Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)(83)

The same company where Thomas Paige had worked years ago.

A company that had been washed so clean, it raised no flags in the murder, and showed no ties to White Box in the present day, either. There was no paper trail at all to link the drugs and guns to the limo service—or the murder, of course—but it turned out Sanders had overheard a few conversations in his runs, and those clues had been enough for Reiss to tie Charlie, Curtis, and White Box back to West Limo.

Charlie knew how to operate like smoke, hiding his tracks, never leaving a trail. But at least there was evidence now to bring them in.

As he turned a corner, John tried Michael once more. The phone rang and rang and rang.

He kept dialing, but with each non-answer, John’s senses told him something was dead wrong.

His suspicions were confirmed when a crackle came over the radio. Paramedics were hauling ass to the same building that he was. Words like multiple gunshot wounds and critical pierced his ears.

Oh God. He was too late.

When he arrived, an ambulance was racing away, sirens blaring, speeding faster than he swore he’d ever seen one go.





CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE


Colin burst through the doors of the emergency room, his pulse hammering in his throat as he raced to the information desk, Elle by his side. The past and the present slammed into him in punishing jolts with each football—memories of his father’s murder mixed cruelly with this. His oldest brother, the one who’d looked out for him, helped him stay sober when he first got clean, helped raise him…Michael had been shot in the chest and rushed to the hospital. They had no clue what his condition was, or if he was even alive.

Colin choked back that horrific thought as he stopped short at the desk, words tumbling out in a traffic jam. “Michael Sloan. He was just brought in. I’m his brother. How is he?”

The brunette in pink scrubs and wireframe glasses looked up and nodded. “Give me just a minute.”

He turned to Elle, taking deep, sharp breaths, but they barely seemed enough to fill his mouth, let alone his lungs. “Elle,” he said in a whisper. He couldn’t say anything else. If he did, he would break.

Her lower lip quivered, and she looked like she was trying to form the words he’ll be okay, but instead, tears slid down her cheeks and she clasped her hand to her mouth. They’d been in bed asleep when Sophie called fifteen minutes ago, hysterical with the news. Elle’s son Alex was at a friend’s house, and they’d uncharacteristically slept in until nine a.m., when they were greeted by a screeching phone and sobs on the other end.

Sophie and Ryan were on their way. Shannon and Brent, too, and their grandparents as well. But Elle lived closest, so they’d arrived first. Colin dragged a hand through his hair, trying to breathe, to ignore the beeping of machines, the clatter of equipment, the hushed conversations between nurses and doctors circling nearby, and the faces of all the other people waiting in the emergency room.

“Elle,” he croaked out again, as the woman at the desk toggled through her computer screen.

She wrapped her arms around him. “He’s going to be okay.”

But she didn’t sound like she believed it.

Resting his chin atop her head, because he felt like he might topple over if he let go, he turned back to the woman at the desk. “Do you know where he is? Is he in surgery? What’s going on?”

The woman held up a finger. “One minute.”

“Goddammit,” he muttered. “Elle, is your mom working?” Colin asked, desperation coloring his tone. “Can she find out something?”

Elle shook her head. “She’s not an ER nurse, but I can try to find her.”

“Wait.” Colin snapped his gaze in the direction of the woman in pink scrubs. “Sloan, you said?”

Colin let go of Elle and gripped the counter. “Yes. Michael Sloan. What’s going on?”

She opened her mouth to speak, when Colin spotted John Winston rounding the corner. His eyes were downcast, his arm was wrapped around Annalise, and he looked like someone had died.

Colin’s ears rang, and he heard nothing but the screaming in his own head.





CHAPTER FORTY-SIX


Thirty minutes ago

Silver gleamed on concrete—two, maybe three feet away from her next to the wheel of a car—like a beacon.

A harsh pant came from Charlie, then the dragging sound of unsteady feet across pavement.

Her hands were covered in Michael’s blood, her vision was blurred from her own torrential tears, and her pulse thundered in her brain.

But Michael’s heart still beat, and in an instant, her choices crystallized into just one.

She lunged across Michael for the gun, rose to her feet, and spun around.

“I’m not done,” the man seethed, as he rose to his full height, his gun in his uninjured right hand. “You and your white box comment this morning at the diner,” he snarled. “You know nothing about my brother. Nothing about how he was buried.”

She had no clue what he meant, and she didn’t care. She was nothing but nerves. She’d never held a gun and had certainly never fired one. She didn’t know how to hit the side of a barn, let alone the heart of a man. But as he lifted his arm, her focus narrowed, and her mind sharpened.

Adrenaline bathed her brain in pinpoint clarity. She was alive, she was unhurt, and she was going to be faster than the man who wanted to kill her then finish off Michael.