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“Cameron!” I almost fell into them with my momentum, my arms reaching out for my woman who was chalk white but conscious.

“Forde,” Cameron murmured, sounding almost drugged.

Had the bastard drugged her?

What else had he done?

The horror of my own imaginings swam in my mind, but my body took control, wrapping an arm around Cameron’s waist to take her weight from Caoimhe.

“Is he armed?” DI Paul asked Caoimhe.

“I … I stabbed him.”

The officer nodded and all three of them disappeared into the hut.

As much as I wanted to go in there to make sure the bastard was done for, Cameron was my priority. “We need to get pressure on your wound, baby.”

“Forde …” Her head lolled, her lids low over her eyes as she whispered, “I love you.”

Then her body went heavy and limp, dragging Caoimhe and I with it.

Fear unlike anything I’ve ever felt sank into the pit of my stomach as I stumbled to hold her up. “Cameron? Baby? Cameron? Caoimhe, let go.”

The woman did as I demanded and I carefully lay Cameron on the grass. I turned my ear to her chest, desperate to hear anything over my own pulse. Her heartbeat was slow. Too slow.

“Where’s that ambulance?” I gritted out, searching the dark roads beyond us.

“Forde.”

I looked impatiently at Caoimhe. She was holding out her sweater, shivering in the cold air in just a vest. Still, I took it and I pressed it to Cameron’s abdomen.

“I got suspicious of him a few weeks ago. He was spying on you and Cammie. I just … for some reason that I can’t explain, I got it into my head to watch him tonight. I followed him and saw him take Cammie. My stupid bloody phone was dead! Stupid bloody phone.” Caoimhe sobbed. I barely made out her garbled next words. “I followed them. I didn’t want to lose sight of them by getting help, so I followed them. But he knew. He caught me. He hit me over the head. He thought I was out, but we … We attacked him together … but I couldn’t … couldn’t stop him.”

I pressed harder to Cameron’s wound, my hand over her heart, tears blurring my vision.

Then I felt it stop.

I felt the heart of the woman I loved more than anything in this world just stop.

53. Forde

Waiting in a hospital room gave a man a long time to think. To agonize. To torment himself with the things he didn’t know. Like how being kidnapped and stabbed by one half of a serial-killing duo would impact the woman he loved.

The beeping of the machines connected to Cameron had become familiar and reassuring as I dozed in and out in the chair next to her hospital bed.

I dare not think about what might have happened if I hadn’t been there to administer CPR. Thankfully, Isla showed up seconds later with the ambulance and we were able to get Cameron airlifted to Glasgow. Caoimhe and I went with her so that Caoimhe’s head injury could be looked at.

She was going to be okay.

Strangely, she was the only person I had there to support me at the hospital in Glasgow as we waited for Cameron to come out of surgery.

I made her tell me everything again and I couldn’t find the right words to express my gratitude for what she did to save them from Kenan.

“She’s a fighter,” Caoimhe told me hoarsely. “Cameron. She’s a fighter, Forde, and she’ll get through this. You should have heard her stand up to Kenan. She didn’t give him what he wanted. He wanted us to cower and take it. She wouldn’t give him that.”

“Neither did you.” I still couldn’t quite process that the person we’d suspected of tampering with Donal’s engine had risked her life for Cameron’s. “It wasn’t you, was it? Who cut the engine on the cabin cruiser? The night I had to rescue Cameron and Donal. Someone tampered with their engine and radio.”

Her eyes flashed with hurt and anger. “You thought it was me?”