For me.

“So you two are Denny Lowe sisters, is that it?” Mia bit back.

“Yeah,” Susie whispered. “Yeah we are. We don’t wanna be, but we are. And, just in case you aren’t getting this, because we are, you don’t fuck with us.”

Whoa.

Susie was totally throwing down.

For me.

I was attempting to process this and how I felt about it when I braced again. This was because Susie’s eyes lifted from Mia and she tensed.

Visibly.

Susie visibly tensed and I watched the blood drain clean from her face.

Then she started backing up.

Her mouth moved.

It moved again.

No sound came out.

“What?” I asked.

Her mouth moved, and again, no sound came out.

“Susie, are you okay?”

She looked to me.

Then she screamed, “Run!”

And that was when the gunshots exploded.

* * * * *

Garrett

“Pink.”

Garrett turned in line at Mimi’s Coffee Shop to see Cal behind him, his baby son asleep and strapped to his chest, his little girl in front of him in a stroller, the key fob to Cal’s truck half an inch from Angela’s face, a clear object of fascination.

“What?” he asked.

“Pink,” Cal repeated, looked to Mike at Garrett’s side, his eyes fucking alight with humor.

Shit.

“And, I hear, some purple,” Cal went on.

“What are you talkin’ about?” Garrett asked.

“Vi reported in. The ornaments for your tree. Brace, man. Cher’s testin’ you,” Cal told him.

Pink Christmas ornaments.

Did they even make pink Christmas ornaments?

“They do that,” Mike muttered.

Garrett turned to his partner. “They do what?”

“Test you,” Mike said.

“Now what are you talkin’ about?” Garrett asked.

“Pink ornaments. Purple sheets. Shit for the kitchen you do not need,” Cal answered the question he asked Mike. And he wasn’t done. “Wait until you get in a discussion about who’s gonna pay what bill. Vi gave it her all to unman me with that one, brother. Cher sinks her teeth in you, you give in even a little on that, she’ll have your balls and she’ll be payin’ your mortgage.”

Fuck.

“And toss pillows,” Cal kept at it. “So many toss pillows, it’s borderline insane. They got some for summer. Then, for some Godforsaken reason, they switch them out for winter. They add some for Halloween. Thanksgiving. Christmas.” He shook his head, but his eyes were still full-on amused. “They use this shit to test you. See how tight a hold they got on your dick.”

Garrett stared at him.

Angela whirled her dad’s key fob in the air and shouted, “May-May!”

That meant Merry.

He grinned down at her, bending to touch the tip of her nose with his finger. “Hey, sweetheart.”

When he straightened away, she twisted to try to see her father. “Want May-May!”

Cal bent over the stroller. “Merry’s workin’, baby. Today, you got Daddy.”

“Daddeeee!” she yelled, a big grin on her pretty face, clearly not too cut up she couldn’t have Garrett.

“Just let it go, man,” Mike advised to Garrett, and he turned to Mike as Mike moved forward in the line. “And by that, I mean the pink ornaments. Just let her have them.”

Cal inclined his head toward Mike. “That’s the way. Suck it up. Take the hit. You fight over pink ornaments and purple sheets, she may let go of your dick.” He grinned. “And you don’t want that.”

“Cher’s got beads acting as a door to her closet,” Garrett told Cal.

Cal nodded sagely, still grinning. “Mm-hmm. You’re in for it, brother.”

“What I’m sayin’ is, who gives a shit?” Merry asked. “She’s it. Got over the wrong one; got my hands on the right one. So if she wants pink ornaments and I got no preference of Christmas ornaments except havin’ ’em, then who cares? If it makes her happy…” he trailed off on a shrug.

Cal’s brows drew together like he couldn’t comprehend what Garrett was saying to him.

Garrett grinned at him as his phone rang.

He pulled it out, looked at the screen, decided tomorrow he was fucking finally going to go get a new phone, and he took Sully’s call.

“Yo, Sul.”

“Merry, brother, call just came in. Shots fired. Parking lot at Bobbie’s Garden Shoppe.”

Garrett froze.

Not because there were shots fired.

Because of the tone in Sully’s voice and the fact that Cher was going to Bobbie’s that day.

“Sul,” he whispered, his insides freezing.

“Shits me to say this—shits me—but gotta say it. Calls came in reported the shooter abducted Cher.”

He turned sharply and headed to the door.

“You with Colt?” he asked Sully.

“Merry,” Mike called.

“We’re headed that way,” Sully told him. “Colt’s a little…” He didn’t finish.

He didn’t have to.

Garrett knew what Colt was.

He was that too.

Except she was his.

She was Colt’s friend.

But Cher was his.

And she’d been abducted.

Fucking abducted.

So what Colt was, Garrett was more of it.

“We’re headed that way too,” Garrett told him, shoving out the door.

“Merry, dammit, what the fuck?” Mike clipped.

“You got any more?” Garrett asked Sully.

“Nothin’. Call just came in. Pandemonium at Bobbie’s. Got units goin’ out there. If I get more before you get there, I’ll call,” Sully answered.

“Later,” Garrett bit off, standing on the driver’s side door of their service sedan. He looked to Mike, who was rounding the hood. “Keys,” he demanded.

It wasn’t his day to drive.

“Garrett, what’s goin’ on?” Mike asked tersely.

“Shots fired at Bobbie’s and preliminary reports say that the shooter took Cher.”

“What?” Mike asked, stopping short by Garrett.

“What?” Cal growled, and Garrett spared a glance to the sidewalk where Cal and his kids were.

He looked back to Mike. “Keys.”

“You aren’t drivin’, brother,” Mike replied quietly.

Garrett leaned his way. “Give me the goddamned keys.”

“Round the car, Merry. I drive,” Mike returned.

They faced off.

For half a second.

Then Garrett jogged around the car so they could get to Bobbie’s.

* * * * *

Cher

From my place, lying in the backseat of a car, hands zip-tied behind my back, I stared at the profile of Walter Jones, who was driving.

“You’re not ex-FBI, are you?” I whispered.

He said nothing.

“You’re not ex-FBI. You’re one of those sick fucks who gets off on all things Dennis Lowe,” I guessed.

“Shut the fuck up.”

He was.

God.

He was.

And he had me.

“I got a kid. I got a mom. I got a man. I got a life. I’ll repeat, I got a kid,” I told him.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“He’s eleven.”

I rolled to the floor when he suddenly stopped the car, pain shooting up my shoulder and across my hips, both of which hit first.

By the time I twisted my head to look up, he was leaned around the driver’s seat, pointing his gun at me.

“I said,” he whispered, “shut the fuck up.”

I shut the fuck up.

He waited.

Then he turned back around and drove.

* * * * *

Garrett

“She didn’t run.”

Garrett stood in the parking lot of Bobbie’s with Colt, Mike, and Sully, listening to Susie Shepherd talk, Mia standing next to her but not close. Both of them were visibly freaked right the fuck out, but surprisingly, it was Susie who had it together to report what had happened.

He tried to stay locked on Susie, but he couldn’t.

His eyes wandered to the back of the Equinox. The hatch up.

She’d been loading bags when Mia confronted her. Interrupted by his fucking ex-wife, then abducted by an unknown man with a weapon.

Six shopping bags he could count.

Fucking six.

She was excited for Christmas. Christmas with him and her boy.