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Mack kept shaking his head. “You don’t know what he did.” He spoke through his teeth.
Liam’s face softened. Compassion. It took Mack aback. As did Liam’s next words. “From where you shot him, I can guess.” Liam moved closer. “He’ll never hurt anyone like that again.”
Mack looked over and saw Calla watching them, sitting up, obviously tense as she waited to see what Mack would do. Beautiful, innocent Calla, who deserved so much better than to witness anything as ugly as this.
“Do this and you might go back to jail,” Liam went on, voice pleading. “Don’t do it. Choose Calla. Choose me.”
Mack looked at Liam. His handsome, boyish features were strained with earnestness.
“Fuck,” Mack shouted, lifting a gasping and sputtering Bone back out of the water and hauling him over toward the incline where the reservoir met the road, far away from Calla. If Bone tried anything else, Mack would still be happy to bash his head in with some of the smooth stones near the base of the road.
The sirens were louder than ever, right over head. Liam swam back over to Calla and started to climb up the muddy, rocky embankment.
“Down here!” Liam yelled. “We’re down here. We need help. And bolt cutters!”
Chapter Forty
CALLA
Calla’s own heartbeat was galloping a million miles an hour as the doctor moved the ultrasound wand over her stomach in order to see if her baby was okay.
Wown, wown, wown, wown, wown.
A smile split the doctor’s face. “You hear that?” He held the wand steady and watched the screen. He was a tall man with more white than gray in his hair. “One hundred forty beats per minute is well within the healthy range. We can run a couple more tests to double check, but you haven’t had any spotting and I see no reason to think there’s anything wrong with your pregnancy.”
“But I passed out when I fell off Painter. My horse,” Calla clarified.
“You said you felt like you had the wind knocked out of you when you came to in the ambulance, right?”
Calla nodded.
“Did you have much to eat this morning?”
Calla shook her head and looked down at her lap. “No. I mean, I had half a bagel, but that was it.” More like a fourth of a bagel if she was being honest. Mack had urged her to eat more but she’d felt nauseous. Morning sickness still hit some days. She claimed it was nerves because of the competition. God, that seemed like it was a million years ago now.
After the police had gotten her free of the cuffs attaching her to that horrible coffin of a gurney, another ambulance brought her to the hospital. She’d about hyperventilated when they put her in the back of it. Liam and Mack hadn’t been able to come either because the police were still questioning them.
“Well,” the doctor said, running his pen-light over her pupils again, “barring the results of your blood test, I’d venture to say that it was just a combination of low blood sugar and the shock of the fall that had you briefly passing out. And after the stress of everything that happened to you today,” he patted her shoulder, “I suggest focusing on rest and nutrition for the next few days. But like I said, I don’t see any reason you shouldn’t continue with a healthy pregnancy.”
Calla blinked but couldn’t hold back any more. She put her hands to her face and started crying.
“Oh. There, there, Ms. Carter.”
“Calla!”
Calla looked up at Liam’s worried voice. “Are you all right? I’m sorry we took so long. The cops kept asking a million questions.”
Liam jogged past the doctor to her side. Mack was behind him but he stopped in the doorway.
“Are you okay?” Liam asked again, slipping an arm under her head and pulling her to his chest. She didn’t realize how tense she’d been until all her muscles relaxed at his touch. She went limp against him, reaching her other hand out for Mack.
He stared at her for a long moment before coming forward and clasping it. Finally. Finally she could breathe out.
“Everything’s fine,” she said, laughing and crying at the same time. “The baby’s fine.”
The next moment, though, her head was filling with images of what happened earlier.
God, when she’d come to in the ambulance only to find an attendant strapping her waist to the gurney. And then—she shuddered remembering how that man, that monster, ripped the second ambulance attendant backwards and how the blood sprayed when he slit his throat—
