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Return of the Warrior
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Royal Lockdown
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"Chase, what's wrong?" Julienne repeated.

"I saw somebody outside the house!"

"But..."

"One of your brothers. Hugo or Wyatt. I haven't seen them in a long time, so I don't know which it was. But I recognized the profile — the big beak of a nose. The jutting jaw."

She shook her head in denial. But even as she tried to tell herself it couldn't be true, she was turning toward the window, scanning the foliage behind the house. The scene was just as she had remembered it — the water oaks draped with Spanish moss. The cypress trees beyond them. The cane thicket. Yet now she wondered who might be lurking in the dappled shade.

"I'm going up to get my gun," Chase said. "You stay here — away from the windows."

She didn't want him to leave her, but she didn't protest as he strode toward the hall. Before she could draw in a dozen shallow breaths, he was back beside her, the gun in his hand.

"What are we going to do?" she asked.

"I'm going out there. You stay inside. Promise me that!"

She nodded.

"Promise! Say it."

"Okay. I promise to stay inside." As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she closed her fingers around his arm. "You should stay inside, too."

"I'm not going to hide in here — waiting for them to do Lord knows what. Suppose they decide to set the house on fire?"

"Would they do something like that?"I don't know. If they're crazy enough to set traps, they're crazy enough to do anything."

Unwillingly, she nodded. Then her heart was in her throat as Chase opened the back door. Crouching low, he sprinted across the yard. As he did, she heard the unmistakable sound of a gunshot break the morning silence.

One of her brothers was shooting at him!

"Chase! Chase, are you all right?" she called out.

"Stay in there," he shouted.

The gun sounded again, and she knew she had made a terrible mistake. She'd forced him to call out to her, and that meant he'd given away his location.

Cursing herself for a fool, she looked around the kitchen, wondering what she could use for a weapon.

Hysterical laughter bubbled in her throat when she thought about attacking one of her brothers with a saucepan or a skillet.

Then she sobered. She and Chase needed help — real help.

But from whom?

This morning, she'd stopped in his room to make his bed, because she'd wanted to touch the sheets where he'd slept.

Now, as she recalled the room, she remembered a cell phone lying on the old dresser.

Which meant that she could call the police. There was no hesitation on her part. The enemy out there might be her own flesh and blood, but her brothers had severed their ties with her weeks ago. She'd come to them in her hour of greatest need — when she'd had nowhere else to go. And they'd turned her away with a coldness that had cut her to the bone.

Quickly she sprinted for the steps, taking them two at a time. Then she was pounding down the hall to Chase's room.

The phone was on the dresser where she'd seen it. Snatching it up, she pressed the on button. The screen came to life, and she started to punch in 911.

Before she could finish dialing, the display flickered and dimmed, and she saw, to her horror, that the battery indicator on the lower right corner of the screen was showing almost no power was left.

To be continued...



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