Nora Roberts - The Pagan Stone

He screamed, he wept, he battered the door.

Though her hand trembled, Quinn retrieved her phone.

Within fifteen minutes, Chief Hawbaker pulled the weeping boy out of the bedroom closet.

“What’s going on?” Kaz demanded. “My eyes! I can’t see. Where am I? What’s going on?”

“He doesn’t know,” Cybil said as she stood clutching Quinn’s hand. He was nothing but a hurt and confused teenage boy now. “It let him go.”

After cuffing Kaz, Hawbaker nodded to the can on the floor. “That what you used on him?”

“Pepper spray.” Layla sat on the side of the bed, clinging to Fox. Cybil wasn’t sure if she held him to stop him from leaping at the pitiful boy, or to ground herself. “I lived in New York.”

“I’m going to take him in, deal with his eyes. You need to come in, all of you, make your statements.”

“We’ll be in later.” Fox leveled his gaze on Kaz. “I want him locked up until we get there, sort this out.”

Hawbaker studied the rope, the knives, the can of gas. “He will be.”

“My eyes are burning. I don’t understand,” Kaz wept as Hawbaker guided him out. “Fox, hey, Fox, what’s up with this?”

“It wasn’t him.” Layla pressed her face to Fox’s shoulder. “It wasn’t really him.”

“I’m going to get you some water.” Cybil started out, stopped as Cal and Gage rushed through the apartment door. “We’re all right. Everyone’s all right.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Fox warned. “Come on, Layla, let’s get you out of here.”

“It wasn’t him,” she repeated, and took Fox’s face in her hands. “You know it wasn’t his fault.”

“Yeah, I know. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to beat him into a bloody pulp right at the moment, but I know.”

“Somebody want to fill us in?” Cal demanded.

“He was going to kill Layla,” Gage said tightly. “The kid. What Cybil and I saw. Strip her down, tie her up, light the place up.”

“But we stopped it. The way Fox stopped Napper. It didn’t happen. That’s twice now.” Layla let out a breath. “That’s two we’ve changed.”

“Three.” Cybil gestured toward Fox’s front door. “That’s it, isn’t it?” She turned to Gage. “That’s the door we saw Quinn trying to get out of when a knife was stabbing down at her. The knife Kaz had. The one from out of the block in the kitchen. Neither of those things happened because we were prepared. We changed the potential.”

“More weight on our side of the scale.” Cal drew Quinn to him.

“We need to go down to the police station, deal with this. Press charges.”

“Fox.”

“Unless,” he continued over Layla’s distress, “he gets out of town. Out to the farm, or just out, until after the Seven. We’ll talk to him, and his parents. He can’t stay in the Hollow. We can’t risk it.”

Layla let out another breath. “If the rest of you could go ahead? I want a few minutes to talk to Fox.”

LATER, BECAUSE IT SEEMED LIKE THE THING TO do, Cybil dragged Gage back to Fox’s apartment to load up the food.

“What’s the big fucking deal about a quart of milk and some eggs?”

“It’s more than that, and besides, I don’t approve of waste. And it saves Layla from even thinking about coming back up here until she’s steadier. And why are you so irritable?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe it has something to do with having a woman I like quite a lot being held at knifepoint by some infected pizza delivery boy.”

“You could always tip that and be happy Layla was carrying pepper spray and between her quick reflexes and Quinn and me, we managed to handle it.” As a tension headache turned her shoulders into throbbing knots of concrete, Cybil bagged the milk. “And the pizza delivery boy, who was being used, is on his way to stay with his grandparents in Virginia along with the rest of his family. That’s five people out of harm’s way.”

“I could look at it that way.”

His tone made her lips twitch. “But you’d rather be irritable.”

“Maybe. And we can factor in that now we’ve got two pregnant women instead of one to worry about.”

“Both of whom have proven themselves completely capable, particularly today. Pregnant Layla managed to keep her head, to reach into her very stylish handbag and yank out a can of pepper spray. Then to blast same in that poor kid’s eyes. Saving herself, potentially saving both Quinn and me from any harm. Certainly saving that boy. I would have shot him, Gage.”

She sighed as she packed up food. The tension, she realized, wasn’t simply about what had happened, but what might have happened. “I would have shot that boy without an instant’s hesitation. I know this. She saved me from having to live with that.”

“With that toy you carry, you’d have just pissed him off.”

Because her lips twitched again, she turned to him. “If that’s an attempt to make me feel better, it’s not bad. But Jesus, I could use some aspirin.”

When he walked away, she continued bagging food. He returned with a bottle of pills, poured her a glass of water. “Medicine cabinet in the bathroom,” he told her.

She downed the pills. “Back to our latest adventure, both Layla and Quinn came out of this with barely a scratch-unlike the potential outcome we saw. That’s a big.”

“No argument.” He went behind her, put his hands on her shoulders and began to push at the knots.

“Oh God.” Her eyes closed in relief. “Thanks.”

“So not everything we see will happen, and things we don’t see will. We didn’t see pregnant Layla.”

“Yes, we did.” She gave his hands more credit than the aspirin for knocking back the leading edge of the headache. “You didn’t recognize what you saw. We saw her and Fox in her boutique, this coming September. She was pregnant.”

“How do you-never mind. Woman thing,” Gage decided. “Why didn’t you mention it at the time?”

“I’m not really sure. But what it tells me is that some things are meant, and some things can be changed.” She turned now so they were eye-to-eye. “You don’t have to die, Gage.”

“I’d rather not, all in all. But I won’t back off from it.”

“I understand that. But the things we’ve seen played some part in helping our friends stay alive. I have to believe they’ll help you do the same. I don’t want to lose you.” Afraid she might fall apart, she pushed the first of two grocery bags into his arms and spoke lightly. “You come in handy.”

“As a pack mule.”

She shoved the second bag at him. “Among other things.” Because his arms were full, she toed up, brushed her lips over his. “We’d better get going. We’ll need to stop by the bakery.”

“For?”

“Another Glad You’re Not Dead cake. It’s a nice tradition.” She opened the door, let him pass through ahead of her. “I’ll tell you what, for your birthday-when you’re still alive-I’ll bake you one.”

“You’ll bake me a cake if I live.”

“A spectacular cake.” She closed Fox’s door firmly, glanced at the plywood Gage had put up where the glass pane was broken. “Six layers, one for each of us.” When her eyes stung and welled inexplicably, she pulled her sunglasses out of her bag, put them on.

“Seven,” Gage corrected. “Seven’s the magic number, right? It should be seven.”

“July seventh, a seven-layer cake.” She waited for him to put the bags in the trunk of his car. “That’s a deal.”

“When’s your birthday?”

“November.” She slid into the car. “The second of November.”

“I’ll tell you what. If I get to eat a piece of your famous seven-layer cake, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go on your birthday.”