Bree had come in and was posed in front of it like a goalie, but Angela never made it that far. Zona was super fueled with anger seeing this woman who was dead set on ruining the lives of everyone around her charge toward her daughter. She reached the woman first, caught her by the hair, and yanked her toward the pool.
“You’re hurting me!” Angela cried and tried to pull away.
“You haven’t begun to see hurt yet,” Zona snarled. She took Angela by the shoulders and hurled her like a giant discus toward the pool.
BREE HAD COMEthrough the backyard gate in time to see the red-haired woman try to break their neighbor’s back witha plastic deck chair, then watch her mother surface from the pool right after he landed in it.
Mom looked like some sort of angry sea goddess, rising out of the water. Before Bree could get to the woman, Mom had her by the hair. She threw the redhead into the pool and jumped in after her. The two were under for only a second before they popped back up. Mom with a fresh fistful of the woman’s hair, and the redhead screeching swear words at her and shoving her hand in Mom’s face.
Mom had been through enough. No one was going to mess with her from now on if Bree had anything to say about it. She raced for the pool and cannonballed in, colliding with Alec James, who was also trying to get to Mom.
“Get out of the way,” he commanded.
She snapped back something Gram would wash her mouth out for, but so what? This was her mom. And he was part of the problem.
Just as Bree lunged for the home invader to push her under, what felt like a baby whale landed practically on top of her. Martin? Next in was Darling, entering with an excited bark, scrambling over Martin’s shoulders and dunking him in an effort to reach Mom.
It was getting crowded in the pool as they all thrashed around, grabbing for each other, and someone’s elbow caught Bree in the eye, making her yelp. Mom.
“Bree, are you okay?” Mom cried, turning to her, and the red-haired pool monster pushed her under.
Bree swore and took a swing at the woman, catching Martin in the jaw, making him grunt.
“Bree, we’ve got this,” he said tersely, as Mom fell against him and knocked him back and under the water.
Gram appeared, waving one of her crutches and yelling, “Hurt my daughter and I’ll sue you!”
Bree was still trying to get a hand in as the two men worked to separate Mom and her attacker when two policemen arrived on the scene. “It’s about time you got here,” Gram said to them.
The one, an older hefty dude, just shook his head. “Okay. Everybody out of the pool.”
Chapter29
EVERYONE CROWDED AROUND THE OFFICERS, ONEgiant, dripping amoeba, talking at once, while Darling shook himself dry, then ran around the edges, forgetting his training and trying to jump on everyone.
“Darling, sit,” Alec commanded when Darling tried for attention by jumping on the older policeman. Darling sat with a whine.
“Officer Mead, arrest that woman,” Louise said to Darling’s new friend, not bothering to specify which woman.
“She assaulted me,” insisted Angela, pointing to Zona.
“No, you assaulted me,” said Zona.
“I have a restraining order against this woman,” said Alec, pointing to Angela, “and she’s obviously broken it.”
“And she hit him with a chair,” added Zona.
Officer Mead held up a hand. “Okay, one at a time.” He turned his attention to Alec. “You say you have a restraining order.”
“He didn’t mean it,” Angela protested, and her lower lip began to wobble. She pulled her sodden hair out of her eyes and squeezed out a tear.
Zona took in the tat on her arm, a cute little fairy. Ha! It should have been a demon.
“I did mean it,” Alec said calmly. “And she also assaulted both myself and my neighbor here. She pushed Zona in the pool, and she whacked me with that chair.”
“Would you like to press charges?” Officer Mead asked both Zona and Alec.
Zona had had enough. Of everything.
