Chapter Twenty-Five
S loan nearly screamed when Jude rushed out of the trees, covered in blood and panting. “Oh my God!”
“I didn’t…kill…anyone.” He stumbled a little, but shook his head when she rushed to his side. “Boat. We have to…go.”
“Sit down right this instant.” She bit her lip and went to the boat.
“I can get it into the water.” Probably .
She didn’t wait for his response, digging her bare feet into the rocks and pushing with all her might.
The boat moved a few inches, not nearly as heavy as she’d expected.
She’d gotten it another few inches closer to the water when Jude appeared next to her. “Sit down.”
“Don’t have time.” He shoved the boat, sending it halfway into the water. “Get in.”
There was no time to argue, not with the steady stream of blood trailing down his side.
He’s been shot . Her stomach lurched, but she muscled the reaction down.
Her having a meltdown wouldn’t do anything but add to their trouble.
He wouldn’t let her help him until they were away, so she needed to ensure they got somewhere safe where she could patch him up as best she could.
Sloan climbed into the boat, her heart in her throat as he pushed them the rest of the way into the water and rolled over the side to lie in the bottom. “Pull the cord on the engine. Takes a few tries.”
She braced herself and yanked, and then again. On the third try, it caught, roaring to life. Sloan tested the handle, quickly discovering the basics of driving. “Where are we going?”
“Sloan!”
She twisted to see Teague standing on the shore, several of his men behind him.
She recognized that man who always guarded Callie, Micah, nursing what looked like a broken nose, but the rest of the men were only vaguely familiar.
Gauging the distance between the boat and where her brother stood, she gave it a little more gas so he’d have to swim if he came after her. “Go home, Teague.”
He shook his head slowly, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “You know I can’t do that.”
She didn’t throw a fit. Didn’t scream. Didn’t do any of the things she could feel rising in her chest like a trapped bird.
Sloan looked at Jude, lying there so pale and with a hole in him that had come as a direct result of her brother not listening to her.
He’d never truly listened, not even when he got her out.
Because I wasn’t really out. He still had a string attached to me that he could reel in whenever he felt like it .
Betrayal lay hot and thick in the back of her throat. “Then I guess you’re no better than our father.” She turned and powered the boat out of the inlet, doing her best to ignore the burning of her eyes.
Crying wouldn’t solve anything.
It never had.
“I don’t know where I’m going.”
“Sunshine…” Jude hissed out a breath. “North. Keep to the coastline.”
She obeyed and then looked down at him. “What do you need from me? I don’t suppose you have some sort of first-aid kit in that bag of yours?”
“Yeah.” He huffed out a laugh. Jude levered himself up until he leaned against the front of the boat. “It was a through-and-through. I’ll live if I don’t bleed out.”
She wasn’t a doctor, but he looked like he’d lost a significant amount of blood. “Do you have someone we can call?”
“Not on the island.” He moved like a man three times his age, carefully pulling out a little white box with the familiar red cross on it. “Second inlet you see is…” He gritted his teeth as he pressed a gauze pad to his side. “Where we’re headed.”
“I can stop and help.”
“No.”
Arguing would waste time and energy, and he was right.
They hadn’t gone that far yet, and if Teague was truly determined to find her and bring her…
wherever he intended…then they couldn’t afford to be caught.
Not when Jude was clearly injured. But not helpless.
I’d never make the mistake of assuming he is helpless .
She watched with a critical eye as he seemed to slow down the bleeding. He was pale beneath his summer tan, but he didn’t seem in danger of passing out like he had been when he first appeared at the boat.
Her attention turned to the bag at his feet.
There was something in there—something worth potentially dying for.
Curiosity bit her, hard and quick, but it wasn’t her business.
Not really. She’d already pressed him hard in the last few days.
If she kept it up, it was possible he’d snap back, out of sheer instinct.
He was alive. He was with her. It was enough.
For now.
The inlet was barely more than a sliver between the cliffs that had been getting higher the farther north they went.
She would have missed the gap completely if she hadn’t been searching for it.
She scraped the sides of the boat several times trying to maneuver in, but as soon as she did, she understood why Jude had chosen this place.
The top of the cliffs curved inward, creating almost another cave.
She found an outcrop of rock to loop the boat tie around, keeping them close enough to the edge that someone above would have to actually climb into the area to be able to see them. “Now what?”
“Now we wait until dark.”
She turned to find him trying to get medical tape on with one hand.
“Let me help.” Sloan didn’t give him a chance to argue, taking the tape from his hands and ripping off several tabs.
She took the opportunity to look at his injury.
It was hard to tell with all the blood, but the entry wound didn’t appear too large.
“What are the chances it hit something vital?”
“If it had, I’d be dead.”
She jerked back in shock, but then resumed taping the pad to him. “I see.”
“No point in pussyfooting around the truth.” He didn’t flinch as he sat up so she could do the same to his back, but she saw the way the muscle tightened in his jaw. “That brother of yours is a dick.”
“I’m not arguing with you at the moment.” She finished taping him up and carefully sat back. “I knew he was overprotective, but this was way too far.”
She’d told Teague she was fine, and he completely disregarded her, so sure that he knew better than she did. She loved her brother, but she could no longer trust him. “What’s our exit strategy?”
“I don’t know.” He closed his eyes, looking exhausted. “We can’t circle back and hope the plane hasn’t been tampered with. They’ll be watching the ferries in. This boat can island-hop to a limited degree, but we won’t make it far beyond that—and it would still require a ferry back to the mainland.”
No easy answer, then. She smoothed back his hair, taking comfort in the simple fact that he was alive and she could touch him to her heart’s content. Jude had carried them both since they left Callaway Rock—even before, if she was being honest.
It was time for her to return the favor.
“Do you have a phone in that bag of yours?”
“Yes.” He didn’t open his eyes. “Are you going to call in the cavalry?”
She hesitated, but he left it at that—just a question.
He trusts my judgment. He trusts me. That realization shouldn’t have been so novel, and it said something truly sad about her history that it was.
Not to mention my seriously dropping the ball with the tracker situation.
Sloan cupped his jaw. “I’m going to try. ”
“Front pocket.”
She found the pocket he’d indicated and pulled the phone out. Truly, there was only one person she could call.
Carrigan.
Sloan closed her eyes, took several deep breaths, and then opened them.
What are the chances that Carrigan hasn’t changed her number?
Not likely. Still, she dialed it all the same, reaching out to her older sister for the first time since she’d learned that Carrigan had forsaken the family for James Halloran.
No one else would understand where she was coming from, not about Jude and not about her plans.
No one else would be the least bit sympathetic to her plight.
No one else would stop to consider that she might be perfectly rational about the decision she’d made.
“Hello?”
Her throat tried to close at Carrigan’s familiar voice on the other end. “Carrigan…It’s me.”
“Sloan?”
“I…I’m in trouble. I need your help.” She held her breath.
She felt like a terrible person for refusing her sister’s calls over and over again, and now reaching out when she needed something.
Carrigan would be well within her rights to rip Sloan a new one and tell her to deal with the mess she’d made.
Instead, she said, “Anything.”
***
Dmitri climbed out of his town car, motioning the driver to stay where he was.
While he couldn’t be anywhere in Boston without a degree of danger, he was willing to take his chances for the time being.
The building looked like every other warehouse in the district, nondescript and windowless.
The street was almost deserted, though he caught the rustling of someone in the shadows. A place for ill deeds.
He stalked to the door, staring at the man standing there until the guy backed off.
And then Dmitri was inside, bodies pressing in from all sides, a deep music that he couldn’t place rolling through them.
The place stank of drugs and sweat and sex, and he wanted little more than to turn around and leave.
It wasn’t an option.
He spotted her almost immediately, her thin body draped over a throne on a dais in the center of it all. A couple fucked on the throne next to her, but she paid them no mind, surveying the chaos around her like a queen with her subjects.
He knew the second Keira spotted him, because the leg she had hanging over the throne’s arm started bobbing. Dmitri waited, fully expecting her to approach, but she didn’t move.
Cheeky.