means to an end, boy,” he whispered. “To hurt
Michael shrugged. “Then I won’t invite you to my wedding.”
“What wedding?” Eve called from where she was standing.
“They annulled our marriage, remember? You don’t think I’d let you walk away, do you?”
She blew him a kiss. “Never ever, rock star. Leave him. Let’s go home.”
Fallon smirked as Hannah Moses put handcuffs on him. “You think you have a home to return to?”
They all stopped and stared at him—at the hot, bitter triumph in his smile.
“Michael,” Shane said, “wouldn’t we know . . .”
“We were out of town,” Michael said, and looked at Claire for confirmation. “We wouldn’t, would we?”
She searched inside herself for that connection to the Glass House, that little thread of feeling that she’d come to recognize.
It was still there . . . but it was weak. Very weak.
“We have to go,” she said. “Right now.”
FOURTEEN
They commandeered a police car from Hannah, and Shane hit the lights and sirens while Michael drove, ignoring stoplights and weaving around other cars as if he’d plunged into a real-life video game. Claire and Eve, on the other hand, just clung to their seats in the back. It didn’t take long to spot their house.
And the massive bulldozer that was heading relentlessly for it.
“Oh, God,” Eve said. As they made the turn, the treads of the giant yellow monster mowed down and crushed their mailbox, hit the white picket fence, splintered it, and crushed it into the nice, neat grass. It wasn’t neat for long. The treads chewed the yard into muck as the bulldozer moved forward, raising its bucket. It was aimed right at the corner of the house, and as Michael brought the car to a screeching halt at the curb Claire saw Miranda’s face at the window, eyes wide in terror, staring at the thing that was coming to destroy their home.
And her.
There were no plans made for this contingency, and Claire knew there was no time for any; Shane and Michael bailed out the front, and Shane remembered—barely—to yank open Claire’s door in the back before he dashed after Michael, too.
“Get the driver!” Michael yelled, but it wasn’t going to be that easy, because the driver wasn’t alone—he had a couple of other burly construction-hardened guys with him. Shane veered off and made a running leap for the cab of the bulldozer. It was brand-new, barely dirty yet, and it had an enclosed, probably air-conditioned cab . . . with a locking door.
And the driver, of course, had it locked.
Shane yanked on the door, but that was useless; he tried driving his elbow into the glass, but it was thick, designed to resist flying debris. And then the bulldozer, which had slowed down as the operator assessed the threat Shane represented, sped up again, and the lurch threw him off to roll on the grass.
There wasn’t time for anything too fancy, but Claire stopped, ran back to the police car, and frantically searched around the seats . . . and found an expandable, flexible baton. She raced past Shane, who was rising to head for the bulldozer again.
“Help Michael!” she yelled. He and Eve were in the middle of a scrum with the two other construction men, and Michael still hadn’t realized the limitations of his all-too-human body yet. “I’ve got this!”
He gave her a quick, worried look, but he didn’t argue. Besides, he loved a good fistfight, and this was shaping up to be one he’d remember fondly.
Claire took a deep breath, a running jump, and landed on the rubber-coated step next to the cab. The driver gave her an irritated, smug look; he sneered and didn’t bother to put the machine in idle this time.
At least, not until she drew back and smashed the heavy baton into the window glass, cracking it into frost. A second blow rained chunks of safety glass all over him, and he let out a yelp and took his hand off the throttle —which automatically shut the bulldozer down to an idle again, five feet from the corner of the house. He swore at her, loudly, and shoved the door open, which pushed her off and onto the grass, where she hit and rolled to her feet, breathing hard.
She’d been hoping he’d jump out and come after her, but he’d done what he intended to do by brushing her off, and now he slammed the door again and jammed the throttle forward.
“No!” Claire screamed, and leaped back on. She collided with the metal door. He hadn’t locked it properly this time, and she stepped back and yanked it open, holding on for dear life. She’d dropped the baton somewhere, but she didn’t have room to wield it inside the cab anyway.
“Are you crazy? Get the hell out! Don’t make me hurt you!” the man said, and shoved at her. She clung on, so he let off the throttle to get a better grip on her with both hands . . . and she let him. He had hard, strong hands, and she knew it was going to leave bruises, but that was okay right now. Bruises were fine.
Because she was able to lean over across him and grab the key from the ignition before he threw her out of the cab and off the machine.
The bulldozer coughed and died, locked in its muddy tracks, and Claire shook off the fall and got to her feet, grinning. He didn’t get what had happened for a moment. He kept jamming his thumb on the button to start the engine, but then he must have spotted what was missing, because he leveled a black, furious look at Claire and jumped down from the cab to come after her.
She ran for the messy brawl that was spilling all over the lawn—Michael and Eve were tag-teaming one of the construction guys, who looked furious and frustrated, not to mention a little worried. His fellow neon-vested buddy was throwing punches at Shane, which Shane was easily dancing around while snapping hard, accurate blows to the man’s midsection, and—as Claire dashed past them—a stunning right hook that spun the guy halfway around to spiral limply to the ground.
“Hey, Claire!” Shane called to her, and then spotted the furious bulldozer operator, hard in pursuit. He stepped in the way.
That was a mistake, because the bulldozer guy had evidently paused to pick up Claire’s fallen baton, which he whipped out to its full length and smacked into Shane’s leg. Shane yelled and went down to his other knee, and his grab for the man’s foot failed to slow the guy down.
Claire ran up the steps to the house. The door opened ahead of her, because Miranda had been waiting, and the instant Claire was clear, the door tried to slam shut.
The tip of the riot baton got in the way, and the front door sprang back open, banging hard into the hallway wall.
The construction guy stepped into the Glass House, flexed his wrist, and lifted the baton as he bared his teeth at Claire and Miranda.
That was when all hell broke loose.
Miranda must have had some warning, because she grabbed Claire and pulled her down to the hardwood floor an instant before the battered little table they used as a backpack/purse/key depository lifted up off the floor and smashed hard into the intruder’s chest. He yelled in surprise, but it didn’t do much damage; he grabbed it and flung it off to the side, into the parlor, then came after the two of them with murder in his eyes.
Claire felt the equally furious surge of energy rising up—out of the floor beneath her, swirling in from the walls, down from the ceiling, a thick but invisible cloud of power that raised goose bumps and tingles all over her body.
And then the coffee table from the parlor upended itself and body-slammed him into the wall, hard enough to leave cracks in the plaster. He dropped the baton and staggered.
An old, weirdly shaped vase in a particularly unpleasant shade of brown flew off a shelf and smashed into bits against his head.
And then he was
The house seemed satisfied with that—Claire felt the surge of triumph and knew it hadn’t come from her or Miranda. She scrambled up, moved the coffee table out of the way (it was heavier than she remembered), and
