With a cartoon “oof,” the man backed away, doubling over. His battering ram fell to the floor and scattered the wood and glass.

Please, she thought, let him stop now. Don’t make me do anything else.

He straightened with a feral snarl.

Crying because she didn’t want to do it, Cassie pointed her elbow into his throat. Her martial arts instructors had taught her to yell, supposedly to strike fear into an attacker and bolster her strength. She needed nothing but the will to hurt another human being. Still she felt sick as the man began to choke.

And damn him. He kept coming.

She was crying as the heel of her palm rammed his nose into his skull. Blood on her hands gagged her as he dropped, unconscious.

She hovered, ready, trembling from head to toe.

“Mommy?”

“Hope.”

Cassie turned, gathering herself as if she’d also been broken into pieces. She rubbed her arm across her eyes and her mouth, trying to erase any trace of the violence that had adrenaline bubbling in her veins.

Gripping the office door, Hope pointed at Cassie’s shirt. A scream poured out of her throat.

Cassie looked down. The blood snapped her straight back to reality.

“I’m okay.” She tore the shirt off. “I’m all right, baby.”

Hope rushed her. Cassie knelt and scooped her daughter into her arms. “The police,” she said to the nearest woman. She threw her shirt far away. In her bra and jeans, she was wearing more than some of the clients who’d shown up at their doors.

She cuddled Hope, keeping her as safe as she could from scary things. “We’re all okay, baby.” To herself, she sounded calm while her heartbeat shook her whole body. In a few minutes, Hope’s crying faded to a whimper.

“Wanna go home, Mommy. Bad, bad man.” As she pointed at him with a four-year-old’s contempt, sirens sounded.

“Put this on.” Liza, one of Cassie’s partners, dropped a faded Tecumseh PD T-shirt over Cassie’s shoulder. Another woman must have worn it into the shelter. Cassie pulled it over her head, and Hope helped her yank it down.

“You hurt that bad man, Mommy.”

“I know.” She seriously wanted to bury her head. “It was scary.”

“I’m glad you hurt him.”

She didn’t know what to say. Normally, it’s not nice to hit people would do, but the man had come bent on hurting someone in the shelter. She couldn’t let that happen.

Cassie cradled Hope’s chin. Violence had changed Cassie’s life forever, and she’d tried to make sure the past wasn’t part of her present with Hope. “I don’t like hurting anyone, baby, but that man wanted to be mean to someone here.” Of their own volition, her thoughts returned to that other bad man, and she hated the fear that whispered through her in a warning.

Unconditional love looked out of Hope’s blue eyes.

“I won’t ever scare you if I can help it,” Cassie said. Her daughter meant everything to her.

“You didn’t look like my mommy.”

Cassie hugged her tight. Someday she’d teach Hope the self-defense she’d made every shelter employee learn, but she didn’t want her daughter to think of her as a woman who beat people up.

She went blank when she tried to think what else she should have done.

Two policemen, guns drawn, barged through the splintered doorway and stopped in front of the unconscious man.

Only then did Cassie realize one woman had picked up his battering ram and another stood over him with a raised chair.

More concerned about the guns, she turned Hope’s face into her chest.

“Danger’s over.” Liza pointed at his revolver. “You can put that away. We don’t like the children to see them.”

The police both holstered their weapons. “What happened?” asked the one she’d spoken to.

“He busted in with this.” She eased the battering ram out of the woman’s hand. “And my friend stopped him from getting any further.”

“Which friend?” the second cop asked.

Cassie stood, lifting Hope onto her hip. “He said someone’s name, but I didn’t catch it.” She searched the suspicious glances of the women and children around them. “Anyone know him?”

“I do,” the second cop said. “He’s a fireman. I can’t remember his name, but we worked together last year when the county put on that disaster training.”

No one else claimed him.

The downed man began to stir and the first policeman cuffed him. He nodded at Cassie. “He wasn’t looking for you?”

Shaking her head, she hugged Hope closer. “I work here.”

“She’s a partner,” Liza said. “I’m Liza Crane. This is Cassie Warne. We have another partner, Kim Fontaine, but she works day hours.”

So did Cassie, but Hope had been out of school for a teacher in-service day. For the first time in Hope’s short preschool career, Cassie had forgotten to arrange for backup day care.

Between them, the police officers dragged the man to his feet. Catching sight of Cassie, he lunged.

“Bitch.”

She backed up, turning Hope away from him.

“Bad man.” Her daughter burrowed her face into Cassie’s shirt.

WITH A TRACE of leftover nerves-on-alert, Cassie hurried Hope into their town house four hours later. She locked the door and shut out the world. Her haven of overstuffed chairs and verdant plants and overflowing bookshelves let her breathe again.

She sought the familiar. Prints from museums she’d visited when she could only stare at walls and pray not to scream. Framed pieces of Hope’s artwork, going all the way from scrawls and handprints to the big faces with stringy hands and feet she favored lately.

“No bad men here.” Hope slid from Cassie’s arms and ran to her room, all order restored in her world.

Cassie breathed easier. The event had only scared Hope for a little while. It hadn’t changed her life.

Setting the dead bolt on the front door, Cassie activated the alarm system. “Are you hungry?”

“Can we have eggs and cheese? All stirred up together?”

“Perfect.” Comfort food.

Cassie went to the kitchen. Hope skipped in while she was pulling the mixing bowl out of a cabinet.

“Wait for me, Mommy. You know I’m ’posed to help.”

“It wouldn’t taste the same without you.”

Cassie broke eggs into a bowl. Hope whisked them all over the kitchen counter and the sink, and Cassie mixed up chocolate milk. They toasted each other while a golden pat of butter sizzled in the iron skillet Cassie had taken from her childhood home.

“That man doesn’t know where we live?”

Cassie shook her head. “And the police won’t let him out, anyway.”

Hope set her glass on the counter and then wrapped her arms around Cassie’s thighs. Cassie leaned down and hugged her tight. And that seemed to be the end of it all.

“I’ll get that peach stuff Mrs. Kleiber made me.” Hope hurried to the fridge for a jar of preserves their neighbor made for her every year.

Cassie dropped bread into the toaster slots, grateful for Hope’s resilience. “How hungry are we after such a long day?”

The phone cut into Hope’s answer. As Cassie lifted the receiver, she saw that their machine had recorded eleven messages. Without bothering to look at the caller ID, she said hello.

“Cassie?”

That voice. Low, more uncertain than she’d ever heard it, but rich and familiar as his touch had once been. She shivered as memories of his hands on her body made her ache, arms and legs, heart and soul.

In a night of shocks, this one made her grab the edge of the counter.

“Van?” She’d read in romances that a man could make a woman light-headed enough to faint. But those women had been bound in Jane Austen finery. She was still sporting splinter-laden jeans and a Tecumseh PD T-shirt. “Van.”

She’d loved him. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t, but she’d had to leave him because he couldn’t love her after she’d been raped.

“MOMMY?”