For some reason, Mason’s crying began to taper off and I could tell he was on the verge of sleeping. I softly placed him down in the crib and watched as he drifted off, and finally, for the first time all day, there was silence.
I felt like I could finally think for the first time. I wondered briefly where Emory was, but it took me a second to realize that he would be sleeping like any other normal person.
I should have been exhausted, but for some reason I felt more awake than I had in days. I stood up and stretched, moving around the room as quietly as I could. I didn’t want to risk waking Mason up, not when he was finally getting some sleep.
I left the room, leaving the door ajar, and went to use the bathroom. I couldn’t help but think about Emory as soon as I got in there, though, as the memory of his body pressed up against mine in that room was still very fresh in my mind.
I wished I was confused about the way I felt about Emory, but I wasn’t. My feelings for him were simple: I wanted him, and wanted him badly. The more I got to know him, the stronger the attraction became. It wasn’t just his body and his cocky smiles that drove me crazy, or even what he could make me feel with his tongue and his fingers.
It was much more than that. It was his loyalty, the way he took to taking care of Mason, the way he was doing everything in his power to keep us safe. It was his strength. And we had similar backgrounds, which made me like him even more.
It was the implications of my feelings that were confusing, not the feelings themselves. Feelings were simple, obvious. But what the feelings mean for people could be devious and difficult to come to grips with.
My feelings for Emory were simple, but they were also complex. He was the father of my child and I had no clue what I wanted from him. I felt myself feeling for him more and more intensely, but did that mean I wanted him to be in my life all the time, to help raise Mason? That wasn’t exactly fair, or even likely given his job.
There was no future with Emory. I knew that, had understood it the second I’d learned he was a Navy SEAL. The man was a fighter, a warrior, and he would always be a warrior. No amount of diapers could change that about him, and he’d always crave that action.
I understood that, but it didn’t change how I felt. I wanted that warrior, wanted him to take me, to make me his. But I needed to think about what was best for Mason, and I didn’t know if Emory was best considering how much danger Emory brought into our lives.
As I left the bathroom, my mind a clouded mess of confusion, I heard something from downstairs. It sounded like a creaking floorboard. I looked down the hall and noticed that Emory’s door was open.
Silently, I walked over to it and stuck my head inside. There was nobody in there and the bed looked like it hadn’t been slept in.
Curious, I softly began to move down the steps. He was just probably sleeping on the couch, and I’d just heard him tossing and turning. I got halfway down the steps and looked out over the living room.
But he wasn’t on the couch. In fact, it was deadly silent downstairs, and totally dark.
I felt something strange inside me. My skin began to prickle with goose bumps and every hair stood up on end. It was like I’d stepped into a static field, and my every instinct was telling me to run.
I took another step downstairs and heard the noise again. It was definitely something strange, but it wasn’t a floorboard. I got to the bottom of the steps and silently moved toward the kitchen.
And stopped dead in my tracks. I watched as one of the locks on the back door slowly turned, unlocking itself.
That was the sound I was hearing, the locks on the door slowly being unlocked one at a time.
My heart was pounding in my chest. I watched and saw a shadow cross the door’s small window. I caught sight of something black.
Something like a mask.
I turned away and ran. I didn’t think. I just ran upstairs, back into the nursery, and shut the door. I locked it and began to pace around, my heart hammering, mind spinning.
What had I seen down there? The locks were opening one at a time, but that could just be Emory coming back home. But then again, I’d never seen Emory come in through the back, let alone wear a black mask.
I wasn’t even sure it was a mask. It seemed like it could have been, but I only got a quick look and it was so dark.
Everything felt wrong to me as I paced around the small room, terror running through my heart. I didn’t know if it was terrorists breaking in to kill us or if it was just Emory coming back from some late-night adventure.
And I had no real way of knowing without leaving the bedroom again. I couldn’t do that though and leave Mason behind. Waking up Mason was out of the question, since he’d just start crying again.
I tensed, terror running through me. I hated being locked up in this room, not knowing what was happening out there. I hated being so damn helpless, but what could a normal girl like me do against trained, violent terrorists?
I had to stay strong and not panic. That was the best I could do. I had to keep myself together for Mason’s sake and hope that it was just Emory coming in through that back door.
Because if Emory was missing and that was The Network breaking in, then I just might be dead already.
22
Emory
I moved silently through the neighborhood, scouting out the quiet houses.
I hadn’t been able to get to sleep. I had tried, but I’d just kept hearing Mason crying upstairs. I could tune out loud, difficult noises, since I was trained to sleep under any condition, but there was something about him being in pain that kept me awake.
Tara didn’t seem interested in talking, which was fine with me. She’d gotten what she’d wanted, even though it wasn’t completely necessary. I couldn’t blame her, since it was my choice to go to the hospital in the end.
Still, I wished she could have been at least a little more grateful, or at least a little less pissed off. She didn’t seem to get how much danger we were in every time we so much as walked outside the safe house.
I had no clue if we had been spotted or not. There was just no real way for me to know. I moved silently through the neighborhood, sticking to the shadows, but I found nothing.
I was like a shadow in the night, deadly and swift. This was my element, my way of life. I was the stalker and the world was my prey. Nobody could stand before me and survive long if I wanted to destroy them. In the night, I was in control.
I moved across the street and crouched down in the shadows. A minute later, another shadow peeled itself from a wall and crouched down next to me.
“Captain,” Travis said.
“How’s it going?”
“Not bad. Quiet.”
“Sorry about earlier. The hospital thing.”
I could sense Travis’s discomfort. “I understand needing to take the kid to the doc, but was that the best decision?”
I glanced at him. He was staring out across the street. “No,” I said, “it wasn’t. I told command that I’m too close to this, but they insisted on keeping me in control of the girl.”
Travis nodded. “Blackfire knows his stuff.”
“He does, but I’m worried he made the wrong call on this one.”
Travis looked at me. “Are you too close?”
I didn’t answer at first. My mind wandered back over the past few days and stopped on the moment when I finally saw Tara again in person.