I kept shaking my head and moving away. I wanted to detach again. I wanted to go anywhere else. This wasn’t happening. “Don’t,” gurgled from the bottom of my throat. She was safe. She was away. She wasn’t what he was going to say. There was no way. Ben never would’ve allowed that to happen.
“Emma.”
“No.”
“She was pregnant.”
Oh god.
I fell to my knees, or I would’ve. Carter caught me. He cradled me to his chest and he tucked his chin into his favorite place. His lips brushed against me as he said it, “She miscarried and bled out.”
She was dead. He was telling me she was dead.
I looked away. I tried to be away. I didn’t want to hear this.
“Emma,” he whispered as he brushed some of my hair down. “Emma. Look at me.”
I didn’t. I wouldn’t.
“Emma.”
“NO!” I ripped out of his arms and staggered back. When he reached for me, I batted him away. “No, I said!”
His arm fell back to his side.
I killed him for her. She was going to die and I stopped it. I killed him. I took him away so she could live and now he was telling me—I refused to believe it. I shook my head again. “No. I don’t believe you.”
“The police found her.”
“Where?”
His eyes narrowed. “You can’t go there.”
“Why not?! She was my family.” She left and I thought she was starting over. That’s what Amanda said. Amanda was always right. They were starting over. I was starting over. We had all survived. And now Carter was saying that all of us hadn’t survived. Not her. I looked at him and whispered, “It should’ve been me.”
He jerked me against him and wrapped his arms around me. “Not you.”
“It should’ve been me.”
His arms tightened around me. “Not you. I’m sorry. I’d kill every single person to keep that from happening.”
“Well, you did.” I pulled away. “I got out. That’s what you wanted. You wanted me here and safe. So congratulations. I’m alive, but if I had stayed there, they could’ve traded me for her. She would be alive and I’d be dead instead—”
“Her boyfriend killed her!”
I froze. Ben? There was no way, but as I turned and stared in Carter’s cold eyes, I knew it was true. He would never lie, not about this. “What did you say?”
“Her boyfriend killed her. He went nuts, Emma. She was pregnant. Whose kid do you think it was? I’m guessing not the boyfriend’s.”
I reared back as if slapped. His cold tone whipped at me, but it was true. What he said was true. I shook my head. “Ben would never hurt Mallory.”
“He would if he was high on something,” he clipped out. “My guess, Franco got him hooked. He didn’t want all that cash to walk away. When the boyfriend found out that she was pregnant, he snapped. It wouldn’t be the first time a guy went into a rage.”
From the knowing tone in his voice, I stopped dead. My heart even held for a moment. “Have you done that?”
“To the woman I love? No. To those who would hurt her? Yes.”
I was struck speechless again. Carter hadn’t blinked an eye when he responded. He seemed calm even. He was, I shivered, the cold-blooded stranger to me again.