Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

Sloan’s mind was awhirl as they drove. So much had happened in such a short time, and she didn’t know where to start in order to wrap her head around it. Jude was a MacNamara—the sole remaining MacNamara. He’d killed Sheridans, and had fully intended on killing Sorcha and Callie before she’d come along.

She was reaching and she knew it, but she also didn’t overestimate what he felt for her. Lust? Most definitely. But Jude was a cold and calculating man outside the bedroom. There was absolutely no way he would be swayed from his course—unless he hadn’t wanted to be on it to begin with. Finding out Callie was pregnant was likely just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

She wanted to know for sure, though. Sloan shifted to face him, studying the way his face was illuminated by the lights in the dashboard. “Why did it take you a year to track down Sorcha?”

“It wasn’t because I was having second thoughts, if that’s what you’re hoping for.” He drummed his fingers on the wheel. “Sorcha has spent her entire life avoiding being found by men like me—because she has a track record of crossing men like me.”

Which was why Sloan really needed to call Teague and let him know everything that had happened.

She wanted answers first. “And Ronan? If you wanted Colm dead so badly, why not let his own son do it? That betrayal would cut deeper than anything you could do to him.” She struggled to keep her tone even, as if she was merely curious. What would Callie do if she knew Ronan might have put her in the line of fire?

“You’re right.” Jude went still, his gaze never leaving the road. “But it takes a special kind of monster to plot the murder of his father. I don’t give two shits about the other families in Boston, but Ronan would have made Brendan Halloran look like a lumbering idiot if he was in control of the Sheridans.”

“You don’t know that.” She’d heard stories about Brendan Halloran. She didn’t like thinking that someone like that could have been related to Callie.

Someone she loved. Someone she mourned.

“I know that. He hid it better than most, but he was his father’s son.” Jude finally tore his eyes from the road to look at her. “Which way are you going on this? Are you painting me as some kind of romantic vigilante? Or am I the monster that other monsters fear?”

She burst out laughing. She couldn’t help it. He sounded so damn snarly at the thought that she might think either of him. “You’re a man, Jude. You have a more colorful past than most, but I understand your reasoning for wanting Colm to pay. I just don’t think you should run around murdering people.”

“An eye for an eye.”

“Leaves the whole world blind.”

He huffed out a breath. “You’re being intentionally difficult.”

“Maybe.” He might have changed his mind about Callie, and spared Sorcha, but he still wanted Colm’s blood. Nothing she could do or say would turn him from that path.

She did understand, at least in theory. Colm Sheridan was the one responsible for killing Jude’s family. Killing his relatives wouldn’t make Jude feel better. Killing Colm was unlikely to assuage the loss he might never recover from. Can you recover from losing something you never had?

But then, this wasn’t about his father and brothers. It couldn’t be. The pain was too raw, too deep, too angry. It was like her plotting revenge for the death of the grandfather she’d never met. He might be related to her, but he was a stranger. People did not spend their entire lives orchestrating the downfall of someone who murdered a stranger.

But they would do it for a beloved family member—and Jude only had one living. “What happened to your mother?”

He was silent for so long, she thought he wouldn’t respond. “She couldn’t go back to the family home without fear of Colm finishing what he’d started with my father and brothers and their wives, so she ran. She had to resort to whoring to feed us, though she never let the johns near me.” He shook his head. “Before my father and brothers were butchered, she was a happy woman. Carefree. Sweet. Or that’s what I’ve discovered in the years since. One of the few boyfriends she had saw potential in me—in our situation—and trained me when he was around. I picked up skills in all the ways a disreputable kid does while growing up, all with the intent of providing for her so she wouldn’t have to sell herself. It wasn’t enough. Nothing I did would have been enough.”

That wasn’t quite an answer, though her heart ached for him. His mother may have been alive, but she wasn’t living from the sounds of it. He’d been adrift and without any of the things she’d taken for granted—family, roots, security.

He looked at her and then back to the road in front of them. With the darkness now fallen completely and the trees blocking out what little moonlight there was, they might as well have been the last two people in the world. Jude sighed. “She took an entire bottle of pills when I was eighteen.”

Eighteen.

He wouldn’t take sympathy from her, and he certainly wouldn’t take pity, but she squeezed his hand in silent support. Eighteen. He might have been legally an adult, but that didn’t mean he was prepared to lose the only family he had in this world.

What a selfish choice to make.

She knew it was her growing feelings for Jude making her so angry, but that changed nothing. “She shouldn’t have done that. She should have lived for you.”

He squeezed her hand back and then slipped his free. “Call your brother.”

She didn’t want to. She wanted to keep talking, to deal with the fact that she was terrifyingly certain she was pregnant, to come up with some sort of plan. Perhaps an assurance that he wasn’t going to change his mind, drop her on the side of the road, and continue pursuing his vendetta against the Sheridans, either getting himself killed or murdering the love of her brother’s life. There was no winning scenario there. None.

I have to convince him to stop.

The sheer impossibility of that task made it hard to breathe. He had his entire life leading up to this plan, and they’d known each other a few short weeks. Yes, she was likely pregnant with his child, but that didn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. She was no stranger to the fact that a large percentage of the world’s population were single mothers. Sloan would have to be living in a fantasy to expect things to work out between them simply because they might have created a life. That wasn’t reality.

Reality was cold and heartless and brutal.

One step at a time. First, she had to ensure that Teague didn’t send anyone after her, and ensure that Sorcha saw justice. She had no doubt that Jude would remove Teague’s men who tried to track her down, and that would only antagonize the issue across the board. Sloan turned to look out the back window to where her suitcase slid around in the bed of the truck. “My phones are in there.”

“Use mine. They shouldn’t be able to trace it if you keep it short.” He passed over the satellite phone that Dmitri Romanov had called him on. She didn’t like thinking that they were on a familiar enough basis that they were calling each other. She didn’t like that at all.

Sloan dialed her brother’s number from memory and listened to it ring, part of her hoping he wouldn’t pick up. Her hopes were in vain. “Teague O’Malley.”

“It’s me.”

Instantly his voice changed, becoming less cold and more worried. “Sloan? Where are you calling from? This number’s not one of the burner phones.”

No point in denying it. “No, it’s not.” She watched their headlights cut through the darkness as Jude headed north, ever north. “I’ve left Sorcha’s house. My location’s been compromised.”

“How do you know that? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” She said it calmly, firmly. She glanced at Jude, who held up a single finger. One minute left. “I’ve met someone. I’m safe. Sorcha was part of a plot to murder Colm Sheridan a year and a half ago, and I doubt she’s changed her tune since then. Callie could be in danger. We left her tied and alive in the house for you to pick up.”

“We? Sloan, where are you?”

Of course that was what he would focus on—where she was and who she was with—instead of the threat Sorcha represented. She sighed, considering telling him the truth. Revealing that Jude was a MacNamara might make Teague have a heart attack and decide to come after him to protect Callie…but it was likely Sorcha would try to use Jude’s identity as a bargaining chip.

She couldn’t let that woman have the upper hand. “I’m with Jude MacNamara. I’m safe.”

“MacNamara?”

She charged on, all too aware of her time limit winding down. “I’m safe.” Maybe if she said it enough times, he’d actually believe her. “Truly, I promise. Please don’t look for me when you should be dealing with Sorcha. I’ll call when I’m able to.”

“Sloan—”

“Love you.” She hung up and dropped the phone like it had caught fire in her hand, her brother’s worried tone ringing in her ears. “I think I made things worse.”

“It’s a shitty situation. You’re doing the best you can.” He actually sounded like he meant it.

She tried not to let hope take hold, but it was impossible. God help her, but she liked this man. “What happens now?”

“Now we find a fucking pregnancy test and a place to hole up for the night.” He slanted a look her way. “Tomorrow we’ll come up with a plan.”

*  *  *

Jude got them a cheap hotel in Seattle solely so Sloan wouldn’t have to take a pregnancy test in some grocery store bathroom. He didn’t like the idea of her facing that alone. Hell, he would have liked to go to a lab and get a blood test done to be sure, but she’d insisted on the over-the-counter test first.

He’d bought three boxes.

She raised her eyebrows when he dumped the bag on the bed’s faded comforter. “Exactly how much do you think I have to pee?”

“We might get a false negative.” He knew better than to say anything about a false positive. He’d done some research while he was considering which brand was best, and it appeared that false negatives were a whole lot more likely than the alternative. “It’s been about ten days, so the hormones might not have built up enough to show up.”

She stared. “Jude, I’m going to take these boxes and go into the bathroom now.”

“Do you want me to—”

“No.” She stood and gave him what she probably thought was a reassuring smile. “I think I can manage without you hovering.”

He muscled back the impulse to tell her to do a clean catch. She wouldn’t appreciate it, and he would sound like even more of a fuckhead than he already did. Jude didn’t like feeling out of control. Research usually centered him, but the things he did research on were normally things fully within his control.

There was nothing about the current situation that he could control.

Either Sloan was pregnant, or she wasn’t. If she was, either she was keeping it, or she wasn’t. Either the theoretical baby was healthy, or it wasn’t.

Nothing he could do could influence any of those outcomes either way.

It made him crazy.

He paced a loop around the bed, and then stalked back, pausing every few steps to glare at the closed bathroom door. What’s taking so long?

It opened, revealing a pale Sloan. “Can you set a timer for three minutes, please?”

That, he could do. He set it on his phone and then dropped it onto the bed. Three minutes wasn’t very long in the grand scheme of things, but it seemed a small eternity. “Sit down before you pass out.”

She rolled her eyes, looking a little more like the woman he’d come to know. “There you are. I thought you were going soft on me.”

“Don’t know the meaning of the word.” He kept close as she walked to the bed, but she only weaved a little as she sat next to the rapidly decreasing timer on his phone. Had he thought three minutes was forever?

It wasn’t nearly long enough.

To distract himself, he crouched next to Sloan. “How are you doing?”

“About as well as can be expected.”

He didn’t know how to do this. Jude was so much better at destroying shit than comforting someone who was upset. And she was upset, even if she was doing a damn good job of hiding it. “You did well back at Sorcha’s—getting out without breaking down.” The second she frowned, he realized exactly how much of an asshole he sounded. “What I mean is—”

“That you fully expected me to curl up in a ball and require you to carry me out of there the same way you carried out my suitcase.” She twined her fingers together. “I’m not okay, Jude. I’m not even in the realm of okay. I’ve been hit by one thing after another, starting with realizing that the life I actually really love has been jeopardized and ending with a gun pointed at my face. I might not be as strong as my sisters—”

“Stop.”

She finally looked at him. “Excuse me?”

“That’s not the first time you’ve said that.”

“It’s the truth—”

He checked the phone—two minutes left—then focused on her. “You uprooted your entire life and walked away from everything you ever knew. Has either of your sisters done that?”

“Well—” She bit her lip. “Sort of? I see your point.”

“I don’t think you do. It takes guts to remove yourself from the equation instead of just going along with the current. You did that. That’s fucking impressive, let alone taking into account what you’ve done since. Marge wouldn’t put up with you at the diner if you didn’t work hard. Did you even have a job before you got to Callaway Rock?”

“No.”

“Sunshine, you’re a goddamn pillar of strength from where I’m sitting.” He took her hands because being so close to her without touching her was just fucking wrong, and apparently it was the right thing to do because she clutched him like a drowning woman would a life raft.

“I am very, very afraid.”

“Tell me who I need to kill.”

She laughed, and then abruptly stopped. “Oh God, you’re serious.” Sloan stroked the back of his hand with her thumb, the kind of mindless action he didn’t even think she realized she was doing. “I won’t lie and say I’m not worried about my family’s single worst enemy knowing my location.”

“Your former location.” He had no intention of projecting their whereabouts to Romanov again, though he couldn’t be sure how the other man knew their movements in the first place. No point in borrowing trouble. Even if Romanov had their current location, Jude doubted he’d make a move until he knew one way or another how Jude would jump when it came to the Sheridans. The Russian wasn’t the type to waste resources when it was likely Jude would do exactly as commanded.

She nodded, conceding the point. “But that’s not what’s freaking me out the most right now.”

The baby. “We’ll know shortly.” In thirty seconds, to be specific.

Sloan gave a sad smile that was like a punch to the gut. “Jude, I think we both know exactly what that test is going to say.”

Yeah, sometime in the last few hours, he’d let that knowledge settle within him. It was entirely possible that they would look at that test in the bathroom and it would be negative, but he didn’t think so. Apparently neither did she. And so he sat there, holding her hand and doing his damnedest not to say anything to make it worse. The timer went off before either of them could do anything resembling relaxing.

She blanched. “Jude, I can’t look.”

“I’ll look for both of us.” He stood, ignoring the way his instincts demanded he bolt from the room—from the truth that sat a few feet away. That was the coward’s path, and Jude was many things, but a coward didn’t number among them. He wouldn’t leave Sloan to face this alone.

The walk to the bathroom seemed to take hours, but it was the sum of four steps. He paused in the doorway, and then cursed himself for pausing. It was a fucking pregnancy test, not the goddamn boogeyman. He stalked across the remaining distance and snatched the test up.

He’d read the instructions too many times to misinterpret the two blue lines showing in the little window.

“You don’t have to say it. I can see the truth on your face.”

He looked up to find Sloan leaning against the doorjamb, her arms wrapped around herself. He couldn’t keep silent. He had to give the truth words. “You’re pregnant. We’re having a baby.”

A baby. His baby.