“Just yours. ” Amanda smiled, accepting the little girl’s excited hug as the mother stared back at her thankfully.
“Thank you, Amanda” she whispered as Kylie bounced down the steps to show off her treasure to her friends. “You just made her night. ”
“How has she been doing?” Kylie had been diagnosed with a rare blood disorder the year before, and it had been a hard journey for her and her parents.
“Good days, bad days,” Tammy sighed. “I almost didn’t bring her out tonight, but she was so looking forward to it. ”
Amanda nodded. “Let me know if you need anything. ” She hugged the other woman tightly, her heart breaking at the pressure she knew her new friend must be under.
“I will,” Tammy nodded. “And you take care too. I imagine being the President’s daughter right now is coming with more downs than ups?”
Amanda drew back, her lips twisting with the irony of the other woman’s comment.
“It has its days,” she admitted with a laugh, plying more candy into open bags as several more children approached her.
After the mess of the Presidential election, the protests of Breed Law, Breed Rights, and Breed everything else, she was due a break. Her own job had become a joke in the past year. Where she had once been a well-respected member of the community, she was now a sounding board for political rhetoric from the school principal down to her sixth grade students and their parents.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the Secret Service agents who accompanied her to work and back were really starting to bug her. She wasn’t the damned President, and she was getting just slightly frustrated with the problems it was beginning to cause her. They acted like rabid guard dogs.
“Amanda, could I use your little girls’ room?” Tammy suddenly asked quietly, a tense smile twisting her lips. “I’m about to die and I don’t want have to take Kylie home. I’ll just be a moment. ”
“Sure. ” Amanda glanced back in the house. “Down the hall on the left. ”
“I’ll be right back. ” She moved quickly past her and headed into the house. “Kylie should be just fine with her friends for a second if you’ll watch her. ”
Amanda glanced at the little girl. “Go. I’ll watch her,” she laughed. Kylie was still showing off the horns. Amanda leaned against the doorframe, watching her closely. She loved children, and one day imagined she would have one of her own. At times she wondered why she waited. She could have married twenty times over, if she was willing to settle for one of the men offering. Plain, boring little momma’s boys, she thought with a sigh, knowing it would never work.
“Thanks. ” Tammy moved past her moments later, her eyes darting nervously to the sidewalk where Kylie chatted with her friends.
“Take it easy, Tammy. ” Amanda frowned at the nervous smile the mother cast her before she moved quickly down the steps and urged her little girl further along the street. The house beside Amanda’s was dark, no lights to welcome the little trick-or-treaters. She frowned at the door to the other half of her duplex and sniffed in distain. The Secret Service unit her father had assigned her was camped there. Blockheads. She closed the door after handing out the last of her treats and turned back to the living room of her spacious duplex. She came to an abrupt stop. Her eyes widened in shock at the black-clad forms standing in her hallway.
Her gaze swung to the alarm system on the other wall, too far away for her to trigger the manual alert, but she could see the red light that indicated the back door had been deactivated. Dear God. Tammy had to have deactivated the alarm. But why?
Okay, so where were the blockheads then? she thought frantically. They should have received an alert that the back door was unlocked as well as the front while she was outside. They were so anal she would have thought they would check it out immediately.
“Can I help you?” she squeaked, hysterically amused at the polite phrase that escaped her lips as she backed toward the door she had just closed. In one blinding second she realized she was pretty screwed.
There were four of them. That was more than her self-defense training was going to handle at once, that was for sure. Masks covered their faces but nothing could hide the feral hatred in their eyes. Amanda swallowed tightly, wondering at her chances of escape. It didn’t look good.
“Yes, you can. ” One of them stepped forward, pale blue eyes glittering ferally as he lifted the gun he held loosely in his hand and pointed it at her head. “You can come quietly, or I can shoot you. Your choice. ”
“I get a choice. ” She blinked with mocking innocence. “Oh, wow. Can I think about it a while?”
She almost winced at the sarcasm. Bad move. Sarcasm and guns did not mix. Cold blue eyes narrowed on her as he cocked the gun, the sound ricocheting through her body and causing her to flinch in dread.
“Do you really want to take that risk, Ms. Marion?” he asked her softly. “It could be deadly. ”
She drew in a deep breath, swallowing tightly. She hated choices. A bullet or perhaps a fate worse than death? If she was very, very lucky a gunshot would only hurt like hell and draw enough attention…
Nope, silencer. Damn.
She stood silent, still, facing them as she caught sight of the light from the corner of her eye. She wasn’t going to just let them calmly take her. Only God knew who they were. He took another step and she jumped. Her hand slapped down on the switch as she jumped for the door, pushing back the lock as she twisted the doorknob and screamed for all she was worth. A second after the sound escaped her throat, darkness descended.
Damn. Dying wasn’t going to be fun…
Chapter Three
Babysitting duty sucked. Kiowa sat back in the seat of the luxurious Lexus and watched the little demoness hand out candy like royal favors and stifled a growl of arousal. He had been at this for a week now, and her effect on him was damned inconvenient. And that costume wasn’t helping matters any. She smiled at the kids, her face lighting up with pleasure at each one that came to her door, only to become smoothly polite while talking to the parents. She held herself aloof, in control, but he could sense a fire simmering inside her.