He gave another sharp kick, slamming the dog onto the floor. With a yelp, it let go, and he gave it another swift boot, sending the old thing flying into a dresser, where a lamp in the shape of a rocking horse tumbled to the carpet.
The dog didn’t move.
He’d planned on abducting the kid and luring Nikki out of the house, using this screaming imp as bait, but this chaos had ensued. He had to think fast.
“I’ll hurt her,” he declared. “Get out of my way or, I swear, I’ll hurt her. I’ll start with her fingers, or maybe her eyes.”
The girl struggled, wildly pitching her surprisingly pliable body this way and that, flinging her arms, kicking as hard as she could, sometimes a little fist hitting his cheeks.
Still he didn’t let go.
Nikki ordered. “Put. Her. Down.”
“And what? You’ll let me go?” He didn’t buy it for an instant. “You’ll kill me.”
And he saw it in her eyes, the light of motherly fervor, the natural instinct to put her own life before her child’s. If he let the kid down, she would fight him to the death. “Get out of my way!”
She didn’t budge.
“No? Okay. Let’s start here.” He took a mouthful of the girl’s hair and snapped her head back, yanking out some of the curls by their roots. Beneath the tape, the kid shrieked bloody murder, just as more frantic footsteps sounded.
“What the hell’s going on?” the sister cried and pushed a wobbly Nikki out of the way. “You let her go!” In that instant, she leaped at the attacker.
The toddler wriggled and screamed.
Nikki cried, “Lily! No!”
He tensed.
Lily twirled lithely in midair, looking as she did in ballet class years before. She pirouetted agilely to the far side of the crib.
He fired, just as the crib rammed into him. The rails slammed against his back. He lost his grip. The kid slid to the floor next to the unmoving dog.
The shot went wild, blasting into the ceiling.
Nikki didn’t wait.
She pulled the trigger.
Blam!
Wheelan fell back against the crib, and though he felt the sting of a bullet and the stickiness of blood as it oozed through his shirt, he braced himself on the top rail and took aim again.
Directly at Nikki.
Chloe cried and covered her ears. Nikki fired again, then scooped up her crying child. He tumbled to the floor, scrabbling on the carpet for his gun. In one swift, instinctive motion, Nikki spun, her bare heel catching Wheelan under the chin.
His head snapped back, and for a second, the world went black.
His gun went spinning away.
Nikki struck again. Her heel slamming into his face.
Crunch.
The cartilage in his nose collapsed, turning into pulp.
“Take that, you bastard,” she said, ready to kill the prick and heard scratching and whining, then sharp barks from Arlo, whom she’d unwittingly locked in her bedroom down the hall when, still half asleep, she’d come to investigate. Even now, through all the chaos and the adrenalin pumping through her system, she felt some lingering effects from the sleeping pill she’d downed. But the pieces were falling into place. Wheelan knew all of the victims. He was a religious nut. Her mind spun as it was all beginning to make sense. With an effort, she kept her gun trained on the writhing man—Duke Wheelan, elder at All Christian, and finally unmasked as a serial killer.