. That's almost worse. He's gone past scared and I can see his mind racing trying to find a way out.
I don't give him the chance.
I grab a fistful of the taller one's jacket and haul him up. He comes without resistance. The shorter one, I leave on the ground as he's not going anywhere with his hands tied behind his back, and I want them separated before we start talking.
I walk the tall one toward the back door. Matthew appears at the corner of the house with his guy in tow, and we exchange a look that lasts maybe a second and contains an entire conversation. He nods once; I nod back.
Inside, Caiden's already got the third one on a chair. Matthew shoves his guy onto another. I deposit mine onto the third. Three chairs. Three men who thought they could walk into my house and take something that belongs to me.
I pull the camera feed. The red light goes dark.
The one Matthew brought in starts talking almost immediately. Custody situation, he says. Domestic. Harris told them it was a legal grab, he says. He's selling it hard, his voice pitched high and fast, the way liars talk when they're trying to outrun the holes in their story.
I let him talk. Then I pull out a chair, turn it around, and sit on it backward. I rest my forearms across the top of it and watch all three of them, letting the silence do the work I don't need to do with words.
"You came to my house," I say. "At two in the morning. With a plan to take a child."
The guy's mouth opens. Closes.
