Page 78 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

“Sorry,” I whispered. “Take care of Emma, please.”

“Chloe, do not do this. Do not…”

One of the men stepped forward. Sawyer moved toward him and the other one pulled a gun. Not aimed at Sawyer. Aimed at Emma, who was standing in the hallway with her dinosaur clutched to her chest and her green eyes wide and terrified.

Everything stopped.

Sawyer stopped. His whole body locked, every muscle frozen, because the gun was not pointed at him. It was pointed at his daughter. And I watched the most terrifying calculation of his life happen behind his eyes in the space of a single heartbeat. The soldier in him wanted to fight. The father in him could not risk it.

He reached back and pulled Emma against him. Held her tight against his body, his good arm wrapped around her, shielding her with everything he had.

“Mama?” Emma’s voice was muffled against his chest. Small and scared and the sound of it almost broke me.

“It is okay, baby,” I said. “Mama will be okay. I love you so much. Be good for Papa.”

I walked through the door. The men flanked me, one on each side, and we walked to the truck waiting at the end of the gravel drive. I did not look back. I could not look back because if I saw Sawyer’s face or heard Emma’s voice I would stop and I could not stop. Not now. Not when stopping meant the gun staying pointed at the two people I loved most in this world.

I touched the necklace at my throat. Dollie’s necklace. The sign that wherever I went, she would come.

I got in the truck. The door closed. And we drove away from the house on Cedar Road while my heart stayed behind with the man and the girl standing in the doorway.

28

SAWYER

Istood in the doorway and watched the truck disappear down the gravel road and felt something inside me break so completely that I was not sure it would ever fit back together.

Emma was crying against my chest. Not the loud, dramatic crying of a child who had skinned her knee or lost a toy. The silent, trembling crying of a child who had just watched her mother walk away with strange men and did not understand why but understood enough to be terrified.

I held her. My arm around her, my face pressed against the top of her head, and I held her while the dust from the truck settled on the gravel and the road went empty and the silence rushed in to fill the space where Chloe had been standing ten seconds ago.

“Papa.” Emma’s voice was small. Muffled. Broken. “Where is Mama going?”

“I am going to get her back,” I said. “I promise you, Emma. I am going to bring her home.”

I closed the door. Locked it. Set Emma on the couch and crouched in front of her, holding her face in my good hand, looking into those green eyes that were mine and were full of a fear that no six-year-old should ever have to carry.

“I need you to be brave,” I said. “Can you do that for me?”

She nodded. Her lip trembled but she nodded.

I called Josh. He answered on the first ring.

“They took her,” I said. “Two men came to the house. They took Chloe.”

The silence on the other end lasted one second. Then Josh’s voice came back, flat and controlled and running on the same operational frequency that I was. “I am on my way. Do not move.”

I called Dollie next. She answered laughing about something, and the sound of her laughter hit me like a slap because the world she was in, the one where things were funny and people laughed, was not the world I was standing in.

“They took Chloe,” I said.

The laughter stopped. Dead. Like someone had pulled a plug.

“I am coming,” she said. “I am coming right now.”

Dollie arrived first. She came through the door like a woman who had been expecting this, or dreading it, and the look on her face was not surprise. It was confirmation. She went straight to Emma, scooped her up, held her close, and looked at me over Emma’s shoulder with eyes that were bright and hard and carrying something that she needed to tell me.

“Good thing I can help,” Dollie said.