Page 84 of From the Embers
“She’s in there!” I yelled, panic consuming me. “I think he’s taking her out the back.”
I took off around the side of the house. Eason was faster though, sprinting past me, his feet hammering on the wooden porch. With two hands on the railing, he propelled himself over it and disappeared from my sight.
“Hey!” he boomed. “Stop right fucking there.”
Blood thundered in my ears as I rounded the corner to the back steps, skipping every other one on my way down. I made it to the bottom just in time to see Eason dive and tackle the bearded man holding Luna.
Luna flew from his arms and landed hard in the grass, a pained wail tearing from her throat.
“Get her!” Eason yelled at me while clinging to the man, fighting beneath him to get away. Punches were exchanged, grunts and cusses echoing through the otherwise silent night.
With my heart in my throat, I bolted to Luna. Her arms were already stretched as high as she could get them, reaching for me, twin rivers dripping off her chin. Mid-stride, I scooped her up, planting her on my hip, but she crawled up my front, shaking as she hugged my neck.
“I want Daddy!” she cried.
“Shhh. It’s okay. I’ve got you,” I soothed, stroking a hand down her back.
The right thing to do was to take Luna and leave. Eason could handle himself. I told my feet to move. My brain all but screamed it. But for some reason, I couldn’t stop staring at the man Eason was fighting to restrain.
I wouldn’t recognize Steven Barton. I’d never seen more than the one picture of him on my computer. The dark-brown hair matched. So did the thick beard.
But none of that explained why the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
“You motherfucker,” Eason snarled, rolling on top of him and wrapping a hand around his throat. Using his knees, he pinned him to the ground, reared back his fist, and then stopped. Completely. Head to toe. His entire taut, rage-filled, adrenaline-ravaged body just…
Froze.
Just like my heart, as the entire world once again caught fire around us.
His name slipped through my lips on a violent whisper. “Rob?”
EASON
“What the hell?” I breathed, the fist aimed at my former best friend’s face dropping limply to my side.
My dead former best friend’s face.
“Get the fuck off me.” He bucked beneath me, blood dripping from his lip into his beard.
I shook my head, seeing but in no way believing that the man breathing in front of me could actually be alive.
I couldn’t lie. I hated Rob for so many things I’d learned since his death, but there was still a tiny part inside me that sparked, almost happy at seeing the man I had considered my brother for so many years with a pulse again.
Until I remembered he had taken my daughter.
With both hands wrapped around his neck, I cracked his head against the ground, roaring, “You’re dead! We buried you!”
A sinister smile curled the corners of his mouth. “No. You buried Steven. That dumb fuck deserved to die. Setting off the explosive in the basement too soon. Fucking amateur cost me my whole damn life.”
I blinked, literally nothing about the moment making sense. I had so many questions, but my mind couldn’t steady on one long enough to ask any of them. It was Luna’s cry from behind me that finally broke through my shock.
I looked up and found my woman holding her a few yards away, her face pale, as though she’d seen a ghost. Which, in reality, she had. But she had my daughter, my baby, safe in her arms, out of reach of whoever this madman was beneath me. Even with the utter shitstorm brewing all around me, I managed to let out a sigh of relief.
Bree started to take a step forward but froze, the shock leaving her unable to get any closer. “How did you get out?” Her voice shook, but her words were clear. “No one could have survived the second explosion.”
Rob sneered, “No one should have survived the first one. And yet here we are.”
I didn’t want to take my eyes off Luna, afraid that, if I looked away, I’d be thrust back into the nightmare of not knowing where she was. But it was Rob’s maniacal laughter that sent chills down my spine, forcing me to focus on him.
“God, this is so damn poetic. Eason, you should write a song about this shit. Maybe it’ll actually be good for once.”
A low blow from the man who’d spent years encouraging me to pursue my dreams. But the more words poured out of him, the more he told me that that man no longer existed.
Maybe he never had.
“Do you have any idea how hard it was to find someone willing to kill you two? I spent months siphoning money from Prism. I plotted out every fucking detail, right down to how Jessica would spend her time lounging by the pool—or better yet, on her knees, treating me like a fucking king.” Even with my hands still wrapped around his throat, he managed to turn his head to look at his wife. No, fuck that. My woman. “Your life insurance policy was going to allow us the life we both deserved. Half a million fucking dollars wasted on Steven Barton, and in the end, she was the only one who died.” He let out a low growl filled with pain.
