She got undressed and pulled a plain brown T-shirt over her underpants. She gazed down at the alley from her back window. Coop had left, the spot where he parked his car was empty. As empty as she felt inside.

She crawled into her too-big bed and stared up at the ceiling. She’d done the right thing. She might not believe she could hurt any more than she did now, but staying with him longer-hiding how much she cared-would only make their inevitable breakup more agonizing.

She finally fell into a restless sleep only to be plagued by nightmare figures with clown faces, jackboots, and selfie sticks. They chased her into a crimson jungle where dead women hung head down from telephone poles. She had to scream. But she couldn’t find the air. She had to find air. She struggled to find a scream somewhere. Anywhere.

She jolted awake. It was still dark. Her T-shirt stuck to her skin, and she’d drooled on the pillow. Her heart was racing. Only a dream… Only a dream…

Somebody stood in the doorway. A dark, silent silhouette. Her voice came out in a grateful croak. “Coop?”

He rushed toward the bed.

It happened so fast. One moment she was trapped in a nightmare, and the next moment, a man was grabbing her. A man who was not Coop.

She screamed.

“Shut up!” He had her by the arm. Shook her. She tried to fight, but the sheet trapped her. His hard shake wrenched her neck. She freed an arm and clawed at his face. He slapped her. Her ears rang. The struggle was frantic, the only sounds her gasps. And then even those stopped as his fingers closed around her neck and his thumbs pressed her windpipe.

The overhead light blazed on.

The pressure on her throat stopped as the man jerked up and spun around. She rolled off the opposite side of the bed, fighting to free herself from the sheet as she fell. She hit the floor. Seconds later, she was on her knees, eyes blinking against the sudden light.

Jada stood in the doorway, her Nerf gun at her side, staring at the attacker, a man Piper had never seen. Jada’s voice wobbled. “Hank?”

He had a shaved head and a gun. A silver-barreled, nine-millimeter Beretta. Pointed straight at Jada.

And then right back at Piper.

He scowled. He was big, muscular. He might once have been a decent-looking guy, but the ugliness of hate had transformed his long face into a mask of malevolence. “What the fuck… Where’s Karah? Why isn’t Karah here?”

Jada whimpered from the doorway. He backed toward the far wall so he could keep them both within easy range of his gun. He had the wrong apartment. He was looking for Karah. Piper choked out the words. “She’s-she’s not here. I’m staying with Jada.”

He turned the gun toward Jada. “Where is she?”

Piper prayed Jada wouldn’t tell him her mother was asleep in the next apartment.

“I-I don’t know,” Jada sobbed.

“You lying little bitch.”

“She’s… at an overnight seminar,” Piper managed to say. “For a class she’s taking. Now get the hell out of here!”

“You’re lying.” He was sweating, flushed, maybe high on meth. “She’s with Graham. Whoring around with that bastard.”

He jabbed the gun at Piper. “Get over there with her.”

Piper moved carefully toward Jada, who stood frozen, the useless Nerf gun slipping to the floor. She wrapped an arm around the girl’s shoulders and prayed Karah wouldn’t wake up. “Karah’s not here. Now get out. Leave us alone.”

“She’s gonna pay for being a whore. She’s gotta pay.”

“Nobody has to pay,” she said carefully. “Just go.”

“Yeah, you’d all like to make me disappear. Make me forget what she did to me.”

“That’s in the past. Let it go.”

He moved closer to them. The gun steady. His attention on Jada. “And her little baby doll. Not so little anymore.”

Tentacles of dread slithered through her body. And then she heard it. The click of the apartment door opening. Karah. He would kill her. And maybe Jada, too.

She’d never felt more helpless. Her Glock was locked in the trunk of her car, and all the self-defense moves in the world were useless as long as he had that gun trained on Jada.

But it wasn’t Karah whose voice echoed from the living room. It was Coop, and her dread turned to ice. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said.

Hank grabbed Jada, jammed the gun against her temple, and jerked his head at Piper, gesturing her through the bedroom door ahead of him.

Coop froze as he saw them emerging. Piper first, then Jada and Hank. “Coop…” Jada sobbed, terrified.

“He’s looking for Karah.” Piper tried to take a step forward only to have Hank shift the gun from Jada’s head to her own.

“Stay right where you are or I’ll blow your head off!”

The gun barrel pressed into Piper’s skull. She tried to block out Jada’s sobs, fought a terror so stark it threatened to paralyze her. She glued her eyes to Coop’s.

Teamwork.

“Put that gun away.” Coop’s voice was low and ugly.

“You come here looking for your whore?” Hank sneered.

“He’s talking about Karah,” Piper said. “Not me.”

Coop didn’t ask any questions. He was a pressure player, and it was fourth-and-goal with seconds left on the clock. “Drop the gun,” he said, his lips barely moving.

“Why should I?” The gun jabbed deeper into Piper’s temple. “I’m going to punish her. She left me and came running to you with her skirt over her head.”

“You got a dirty mind,” Coop said. “Karah’s nothing to me.”

“You’re a liar! Just like she is.”

“I’ve got no reason to lie to you.” Coop was cool, easy, except for the intense watchfulness in his eyes and the muscle ticking at the corner of his jaw.

With no warning, the pressure on Piper’s head disappeared, and Hank jammed the gun back into Jada’s temple. Jada whimpered as he dug the barrel deeper. “I was gonna blow Karah’s head off, but that’s not bad enough. I’m gonna hurt her where it’ll hurt the most.” He threw the back of his arm over Jada’s throat. “I’m gonna blow her kid’s head off first.”

Jada gagged. Her body convulsed.

A trickle of perspiration slithered between Piper’s breasts. Her skin was clammy, her heart pounding. “Why do you think Coop and Karah were lovers?” She needed to talk. Say something. Anything. “Coop’s my lover. Coop and I have been lovers forever. We’re more than lovers. We’re in love.” She talked on. Stalling for time. Distracting him from the gun digging into Jada’s head. “He doesn’t even like Karah. He laughs about her behind her back.”

“You liar.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Coop move. Slowly. A quarter step to the left. She kept talking. “You know what a loser she is. You know that more than anybody. She doesn’t even take care of Jada. Her own daughter. That’s why I stay with her. Because Karah hates her own daughter.” Coop took another step. Teamwork. Teamwork. “How could you still care about a woman like that? She said she never wanted to be a mother. That Jada’s holding her back. Keeping her from being free.”

A strangled, howling sob came from the bottom of Jada’s soul. Hank jerked, and Coop went airborne. That long, lean body extended. He dove. And threw the greatest man-to-man block of his career. A crushing, illegal block that hit at the knees and shook the room.

Piper grabbed Jada and fell on top of her, shielding the girl with her own body as the gun went off.

21

Piper folded her body over Jada’s to keep her safe. She was afraid to raise her head and expose any part of Jada to harm. The nightmare seconds dragged by. Was Coop dead? Let it be Hank who’d taken the bullet. Or the wall. Or the floor. Anything but Coop. He had to stay alive. He had to stay alive because she loved him-loved him with all her heart-and because she had to protect Jada and because he had to finish the job she couldn’t.

Coop, be alive.

A garbled woman’s scream. Not her own. Not Jada’s. Karah.

“You bitch!” Hank’s howl of outrage chilled Piper to the bone.

A fierce obscenity from Coop.

He was alive.

Jada’s body heaved beneath Piper. Where was the gun? Piper had to get the gun. She turned her head.

Coop had Hank trapped on the floor. There was blood.

Piper reared off Jada and dove for the gun. As she came to her knees with the weapon in both hands, she saw Karah standing just inside the door, her mouth an oval of horror. Piper shouted at her to call the police.

What happened next was short and brutal. Coop hauled Hank up by the throat and slammed him into the wall. He beat him until Hank collapsed unconscious to the floor.

Jada grabbed her Nerf gun. With sobs racking her body, she rushed toward Hank and fired at his crumpled figure. One foam bullet after another.

Piper saw the blood smear on the wall first and then, seconds later, she saw something far worse. A crimson rose blooming through the wool of Coop’s jacket.


***

The EMTs had to block her from climbing into the ambulance with him. She jumped in her car and followed, not thinking about speed limits but only about what parts of him that bullet might have hit. When they reached the ER, she refused to leave him alone for even a moment.

He’d been shot in the side. Both an entry and exit wound, so that was good. No vital organs hit. That was good, too. Except he’d been hurt, and that was horrible. Unthinkable.

She stood guard by his bed, cross-examining every doctor, nurse, technician, and orderly who came in to check on him. She even tried to go into the X-ray lab with him, but they threatened to call security.

Coop was fully conscious through all this, but he made no attempt to settle her down. Instead, he watched her with a kind of bemusement.

While Coop was in X-ray, Piper began putting it all together. She’d assumed he had only one enemy-Noah Parks. But she’d been wrong. Noah was behind the attempts to sabotage the club, the drone, and the false accusation. But Karah’s pathologically jealous ex-boyfriend was responsible for the rest. Hank believed Coop and Karah were lovers. He was the one who’d attacked Coop the night they’d come back from taking Faiza to Canada. He was the one who’d slashed Coop’s tires. She also suspected he’d known exactly who was behind the wheel of the Audi the night he’d run it off the road. If he couldn’t have Karah for himself, he wanted to make certain no other man could have her.

She told the police all of it and tried not to imagine what would have happened to Karah and Jada if Hank hadn’t gotten the apartments confused. Or what would have happened to all of them if Coop hadn’t shown up.

She waited until eight in the morning to call Heath, who came running into the emergency room barely half an hour later, his face as pale as a hospital sheet. His questions were terse but thorough, and as soon as he understood that Coop was going to be all right, he reverted to his normal manner with a nod toward his client stretched out on the hospital bed. “Nice nightie.”

“Leave him alone,” Piper snarled.

Coop and Heath exchanged looks she ignored. She didn’t want anyone harassing Coop about anything right now.

Later that morning, Piper talked to both Karah and Jada on the phone. Hank was in jail for attempted murder, along with a slew of other charges. Karah blamed herself for everything. “He was really sweet when we started dating, and by the time I realized how sick he was, it was too late. That’s why I left St. Louis. To get away from him. I never thought he’d follow me.”

Piper tried to comfort her and then spoke with Jada. Their conversation was reassuring. “Mom is going to make me see a counselor for a while to make sure I don’t, like, go psycho or anything because of what happened, but I’m pretty sure I won’t. And guess what else? After the police left, Mom said she’d take me out for pancakes, and with everything that happened, I wasn’t paying attention, and Clara shot me. I’m officially dead.”

“Oh, no. I’m really sorry.”

“I know. I thought I’d be more depressed, but it’s kind of okay because it was Clara who shot me, and her and I are kind of getting to be friends.”

“Still, after everything that happened today, that’s rotten timing.”

“Yeah, but I could tell she, like, felt really bad about it, and she needs the money even worse than I do, so I told her it was okay, and we’re going to hang out tomorrow and work on our project about child sex trafficking. The good thing is that I don’t have to carry around those stupid Nerf guns anymore.”

The doctors overrode Coop’s protests and insisted on keeping him overnight. Coop had already kicked Heath out, but he seemed to expect Piper to hang around, not that she would have left.