It happens now…
9:29 p.m.
The bomb at the FBI Lab exploded.
Chelsea positioned the unconscious woman in the tub and opened a second bottle of drain cleaner.
Tessa stared out the window, watching Detective Warren step careful and catlike toward the body.
Margaret Wellington popped the DVD into her computer.
I swung the car to a stop.
Only seconds ago I’d heard gunshots from behind the house.
I leaped out. Unholstered my weapon.
Sprinted around the corner of the house and saw a woman.
“Stop!” I yelled.
“It’s me!” Cheyenne’s voice. “I got him. Over here.”
“How many shooters?”
“Unknown.”
I eyed the tree line, looking for movement. Covered Cheyenne. She was approaching the rock wall that fringed the lawn. A body lay on the ground. “Is that Adkins?”
“I didn’t see his face.” She was less than five meters from the body.
“Where’s Tessa?”
“In the house.”
“I’m going in.” But I’d only made it two steps when Cheyenne gasped. “Hurry, Pat! It’s-”
A gunshot erupted from the shadows near the back deck. I heard a deep, solid slap! behind me, and knew instantly what it was-a bullet hitting a human target.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Cheyenne crumple against the stone wall.
No, no, no, no!
Darkness seemed to breathe on me.
Inhaling.
Exhaling. Shadows panting all around me. I sprinted to her.
Scanned the woods. The deck. Still no movement.
She’d been shot in the right side and was gasping for breath. She had her left hand over the wound, but bright, frothy blood was oozing between her fingers. Her lung. She’s hit in the lung.
I heard sirens, but they were too far away to get here in time.
No visual on the shooter.
She’ll bleed out!
As quickly and carefully as I could, I moved her three meters to the opening in the wall so she wouldn’t be exposed in the field. Then I called 911.
Darkness.
Breathing.
Get to the house, Pat. You have to find Tessa!
In a handful of seconds I told the dispatcher what I knew about Cheyenne’s GSW and explained exactly where she was.
“Go,” Cheyenne coughed. “I’ll be all right… just…” Her voice trailed off.
She was still pressing against the wound, but when I put my hand on hers I realized she wasn’t applying enough pressure to stop the bleeding. She’s too weak. “You need to press harder,” I told her urgently.
Get to Tessa, you have to get to Tessa!
Cheyenne’s eyes fluttered, then closed. She went limp, unconscious. “Cheyenne!” I slapped her cheek, but it didn’t rouse her.
You can’t stay. You have to go!
I saw a glimmer of light in the house. A flashlight moving through the living room.
No!
Tessa would lay low, wouldn’t use a flashlight.
I tilted Cheyenne to her side, wound against the ground, so her body weight would at least provide a little pressure, maybe slow the bleeding, keep it from pooling, flooding the other lung. Maybe it would buy her a few extra minutes until the EMTs arrived.
I rose to sprint to the house and finally saw the face of the person Cheyenne had shot.
Paul Lansing.
No!
Hastily, I knelt beside him, felt for a pulse. Nothing. No pulse. No breathing. Cheyenne had put three shots center mass, and his chest was shredded, blood-drenched.
He was gone.
Tight, hot anger shot through me.
Sevren set this up! He lured him here!
Sirens, blaring sirens. Distant but growing stronger.
I bolted toward the house.
MagLite out, gun level, I entered from the back deck. Moved slowly through the doorway. “Tessa?”
No reply.
I tried the living room lights. Nothing. “Tessa!”
I don’t pray often, but I did now, and it was as raw and real as they come. Please, please let her be okay. Both her and Cheyenne. Please!
Then I heard it. Muffled sounds coming from the hallway.
Flashlight in my left hand, SIG in my right, I flared around the corner.
Tessa was standing, gagged, at the far end of the hall, just outside her bedroom. A man was hiding in the room, clenching a handful of her hair with his right hand, holding a Walther P99 pressed to the side of her head with his left. She had a welt on her forehead, blood trailing down her cheek; he must have hit her with something when he overpowered her.
Anger. Prowling. Roaring.
She tried to cry out. The gag stopped her.
“That’s far enough, Bowers.” His voice was a hiss. Though I couldn’t see him, I pictured him: dark hair. Medium build. Stained, primal eyes.
“Drop the gun, Sevren!”
I stepped forward lightly, but he jerked Tessa’s head backward and she cringed.
“I said that’s far enough!” he shouted.
I froze. Somehow he was watching me.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he said. “You’re going to throw your gun to Tessa. She’s going to pick it up. And then you’re going to watch your stepdaughter die.”
There are many kinds of death, Sevren thought. Physical, spiritual, emotional, psychological.
And this would be the most fitting kind of all.