to move to a more secure location. He pushed the carrier into Robin’s hands and pulled her to her feet, urging her to keep low as they ran toward the back door. “It’s going to have to wait until later.”
A flash-bang grenade lit up the room they’d just vacated. Someday, he’d think about how angry it made him to think the place where he’d first made love to Robin was now burning. But right now, Jake could only think about getting them all to safety. “He can’t find us in the house. Let’s move.”
A second flash-bang hit the kitchen and startled Emma into a screeching panic. Jake opened the back door and pulled Robin along the side of the house behind him. “If we can get to the barn, you and Emma can hide out inside the wall of hay bales. That should give you a little more protection.”
“You’re coming with us.” Robin accidentally tugged on his wounded arm and Jake cursed.
“I’ll get you to the barn.”
Their attacker had found Jake’s semi-auto and was cutting a line of bullet holes through the front room now. With every new loud sound, Emma cried out. “Can you keep her quiet? Hiding won’t do us any good if her crying gives us away.”
Robin pulled Emma from her carrier to hug her right up against her chest. “Shh, sweetie. Mommy needs you to quiet down.”
A knot of dread formed in Jake’s stomach as nightmare and reality blended together. Darkness. Burning. Explosions. Somebody wanted him dead.
“Jake?” Robin’s touch startled him and he looked over the jut of his shoulder at her. “Stay with me. Don’t go to that place. Here.”
She placed Emma into the crook of his good arm.
“Feel the rain? It’s cool.” Another burst of gunfire made him jump. “Listen to Emma. See?” The infant’s shrieks had quieted to a few intermittent sobs. Robin stroked her hand across his brow and quieted the nightmare. “Are you with me?”
Squeezing the haunting images from his mind, he looked down into her sweet, gray-blue eyes and nodded. “Honey, I’m supposed to save you.”
A flash-bang detonated in the bedroom behind them and all three of them jumped. “I think you’ll still get your chance.”
He hugged Emma as close to his chest as he dared. “Stay low to the ground. And run.”
Once he had Robin and Emma secured behind triple hay bale stacks in the barn, Jake pulled out his half-spent Beretta. “You know how to use a gun?”
“No.”
He placed the gun into Robin’s hands and gave the quickest lesson of his life. “Safety’s off. Squeeze the trigger—don’t jerk it. And don’t shoot me.”
She grabbed hold of him, curling her fingertips into his chest. “Where are you going? Backup’s coming, isn’t it?”
“Maybe not soon enough. If this guy’s like me, only one of us is getting out of here alive.” Her skin paled and Jake leaned in and kissed her. This is who he was, who she needed him to be. “I intend it to be me.”
“I love you,” she whispered as he pulled away.
Jake nodded and kissed her again.
The lights of the approaching sirens finally diverted their attacker’s attention away from the house. With the rain muffling his footsteps, Jake snuck up on the man’s flank. The light wasn’t good, but it didn’t have to be at this distance.
Jake pulled his knife and flipped it in his hand. And when the perp in the trilby hat finally realized he wasn’t alone, he swung around with the semi-automatic. But Jake was quicker.
Twenty seconds later he was standing over a dead man with a knife stuck in his heart. Robin and Emma were finally, truly safe.
He kicked the stupid hat aside and looked back toward the barn. “I love you, too.”
Chapter Twelve
“Joe! Hey, Joe!”
Jake looked up from the baby cooing in his lap on the gurney where a pair of EMTs had bandaged the through-and-through in his shoulder. The guy, blond-haired and long-legged, was chasing the ambulance in his jeans and cowboy boots, trying to catch it before the doors closed and they drove him away for a routine check and some stitches in the E.R.
The man wasn’t much older than Jake, but the badge and sidearm on his belt demanded that he didn’t just blow him off for a private ride with the Carter girls and, he hoped, one of those conversations that Robin liked.
“Detective Montgomery said you’d been avoiding me. If you aren’t the cagiest son of a gun to track down. The rest of the squad thought