He listened.
I asked, “What’s going on?”
He said, as he drove, “Intruders, subdued?—”
“Two?”
He nodded, listening on the phone, then relayed to me, “They dragged them up to your porch because of a lightning storm… carrying weapons — swords.” Then he said to the guard on the phone, “Yeah, I’m on route to you, ETA three minutes.”
He listened.
“I know, I know, she’s insisting…”
I asked, “Did the guards get their names?”
He asked on the phone, “Identification?”
He listened, then relayed, “…wearing costumes, no IDs.”
Was it Torin? I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like it.
The driver hung up the phone and drove a few more blocks, then turned on the blinker as we neared my house.
37
LEXI
2004 - LAUREL RIDGE
We pulled into my driveway. I scanned the landscape, dripping wet from a quick storm that was now gone. Marcus said, “Wait here?—”
But there was a big commotion on the porch, someone on the ground struggling against two guards, another man on his knees.
I peered through the rain. Marcus said, “Looks like they have them subdued… We’ll go up as soon as we get the all clear.”
I put my hand on the door handle.
His brow furrowed. “I can see you planning it, ma’am, but you can’t go. Wait until we figure this out.”
“I just can’t tell who it is…”
He said, “That’s why you hired security. Let us finish the interrogation, let us decide if it’s safe or not.”
I peered, “But look, it looks like Torin — myfriend. That might be my friend on the ground… I think that… it might be him—” I opened my door and jumped from the SUV into a rain puddle, sopping wet shoes, rain splashing all over the bottom of my pants as I raced across the grass to my house, setting all my security guards into a commotion. They were a freakingbunch of drama queens, but I didn’t care. I sprinted up the long, slick porch steps, my heart hammering with dread, but then it changed to hope because by the time I made it to the porch, I could tell —Torin!
He was thrashing about, struggling against the tie at his back, muscles straining, stomach down on the boards of my porch, having his wrists roughly zip-tied, with one of my security guards’ knees on his lower back.
“Torin!”
A security guard tried to push me back.
Marcus was right behind me. “Ma’am, I told you not to go!”
Torin lifted his head, wet hair plastered to his face, his eyes blazing green even through the dim light of the porch light.Torin.He stopped struggling and turned his head to see me as I ran up. “Och aye, mo leannan?—”
I was pulled back and away by two guards. “You don’t understand, he’s a friend. He’s okay, let him go.”
No one was moving quickly enough, I was being jostled, pushed away, as one of the guards pressed his knee harder into Torin’s back. He grunted with pain.
