“Ms. Michaels. Everything okay?”
She pointed to the house. “Someone was in there. Ashton is hurt.”
The cop opened the car door and helped her inside. “Lock the doors while we go check.”
“Hurry,” she whispered.
16
Ashton
I woke with a gasp, realizing I was on the floor. My head felt like it was about to explode. Grabbing my gun, I stumbled to my feet on shaky limbs as my double vision merged into one.
“Stella!” I yelled.
No answer. The house was eerily quiet as I spun in all directions, looking for the threat that had taken me down.
The window across the room was open, and a breeze danced on the curtains.
“Stella!” I yelled louder, backing out of the room and into the hallway.
I spun at the sound of heavy booted feet on the stairway, lifting my gun when two cops rounded the corner.
I lowered my weapon and squeezed my forehead, trying to stop the intense pain pounding inside my head.
“Where is he?” one asked.
“What happened?” the other asked.
“I walked into the room and forgot to tell Stella something, so I headed back out into the hall, and when I did, there was a blow to the back of my head. I regained consciousness about two seconds before you came upstairs.”
One cop hurried past me and into the room. “Looks like whoever got the drop on you went out the window.”
“Where’s Stella?” I shoved through them to get to the stairs.
“She’s safely locked in our car outside. She said you were hurt, and so she ran to us for help.”
My entire body eased, if only fractionally. She was safe.
“I checked the doors and windows earlier. All but this one. She likes to sleep with it open.” I knew I should have insisted even if it pissed her off.
“Hopefully, we’ll get lucky. The perp might have left prints on the trellis or maybe on the downstairs window looking for entry. The surface is still a little damp from the rain earlier, but we might get lucky. I’ll get a team out here to look.”
There was a silence in my head. The kind that only happened when I was around Stella.
Either these guys weren’t thinking about anything, which was never the case, or something had happened when I’d been hit in the head.
“Count to ten in your head,” I demanded.
“Come again?” the cop asked.
“Maybe we should get you looked at. I think you hit your head worse than we thought.”
“Humor me,” I demanded.
The cop raised his brow, and a second later, he replied, “Okay, now what? You want me to recite the alphabet too?”
No, no, no, no, now was not the time for this. I needed to be able to read minds. I needed to know what those around Stella were thinking.
