second knock that made me realize that the tap-tap I’d heard and dismissed was actually the door.
“Shit,” I said as I got up and walked to my towel.
“One minute!” I screamed.
Hopefully they’d hear me.
It could only be a few people.
There were no more deliveries this late at night, even though I was waiting for one. Dammit. My parents’ third gift wouldn’t be here until the twenty-sixth. Which pissed me off because that was the one I’d most wanted to give to them.
What was the point in paying for extra fast shipping if it wasn’t going to get here in time?
“You can bet your ass that I’m getting my money back for that,” I grumbled as I slipped back into Saint’s sweatshirt, a pair of leggings, and some slippers.
I was just getting to the door when I heard, “Don’t bother. I let myself in.”
I looked at the panel on the wall.
It was black.
But I remembered one thing my father told me about it.
Cut power and the police are called. It may look like it’s not working, but it is. Battery backup, baby.
Hopefully what he said was true, because as I stared at the man in my house, I was scared shitless that nobody would know until I didn’t show up at Christmas in the morning.
CHAPTER 16
All I’m saying is you rarely see a person crying and eating Christmas cookies at the same time.
-Caro to Saint
SAINT
“All units be advised,” the dispatcher said into our radio as I hurriedly changed into my SWAT gear. “Silent alarm was tripped at…”
I listened with half an ear as I dropped down onto the bench and tied my boots.
I hustled through, grabbing my gear when I arrived outside to find the entire team already there and waiting. I was last. Again. But, saying that, I’d had a streaker that’d thought it would be a grand idea to run down the length of Kilgore’s main highway and flash everyone his candy cane.
Newsflash, the city of Kilgore did not like seeing his candy cane or his ornaments.
I’d just gotten him in the back of my cruiser, cold, saggy balls and all, when the call had come through for the SWAT team.
“Ready,” I said, huffing slightly at the hurry that they’d put on me.
Normally we weren’t quite so frantic, but I hadn’t had the chance to read the call yet. I just knew there was one.
Now I was left staring at the men of the SWAT team as they stared back at me in various shades of pity.
“What the fuck are y’all looking at me like that for?” I barked, uneasy with the attention, but also a bit unsettled when not just one, or two, but all of their eyes were on me.
I never got that much attention.
It was making me very uneasy.
Foster, who was our team leader for today, stepped forward.
That was when I also saw that Bennett was there, too.
He wasn’t on call…
Which then got me to thinking, over half of them weren’t on call. It was decided that half the team would have Christmas Eve off, and the other team, which was my team, would have Christmas off.
They shouldn’t be here…
That unsettling feeling grew until a wave of nausea took root in my belly, slowly filling me up from the throat down.
There were one of four or five people of this world that could get this reaction out of me, and of them all, only one of them did the SWAT team know about.
Carolina.
There was something wrong with Carolina.
“What happened?” I asked, feeling sick that I even had to ask.
Bennett stepped forward, too, but gestured to the rest of the crew to get into the back of the armored truck. They did, leaving Foster, Bennett, and me standing there behind the truck.
“Foster, you mind riding in the back?” Bennett asked. “I’ll drive.”
Foster got into the truck and Bennett closed the doors before gesturing for me to take the front seat.
I did, though I didn’t want to.
I had a feeling that sitting up in that seat meant that I was going to hear things that I didn’t want to hear.
I was right.
When I got in and Bennett started the truck up, he started to talk.
When he was done, I couldn’t quite believe my ears.
“I’m sorry, but can you repeat that?” I asked, even though I’d heard him correctly the first time.
Bennett looked over at me with a hardness to his face that I’d never seen before.
“Carolina is being held hostage at her house,” he repeated slower. “There was