Page 37 of Hideaway Whirlwind (Big Boys of Berenson Trucking #4)

Teagan

When Mckinley lowers her phone with a mumbled excuse, I grab Elliott’s face, his big body still crouched on the floor, so I’m taller for once. “I love you so fucking much,” I say with a rush, crushing his lips beneath mine, pouring all of my heart into it. “I’ll always love you.”

He tries to pull me closer, but I break the kiss and his hold, sprinting toward the stairs while everyone watches me like a circus freak.

“Birdie!” he yells, clambering to his feet. He catches me halfway up the stairs, spinning me around with his hand on my elbow. “What are you doing?”

I try to shove him away. “Let me go!”

He does, instantly, but holds his palms up like a plea. “What’s wrong?”

“We can’t stay here.” I turn and continue up.

“Dustin! Sydney!” My boots boom on each step as I gasp for breath up the never-ending stairs, grabbing onto the railing.

“Get out of my way!” I scream at the skinny guy blocking the top of the stairs, who isn’t looking at me but at Elliott over my head.

He jumps back, but then there’s Layla right behind him.

“Teagan, slow down,” she says with both hands held up to stop me. “Whatever it is, we can help you.”

I blow right past her, careful not to knock her over.

“Dustin, Sydney!” This castle is a fucking maze, and I don’t know which room they’re in until Laura or Cora or whatever her name is steps out of one room toward the end, holding Kendall on her hip with Dustin and Sydney pushing through the open doorway.

When I reach for Kendall, the woman reels back in shock, just another person looking over my head, waiting for instructions from someone other than me. “Give her to me,” I say, “or so help me Zeraxy, my face will be the last one you see!”

I grab Kendall when the woman nods fast with a rushed apology, and I hug my baby tight.

She’s frightened by my voice, clinging tight to me, shaking in my arms. “We have to go,” I tell Dustin and Sydney, trying to normalize my tone, but it’s impossible.

They’re just as upset as Kendall, but they don’t ask any questions when I push them in front of me toward the stairs.

But then they see Elliott, and they bolt toward him, yelling, “Papa!”

“No, no, we don’t have time!” I don’t have enough hands to pick up each child and run.

I’m stuck. Trapped. “We have to leave!” Tears skew my vision as I try to think of another way out.

I even sprint back to the end of the hall, hoping to find another staircase, but there’s only the one.

I bend over, trying to breathe through my nausea, and scramble to hold onto Kendall.

“Ok, ok,” Elliott says. “Then we’ll all go. I’ll carry Kendall.”

I almost break down and sob when he takes Kendall and starts down the stairs. Dustin follows after him, and I clutch Sydney’s hand as we bring up the rear. But we’re only partway down when we hear a few slamming car doors from the front, weak, red and blue lights flashing in the windows.

“No! No, no!” I cry, clutching Sydney against me, my eyes flying to Mckinley.

“I told Sheriff I called by accident! He must have come anyway. I’m so sorry,” Mckinley says, though she doesn’t know what she’s apologizing for.

Someone knocks on the front door, and two others tap at the glass side and back doors. We’re surrounded. Four years, and now it’s over. It’s all over.

I sink down on my step and pull Sydney onto my lap, crushing her in my arms as I begin rocking.

She’s crying just as hard as I am, scared by whatever is scaring me—and I’ve never been more scared in my life than in this moment.

I swallow hard when Dustin moves to sit beside me, hugging my shoulders, tears streaming down his face.

Not a soul moves as the knocking continues until Russell jogs across the living room and says, “Tell me what the heck is going on.”

I finally look up at Elliott, who has dropped to his knees two steps below me.

“The fabric…it’s the color my mom wore. I think…

I think she somehow survived the explosion and found me.

” And if she’s alive and been in hiding all this time, there’s a chance some of the others may be as well.

“If she went to the cops, they’ll arrest me and take Sydney. ”

“Neither of you is going anywhere,” Elliott says fiercely, and truly, he believes it. I wish I could, too. But this is bigger than anything he can protect us from.

“Promise me you’ll do everything you can to get her back,” I tell him, laying my hand flat over the side of Sydney’s face to cover one ear, her other pressed against my chest. “You can’t let her grow up in that cult, or they’ll marry her off and—” My face screws up, Guxxer’s sneer from on top of me in the one-room, crudely built concrete structure that was our home flashing in my mind’s eye. “They’ll hurt her.”

Someone is now pounding the front door, and I startle when Goldie reaches through the spindles of the railing and lays her hand on my arm. She’s already figured it out, while Elliott still looks so lost. Layla settles on the step above me, hugging me from behind.

Russell’s brows fall with understanding when his gaze shifts to Sydney. “She isn’t yours, is she?” he asks bluntly.

“She is mine,” I snap, coughing through my tears. “I raised her. I saved her from that place. She is my daughter.”

“But you’re not her birth mother.” Russell rubs his jaw, a cold calculation flashing behind his eyes.

I want to rip my boot off and throw it at him. Scream and wail and tell him to take it back, because I can’t stand the truth. I can’t stand it. But I give it to him anyway. “She’s my sister.”

Elliott sucks in a sharp breath, wrapping his arms around all four of us. “You took her when you escaped.”

I nod against his shoulder. “I have forged birth certificates hidden under the bottom bunk mattress at Goldie’s, but it won’t matter if they DNA test us.

” I did more than kidnap my sister and buy fake papers, but I can only pray to a galaxy I don’t believe in that no one will ever figure out the rest, or I’ll never see the outside of a prison cell again.

“Screw DNA, Birdie. She’s ours. No one is taking her from us,” Elliott says viciously. My big bear of a man. Our protector. My love. “I won’t let anything hurt you or her ever again. We’ll figure this out.”

Elliott

“Open this goddamn door, Russell, before I blow this here fancy handle off!” Sheriff Gibson yells from the porch.

“Layla, hide them upstairs,” Russell says, and as soon as my family is out of sight—much as I hate that—Russell jogs to the front door, stopping first to stow his shotgun in the hall bathroom. “I’ll handle this.”

“ We will handle this,” I say. We’ve always made a good team, and maybe now, after Birdie stuck up for me, chose me, he’ll see that he never should have lost any trust in me—though I’ve certainly lost some in him.

With a nod to each other, we collectively shutter our expressions before Russell swings open one side of the double doors.

Sheriff Gibson pauses mid-knock. “‘Bout damn time. You didn’t hear me pull up?”

Deputy Zoey Cooke is with him, her almost-white-blonde hair pulled back in a slick, low bun as she eyes Russell and me suspiciously. Since that’s her go-to expression, I don’t pay her much mind.

“Nope. Can’t say that I did,” Russell responds in a casual voice.

“Bullshit.” Sheriff lifts his boot to step inside, but Russell blocks the doorway with me standing as backup a pace behind him.

“I’ll remind you not to curse where my wife can hear you,” Russell says. When Sheriff sniffs and nods, my brother asks, “Now, how can we help you?”

Sheriff sucks his teeth. “You know we got a call from Mckinley.”

“And she told you it was an accident. Butt dial, I think she said,” Russell says, both of us silently relieved—only by a hair—that it wasn’t another call placed by someone else, like Birdie’s mother, if she is in fact the lurker, that brought Sheriff and his deputies out here.

Sheriff pushes his cowboy hat up to scratch his lined forehead beneath his gray hair, more than a few of those due to my brother and me, both of us having been arrested by him at some point or another.

“Well, seeing as how you boys have been nothing but trouble and put me through the wringer over the past few years, I thought it best to check things out.” Boys .

As if he isn’t only a few years older than us.

Russell inches the door closed. “Everything’s fine. Y’all have a good night.”

Sheriff slaps a meaty hand against the door and sweeps his eyes across the vehicles parked in the driveway that splits off into a U in front of the house. “Y’all having a party, or something?”

“Yup. Celebrating the end of the freeze. Best get back to it,” Russell says dismissively, still trying to force the door closed.

“Now, how come I didn’t get an invite? Lord knows Sheila and I froze our hinies off, same as the rest of you,” Sheriff says jovially with a tilt of his head, changing tactics that we see right through.

“My wife’s been itching to get out of the house, and she sure would have loved to catch up with Layla. Been too quiet around here.”

Deputy Cooke tsks. “You shouldn’t have said that.”

“Right, right.” Sheriff knocks twice on the wooden doorframe, superstitious as he is that they’ll suddenly be inundated with calls in our normally quiet county—when he’s not up to his neck in trouble from us boys .

“Well.” Sheriff stalls, his gaze catching on my brown Bronco parked behind Goldie’s Explorer.

He takes a small flashlight from his duty belt, stepping off the porch to shine his light through my windows into the back seat.

“Huh.” He thumbs his nose, looking past my brother at me.

“You wanna tell me why you have three car seats in the back here?”

I grunt. That means no .