LITMIR.BIZ

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more torn up. He’d given Cassie the divorce she’d demanded and gone meekly away as she’d asked. He’d lost track of her father, and he couldn’t find his old friend in this shell of a man. “How about if we both go with these guys?” He pointed at the EMTs. “They’ll check us out on the way.”

      He coughed, feeling ludicrous, but Leo let him help him all the way up. “I’m freezing,” Van said.

      “I might be a little cold, too.”

      They shuffled, arms around each other, toward the ambulance. The paramedics closed in on Leo, seized his arms and began moving him at rapid speed. He searched over his shoulder for Van, desperation naked on his face.

      Van wiped his eyes and then checked to make sure no one else had noticed. He and Leo had been close since he’d first marched into the bank to ask for an internship. He trotted to catch up. “Can I ride along?” he asked the nearest EMT, who turned out to be Trey.

      “Sure, if it’ll ease Mr. Warne’s mind.”

      “You need to check him, too,” Leo said.

      The other guy looked at Van, who shook his head slightly.

      The ambulance distracted Leo. He climbed onto it, slowly taking in the noise and machines. One of his rescuers eased him onto a stretcher. Immediately, the driver got in the front, and Trey and another EMT started treating Leo.

      Van sat out of the way on the opposite side of the ambulance. Trey and his partner contacted the hospital, started an IV, and reported Leo’s symptoms and vitals.

      From between the two men, Leo’s hand suddenly jutted out, splayed like a frightened child’s. Van caught it and folded the gnarled, trembling fingers into his palm.

      IN THE KIND HEART woman’s shelter in Tecumseh, Washington, Cassie Warne was carrying a tray of cookies and milk to her office to share with her daughter when a man crashed through the locked double doors behind her in a hail of splinters and broken wood.

      Cassie turned, transfixed by chunks of the door clattering at her feet. At first she thought the man was brandishing a baseball bat, but it was a metal battering ram.

      He snarled a name Cassie couldn’t hear. She didn’t ask him to repeat it. Women and children going about the business of getting settled for the night, froze. The man searched them for the one he wanted, and Cassie’s instinct took over.

      She never let herself dwell on that night five years ago. It had happened, like her mother’s death, and her broken arm on her eleventh birthday. It was only a fact, but it had changed her.

      She needed no one and no one would ever hurt her or anyone who depended on her.

      The tray slipped from her hands. The plate and glasses smashed. Vaguely aware of glass shards on the floor among the bits of broken wood, she felt time jerk to a start again.

      Cassie threw herself at the man, praying her four-year-old daughter would stay in the office, out of sight.

      Silently, she swung the edge of her foot into the man’s belly. Though her own stomach heaved, she never looked away from his eyes. She’d seen rage like that—uninhibited, unstinting fury in a face looming over her one night when Van had been in D.C. or Milwaukee or Fresno. Somewhere other than their tiny apartment bedroom.

      With a cartoon “oof,” the man backed away, doubling over. His battering ram fell to the floor and scattered the wood and glass.

      Please, she thought, let him stop now. Don’t make me do anything else.

      He straightened with a feral snarl.

      Crying because she didn’t want to do it, Cassie pointed her elbow into his throat. Her martial arts instructors had taught her to yell, supposedly to strike fear into an attacker and bolster her strength. She needed nothing but the will to hurt another human being. Still she felt sick as the man began to choke.

      And damn him. He kept coming.

      She was crying as the heel of her palm rammed his nose into his skull. Blood on her hands gagged her as he dropped, unconscious.

      She hovered, ready, trembling from head to toe.

      “Mommy?”

      “Hope.”

      Cassie turned, gathering herself as if she’d also been broken into pieces. She rubbed her arm across her eyes and her mouth, trying to erase any trace of the violence that had adrenaline bubbling in her veins.

      Gripping the office door, Hope pointed at Cassie’s shirt. A scream poured out of her throat.

      Cassie looked down. The blood snapped her straight back to reality.

      “I’m okay.” She tore the shirt off. “I’m all right, baby.”

      Hope rushed her. Cassie knelt and scooped her daughter into her arms. “The police,” she said to the nearest woman. She threw her shirt far away. In her bra and jeans, she was wearing more than some of the clients who’d shown up at their doors.

      She cuddled Hope, keeping her as safe as she could from scary things. “We’re all okay, baby.” To herself, she sounded calm while her heartbeat shook her whole body. In a few minutes, Hope’s crying faded to a whimper.

      “Wanna go home, Mommy. Bad, bad man.” As she pointed at him with a four-year-old’s contempt, sirens sounded.

      “Put this on.” Liza, one of Cassie’s partners, dropped a faded Tecumseh PD T-shirt over Cassie’s shoulder. Another woman must have worn it into the shelter. Cassie pulled it over her head, and Hope helped her yank it down.

      “You hurt that bad man, Mommy.”

      “I know.” She seriously wanted to bury her head. “It was scary.”

      “I’m glad you hurt him.”

      She didn’t know what to say. Normally, it’s not nice to hit people would do, but the man had come bent on hurting someone in the shelter. She couldn’t let that happen.

      Cassie cradled Hope’s chin. Violence had changed Cassie’s life forever, and she’d tried to make sure the past wasn’t part of her present with Hope. “I don’t like hurting anyone, baby, but that man wanted to be mean to someone here.” Of their own volition, her thoughts returned to that other bad man, and she hated the fear that whispered through her in a warning.

      Unconditional love looked out of Hope’s blue eyes.

      “I won’t ever scare you if I can help it,” Cassie said. Her daughter meant everything to her.

      “You didn’t look like my mommy.”

      Cassie hugged her tight. Someday she’d teach Hope the self-defense she’d made every shelter employee learn, but she didn’t want her daughter to think of her as a woman who beat people up.

      She went blank when she tried to think what else she should have done.

      Two policemen, guns drawn, barged through the splintered doorway and stopped in front of the unconscious man.

      Only then did Cassie realize one woman had picked up his battering ram and another stood over him with a raised chair.

      More concerned about the guns, she turned Hope’s face into her chest.

      “Danger’s over.” Liza pointed at his revolver. “You can put that away. We don’t like the children to see them.”

      The police both holstered their weapons. “What happened?” asked the one she’d spoken to.

      “He busted in with this.” She eased the battering ram out of the woman’s hand. “And my friend stopped him from getting any further.”

      “Which friend?” the second cop asked.

      Cassie stood, lifting Hope onto her hip. “He said someone’s name, but I didn’t catch it.” She searched the suspicious glances of the women

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