Cautiously, with a gun in one hand, he pushed my door fully open and entered my space.

Okay, all right.

I’d been robbed.

No.

Um.

Okay.

All right.

Someone had come after that Trader Joe’s bag and demolished my apartment!

Oh my God!

The instant I started reacting to this—this reaction being beginning to tremble from head to toe—Mag was back.

Without a word, he shut my door, took my hand and dragged me to the stairs.

He then dragged me down them to his truck that was parked in guest parking.

He’d beeped the locks, had the passenger-side door open, me maneuvered into it, and when I didn’t immediately move to haul myself in, he picked me up, again, and dumped me in the seat.

When he was about to close the door, my hand shot out, fingers splayed to catch it.

“Danny, that bag is in my trunk,” I whispered.

“It’s been popped,” he rumbled unhappily. “Your trunk is empty.”

How…?

I’d only been away from it for maybe five minutes.

Whoever they were, they’d been waiting for me.

“Oh my God,” I breathed.

The drugs were gone.

“Oh my God,” I repeated.

“Belt up,” he ordered.

“Danny—”

“Belt up, Evan.”

“Danny!”

All of a sudden, my face was framed in both his hands, he used them to yank me his way, our foreheads collided, I felt the first strum of pain there since hitting it yesterday, and his eyes filled my vision.

“Keep it together, Evie.”

I stared into his eyes.

“Are you getting it together?” he asked.

I was not.

I nodded.

“Good. Belt up. Let’s go.”

I nodded again.

He let me go.

I settled back and belted up.

Mag slammed my door and jogged around the hood.

I had no idea why Mag was at my apartment complex.

I had no idea where we were going.

But I was very ready to be anywhere but there.

Chapter Six

One Day at a Time

Mag

Mag was driving very carefully in order not to freak Evie out even more than she already was.

He did this while at the same time attempting to lock down the feeling boiling inside him.

This was a problem.

A problem about which he was aware.

His anger issues.

Not that what he just saw done to Evie’s pad and car wasn’t something to get angry about.

Really fucking angry.

But, since he got out of the military, he had trouble managing his temper.

Now, even more than normally, he needed to keep a lock on it.

“My keys,” Evie murmured.

He glanced at her to see her face was pale and tight, and she had a death grip on her little bag in her lap even though it wouldn’t go anywhere because the long strap was crossing her body.

“Sorry, baby?” he asked as gently as he could and then looked back to watch where he was driving.

“I think…I think I dropped my keys when I dropped my mail.”

He felt her eyes on him and glanced at her again to see they were round and filled with fear.

Seeing this, he tightened his fingers on the steering wheel so hard, he felt the tension as mild pain up the insides of his forearms.

“And…and, Danny, we didn’t lock the door!”

Her voice was rising.

She was losing it.

But she didn’t know they didn’t need to lock her door.

There was nothing anyone would want in there.

Not anymore.

If her living room was a disaster, her bedroom was a catastrophe.

Mattress shredded. Drawers pulled out and broken. Clothing strewn everywhere, and a lot of it was ripped in the frenzy. Lamps smashed.

Whoever had gone in there had started up front, got tweaked the longer they searched and didn’t find anything.

So they got ugly at the back.

“On it,” he said to Evan, releasing his grip on the steering wheel and using his thumb to maneuver the buttons to get to his phone on the computer on the dash.

Auggie, by virtue of his name, was the first on the list.

So Mag hit go.

“Yo, brother,” Auggie greeted. “Did you go—?”

He didn’t let Auggie finish.

“Listen, I got Evie with me. Her place has been tossed. I got there a coupla minutes after she did, and she’d just seen it. I pulled her out of there, but she thinks she dropped her keys. Can you call Lottie or Mo, get her address, get over there, get her keys and secure her place? And a call would be good to Hank, or Eddie, Mitch or Slim.”

Auggie repeated Mag’s earlier words, “On it,” and immediately disconnected.

“Thanks,” Evie whispered.

“Not a problem,” he replied.

Evan said nothing.

Mag did not share that Hank, Eddie, Mitch and Slim were cops.

He’d get into that later.

For now, he assured, “It’s gonna be all right.”

“Unh-hunh,” she mumbled.

She didn’t believe him.

But it would be all right.

Seeing as he was going to make it that way.

The feel of the cab was unpleasant, anger coming from him, fear from her, which only served to notch up his anger, they both remained silent the rest of the drive to his place.

He guided his truck into underground parking, slipped it in his spot, and shut it down.

He angled out of his seat quickly, and after he’d rounded the bed, he saw Evan was already out.

He reached his hand to her, and she took it without hesitation, holding on to his fingers like she was dangling over the side of a building and he was the only thing keeping her from falling, her fingers squeezing his so hard, they bunched together with a sting of pain.

Mag’s teeth clenched and he had to force them to release to say, “You’re safe, Evie. Yeah?”

She looked up at him and nodded, but he knew she did not get behind her affirmative.

He tugged her to the elevators, and they were in them, Evan still holding on tight, when his phone rang.

He dug it out of his cargo pants, saw the screen said, MO CALLING, and he knew that Auggie had been communicating.

He took the call by saying, “Hey, brother. She’s with me, I got her and Auggie’s on the way to her pad.”

Mo’s two words were so weighted with anger, they felt like boulders landing.

“She okay?”

“No.”

Mo didn’t reply.

That was good because Mag wasn’t in the mood for conversation except to say what he was going to say next.

“I need you to talk to Hawk, Mo,” Mag said. “You with me? Brock or Mitch, Hank or Eddie, I don’t care who can do it. I want it arranged. You know what I mean. I want to talk to him. Yesterday.”

“I’m with you,” Mo replied.

Mo then disconnected.

And Mag had a feeling he’d be having a sit-down with her brother ASAP.

The elevator doors opened, and Mag got Evie out of it, down the hall and into his condo. He then took her directly to the fridge.

Still holding her hand, he opened the bottom-drawer freezer, pulled out the bottle of Fireball he had in there, closed the freezer with his shin and moved her to the cupboard.