Sacrificing Sloan (Sloan Series Book 3) (2 page)

Watching Mackenzie made me smile, a strange sensation, since I hadn’t in a very long time. Who knew those two would find something special?

Who knew he would get shot protecting me?

If anything happened to him, it would be my fault. Mine.

“They’ve searched a few areas, I heard, but they won’t be able to do much until they have an idea of where they might have gone. And even then, it needs to stop raining. The creek flooding isn’t helping anything.”

“I don’t think they believe they… I don’t think the police think they’ll ever find them…” Saying what I feared out loud hurt. I had to hold back a sob because I wouldn’t cry in front of Ray. What if he could hear me? What good would it do to cry? Would a single shed tear bring Aaron back to me? No. Would it wake Ray up? Nope. Would it make Mackenzie feel better? No. Would it make me feel better? Well…yes, actually. It would. Crying would make me feel a lot better, but I wouldn’t do it. No matter how much it hurt, I had to be strong for Mackenzie and Ray.

I had to be strong for myself.

“They’ll find him.” Mackenzie’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. She was as scared as me. “And Aaron will be fine. I know it.”

“Have a sixth sense, do we?” I tried to laugh. It sounded more like a walrus coughing.

“Yes, ma’am. I do, actually.” A grin curled Mackenzie’s mouth. She raised Ray’s hand to her lips. “I believe a lot of things.”

It hurt, physically hurt, to see Mackenzie like this. To see Ray like this. How many people could say someone was shot for them? Who would want to say it?

Definitely not me.

I couldn’t sit there any longer.

Sure, the thunder shook the building, and yes, the lighting lit up the sky like the fourth of July, but there had to be something I could do. When Boyd kidnapped me, did Aaron just let him? No, he fought him. He tried to protect me. And what about Ray? Did Ray just leave me? Did he just stay at the dance with Mackenzie and have a fine ole time? No. He came after me. He saved me.

Now it was my turn.

Be strong.

I kissed Ray’s forehead and headed for the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Mackenzie… she knew me so well.

“Aaron needs me.”

“He needs you to stay safe.”

My hand touched the cool metal of the door. “He needs me to find him. Just like he found me.”

“He was thrown in a trunk. It wasn’t exactly his choice. Plus, he’s Aaron Hunter. He’ll be ticked at you if you get hurt saving him.”

“I have to try. I owe him that.” And I did. I really did. Mackenzie yelled my name behind me, and I didn’t care. I didn’t even flinch. I stepped out of the door when I heard it. “Sloan…” It sounded so weak. So tired. So rough.

It was the one thing that could keep me there. I turned around, tears welled in my eyes. “Ray?”

CHAPTER TWO

Aaron

Morning… sometime

T
HE CLOCK READ 10:09 IN THE MORNING
. From the lack of sunlight, I couldn’t believe it.

The rain just kept coming. It muddied the pane window to the right of my bed, not really my bed. That Lawrence man let me use it since he’d found me a few hours ago… Had it really only been a few hours? It felt like a year at least.

I didn’t remember a lot about those first few hours. I knew everything hurt. I knew my leg hurt like it was on fire and my head. Good. Glory. My. Head! Turns out, my leg was more than likely broken… I sure thought it was. It wasn’t like I could put pressure on it, and when I had actually tried to walk… well, the stars flashing around in the dark tunnel of my vision sort of let me know that it was a bad idea.

So there I was…

Stuck.

In a cabin.

With them…

I remembered waking up a few times in those foggy first hours, screaming at Boyd, begging him not to hurt Sloan…and screaming for Ray.

He’d shot Ray.

But Ray couldn’t be dead.

In no realm of sanity or understanding would I ever believe my brother was dead. God—the God Sloan and Ray kept babbling about—wouldn’t let that happen. The bullet grazed his head. That was all. That’s all I would accept.

Torrential rain and thunder…and roaring water kept me company all through the night. I thought I saw sunlight once, but it must have been a dream.

The water was too close to the cabin. Much…much too close.

And the pain.

The pain kept me very much company. My leg was broken from the trip over the falls. My other leg? Well…I think I’d sprained my ankle in some way. It didn’t hurt as bad as my broken one, but that wasn’t saying much. I could feel the bruises on it, and I knew if I pulled off my black suit pants—which I refused to do, by the way—it would be all black and blue. My ribs hurt. I think I hit every rock in that creek before I washed up on the shore. I remembered the shore. I remembered the man finding me. I remembered, strangely, the sun. It must have come out a few minutes before the second storm hit again. This storm, according to the radio the old guy had flipped on over the make-shift stove, would be something of a historic event.

Oh goodie.

The man, Mr. Lawrence, Boyd’s father, had placed a very generic sling on my broken leg with a rolled-up magazine and a piece of fabric he’d ripped from a bed sheet. All in all, it wasn’t half bad. It would do, but I definitely needed help. Not just for my injuries, but from these two.

Boyd Lawrence and his father. Nothing would go wrong with that combination…

I had to give it to Mr. Lawrence, though. He could have left me out there on the creek bank. The storm clouds had rolled in, after all, and he very much could have left me and taken Boyd. No one would be the wiser, and I’d be too dead to tell the tale.

But he didn’t. That put some points in his bank with me.

And then there was Boyd. The guy who just could not die.

Sure, he’d faked paralysis before, but I seriously doubted he was faking blindness and head trauma. The blindness did come in handy, though. Boyd couldn’t see how to escape even when the door was like two feet away from him. Then what? Would he go trekking through the woods with no clue where he was going?

With everything in me, I would not let Boyd out of my sight. I might not be able to walk, but he couldn’t see. Boyd would pay for what he did to Sloan—for what he did to my brother.

Boyd Lawrence would pay.

Just…not now.

Mr. Lawrence threw another log in the stove and shivered. Yeah, it was May, but it was an incredibly cold May. Thunder boomed overhead, and the cabin lights flickered. “We are using a generator.” Mr. Lawrence said, possibly just to himself. “We should be fine.”

“Should.” Boyd scoffed. He propped his legs up on the bench next to him and folded his hands over his chest. It was very strange. Even though I knew Boyd couldn’t see me, sometimes he looked exactly in my direction like he could.

I found a piece of paper and crumpled it up…and waited.

Mr. Lawrence was an older dude, but not really old. He was mid-forties with graying black hair. He seemed nice enough. Then again, he’d spawned Boyd, so he couldn’t be that great of a person, right? Of course, I’d hate to be judged based on my mother. She wasn’t the greatest person ever and…yeah.

A loud bang echoed through the small one-room cabin, and it wasn’t thanks to the thunder this time. A log lay on the floor next to Mr. Lawrence’s boot, and Mr. Lawrence looked ticked. The fire contorted his face into all kinds of scary. Even Boyd flinched. “Should? Yes…should, Boyd. If you have a problem with it, go out yourself! Oh, wait…you can’t because you can’t see, you are hurt, you don’t know the area because you’ve been too busy screwing up your life to come up here with me like you used to when you were little, and the police are probably looking for you right now.”

Boyd bit his lip and his nostril’s flared, but he didn’t twitch. He didn’t even turn his head toward his father’s voice. “And you’d let them take me, wouldn’t you?”

Mr. Lawrence cursed an affirmative and slammed the stove door shut. “You hurt that girl, Boyd. You pretended to be hurt when you weren’t. I worried for you. I
prayed
for you!”

“Well, then your prayers were answered, weren’t they, Pop?” Boyd sneered. “I’m not dead. I’m not paralyzed. I’m right here. I’m here with you. And are you happy? No!”

“Oh! I’m supposed to be happy? I had no idea I should be happy that my son— my boy—hurts women and does God knows what else. What did you do to Ray Hunter’s brother? Huh? What did you do, Boyd? How did you get here?”

“I fell.” He shrugged, but I could tell that this was getting to him. Surely, Boyd didn’t expect his father to just be on his side no matter what. Granted, I never had a father… I mean I did. I wasn’t grown in a dish in a lab, but I never met the man. Don’t think I ever want to meet him. But I can’t imagine he’d be happy if I made the same life choices as Boyd. I know I wouldn’t if I were a father. Yes, I can understand love, but are loving unconditionally and loving someone’s actions really the same thing?

“You fell.” Mr. Lawrence shook his head and laughed. He actually laughed. I remember when my mom had guy “friends” over, and they were sort of serious and wanted to act like a father figure to me—and I use the term very loosely—they would get that look. It never actually ended well for me, but for some reason I didn’t see Mr. Lawrence as the type of guy who used belts as corrective devices. “You fell…and you took the boy with you?”

The boy was me. He pointed in my direction when he said it, and I sort of had to smirk. A boy… at twenty years old, I was a boy. Alrighty.

“He held on. Not my fault he wanted to go swimming with me.”

Would he just give it a rest? It was getting on my nerves so bad. The clock on the mantle just kept ticking away. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. I hoped help would get there soon because I didn’t think I could keep up with those two much longer.

I started to open my mouth when the loudest noise I’d ever heard happened outside. Mr. Lawrence jumped to his feet and ran out the front door.

I had a feeling. One of those sick feelings that you get when you know something is off and not going right.

Boyd and I didn’t talk, but I knew he thought it too because he leaned his ear toward the door like he could hear what was going on. The boy must have thought he’d gained a new sense or something with his blindness.

When Mr. Lawrence came back in, his shoulders were slumped, and he had a faraway gaze in his eyes.

“What?” I asked, not really sure I wanted to know the answer.

“The wind blew down a tree. It didn’t hit the cabin, thank God. We are okay. Didn’t hurt the roof…”

“But.” Boyd prodded.

Mr. Lawrence bit his lip. “But… it fell on the jeep. I’m sorry boys, but we are stuck here.”

CHAPTER THREE

Sloan

“
R
AY?”
I
RAN TOWARD HIM WITH
every intention of giving him the biggest hug in the history of ever. But when I was in arm’s length of him, I froze.

His eyes were barely open. Open… that was the important part, but barely so. And he looked like he was having a bit of trouble breathing. Mackenzie already had her finger on the nurse call button, and when the nurse answered, she told her Ray was awake.

I sank in the chair next to him and held his hand. His gaze wandered a bit, but before long, they found mine.

And he smiled.

As much of a smile as I figured he could muster, but it was the best smile I’d ever seen. “Sloan. You’re…okay.”

“Yeah.” A tear slid down my face, and I held his hand tighter. “Yeah. I’m alright. You, on the other hand, gave us quite a scare, as they say on those soap operas my neighbor Donna watches.”

“You watch them too. Don’t deny it.” He smirked just a little before licking his lips and cringing. “My head…”

“You were shot.” Mackenzie said, holding his other hand.

Her voice made him jump, and he rolled his head in her direction. “Mackenzie.” He smiled. “You’re here.”

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else.” She beamed and placed his fingers to her lips.

“That’s nice.” Ray’s eyes closed, and for the briefest of seconds, everything stopped within me.

“Ray?” I asked, my heartbeat pounding in my ears. We’d just gotten him back! There was no way we could lose him now.

He flinched at his name and rolled his head back in Mackenzie’s direction. “You look…beautiful.”

“I’m sure.” She giggled, but her normally colorless cheeks blushed pink. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“Of course I’m okay. Never better.” He tried to sit up, and it took everything Mackenzie and I had to not let him. “I’m fine.” He protested, but was too weak to force our hands away.

“Not even in the slightest.” I pushed gently on his shoulders to show I meant business. “You are laying right here and waiting for the doctor to examine you. You can’t just get shot one day and go home the next.”

“I was…shot.” He said the words like the tasted funny in his mouth. “Shot.”

I nodded. If he didn’t remember being shot, then he sure didn’t remember about his brother. This would be fun. “Yeah. Boyd shot you at the falls. Do you remember?”

He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. His entire face winced. “Yeah. I mean, I remember driving to the falls. I had to help you. He had you.” Ray’s eyes flashed open, and he looked terrified. “Did he hurt you? Was I too late?”

I shook my head and tried to sound as soothing as I could. When would those doctors get there? “You weren’t too late. You were awesome. You just got yourself shot, which isn’t cool.”

He furrowed his eyebrows, and I wondered what was going through his mind. “Boyd?”

“He went over the falls.” Mackenzie said which I was thankful for, except I knew what the next question would be, and I did not want to be the one to have to answer it.

“Good.” Ray answered, squeezing my hand tighter. “If he hurt you…”

“He didn’t. I promise. I’m fine.” Of course, Ray being Ray found the one place on my arm that was scratched up with the bruises Boyd’s fingers left.

“You aren’t fine.”

“I’ll live.”