Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
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.”