Chapter 26 #2
He was thinner, his cheekbones sharper. His features harder.
Maybe it was because I hated him now, but I couldn’t see any remnant of the beautiful boy I’d made Callie with.
His insides were finally becoming his outsides.
“I don’t think so.” I didn’t tell him about the cell in my pocket, the one I’d had to silence because it was filled with calls from people who knew we were in danger.
“Time we had a little chat, then.” He gripped Callie harder, and my daughter winced.
I’d hurt him for that.
It took everything within me to keep my expression impassive. “We talk if you let Callie go.”
“You think I want to hurt my kid?” Nathan sneered at me. “You drove me to this, Sloane. Anything that Callie’s feeling right now is your fucking fault! You turned her against me!”
Our daughter whimpered in his grasp, eyes pleading with me.
“Nathan,” I said calmly, taking a tentative step toward him. “You’re right. And that’s not Callie’s fault. It is my fault,” I lied.
That seemed to ease him a little.
“So let Callie go, and you and I will talk.”
“Mom!”
I shook my head at her, begging her silently to be quiet.
Her lips pressed together as tears fell down her cheeks.
I’d hurt him for every one of those too.
“Callie can stay here, and we’ll go for a drive. Like I said, I ain’t got no beef with my kid just because her mom’s a cunt. But I will have a problem with her if you don’t do everything I say.”
“I can’t leave her here alone,” I told him gently. “She’s only ten, Nathan.”
“Then leave your cell with her, and she can call someone after we leave.” He gave her a shake. “But you don’t call them until five minutes after we’re gone. You hear?”
Callie shot me a look.
Trust me.
She nodded and turned back to Nathan. “Okay.”
“Okay, what?” He shook her again.
“Okay, Daddy,” she choked out.
“Damn right.” He grabbed her arm and dragged her past me toward the BMW. “You wait in there.” Once she was inside the car, he turned to me, gun pointed in my face. “Cell.”
Tugging it out of my jeans pocket, I handed it over, but my gaze was on my daughter.
I didn’t need to ask to know who she’d call, and I just hoped he’d get to her in record time.
“I’ll be okay,” I promised her.
She cried quietly again as Nathan handed her the cell. “Don’t call anyone until five minutes is up.”
Callie nodded, but I knew as soon as Nathan and I drove away, she’d make her call.
“Lock the car, baby girl,” I instructed as soon as Nathan closed the door on her.
She immediately hit the button on the driver’s door, and I heard the BMW lock her in, safe. From him.
Nathan gestured with his gun. “Get in my car.”
It was like severing some integral connection inside me to walk away from Callie and get in his vehicle. But I’d do it. I’d do anything to get this crazy bastard away from her.
With one hand still holding the gun, Nathan drove us away from the bluff and toward Inverness.
I had no intention of letting him get too far. Just far enough away from Callie.
Eyeing the gun, I listened as he spewed his bile at me. “I know it was you who told that bastard where I trade. Everything I did for you, and you stab me in the back like that?”
“Everything you did?” I asked numbly.
“You fucking shot me! I could have put you away for doing that!”
“And put yourself away for your troubles.”
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up, you dumb bitch!” He waved the gun at me, the car veering across the road before he pulled it back under control.
“You think because that fucker has money that you’re protected?
You think a cunt I own—I OWN—can run from me?
No! No fucking way! I’m gonna show you what it is to betray me, bitch.
” He shoved the gun into my temple, spittle dripping down his chin, his cheeks flushed with rage.
Blue eyes filled with madness. I flinched as he dug the gun into my head.
“First, I’m gonna fuck you into the next century and remind you who owns you.
Then I’m gonna watch the light go out in your eyes, all the while you know that I’m not gonna stop until Callie’s home with her daddy, where she’s supposed to be. ”
A cold understanding crawled through me.
This would never end for Callie.
“How do you expect to get away with killing me?” I asked calmly.
My tone seemed to gentle him.
Nathan lowered the gun to his lap. “You’re not the only one with connections.”
Heart racing harder as I noted the empty road in front of us, I braced myself for two seconds, and then I lunged for the wheel. Nathan yelled as I twisted it toward the other side of the road and he dropped the gun, trying to grapple for the wheel.
But I held tight until we crashed down the embankment, heading for a tree. I let go, forcing myself back in my seat seconds before impact.
If it hurt, slamming against the dashboard, I didn’t know at the moment. I could feel the burn of my seat belt cutting into my neck, and my ears rang.
Dazed, I checked myself for injuries before urgency kicked in. I gasped as I looked to Nathan.
He was out cold. His forehead rested on the wheel, blood trickling down the side of his temple. The airbag hadn’t deployed.
The gun. The gun!
I unhooked my seat belt as quietly as possible and leaned over to see the gun had fallen at Nathan’s feet. Blood rushed so loudly in my ears, I could barely hear a thing over it. Praying he didn’t wake, I squeezed my arm into the gap between the dashboard and Nathan’s leg.
My fingertips touched the cool metal just as I heard him groan.
Oh my God. Oh my God.
Sucking in a frightened whimper, I pushed harder into the gap and my fingers curled around the gun. As I pulled it up, my eyes went to Nathan, and he was staring right back at me.
I cried out, falling against the passenger door as he started to come to. Scrambling for the door handle, I pushed it open and he said my name in a hoarse yell.
Falling out of the car, gun still in hand, I crawled away, desperately clambering to my feet as the sound of the driver’s side door opened.
In my panic, I did something stupid.
Instead of running for the road, I ran into the woods.
“SLOANE!” Nathan yelled.
Bracken and leaves crunched under my feet as I ran back the way we came. My ribs throbbed with the movement, and I could feel a pulsing pain in my shins where they’d hit the dash on impact. Ignoring it, I ran as fast as I could.
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.