Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
“I don’t know, Mother Ashby,” Cass said evenly. “How can I trust you to keep your word? JJ’s the one who’s got a head for knowing when someone’s telling the truth.”
I managed to maintain my calm as I digested Cass’s words. He’d mentioned my name and the word “head” and knowing Cass as well as I did, his focus wasn’t on his grandmother at all as he inched closer toward the trio while still making sure not to put himself between Patricia and me. Even if I was wrong about everything, Cass, like me, knew what, or rather, who came first. I didn’t take another second to think about it.
“I’m not interested in speaking to your little fuck toy Cass—” Patricia snapped as she turned her head to focus on me.
The second my eyes met her soulless ones, I pulled the trigger and just like that, Cass’s tormentor was gone. There was a split second as her face twisted into one of true surprise and then the bullet tore through her forehead and exited the back of her head through her perfectly coiffed hair.
Cass was moving before I even pulled the trigger. The second his grandmother released Charlie and fell backward, he caught the little boy and covered him with his body. A flurry of bullets followed from the men standing at our sides. Renly had a single second to scream in disbelief as the woman he’d handed his soul over to hit the ground and then bullets ripped through his body. The pilot went down just as easily.
A couple of seconds of silence followed before Cass was yelling, “Call an ambulance!”
I ran to him and slid on my knees as I fell to the ground next to him and his little brother. I put my ear to his chest. “He’s barely breathing,” I said. I snatched the pill bottle from Patricia’s lifeless hand.
“It’s Oxy,” I shouted just as a man from my brother’s team dropped to his knees between me and Cass.
“Move,” I heard the man yell at Cass. As hard as it was for Cass to move away from Charlie’s still body, he did it. The man quickly sprayed something into one of Charlie’s nostrils.
“Narcan,” I said in relief. Cass dropped his head and took a deep breath. The medication the man had given Charlie would reverse the effects of the opioid Patricia had given him. It wasn’t guaranteed to work, but it was our only chance.
“Axel, can you fly that bird?” the man called.
Axel, the guy I’d partnered with at the beginning of my first case, was in the process of dragging the dead pilot’s body out of the helicopter. “On it. Two minutes!” he yelled as he climbed into the machine.
The man tending to Charlie leaned down to listen to the little boy’s breathing. “It’s getting stronger,” he said as he put his finger against Charlie’s pulse. “We need to get him to a hospital. He may need another dose of the Narcan before we can get him there.”
The man climbed into the helicopter while Cass picked Charlie up. Cass’s eyes connected with mine. “Go,” I said. I kissed him hard. “I’ll see you soon.”
“My father,” Cass responded even as he began moving toward the helicopter. We kept our heads lowered as the blades began to spin. The noise made it nearly impossible to hear each other.
“Go,” I said with a nod. Cass held my eyes for a few seconds before he climbed into the helicopter. I moved away from the bird but didn’t watch it take off because I was already doing what Cass needed me to do.
I reached for the button on my comms. “Sully, is he alive?”
CHAPTER 31
Cass
“Cass?”
The sound of JJ’s voice was like a balm for all the wounds that were being carved into my body from the inside out. I had no idea how much time had passed since I’d last seen JJ, but I didn’t care.
He was here.
I knew what I must’ve looked like to JJ. I’d seen it in the eyes of the terrified people in the surgery’s waiting room when I’d entered and sought out the corner closest to the door. Even if I could have explained why I was sitting on my ass covered in blood-stained clothes, I wouldn’t. I barely understood it myself.
JJ would get it, though.
“Cass,” he repeated as his warm body settled against mine. I could feel when his fingers wrapped around mine, but I couldn’t return the embrace.
“Charlie?” I asked.
“Awake and happy. His nanny is with him,” JJ said gently.
I wasn’t sure if I managed a nod. I’d been with Charlie up until the children’s hospital ER doctors had assured me my little brother was going to be okay and then someone, Boone maybe, had driven me to the hospital where my father had already been in surgery.