What had she been . . . ? Where?
Lucy licked her chapped lips, looking around, taking stock. Her gun was gone. As expected. So was her phone, not that it would have done her any good, dead as it was.
She was in a shed, like plenty that she’d seen over the past few days. Bigger than the glorified closets found in suburbia, but not quite a barn. It wasn’t empty. There were shovels lined up against the wall, a broken-down lawn mower tucked into the corner, heavy bags of mulch stacked not far from where she sat.
That was odd. Not empty, not stripped bare. Why was that important?
Lucy flexed her hands. They weren’t tied.
Again, her instincts screamed. This mattered, this mattered. Her hands weren’t tied.
She looked down at her feet. Kicked them out once, twice to test that what she was seeing was true. They weren’t bound, either.
Something was wrong.
The pain pounded in time with the thought. Over and over again, until she was curled up, her forehead tucked between her knees, just trying to breathe.
She was wasting time.
Stand up.
Lucy pushed to her feet, wobbled, reached blindly for the wall. She stared at her hands, her wrists. Why weren’t they bound?
Run.
Did it matter now? Did it matter that she could run?
Because there was nothing stopping her.
Why would she just be left like this? In a room full of potential weapons she could use to defend herself.
Something’s wrong, something’s wrong, something’s . . .
Footsteps.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
MOLLY THOMAS
Now
Branches and bramble caught at the already-cut-up skin of her arms, the thorns like little blades slashing at her flesh.
Molly kept running.
The woods were familiar. It was the patch near the cemetery, the place Eliza and she had guessed the bodies were being buried. Was Molly buried there? Would she stumble upon her own body, fresh in the dirt, and realize she really was in hell? What would she do if she saw her face? Her hands reaching up, begging for help.
You’re going crazy. Maybe she was.
Molly kept running.
There was a road nearby. She knew it. She’d driven it when learning how, her fingers clamped around the steering wheel. She’d been fourteen, barely able to reach the pedals, but that was how rural kids were, her dad reassured her.
She just had to get to the road.
Molly went down, but the ground was soft. Was that because there were bodies underneath it?
A nervous laugh sounded from behind her, and she whirled, thinking her attacker had followed. But there was no one there, just the echo of those giggles crashing through the air.
And that’s when she realized it had been her.
See, you are going crazy.
Molly pushed to her feet, brushing the soil from her palms. It stuck in the open cuts where the glass had dug in, where the ropes had rubbed raw. Pain laced through her, but it helped to have something to focus on.
A branch broke, not far off, and Molly started running again, her breathing loud enough to block out any footsteps behind her. If she heard them, that was it for her. Panic would take her down, hold her paralyzed, and then the earth would surely devour her, just like it had the other bodies.
The road. Get to the road.
Everything blurred, and she thought there were tears in her eyes, but that didn’t even make sense because she’d cried them all out. Gone. They were gone so long ago. Back in the darkness.
Was she still there? In the darkness?
No. The air was on her face. The sunlight nearly blinding.
Molly kept running.
That’s when she heard the sound. Tires on pavement. She almost wept those tears that she couldn’t cry anymore. A dry sob heaved out of a scratched-up throat, and it almost brought her to her knees once more. But she kept going.
Her foot caught on a branch, sending her sprawling. In the next heartbeat she was up again, running.
When she burst through the tree line, Molly was sure she was dead. This pure relief, this pure joy was too much to handle in her beating heart. She thought she must still be back in the forest, beneath layers of dirt.
But a pickup truck was slowing, pulling to the shoulder of the road.
Molly waved her arms as if they couldn’t see her, shouting without a voice, jumping, too, just in case.
Thank God, thank God, thank God.
Warm hands grasped her shoulders, and she wanted nothing more than to sink into the kind touch. It spread like honey butter through a body that had known nothing but pain and fear for weeks or years or however long since she’d been taken.
Molly collapsed against a welcoming bosom, every muscle shaking.
“It’s all right, baby,” Darcy Dawson whispered in her ear, her hand stroking Molly’s hair. “It’s all right now.”
Molly nodded and felt all of two years old. She didn’t care; she just let herself be petted and hugged and coddled. Let herself be bundled into the passenger side of the pickup.
Her head was heavy, so stuffed full of that cotton. She let it hang until her forehead rested on the window. Glass, like the kind that had shattered beneath metal.
The driver’s side door opened and closed, the engine turned over, and Darcy pulled back on the road. The vibrations traveled along Molly’s spine, and there were weights on her eyelids, pulling them down. She was going home. Darkness beckoned, but not the scary darkness. It was oblivion that was calling out to her now, ready to hold her in an embrace as kind as Darcy’s had been.
But . . .
Not yet.
Molly whispered something that her mind didn’t quite register, her breath hot on the cool window.
“What was that, baby?”
Molly shifted even though every molecule in her body protested, sitting up enough so that she could see out the front. She said it again, this time louder: “You’re going in the wrong direction.”
Darcy’s knuckles tightened on the wheel, but she didn’t turn around.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
LUCY THORNE
Now
Footsteps.
Someone was coming. Lucy scrambled away from the door, toward the riding lawn mower parked against the back of the shed. She ducked down behind one of its oversize wheels, giving her weight over to the rubber. Her body throbbed along with her heartbeat as she tried to steady her breathing.
She thought she knew where she was now. In the Cooks’ shed. She’d come out here looking for Josiah, thinking of power and shield laws and bruises on little bodies.
Had it been Josiah who had knocked her out? Whoever it was must have heard the conversation. Had they panicked? Or was this planned?
If it had been planned, why wasn’t she restrained?
Lucy scanned the near surroundings, searching for a good weapon out of her many options.
There was a shovel in the corner, too far away to make a grab for now, but it was good to note that it was there. The metal of the blade could do some serious damage.
There were some heavy clay pots near her feet, the kind that housed blooming flowers and plants to keep on porches. Like the ones she’d seen on the Cooks’ wraparound the other day.
That’s where she’d been, she realized. She’d been talking to . . . Peggy? Her memory was blurred with dark spots that pulsed in time with her head. Whoever had knocked her out had put all their strength into the blow.
A wave of nausea built and then crested with the sound of boots on stone outside the shed. The person was moving slowly, cautiously. But it was still early in the day. She could tell that by the sun creeping in through the slats.
Broad daylight. Even if it wasn’t suspicious for the person to be headed to the shed, surely they wouldn’t have risked being seen. Not with a cop’s car in their driveway. They would know Zoey had lent it to Lucy. They would know Zoey would kno
w where she was.
This picture was wrong. All wrong.
Unless they weren’t worried about Zoey telling anyone.
Was the woman in on this? Had she deliberately made it easy for Lucy to get out to the isolated ranch by herself? To give her access to a car that she could then come collect whenever her partners had finished off the job?
But then surely Lucy’s hands would have been tied.
There was a faint rattle—padlock against wood. The door.
Lucy’s eyes slipped along the walls again. Was this the best place to hide? She had surprise on her side, and that was a potent force. She didn’t want to waste that advantage.
She didn’t hold her breath, but rather took shallow, calm drags that wouldn’t give away her position, the way a gasp would following too long without oxygen. The air was heavy with manure, and it slipped into her body, into her nostrils, her throat, her lungs. She ignored it.
Metal clattered against metal as the person worked the heavy locks.
Another second passed. Then another. Lucy eyed the shovel once more. She’d just decided to risk going for it when the door swung open.
Lucy curled herself down smaller, deep in the shadows, her shirt sticking to the sweat on her lower back.
There was some shuffling against concrete, and then a soft curse. It shivered along her spine.
She recognized the voice.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
LUCY THORNE
Now
“Come on out, Agent Thorne,” Josiah Cook called.
Lucy concentrated on breathing, still thinking about the shovel. It wasn’t in easy reach, but it was still doable. Or maybe she could distract him, lure him into the back of the shed somehow while she slipped out behind him.
Because he’d left the door open, she could tell.
Something’s wrong, something’s wrong, something’s . . .
But it made sense. Of course it was Josiah. The man at the heart of all this, the protector of the Church, the defender of the shield laws. The man with the power who had everything to lose.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
Lucy glanced behind her. Although the tractor provided good coverage, it had trapped her a bit, putting her far away from the exits. It would be tough to get him close enough to her to leave a direct path to the door.
So a weapon it would be.
The clay pots were too heavy to maneuver, so she dismissed those. There was the shovel, but there might be something even better. Outside, the clouds must have shifted, because the light streaming in was brighter, reached farther into the nooks and crannies and corners than it had before.
And that’s when she saw it.
It was old-fashioned. A musket, maybe. In any other situation, Lucy might have doubted it was operational. But knowing this type of farmer, it was probably kept in good enough condition to shoot.
“I just want to talk,” Josiah continued, and for the first time since he’d walked in the door, Lucy actually listened to his voice. It was trembling, breathy. Panic and desperation crawling at the edges.
He certainly didn’t sound like a seasoned serial killer. No, he sounded more like a cornered animal.
She didn’t know if that helped or hurt her cause. Cornered animals could be far more dangerous than even the sleekest, most confident predator.
Lucy eyed the musket. It wasn’t that far away, but going for it would force her out from behind the tractor. There was a good chance he had some kind of gun, and taking the chance to get the one on the wall would put her out in the open, make her vulnerable. She ran the odds in her head. The payoff would be big, the risk moderate.
Josiah was still talking, walking the perimeter of the room.
Her hands brushed the floor, searching, searching, searching, and then. Yes. There. A rock. Small enough to almost be called a pebble, dragged in with the tractor wheel. But she tested it in her palm. It had enough heft to be thrown, to make noise.
She waited, waited until Josiah was close to the back but on the other side of the shed. There was only one shot at this.
When he was where she wanted him, she breathed in, let herself count to three, and lobbed the rock toward the far-right corner.
Josiah swung wildly, and then there was a blast. She didn’t let herself think about the fact that he’d been ready to blow a hole through her torso with the shotgun. Lucy just rolled out of her tuck across the floor and in one smooth motion pushed to her feet, grabbing the musket from the wall.
It was heavier than she’d expected, but she let her body compensate as she turned to face Josiah, weapon already lifted, sighting on him without hesitation.
He was red, sweating, visibly trembling as his eyes darted between her and the hole he’d just put in the side of his shed. “I didn’t . . .”
“Right,” she drawled out. She didn’t even know if the weapon she held was loaded, but there was something to be said for confidence, faked or otherwise. “You didn’t mean to hurt me. Except that hole in the wall would have been my chest.”
“It’s not . . .” Josiah’s voice shook. When before he’d always seemed bigger than his short frame, now he just looked small, the power, the charisma dimmed enough to see the empty man beneath it. “I panicked.”
“You came in here with a shotgun, Josiah,” Lucy said, calm despite the pain, the fear. “Can you honestly say you weren’t planning on using it?”
Josiah’s eyes dropped to the weapon in his hands as if he’d forgotten he was holding it.
Something’s wrong. None of this made sense. The motive, yes. But nothing else.
“Josiah, drop the gun,” she tried, just to see.
He didn’t, but he also didn’t lift the barrel any higher, either. When he responded, it was in a whisper. “You don’t understand.”
Heartbreak. That’s what that emotion trembling in the words was.
“Okay,” she said, shifting just a step toward the door. “Try me.”
He glanced up at that, mouth slightly open as if surprised. “I . . .”
“Josiah,” she said again in her most soothing voice. We all need a reminder that we’re human. “Josiah. I don’t know what you’ve done so far, but shooting me would be a line you can’t uncross.”
So was killing a twelve-year-old boy, but Lucy didn’t mention that part. She was just trying to get him to drop the gun.
But it had been the wrong tactic. His fingers tightened on the grip, and he lifted it once again so that it was aimed directly at her heart. “It’s too late.”
“It’s never too late.” Lucy shifted. She was nowhere close to safety, but there was a large worktable running the length of the wall behind her. If she could just sidestep the piles of debris blocking it, she could throw herself beneath its shadows. She would at least be harder to hit that way. “It’s never too late to make the right choice.”
At that Josiah let out a little hiccuping sob. “Do you believe that?”
What had been the rest of that verse? She was too frazzled, too high on adrenaline to recall the actual words. But it had been something about falling short, about being redeemed. “Your life is made up of a series of actions, Josiah. One alone doesn’t damn you.”
Josiah laughed, but it was wet, almost mocking. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”
“Tell me, then,” Lucy said, quiet and commanding. His body bent toward her as if he wanted to drop to his knees, as if she were his confessor.
He looked up, met her eyes. “Do you think you’re a good person?”
Lucy took another step to the right. She didn’t care about this bullshit. “Are any of us?”
His shoulders collapsed at that. “I was just trying to keep it all together. That’s all.”
“Tell me,” she said again, and shifted sideways. Two more steps, maybe. And then she’d be in a safe spot. Her head pounded with the effort of remaining in control, of remaining upright.
“I don’t think I am,” Josiah said to his
feet. Lucy took another step.
“What?”
“A good person,” he said, softly. And her brain blared warning signals that it took the rest of her a moment to catch up to. Josiah’s manic hysteria was gone. In its place was resolve. Terrifying resolve.
Her stomach clenched as her thighs bunched, ready to throw herself toward the side, hoping he wouldn’t have time to adjust his aim.
But the bullet never came.
Instead he swung the gun around, put his mouth on the barrel and then . . .
“No—” Her scream was lost beneath the shot.
Her knees buckled and she sank to the ground, her entire body shaking. She wasn’t a stranger to violence, but she wasn’t immune to it, either. She stared at the gore before her.
Something’s wrong.
The adrenaline was still pumping despite the neutralized threat, her instincts screaming.
Her phone. She’d been talking to Peggy when she’d been knocked out. She felt her pulse in her temples as she pushed to her feet, stumbling to avoid the blood splatter, the gray matter on concrete.
She nearly went down once, twice before she got to the pickup that was still sitting outside the Cooks’ house. Once again, she fell to her knees, her hands groping on the ground for her dropped cell. Lucy prayed it was there, prayed it was working.
When her hand touched plastic and shattered glass, she nearly wept with relief. There was still enough battery left to light up the screen. There were seven missed calls from Vaughn and one missed text from an unknown number.
You can’t stop me, but you can arrest me.
Beneath the message was an address she vaguely recognized.
Then her phone went dark.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
MOLLY THOMAS
Now
Darcy Dawson was crying as she held the gun on Molly, all but choking on big, ugly sobs, her nose red, with snot pouring from it.
They were parked outside Darcy’s house, and there was no one and nothing around to save Molly.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Darcy said, voice shaking, hands shaking, body shaking.
Molly wanted to say, Then don’t, but she didn’t think that was the right response. She didn’t know what the right response was. She didn’t know what was happening. Her thoughts were stuck somewhere back in the woods, and maybe even further, like on the bed, tied down with rough rope, or even further back in the hole with only drugged water to drink.
Her Final Words Page 25
