“We’ve been robbed,” Patsy said.
“What?” Carly went to her mother’s side. The end table drawers were upside down in the middle of the room. Books had been swept from the shelves and lay scattered across the floor, and the couch cushions had been flung across the room. Carly’s gaze settled on an electronic tablet in the middle of the area rug. A thief wouldn’t have left a small valuable item behind. The house hadn’t been robbed. It had been searched.
Patsy walked into the room, her head swiveling as she surveyed the damage. “I can’t believe someone would break in here.”
Technically the house had been open, as always, so breaking in hadn’t been necessary. But intruders had never been an issue out in the country. This was not a house a robber would find by chance. Whoever had come here had done so with the farm as their target.
Carly went to her mother’s side. “You need to call Zane.”
“Of course.” Patsy opened her purse and rummaged for her phone.
Brianna grabbed Carly’s hand. “What happened, Mama?”
A floorboard squeaked overhead. The hair on Carly’s nape lifted.
The intruder was still here.
She tucked Brianna behind her and moved toward the hall, fifteen feet away. “We have to get the kids back out to the car.”
Before they reached the hall, footsteps thudded on the stairs. A dark-clad figure leaped over the railing and landed in front of them.
They were trapped.
Brianna screamed. Carly wished she were carrying her handgun. Unarmed, with the baby in her arms and Brianna tucked close, she felt helpless. But Patsy had Bill’s old over-and-under shotgun off the wall and was digging in the vase on the mantel for a shell. Stepping in front of Carly and the kids, she opened the shotgun, slid a shell into the top barrel, and snapped the gun closed just as light glinted on the metal of a gun in the intruder’s hand.
Carly had seen the shotgun in her father’s grip at the range hundreds of times. Bill had believed that if a man kept a gun in his house, every person who lived there needed to be comfortable and safe with the weapon. She and her siblings had grown up shooting targets and clay pigeons, but she’d never seen the gun in her mother’s hands. Her mother was a small woman, and the long Winchester looked like an elephant gun against her shoulder. But as a woman born and raised in the country, Patsy handled the weapon just as deftly as she’d worked pie dough that morning, and her eyes were as cool as the winter wind blowing through the front door.
Her mother was the sweetest woman on earth, but one did not threaten Patsy Taylor’s family.
The man froze, featureless and terrifying in a ski mask and black knit hat. The gun was at his thigh, pointed at the floor.
“I am giving you this choice once.” Patsy’s voice was as level and solid as her aim. “Put that gun on the floor or I will shoot you.”
He hesitated.
“Your choice,” Patsy said. “Carly, cover the girls’ eyes.”
The front door of Patsy’s house was wide open.
Icy fear solidified in Seth’s gut as the cruiser stopped. “Something’s wrong.”
“Maybe they had their hands full and didn’t get the door closed yet,” Phil said.
“Maybe.” But that explanation didn’t feel right. “It’s bone-cold out here. Call it in.” Though by the time backup arrived, whatever was going to happen here would likely be over and done.
Drawing his weapon, Seth got out of the car. After updating dispatch on the radio, Phil mirrored him on the other side of the vehicle. They walked toward the house, staying out of the line of sight of the gaping door. They flanked the entry. Seth peered around the doorframe.
Patsy stood in the hall, facing the kitchen at the back of the house. Bill’s big Winchester looked like a cannon in her arms.
“You keep backing up,” she commanded.
Arms raised, the intruder took a slow step backward into the dark kitchen.
“It’s Seth. I’m behind you, Patsy,” Seth called out as he moved down the hall. As he passed the doorway on his right, he scanned the trashed living room.
A door slammed at the back of the house. His mother-in-law lowered the weapon and let the barrel tip toward the floor. Seth sprinted down the hall and raced out the back door. A dark figure was halfway across the meadow. Seth bolted after him, fury fueling his legs to pump faster. He was gaining distance when the man hit the woods. A few seconds later, the high-pitched whine of a dirt bike split the cold air. Seth slowed his stride as the sound faded. He was fast, but he couldn’t outrun a motorcycle.