Panic and fear had become her natural state, her body so used to being inundated with chemicals that now it barely reacted to them. There was a new buzz beneath her skin, trying to cut through the numbness, one that said this was an active threat, one that directed her to run. But, God, Molly was tired. She just wanted to rest, lie down in the dirt. Maybe she was already there, back in the woods, but this time in one of those graves.
So she didn’t say anything, just let her body slide from the truck. Blood rushed away from her head at the change in position, and she had to hold on to the door to fight passing out. Molly thought maybe some of the cuts from the glass were worse than she’d realized. Glancing down, she noticed a deep red smear along her T-shirt where the fabric was saturated. Yeah, probably worse.
“Just don’t . . . don’t run, okay?” Darcy said. “Just go in the house, baby.”
Where would Molly run? There was nothing but wide-open spaces for at least a mile in all directions. She’d never been to the Dawsons’ place before, but she knew where it was. They were isolated. Even if she could dodge bullets, it wouldn’t take long for Darcy to get back in her car and chase Molly down. If that happened, Darcy might be angry, might not be so set against hurting Molly.
Molly forced herself to walk toward the small cabin despite every alarm bell in her head ringing and blaring and flashing bright lights.
She wasn’t tied, she told herself, trying to use her best soothing voice. She wasn’t bound. The cabin had windows and at least two doors, neither of which were blocked off. She’d been in worse positions over the past number of days.
Darcy was a stout lady and strong. But she was upset, and her finger was anything but steady on the trigger. Surprise was probably Molly’s best option.
“Inside,” Darcy prompted when Molly stopped at the door.
No, no, no, no, the sirens screamed in her head. But she forced her hand to reach out, turn the knob.
The house was empty, clearly. It wasn’t big enough to hide anyone.
“In the corner,” Darcy directed. Some part of Molly recognized that as a smart strategy for Darcy—it was far away from anything that Molly could use as a weapon, and it was contained; Molly would be trapped between two walls and a gun. Another part of her was horrified that she was thinking like that. If she survived, was that her life now? Entering each room and figuring out the best way to escape?
Molly sat on the cool tile, and it grounded her a little. Pressure without pain. She held on to the sensation.
Darcy sat at the small table, which Molly noted as a tactical error that made her more vulnerable, stripped away some of her upper hand. Darcy wasn’t good at this. Why was Darcy doing it?
“Why?” Molly’s lips were thick and clumsy, but somehow she got the word out.
The weapon swung wildly to the right and then lurched back to point at Molly. It was probably more likely to go off by accident than with intent at this point. Wouldn’t that be her luck? Escape a serial killer to die because Darcy Dawson didn’t know how to hold a gun.
A giggle broke the taut silence, and Darcy paled. Molly looked around for someone else, but it was just the two of them, and the giggling was still going, manic and high and grating instead of filled with humor.
Darcy finally slammed her palm down on the table. “Stop it.”
Molly clamped her lips together because apparently it was she who had been laughing. They sat in the silence that dropped for long minutes, the only sound the ticking of a clock somewhere in the distance, counting off the seconds.
“Why?” Molly asked again, and this time she didn’t laugh. It hadn’t been Darcy’s voice she’d heard that day her captor had told her to be quiet. Molly didn’t even really know the woman, had talked to her only that one time. In the grocery store.
“Can you not mention this to anyone?” Darcy had asked quietly. “Especially not to Pastor Cook.”
They had sat in the café, drinking water, and Eliza . . . Eliza had been with Noah.
Molly inhaled, meeting Darcy’s eyes. “Noah?”
Darcy shattered in a way Molly hadn’t realized a person could. It lasted only a few seconds before Darcy’s face went hard again, her mouth set, eyes blank. “He’s dead.”
Pain shot through Molly’s chest, but she didn’t dare move. There was still the gun and the fact that Darcy’s hands were no longer shaking.
But, God. Noah was dead. Another body in the woods. Had Molly run over his grave?
Eliza, what did you do?
“I didn’t . . . ,” Molly tried. Her voice was rough, so rough. “I didn’t kill him.”
“No, you didn’t,” Darcy said, and it sounded like it wasn’t a guess.
Molly let her eyes fall to the weapon, a clear question.
Darcy’s gaze followed Molly’s. “It took me a while to see.”
“To see what?” Molly managed. Though she thought she might know. It was the same thing it had taken too long for her and Eliza to see as well.
“It’s one of us, isn’t it?” Eliza had whispered. “Who’s doing it. It’s one of us.”
“Yes.”
Darcy nodded almost as if she could hear the conversation. Maybe Molly had said it out loud.
“And I thought, I thought I was going crazy,” Darcy said. “You know? Everyone acted like I was.”
It was true—even Molly had heard the rumors, the talk of Darcy’s episodes. She’d witnessed one firsthand.
“But I wasn’t,” Darcy said, with a sudden intensity that had Molly pressing her spine tighter against the wall. “Kids don’t just go missing like that.”
No, they didn’t.
“I thought Rosie might be next.” Darcy’s voice trembled. “But I hadn’t been worried about Noah. Not Noah.”
It hurt to breathe, watching Darcy. The woman was shattered once more, almost in pieces. Molly wondered what Darcy would do if Molly went for the gun now. Or even tried to move. Would she notice? But every part of Molly was heavy, sinking into the floor beneath the weight of Darcy’s grief.
“He was always my fighter,” Darcy said softly. “My old soul, too wise for me.”
“I didn’t kill him,” Molly said again, even though it didn’t make sense. Darcy didn’t think she had. But still, here Molly was in Darcy’s kitchen at the wrong end of a gun.
Darcy ignored her. “It had to be Josiah, I’d thought. Of course, it was Josiah.”
They’d thought that, too. Back wrapped in the safety of darkness at their post, their voices hushed as they painted a picture that was almost right, but not quite.
“It’s never been him, though,” Darcy continued, her eyes drifting to the window. Expectantly. Someone was coming. Molly could hear it now, a truck on gravel. She wanted to scream for help but knew it would be pointless. “It’s not Josiah who does the Church’s dirty work.”
Down the hallway, the front door of the cabin opened.
Darcy smiled.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
SHERIFF WYATT HICKS
Now
Hicks had been staring at his mostly empty desk for an hour straight since he’d come to his realization when his phone rang. It was the number for the emergency cell phone he kept in the extra trucks.
Lucy.
“Hello?”
“Hicks, I need backup.” She was breathless. Desperate, for sure, if she was calling him. “And you need to head over to the Cooks’ place.”
He was already on his feet, keys in hand. “Where are you?”
“Josiah, he . . .” A horn blared. She was driving. “He shot himself, okay?”
The bottom dropped out beneath Hicks, but he didn’t have time for an emotional reaction. He repeated, “Where are you?”
“Is Zoey back?”
Hicks paused, hand on the door.
Zoey. He guessed she wasn’t where Lucy thought she was. Again, a thought for a different time.
“No.”
Lucy cursed and Hicks gritted his teeth, swinging up into the
driver’s seat and jamming the key into the ignition.
“Where. Are. You?” he asked again.
“Just head to the Cooks’.”
“No,” Hicks said. “Look, I know you don’t trust me right now. I get it. But I’m what you’ve got.”
There was silence on the other end, long enough for Hicks to check if she’d hung up. If she did, he was screwed. But she was still there.
Finally, she bit out, “Darcy Dawson.”
And then the line went dead.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
MOLLY THOMAS
Now
Darcy pushed to her feet without making a sound, melting back into the shadows of the kitchen.
And they waited as the floorboards creaked.
Was this worse? Worse than the hole and worse than the cabin and worse than running over dead bodies? She’d been so sure she was going to die, but not really. Not like this. There was an inevitability barreling toward them. And Darcy’s hands shook as much as her voice did. It was unlikely she’d come out the victor here.
Molly desperately wished she could go back to that moment of weakness, of grief, of absolute base humanity in wanting her friend not to die. Then she would stop herself from talking to Deputy Grant, and Molly would never have been seen as a threat. She would have faded into the background like she had the rest of her life.
She wouldn’t have ended up in a hole, and then in a cabin, and then on the kitchen floor with her face wet and legs numb. Helpless to do anything as Rachel Cook stepped through the doorway into the light, a gun in her hands.
“I should have killed you that first night, Molly dear,” Rachel murmured. Her grip on the weapon was confident, but her eyes scanned the room, searching for the threat. Because she would know that if there was bait, there was someone waiting for her to take it. “You have been far more trouble than you’re worth.”
“Really sorry to inconvenience you.” Even as Molly spoke, her lip broke open, the blood tangy and sharp against her tongue. She knew she was skin, she was bones, she was dust. But she would not be cowed by this woman.
Humor flitted across Rachel’s face at the sarcasm, but it faded away just as quickly. “I didn’t want to have to kill you, too.”
“Yeah, it seems like a lot of people are telling me they don’t want to hurt me, and yet . . .” Molly gestured to herself, her anger as tangy and sharp as the blood on her tongue. She’d been so scared in that hole, in that cabin, and now, now all that was left was rage.
Rachel’s mouth twisted into something unpleasant. “Believe it or not, I didn’t want to kill you. Your death would have served no purpose.”
It had never been Josiah like she and Eliza had thought. The picture had been just a shade wrong. When Molly had been in the bunker, when she’d heard Rachel’s voice snapping at her, everything had shifted until it had finally made sense.
Josiah may have been the face of the Church, but Rachel had always been its backbone. That’s what Eliza had said, time and again. He liked to preach and talk and stand in the spotlight, his rhetoric fiery, his message always on point.
Rachel, on the other hand, lived in the shadows behind him, cleaning up the mess that inevitably followed.
Molly stared Rachel down. “So, you can admit you killed them? I thought I was about to get a spiel about ‘sending the children home to God,’ or some bullshit like that.”
“I know what I did,” Rachel said calmly, stripped bare of any emotion. The sheer lack of it, of remorse or guilt or even self-righteousness, formed a fist, punched into Molly’s belly. “I did what I had to do to protect us.”
“That’s bullshit,” Molly said, but even she could hear the wobble in her voice. She was fading, her hands slick with blood.
Rachel watched her for a long minute, and Molly was sure she was going to die. If she hadn’t already. But then Rachel turned away, her eyes sweeping over the dark corners of the kitchen. “Enough of this. Darcy, let’s not play games, dear. You called me to come here.”
There was silence. And then Molly’s breath hitched as Darcy stepped into the light, a gun in her trembling hands.
It was a standoff. They both had weapons, but Rachel was the one who’d proven she wasn’t afraid to use hers.
“You’re just going to kill us both then, Rachel?” Darcy asked now, and Molly thought she might be aiming for caustic, biting. But in the end it just sounded pleading and sad, her voice thin and fragile.
“I wouldn’t have had to,” Rachel snapped, finally a show of emotion, though it was annoyance, not anger. Irritated at a minor inconvenience, swatting at a bug who got too thirsty, drank too much. “But look what you’re making me do, Darcy.”
Molly saw Rachel’s gaze drop to Darcy’s finger when it tightened on the trigger.
“I didn’t kill him, you know.” Rachel said it so casually, as if in passing, as if a bit curious but not too concerned.
Both Darcy and Molly recoiled at the denial as if it had been a slap.
Rachel merely lifted her brows, though Molly thought she could see a thin sheen of sweat at the woman’s temples. “You don’t have to believe me.”
Darcy shook her head, her body following, like a dog drenched in water unexpectedly. “An eye for an eye.”
The way she said it, the certainty, the grimness, had Molly clenching, braced to move, to roll, to escape, even though surely she was too weak to accomplish such a feat.
“An eye for an eye, a death for a death,” Darcy said again, manic, her eyes wild in a way they hadn’t been earlier, even when she’d been shattered.
“He was dying anyway,” Rachel threw out, and it sounded offhand, like her eyes hadn’t just flicked to the gun. But they had, and Molly had seen them do it. Rachel was trying to throw her off. “Noah was dying, Darcy. Whoever killed him, it was a mercy kill.”
A mercy kill. Molly’s head tipped back against the wall as if she could get farther away from the evil that stood before her.
That’s when they heard it.
Tires on gravel once again.
A truck. Two.
Darcy’s eyes flew to the window, but so did Rachel’s.
“You called Hicks?” Rachel guessed, but there was hesitation there, confusion. What was Darcy doing with a gun pointed at Rachel’s chest, then?
A door slammed; there were boots on the ground. Molly wanted to call out, but she couldn’t, her throat dry and scratched up.
“Say it.” Darcy’s attention was back on Rachel, locked on her. “You killed him.”
“Not him.” Rachel lifted a shoulder. “Others, yes. But not him.”
The words didn’t make sense.
“You killed him.” Darcy’s voice shook. Molly watched as she inhaled, exhaled, lifted the barrel just enough so that the damage would be permanent, fatal. “Admit it, you killed him.”
Molly wouldn’t have tried to stop what she knew was coming if she could.
But she did notice Rachel’s lips part slightly, a breath in, just like the one Darcy had taken as she’d sighted her gun.
In the second it took for that to make sense in Molly’s mind, the bullet left the chamber.
Darcy hit the floor without firing a shot.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
LUCY THORNE
Now
The crack of a gunshot was unmistakable. It sliced into the marrow of Lucy’s bones, took up space there. You failed, it said. Loud and clear.
Hicks had pulled in behind her, his feet hitting the gravel almost before the truck even stopped moving.
No matter what they walked in on next, though, they had failed to stop it.
Hicks paused beside her, and then they were both moving again, muscle memory kicking in where the brain lagged. Clear the room, find the weapons. Find the body.
The Dawsons’ house was small, easy to get through.
Whoever had taken the shot was in the kitchen.
Hicks stopped in the hallway, eyes on Lucy, following her lead.
&nbs
p; Lucy stepped into the room, taking in the chaos in one sweep.
Molly on the floor. Screaming. Alive.
Darcy on the floor. Bleeding. Maybe alive. Less certain.
Rachel standing. Gun in hand. Definitely fucking alive.
“Drop your weapon.” It was out of Lucy’s mouth before she even thought it.
“She was going to shoot me,” Rachel said, her voice going soft and pleading. “She’s crazy, you know she is.”
Lucy didn’t take her eyes off Rachel. “Drop your weapon,” she repeated.
Rachel licked her lips and turned the gun sideways so that it was pointing at the wall. She didn’t let it fall, though. “She was going to hurt Molly. She snapped, Agent Thorne. It was never Eliza, it was Darcy.”
“No, no, no, no,” Molly muttered from the floor, but Lucy didn’t dare look away from Rachel.
She must not have known what had happened with Josiah. She must not have known about the text Darcy had sent.
You can’t stop me, but you can arrest me.
Maybe, maybe if Lucy had seen only that, she’d buy Rachel’s story. But Josiah had panicked.
And everything that hadn’t made sense in the shed—being left with weapons, her hands untied, Josiah’s breathlessness—now did. The puzzle finally complete.
Lucy had been distracted by the idea of power, of Josiah wanting to protect everything he stood to lose if the Church came crashing down around him along with the shield laws. But it wasn’t only him that would have been demolished.
A motive, finally found.
“Drop. Your. Weapon,” Lucy said.
Molly was still muttering on the floor, but at least she’d stopped screaming. Darcy was unconscious, possibly bleeding out. There was a static pause where Lucy thought Rachel would try to stick to her story.
But something flickered across her face, and the fear she’d been wearing almost convincingly fell away.
Her Final Words Page 26
