Page 376 of Off Limits: The Firsts

Withdrawn.

Like I didn’t get to her in time.

Petrified.

Like I didn’t save her.

For a second, the picture of Emerson that fell from the folder flashes in my mind and the two of them meld together.

Emmy and Keely.

Keely and Emmy.

They could be one and the same.

“Don’t do it, Grant,” Nate warns, already grabbing my arm and trying to drag me back a step. “Don’t do it.”

“Do you have a warrant?” Mr. Davis says as he stands there with a cocky smirk.

“I have probable cause,” I say, lifting my chin toward his daughter.

“You don’t have shit,” he sneers. “She fell running up the stairs earlier. Got banged up real good, too, but we kissed it and made it all better. So, since you have no authority to be here.” He strides the short distance to the front door. “Then good bye.”

My palm is on the door slamming it back to prevent it from closing. Keely shrinks at the sound, and Davis curses at me.

“Grant,” Nate cautions, but all I can think of is willingly letting this little girl go back into this house.

Her blood is on my hands.

Keely isn’t Emmy.

I don’t have probable cause.

She asked for help.

Emmy isn’t Keely.

I don’t have any cause other than a rock painted like a watermelon.

“Get inside, Keels,” he demands, but never once looks at her. Tension ratchets with each second that we stare at each other, the predictability of what’s going to happen next changes with each and every one of my thoughts.

“No.” My hand is on her shoulder, keeping her put as she swivels those big, blue eyes of hers from her dad to me and back again, both of us wanting her for different things—I want to protect her, and he wants to hide his abuse.

“Man, we don’t have the auth—”

“I don’t care about parental privilege.”

“Get inside the house,” Davis growls.

I look at Nate and then back to Keely. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about her piece-of-shit father, but I know what I have to do, and Nate is going to kill me for it.

Without warning, I stoop down and pick Keely up. “She isn’t going back in there.” I half expect to be attacked from behind as I walk down the path. I prepare for it, but it never comes. Though, Nate is swearing and Davis is shouting.

Or possibly Nate is holding Davis back while I jog away with his daughter.

With the evidence.

I don’t have a plan. I don’t have anything thought out other than there is no way in hell I am letting her go back into that house with that jerk and her compliant mother. Keely’s little hands grip my neck, and her sniffles fill my ears.