Chapter 27
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?
Guns out, we moved swiftly into the trees and followed the smaller footprints. Soon we heard a male voice and … Sloane.
I picked up the pace until I saw her.
Standing over Andros with a gun in her hands while he clutched his bleeding thigh.
Relief and pride rushed through me.
“Sloane,” I said quietly, trying not to startle her.
She glanced sharply over her shoulder without moving her gun off Andros. As soon as our eyes met, she burst into tears.
My gut knotted, and I moved to her side as I murmured, “You can lower your gun, baby.”
Jamie stood over Andros, gun trained on him, while he called for an ambulance and the police.
Sloane lowered her gun, slumping into me. “Callie?”
“She’s fine. She’s safe. Are you injured?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
I wrapped an arm around her as she rested her cheek on my chest. Her body trembled like she was in shock.
“Is he going to die?”
Looking down at Andros, I noted he’d passed out. Blood saturated his leg, and I realized he had a second gunshot wound in his shoulder. Sharing a glance with Jamie, I waited as Jamie kneeled on his haunches and checked Andros’s pulse. He looked up at me grimly. “Pulse is faint.”
“I think I hit an artery,” Sloane observed flatly and repeated, “Is he going to die?”
“I don’t know.” I held her tighter as Jamie took off his tie and made a tourniquet around Andros’s thigh to stop the blood flow.
“Is Callie all right?”
Her trembling wouldn’t desist and between that and her repeating herself, I was worried she was definitely in shock.
“Callie’s fine.” I slipped my gun back into its holster and drew off my jacket to cover Sloane.
I rubbed her arms as she stood impassively against me, cheeks chalk white, eyes too big.
“Jamie, go flag down that ambulance,” I ordered, not taking my attention off Sloane.
“We’ll be fine. Andros isn’t going anywhere. ”
Once Jamie left, I cupped Sloane’s face and forced her to meet my gaze. “Sloane, stay with me, baby, okay?”
She nodded, but her eyes were glazed. “I think I killed him. What will happen to me?”
“Nothing is going to happen to you,” I vowed fiercely. “Do you understand me? It was self-defense.”
“Self-defense,” Sloane murmured.
I crushed her to me, holding tight, trying to keep her warm.
But really, the embrace was for me too. How many times had I promised I wouldn’t let anything happen to her?
I’d failed her by not protecting her from Andros’s attack, and if he died at her hands, I’d have failed to protect her from the trauma of taking someone else’s life.
As I looked down at an unconscious Andros, I didn’t know what the better outcome would be: him, gone from their lives for good, but leaving Sloane with the weight of his death on her shoulders; or him surviving and posing a threat to her peace of mind for the rest of her life.
Neither seemed right.
It should have been me. That bullet in his thigh should have come from me.
I’d failed her.