“I was upstairs with the baby,” she said. “I was packing. Our plan was to wait until dark and then leave. She said they were getting close to finding her and we needed to get to you. You’re a bear,” she says, as though she’s confiding a secret I don’t already know. “And none of them are shifters.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re strong.”
“She wanted me to protect her.”
She trusted me to protect her.
Even though we’d been apart for so long and I thought she was dead, Alexis believed in me. That thought gives me so many different emotions all at once. None of these are things I’m able or read
y to deal with in front of Polly. She might be Alexis’ best friend, but to me, the beautiful girl is still a stranger, and I don’t want her to see me cry.
“They broke in while I was upstairs,” she says in a rush. “They came in and they killed her.”
“Who?”
“Her dad and Andrew.
“Did you see them?”
“I heard their voices,” she says. “And I had security cameras in the living room. I saw that it was them.”
“Did they say anything before they killed her?” I ask. My heart feels so tight that I think it might explode – and not in a good way.
In a horrible, terrible, this-is-the-end-of-the-world way.
“They wanted to know where she’d gone and when she’d come back, but she didn’t say anything. Then her dad said he knew she’d been pregnant. He saw her back when he’d tracked her down the first time. He wanted to know where the baby was.”
“She didn’t tell him.”
She wouldn’t have.
If there’s one thing I know about Alexis, it’s that she would never give up any information she didn’t have to.
Polly starts crying then.
Her tears come slowly at first, and then faster, and soon she’s sobbing at the kitchen table. I don’t know what to do now. This woman literally barreled into my life and she brought with her a train wreck of emotional baggage.
How am I supposed to handle this?
What am I supposed to do with any of this?
Alexis is dead.
To me, it’s as though she’s been dead for six months.
To Polly, her death was only recently.
It’s also possible that I’m the only person who understands what Polly is going through or what she’s dealing with. I might be the only person who can help her, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that I can’t leave a woman like Polly to fend for herself. Not when she doesn’t have to.
I can help her.
I can comfort her.
I can protect her.
“Come here,” I murmur, and I stand up. I think that she’s going to hesitate. I suspect that she’s going to fight me, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t do any of that. Instead, Polly practically leaps to her feet and throws herself into my arms.