Page 27 of Torin and His Oath (Torin and the Princess #2)

JEN

SAME DAY - DIFFERENT POV

C ooper had been out on the porch all night with the gun beside him.

I was supposed to work in the morning. I had called out sick but that sucked, I was lying, plus it was the Monday after spring break. It did not look good to be asking for the Monday off. And what would I do if she didn’t come back tomorrow? I couldn’t keep calling out.

I fretted — if she didn’t come back, how much trouble would we be in? And what would the police say if I called them? I called out sick from teaching — would that play into the charges that would definitely be levied against us if she never returned?

I guess sickness wasn’t a complete lie, I felt sick.

I was worried about Lexi. Would we be able to find her, would she come home? Cooper was very morose.

At around 11pm, sitting in a chair on the porch, staring out at the night, I couldn’t stay awake anymore. My head lolled forward and I almost hit my head on the table.

I muttered, “I’m going to bed. Are you going to try to sleep?”

“No, gonna stay out here all night. If she comes back I don’t want her to be alone. And what if the guys come back?” He waved his gun toward the yard. “I need to be ready.”

I said, “Call me if anything happens,” and went inside to sleep in the guest room.

The night was long and, though I was exhausted, I had trouble sleeping.

Cooper was a mess in the morning. “She’s not back, you said she’d be back.”

“I thought she’d be back the next day, it’s not even past breakfast time yet.”

He counted on his fingers like an ass. “Midnight to now, seven hours. Seven hours already.”

I huffed and sat down on the porch swing. “I really hoped she’d be here by now, it’s been a long time since she… you know, was taken.”

He said, “Yep, too long. We gotta call the cops.”

“Yeah, I think so too. I’m gonna make coffee though, first.”

“You want me to tell the cops that we made a pot of coffee before we called them?”

“We waited all day, ate dinner, you had a couple of beers, we went all night, and then we made a pot of coffee. Then we called them. I don’t know what to say except, we thought she would come back.

We’ve been waiting for her. I’m sure that happens all the time.

Not everyone calls immediately, sometimes it takes a while before you realize someone is missing.

She was with Torin, you know, we thought she would be back. ”

He nodded. “I want to kill that guy.”

“You know it’s not his fault, he’s not the one who took her. He was trying to keep her safe.”

“Yeah, I know, but still … if he hadn’t come, she would be fine. We would be normal.”

I nodded. “Yeah… true. But what if, suddenly, out of nowhere those kidnapping guys had shown up and stolen her without Torin being here? He might be the only person in the world keeping her alive.”

“Yeah, but, why would they find her without him?”

“Because she’s some kind of princess.”

He shook his head.

I said, “It’s the only explanation, Coop.”

He asked, “You making coffee? I’m going to need coffee to discuss this kind of thing, and I don’t want to take my eyes off the grass.”

“Yeah, I’ll make it. Better at it anyway, you put too many grounds in.” I squeezed his shoulder as I went into the house.

I was pouring water into the back of the pot, when a shadow fell over the house. I looked out the window to see the sky had turned gray. Wind gusted hard, trees whipped.

It was shocking at first, a storm out of nowhere, but then I realized — A storm out of nowhere!

I dropped the pot and ran for the door. It flew open before I reached it, yanked wide by the gale. The wind howled into the hall.

Cooper was outside, pinned against the siding, one arm braced across his face as the gusts drove him back. He staggered, slammed flat against the wall. In the half-breath lull between gusts, I grabbed the screen door, yanked it open, and shouted, “Come in!”

He dove inside, and we crouched in the narrow hall as the wind tore through, rattling the walls. The screen banged violently, gusts burst into the house, knocking a picture frame from the wall. Glass shattered on the floor.

And then, almost as quickly as it had risen, the storm ebbed. The roar lessened, the house stilled.

It dawned on me, with certainty — it was undeniable, the storms were part of it.

We could argue that it wasn’t happening, that it wasn’t true, but it had just ripped a frame off the wall and broken the glass. There was no denying anymore.

Together, slowly, we edged toward the door.

The storm slowed, we had a glimpse of a person lying in the yard.

The next gust, I could see a horse. By the last gust there were two bodies in the yard, two horses.

Dude skittered up to the porch to get out of the last sprinkles of rain.

He rushed past us, headed into the kitchen, ‘trilling his head off’ as Lexi would say, looking for his food.

I wasn’t feeding that damn cat, he would need to wait, because Lexi was out lying in the mud.

We rushed from the house, Cooper getting there first.

“Lexi!”

Cooper slid on his knees beside her and checked her pulse.

“Is she alive, oh god, she doesn’t look good!”

He said, “There’s a pulse, but… yeah, she doesn’t look good.”

Torin was beginning to stir.

He was on Lexi’s legs. He raised his head, appearing dazed, looking around. Then he rolled off to the side.

Cooper said, “Torin, wake up! Wake up, Torin, what happened?”

Torin looked over at Lexi, “Did she make it?”

Lexi looked frighteningly pale, not good at all. “She doesn’t look good.”

Torin said, “She is verra ill.”

“Oh no, what happened?”

“The Princess needs a physician.” He lumbered to his feet.

I patted the back of Lexi’s hand, “Wake up, babe, you need to wake up!”

Torin was visibly upset, stacking bags and checking on horses that had shown up with him and Lexi. He repeatedly insisted that Lexi needed to get to a hospital, that we needed to call a physician.

Coop got out his phone. “What’s happened to her?”

“She is beset by flux, a weak and loose belly, I couldna make her well.”

Cooper called the ambulance while I tried to get Lexi to wake up. “How ya doing, Babe? You okay? Torin said you were sick.”

My focus had been on Lexi, when I realized Torin was returning from the house.

Cooper told him Lexi’s ambulance was coming, but it was dawning on me — was he leaving a horse?

He said something crazy, like it was Lexi’s horse.

I was shaking my head, completely unable to explain to Torin that Lexi did not want a horse, had never wanted a horse, and wouldn’t know what to do with a giant beast. He was acting like it was the most normal thing in the world to leave a horse at Lexi’s house.

Torin said something about how Cooper needed to hire security guards for Lexi and warned that more men might be coming, and Cooper looked pissed at being bossed around.

But I was struck at how impatient Torin was to get going and I wondered if we had done something to him, or if Lexi had upset him somehow.

But then he said, “If anything happens tae her… daena let anything happen tae her.” And then he said, “I winna be back, I winna bother ye again.”

And I caught a glimpse of a look — his heart was breaking.

Lexi moaned. Her leg moved.

Cooper said, “Lexi, it’s me, are you okay?”

She groaned and weakly said, “No… where’s Torin?”

Cooper said, “He’s here.”

I saw Torin shake his head sadly, he wouldn’t even look at her.

I tried to reassure him, “Don’t worry, we’ll get her to the emergency room.”

He said something about ‘farewell, mo leannan,’ bowed, and walked away.

Coop watched him go. “Man, he is pissed, whatever she did, he was not happy about it. He is such a nut job.” He held her hand.

I said, “I don’t think that’s what happened at all.”

“You saw him, he was pissed.”

I shook my head. “Yeah, but I don’t think you’re right about why, he’s not mad at Lexi. That’s not it at all.”

We heard the distant sounds of an ambulance headed our way.