Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 133849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 535(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 535(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
A loud blast cracked through the air as Dad shot the shit out of Ted Holloway. No hesitation. He’d watched the man take aim, and he’d done what he had to do. Unlike whoever had shot Harlow, Jack Barnes’s aim was true. That had been a heart shot, and the man wouldn’t need an ambulance.
The man in all black slumped to the ground.
“Damn it, Dad. We needed him alive,” Josh shouted.
“Am I supposed to let him kill you?” Dad had his cell phone out. He pointed to the left. “And we do not need that asshole. She’s this way. I told you I know where she is.”
Grim joined them, his heart threatening to thud out of his chest. What did it mean that Ted Holloway had been coming out of the woods? Nicole wasn’t with him. Were they going to find a body?
“I was handling it,” Josh insisted, but then followed their father. “Is Harlow okay?”
“Yes, she’s stable. Pops has her. Says he knows a lot about gunshot wounds or something. We might need to delve into parental history when we get out of this, brother. Also, she says there were two men. I’m pretty sure the one Dad shot is her brother-in-law. Harlow said her husband is here, too.”
“We’ll have a lot of questions since Dad seems to have LoJacked our woman,” Josh said, his voice tense.
“I personally am happy about that, sir.” Grim moved through the woods, trying to be as quiet as possible.
“I know how damn dangerous the world can be, and I’m not about to let it take one of my kids without a fight,” Dad said, his eyes on the screen again. “Damn it. It’s hard to read. I think we’re going the right way. She’s not moving. She hasn’t for a couple of minutes.”
“Then they might have…” Josh began, and then his jaw tightened. “Then she’s hiding and we need to get this guy away from her.”
“She’s close,” Dad whispered. “I think I can hear something.”
“Those nights we spent together. They were the best nights of my life.” A deep voice came from somewhere in the woods to the east. The fucker sounded like he was talking to a lover. “Laura was a pitiful comparison to you.”
It turned his gut because he was absolutely certain Micah Holloway wasn’t talking about sex. At least not the consensual kind. He was talking about torturing the woman he’d promised to protect and love and how much he’d enjoyed her pain.
“I’m going to kill him,” Josh vowed quietly.
“If he’s talking, she’s alive,” Grim pointed out. “She is our priority. Dad can kill him. He seems to be good at it. You have to shove your anger aside and think only of her safety.”
Josh frowned, but he nodded. He looked to their dad. “Where is she? Sound bounces through the woods. I can’t tell where it’s coming from.”
“She’s close,” Jack said, putting his phone back in his pocket. “I think that’s as close as we’re going to get using technology. It can’t pinpoint her. But I can. Look. Someone ran through here and recently.”
He looked down, and the ground showed signs of sneaker prints. Two large, one small. One backtracked. Ted. He’d walked back this way to get to the parking lot. So Micah and Nicole had gone further into the woods.
Dad led the way, moving across the soft earth, making far less sound than a man his size should.
She was alive. Grim gripped the handle of his kit with one hand, the gun in the other. It was strictly for emergencies. He would drop that sucker the minute they got to Nicole. He would protect her, hold her together if need be. In this case, his medical kit would do more good than the gun.
They moved quietly, and then they heard it. A loud shot cracked through the woods, and Grim simply ran. He and Josh ran toward the river where the shot seemed to have come from.
His heart threatened to stop as he saw Nicole on the ground. She wasn’t the only body, but she was the only one who mattered.
Josh got to her first, falling to his knees beside her. Tears tracked down his brother’s face.
He’d never seen his brother cry. Not once in all the years they’d lived together.
Grim felt stuck. Like the world stopped, and as long as he didn’t move, it wouldn’t go further than this. He could be stuck in this moment, pretending she might still be alive, that she wasn’t still on the ground. Facedown in the mud where her abuser had put her.
“Josh, Grim, I’m so sorry,” Dad managed to get out.
“I am, too,” the sweetest voice said. “This hurts. I’d like some drugs now.”
Nicole. The world sped up again and he rushed to her, dropping his kit beside her. “Don’t move, baby. Where are you hit? I don’t see an exit wound.”