Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 112762 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112762 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
I still don’t know how he did it.
How he circled me so quickly.
But suddenly, Nathan ran out from behind a tree in my path, and I raised the gun as I startled to a halt.
He sneered at me and raised his arm.
There was a gun in his hand.
“You think I only carry one?” He curled his lip, blood dripping into his left eye.
“Stop,” I demanded. “You can’t get away with this, Nathan.”
“It’s amazing what people can get away with. I’ve seen it. I could have let this go”—he gestured between us with his free hand—“let you live your life here while I got on with mine back in LA. But it’s just not in me. The thought of you walking around, living your life with my kid, like you didn’t shoot me and then betray me … I haven’t got it in me to let it stand, Sloane.” He laughed grimly. “It’s fucked up because a part of me loves you for your fight. I admire it. I admire you. I even love you for it. But I hate you more.” Nathan’s arm was steady as he pointed the gun. “People will think I’m a pussy if I let you get away with it.”
Disgust was clear on my face. “You’re a psychotic son of a bitch.”
Nathan sniffed, wiping the blood out of his eye without his gun hand wavering. “Maybe. But you had a kid with me, so I don’t know what that says about—”
I pulled the trigger, shooting him in the shoulder.
It shocked him enough to give me time to dive behind a thick tree trunk.
A bullet clipped the bark close to my ear as he screamed vile words at me.
His voice grew closer as another bullet hit the tree. Another bullet. Another.
My pulse was racing so hard, my breaths were short and sharp and fast.
But then the sound of a click.
And, “FUCK!”
His gun wasn’t fully loaded.
I jumped out from behind the tree, gun clasped in both hands, and shot him in the thigh before he could lunge for my weapon.
Nathan dropped to the ground instantly, clutching his thigh as blood spurted out of an artery. “Call an ambulance, you fucking bitch,” he growled up at me, his skin pasty and chalk white.
Gun trained on him, I shook my head. “We’re not going anywhere.”
“I’ll bleed out!”
“Walker will be on his way.”
“No one knows which way we came!”
“He’ll find us,” I said, believing it.
And if Nathan bled out while we waited, I wouldn’t cry about it.
Twenty-Seven
WALKER
Andros couldn’t know it, but he timed his move well. What were the chances that he’d take Callie the same day two celebrity fangirls tried to break onto the estate? Being on such high alert, it distracted us long enough for Sloane to take off with Aria’s vehicle.
The pieces fell into place with a frantic phone call from Regan to inform me Callie hadn’t come out of the school gates with Lewis. When school ended, the teachers and students had been distracted by a fight that broke out between three of the older boys, and a parent saw a man of Andros’s description talking to Callie outside the gates. No one had seen her walk off school grounds because of the fight. They’d spoken before they walked away together hand in hand. Callie had gone willingly. Regan hadn’t known Callie was gone until almost everyone else had cleared out.
An alert from the guards that someone had stolen Aria’s BMW followed that call.
Sloane.
When she didn’t answer her phone, I felt fear like I hadn’t felt in a long time.
It had been years since I’d felt that close to losing my fucking mind.
We followed Sloane’s phone, and Callie called me from it. The relief of finding her safe inside Aria’s vehicle barely tempered me. Facing that wee girl as she begged me to save her mum … I honestly hadn’t known what I’d do if I failed her.
Callie went willingly with Jock after explaining Andros had threatened her mum’s life and that’s why she’d left with him at the school gates. She pointed us in the direction they’d gone but could only tell us the color of the car and that it was old.
“We’ll find her,” Jamie had said as I drove us toward Inverness.
We had to find her. There was no other option.
The last time I saw Sloane couldn’t be the last time.
As it turned out, finding her was easy. Two cars had pulled off to the side of the road about ten minutes from where we found Callie. There were people climbing up from the embankment after inspecting a blue car that had crashed.
I swung the SUV in behind them and ignored the drivers who had stopped to investigate as Jamie and I hurried down the slope to check it out. The vehicle was empty.
We shared a worried look, and then I rounded the hood and saw the footprints in the mud. Smaller and larger. “They went into the woods.” Fuck! Why had Sloane run for the woods instead of the road?