Читать книгу Loving The Lone Wolf - Ingrid Weaver - Страница 8

“Mommy, look at this!”

The scene unfolded with the slow-motion horror of a nightmare. At first, Kelly couldn’t accept what she was seeing. This was Jamie’s playroom, part of their sanctuary, an island of sanity where her son could be just a kid and she could be simply a mom. Toy cars littered the carpet, crayons and paper covered the child-size desk and the cushions from the biggest couch had been propped into a pile on the floor to make a garage.

But Jamie wasn’t holding a crayon or a car or the favorite threadbare stuffed rabbit that he had crawled into his couch-cushion garage to find.

He was holding a gun.

No. Oh, God, no!

The nightmare image continued to expand, melding the ordinary with the obscene. Under the eerily unblinking gaze of the toys that lined the shelves, sunlight glinted from the silver pistol, the same sunlight that sifted through Jamie’s strawberry-blond hair and gilded the freckles on his cherub cheeks with gold.

Kelly fought to stay calm, despite the scream that swelled in her throat. She couldn’t risk startling him. She unfolded her legs from where she had been sitting cross-legged on the floor. Holding out her hand, she knee-walked across the carpet. She was only two yards away. It seemed like two miles. “Jamie, please put that down.”

The gun was a 9mm clip-loading semiautomatic, the kind the guards who patrolled the estate carried. It was too large for a three-year-old’s tiny hands, so Jamie gripped the pistol by its barrel the same way he would normally grip the handle of the plastic hammer that had come with his toy tool bench. Oblivious to the danger, he sat back on his heels and tilted his head to investigate his new find. “Pow, pow!”

“Now, baby.” Kelly halted in front of him, reached for the weapon and eased it from his hands. “Give it to Mommy.”

“I want to play with it!”

The moment the gun was securely in Kelly’s grip, her breath rushed out. Her pulse was pounding so hard, her chest ached. The urge to scream was getting stronger. It was almost as powerful as the urge to run.

Yes, run. Take her baby and keep going until her feet bled and her legs collapsed and there was no more air in her lungs. End the madness, leave the nightmare behind and find somewhere free and safe and normal where love wasn’t a tool, armed men didn’t patrol the halls and guns didn’t end up between couch cushions like stray pocket change.

Her fingers trembled as she unloaded the gun and put it on the floor behind her. How it had gotten here, who had left it, were questions she would deal with later. She leaned over to pull her son into a hard embrace. Pressing her nose to his hair, she drew in his scent, that sweet mixture of baby shampoo and warm child, the familiar anchor for her senses when the world spun out of control.…

Before she realized what she was doing, she was on her feet with her son clasped in her arms and was halfway across the room.

Kelly’s scream emerged as a moan. Clenching her teeth, she stopped short of the door and turned in a circle. She couldn’t run. Not yet. If she did, Stephan would track them down as he had before.

She had to be patient and stick to her plan. She had to use her head instead of her heart. She couldn’t trust her heart. That’s what had gotten her into this in the first place.

But, oh, God! If she had been three yards away instead of two, if Jamie had played with that gun instead of showing it to her, if he had looked down the barrel, if he had touched the trigger…

Kelly’s shoulders shook with a sob. She sank to her knees, clutching Jamie to her chest. He squirmed, restless with his mother’s need to cling, but she only hugged him tighter.

“I’ll get us out of this,” she whispered. “I promise.”

The vow was one she had made countless times.

Only this time, she knew exactly how she would make it happen.