Page 140 of Jay Bird

Willow: Thank you. Have fun with the guys. Love you.

Willow stared at what she’d typed, her heart suddenly thumping a little faster.

Oh, shit. She hadn’t meant to type that. Or maybe she had, and that was the problem.

She and Jay Bird had talked about their feelings and acknowledged that whatever was developing between them had become important to both of them, but neither had said those particular words yet. Willow quickly deleted the last two before she could overthink what it meant.

Willow: Thank you. Have fun with the guys.

She tucked her phone away and reached for Lily’s hand. “Come on, puppy thief. Let’s get home before you somehow convince me to turn around and adopt all six of them.”

They had only taken a few steps when Willow glanced toward her SUV and stopped.

At first, her mind refused to process what she was seeing.

The parking lot looked completely normal. Cars sat beneath the late-afternoon sun, traffic moved along the road beyond the property, and somewhere behind her, the rescue center door closed as someone went inside. There was nothing about the ordinary afternoon that should have caused the cold sensation suddenly spreading through her body.

Except for the man standing beside her vehicle.

She knew the dark eyes and the faint scar near his jaw. She knew the way he carried himself and remembered countless times when he had stood outside Chen’s office while Willow waited to find out what kind of mood the monster inside would be in.

Liu, Chen’s most trusted man.

Willow’s fingers tightened around Lily’s hand as her heart slammed painfully against her ribs. For one terrible moment, she couldn’t move because the sight of him dragged her straight back to the hell she had been trapped in.

Then Nova’s voice entered her mind as clearly as if she were standing beside her.

Freezing doesn’t mean the fight is over.

She wasn’t trapped inside Chen’s compound. She was in Virginia Beach, standing outside Mia’s rescue center in broad daylight, and there were people inside that building who would help her.

She scooped Lily into her arms and spun around. But then another man stepped from between two parked vehicles, blocking her.

Willow immediately changed direction, only to see a third man approaching from the other side. They had surrounded her.

“Momma?”

The fear in Lily’s voice snapped Willow completely out of the memories trying to pull her under.

Willow lowered her daughter to the ground and turned her toward the building. “Baby, I need you to listen to Mommy. I want you to run back inside and find Mia.”

Lily stared up at her, already frightened by Willow’s tone.

“Go, sweetheart. Run to Mia.”

When Lily didn’t move, Willow raised her voice. “MIA!”

One of the men rushed toward her. His hand closed around her wrist, but instead of pulling away the way instinct told her to, she stepped toward him, twisted her arm through the weakest point of his grip, and ripped herself free exactly as Nova had taught her.

The surprised look on his face would have almost been satisfying under different circumstances.

“Lily, run!”

Her daughter began crying and took several uncertain steps toward the building, but Willow knew immediately that her plan wasn’t going to work the way she needed it to. Lily was two years old. She didn’t understand why Mommy was suddenly screaming or why strange men were surrounding them, and fear had turned her little body almost as rigid as Willow’s had been moments earlier.

Willow started toward her, but an arm suddenly wrapped around her from behind.

Panic exploded through her so violently that for a fraction of a second she was back in Central Park. Her body started to lock up.