Page 40 of Run to Ground
Shrugging off Hugh’s appreciation, Theo headed for the door, but paused before opening it. “Thanks,” he muttered at the door handle.
“For what?”
“Holding on.” Yanking the door open, Theo escaped into the hall so fast he barely caught Hugh’s response.
“You’re welcome, partner.”
* * *
“They couldn’t have been aiming at you. No one wants tokillus.” Ty tipped his chair back to balance on two legs. “I vote we stay.”
Sam frowned. “Th-th-they st-st-still haven’t c-c-c-c…f-found the sh-shooter.”
“They will.” At least, Jules really hoped they would.
Looking up from where she sat on the kitchen floor with Viggy’s head in her lap, Dee said, “I don’t want to leave. We just got here.”
“I don’t want to go, either.” Tio was sitting in the seat next to Ty, although all four of his chair’s legs were solidly on the floor.
Looking around at her siblings’ faces, seeing everything from worry to hopefulness to Sam’s closed-off, unreadable expression, Jules felt inadequate. How was she supposed to be a parent and make these kinds of decisions? How could she manage to let them head off to school every morning, a school where she’d been hiding in the bathroom a day ago because someone wasshootingagunat them? Would a new place be any better, or was this just life? Was death and danger around every corner going to be an ongoing part of their new, post-kidnapping existence? It had seemed like such a peaceful, pretty town.
“Jules?” Dee said tentatively. “Can we stay? Please?”
Jules squeezed her eyes closed for a moment so she wouldn’t have to look at their hopeful faces. They depended on her, and she had not a single clue what she was doing. Opening her eyes again, she took a deep breath.
The doorbell rang.
All the air in her lungs escaped in a relieved rush at the interruption, allowing her to delay her decision—this huge decision that would affect all of their lives—for a little bit longer. Immediately after, however, familiar panic sparked to life, fueled by her siblings’ anxious expressions.
Giving them a look she hoped was reassuring, she headed to the door. The kids knew the drill already. They waited in the kitchen and listened. If they heard Jules say they were at the park, then they were supposed to slip out the back door and run to the barn to hide. After fifteen minutes, if Jules hadn’t joined them, they were to grab the money hidden in the loft and run.
Each step tightened her stomach more as she approached the front door. Holding her breath, Jules peeked through the peephole. When she saw who it was, her muscles relaxed and a smile crept onto her face. Who would’ve thought that, just days after she’d become a felon, the sight of a cop would be a relief?
Brushing off the nagging thought that it was stupid to feel excitement fizzing in her belly, Jules opened the door. Her crush—or whatever it was—on Theo was one of her stupider moves, dumber even than working for Luis Espina. Sheknewthis, but she still couldn’t help grinning at him.
He scowled back at her, but for some crazy reason, that only made her smile widen. His crabbiness was just part of Theo, and she liked it. It made no sense, but she couldn’t help herself. It was the worst time and the worst place and the worst everything, but she stilllikedOfficer Theodore Bosco. A lot. It was hard not to after he’d thrown himself in the line of fire to save them.
“Hi.”
His answering grunt made her beam, even as she mentally rolled her eyes at herself.
“You okay?” Her gaze scanned him, wanting to see with her own eyes that he was in one piece. As soon as they’d emerged from the school bathroom, Jules had heard that a police officer had been shot. It had taken a frantic twenty minutes to find out that the injured cop was Hugh, not Theo. To her shame, relief had coursed through her at the news. Although she’d hated that funny, cheery Hugh had been hurt, Jules had just been so glad it wasn’t Theo who’d been shot.
“Yeah.” And he did appear to be uninjured. At some point since the shooting, he’d changed out of his uniform into well-worn jeans and an equally broken-in T-shirt. Jules tried to focus on their conversation, rather than how very good he looked in civilian clothes. “You? Your family?”
“We’re all fine, thanks to you and Hugh. How’s he doing?”
The corners of his mouth twitched into an almost-smile. “Well enough to be a pain in my ass.”
Relief made her laugh a little too loudly. “That’s good. We’ve been worried. Thank you for what you did for us yesterday.”
Appearing a little uncomfortable, he gave a tight nod as his gaze dropped to the side.
“You saved our lives.” Tears that had been hovering too near the surface for the past twenty-four hours threatened to spill over once again. “I was still trying to figure out what was going on when you dragged us back to the school. We could’ve easily been killed in the time it took for me to realize that someone was shooting at us. If something had happened to Dee…”
As her breath choked off in her throat, Jules stopped that train of thought, since talking about how much danger her little sister had been in, how close she’d come todying, was a sure way to lose control of her teetering emotions. “So, thank you. It’s such a stupid, tiny thing to say, when what you did was so amazing, so brave, sohuge—”
He’d been looking more and more awkward as her speech continued, until he finally cut her off. “Please stop talking.”
