left hand over her stomach to try to soothe him or her, but she kept the gun ready in her right.
Thanks to the security lights, she watched as Clayton and Declan made their way across the backyard and toward the fence that stretched out behind the barn. She remembered seeing horses in that part of the pasture when she and Clayton talked to Quentin, but she couldn’t see any back there now. Only the ones that were running free.
Her breath stalled again when she saw Clayton and Declan pivot toward the front of the house. Both took aim. But then just as quickly, they lowered their guns when Cutter came into view.
Good.
Not only wasn’t it the threat that her body anticipated, but now Clayton had two people with him. She wished he had an entire army, because she had a very uneasy feeling about this.
Was Johnny Lomax out there?
The three men kept moving toward the back pasture. All stayed vigilant, with their gazes firing around them and their guns ready. It wasn’t long, however, before they disappeared from view. What little peace of mind she had disappeared, as well. It sent her heart racing to know that Clayton could have to face down a killer out there in the darkness.
Lenora considered hurrying to another room with a rear-facing window so she could keep watch, but Clayton had told her to stay put, and that’s what she would do. Besides, her movements might alarm Wyatt, and she didn’t want to distract him, since he was likely keeping watch, too.
Since she couldn’t see Clayton and the others, she tried to steady the heartbeat in her ears so she could hear what was going on. There were certainly no voices. No more shouts. Only the sound of the horses’ hooves chopping into the ground below her. The quiet didn’t lull her into a sense of safety, but she started to relax just a little.
When the sound pierced through the room.
But not just the room.
The shrill noise blasted through the entire house. And it was a sound she definitely hadn’t wanted to hear. Not a shot. In some ways, this could be worse.
Because someone had set off the security alarm.
God, was the killer inside the house?
* * *
CLAYTON CURSED the moment he heard the alarm. The only way for it to be clanging like that was for someone to have opened a door or window. And since he’d warned all of them—Lenora, Kirby, Stella and Wyatt—not to leave, that meant one of them hadn’t listened.
Or someone had broken in.
Hell, Lenora and the others could be in danger.
Clayton took out his cell and called the house phone, as he’d promised Lenora he would do. She answered on the first ring.
“What’s going on?” Lenora immediately asked.
She was alive, thank God, and from the sound of it, terrified. That wasn’t good, but he’d take terrified over wounded any day.
“I’m not sure what set off the alarm,” Clayton answered. Or more like who set it off. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Are you?”
“Fine.” For now. He wasn’t about to say that to her, though. “Keep the bedroom door locked and stay away from the window,” he repeated. “I’ll get there as fast as I can.”
He hung up, but not before he heard Lenora say, “Be careful.”
Clayton motioned for Declan and Cutter to follow him when he started for the house. He ran, trying to keep watch around him. After all, there was a possibility that the alarm had been tripped to draw them into an ambush, but that was an outside chance. There’d been opportunity for someone to shoot at them the minute Declan and he had stepped outside.
But how had someone gotten past the ranch hands and into the house?
With that question burning in his mind, Clayton ran to the back porch. No one was in sight, and he couldn’t hear anything over the alarm. He tested the knob.
Locked.
Just as he’d left it.
He fished out his key from his pocket, opened the door and peered inside the kitchen. The room was practically pitch-black, also as he’d left it, and he couldn’t see anyone lurking in the shadows. He reached inside and glanced at the security panel.
Clayton cursed again.
The tiny blinking red light stabbed through the darkness, an indication of which sensor had been tripped, and it was the sensor for a window in the den. The bottom floor of the house. He wasn’t sure how an intruder had gotten past the ranch hands, but maybe the person had used