Page 7 of Captured By the Dragon Warrior
As Rampon went over to the basket, I tromped upstairs. Whoever was out there knocked on the front door again. A quick glance in the foyer mirror let me see I definitely looked freshly kissed, but maybe no one else would notice. I opened the door just as the person on the other side started knocking again.
“What the hell, man?” I snapped. “It’s six a.m. for shit’s sake.”
“This is important.” It was Murray Coogan, a neighbor from up the street. Not the brightest bulb, but unlike his best buddy Rex, who was loitering on the lawn, at least the lights were still on.
“Okay, what’s so important?”
Which was when the dude from last night, the one who’d been guarding Rampon and shot out the light as we’d escaped, walked into view beside Rex. I didn’t hear a single thing Murray said as that guy said something to Rex and pointed up at me.
My cover blown, I slammed the door, bolted it, and ran back down into the basement.
“We gotta get out of here. They’ve found us!”
“Who?” Rampon said, cool as a cucumber. He had on my gray sweatpants, the legs pulled up to his knees and his pouch straining the center seam. He tossed an apple into his mouth and crunched it up.
“The guys from last night!” Why wasn’t he more freaked out by this? “I didn’t know but one of them’s my neighbor, and the asshole who shot the light is out there identifying me. Fuck, Ram,they’re here.”
He finished chewing his apple and nodded. I watched him crack his neck and shake out his arms as the frill along the top of his head stood up and turned from blue to orange. Black claws extended over his fingers and toes, and he flexed his muscles. “I will defend you and your home. Let them come.”
Woo! Okay, that was sexy as fuck. Unrealistic since he’d already been captured once, but a little swooning part of my inner damsel was all for sitting back and letting him protect me and my castle from invaders. I nearly laughed thinking that the dragon was the hero.
“Do you have any weapons?” He looked around. “Where is the gun from last night?”
I went over, got my Glock, and checked the clip automatically. “You want to make a stand here?”
Rampon shrugged as he moved to stand at the bottom of the stairs, looking up. “Where are they?”
He seemed to expect them to come running at us. I got my phone out and saw the notifications about someone being at the door from my security camera. Checking all of them, I saw that they’d parked an old cargo van in my driveway behind my truck, while they lingered on my front walk. Murray was gesturing wildly as the shooter and Rex stared at him. As I watched, two other people from the neighborhood trotted over. Reinforcements or just concerned neighbors?
“Ram, I think we need to leave.” I showed him the feeds on my phone.
“Are they at this door?” He pointed to the one out of the basement into the backyard that we’d used to come in last night.
I called up that view. There was no one there.
“I can hot wire the van,” I said, planningout loud. “You’ll fit fine in there. Then we can drive up to Cleveland. You have people all over up there, right?”
Suddenly, there was loud banging and Murray’s voice calling out, “We know you’ve got it in there! Just send it out, and we won’t fuck you up!”
Anger bubbled up inside me at them calling Rampon an it. “How fucking dare they?”
Someone else screamed, “We’ll burn your goddamned house down!”
Well, that gave me pause. “Shit. Maybe I should just call 911.”
“Emergency services?” Rampon asked.
“Yeah. This is getting out of hand.”
I got distracted as his tongue started darting in and out of his mouth. “Your house is made of wood,” he said. “It will burn quickly.”
“Oh. Well, yeah, but it shouldn’t take cops and firefighters more than?—”
“We must leave for both our sakes.”
And he just went over and opened the door, decision made, here we go. He was outside a second later.
“Goddamnit,” I cursed as I ran after him.
