She reached out, the blade in view but just out of reach.
Tanner wrapped his hands around her throat, finally pinning her, his eyes crazy like she’d never seen before. “If you won’t have me, you’ll havenothing.” He squeezed, cutting off her oxygen, but Sunny didn’t even let that stop her.
She stretched as far as she could, her fingers brushing the handle of the knife, the world getting hazy.
She didn’t want to die with Tanner being the last thing she ever saw.
She jerked, her foot hitting the chair in her living room, giving her that scant inch of reach she needed to wrap her fingers around the handle.
The power was off. Garrison had suspected as much when they couldn’t bring up a feed on her cameras. He hadn’t kept access to them as a way to invade her privacy, hadn’t even thought about his administrative access until after she’d failed to answer her phone, when they’d realized Tanner could be there. At the end of her driveway sat a rental car, no driver, and it pushed Garrison to take the driveway even faster, their SUV hitting the bumps hard.
He wasn’t a praying man, but he sent up more than a few on the drive over.
There was something so much worse than her not wanting them, than her not being in their lives—that was the thought of her not being in the world at all anymore. It was the idea of her slipping away, of Tanner getting his hands on her and them never finding her. All the terrors coursed through his head, making him yank the parking brake before the car had even come to a stop in front of her house.
He was out a breath later, rushing for the front door, Trent and Connor on his heels. He could have knocked, could have used his keys, but the yell of a man inside meant he stopped and kicked the front door in as hard as he could.
Locks were strong, but wood often wasn’t, and the thing splintered beneath his anger and fear.
Inside was darkness, but some light poured in from the mostly full moon, through the front windows to illuminate the room.
A large man stood above Sunny, who was on the ground, on her back.
Garrison rushed forward, not caring what weapon the man might have, not caring about any risk. Nothing mattered but getting this fucker as far away from the woman Garrison loved as possible.
Except the man teetered backward with an uneasy step, then turned. From his side, a black handle stuck out, blood pouring from the wound.
The man—Tanner—stumbled, then collapsed to the floor, the monster of all their nightmares, reduced to nothing by their Fox.
* * * *
Connor hated hospitals, which was funny, since he’d spent plenty of time in one, at least one for animals.
That was different, though. He was the doctor those times, not just another visitor waiting outside a room.
Sunny was giving her statement to the police, but from what Connor had heard, the case seemed open and shut.
Mitch had found all the evidence that Tanner had been stalking her, that he’d been coming every weekend, and the blood from the break-in would be a match. Also, because the cameras worked on battery backup, they’d recorded him entering the house when he’d attacked her, even though the lack of power had meant Connor hadn’t been able to access them.
Still, knowing it was over didn’t quite reassure Connor as it should have.
Sunny had looked so small there, on the ground, and when the lights had come back on—a flipped breaker was an easy fix—he’d seen the angry red marks on her throat.
The fucker had hit her and strangled her.
Of course, she’d stabbed him. He’d live—Connor was on the fence on if he was happy about that or not—but it had taken surgery to save him and it had, no doubt, hurt.
That was something, at least. Also, there seemed a wonderfully perverse bit of humor in the fact that she’d stabbed him in the same place Spike had bitten him.
The police walked out, nodding at Connor as they passed. “We’re good for now.”
Connor took a breath, frozen at the threshold, unsure of his welcome, of any of theirs. The ambulance had brought Sunny, so they hadn’t actually seen her since the police had arrived at her house. Would she even want them there? Maybe they were too much in that moment, a reminder of something she didn’t much want to remember?
Still,notgoing in wasn’t an option, not if there was any chance that she needed them there.
Trent walked in first, the one to always act before thinking or worrying much.
Sunny looked small in that bed, in the hospital gown, and the red marks on her throat had started to darken. It made him realize Tanner hadn’t been trying to scare her—he’d been intent on killing her. If she hadn’t gotten that knife…