A bullet splintered wood a heartbeat behind her, accompanied by a snarl from Varden.
Sarah didn’t waste a moment, moving as swiftly as she could toward the corridor she knew would lead her to the escape tunnel. She tried to keep the boxes and junk of the cellar between her and him, but she had to circle widely to pass by him. She counted on Varden to head toward the stairs and his own escape.
For once, her instincts and senses failed her.
He was there, in front of her, gun leveled and face savage, blocking her way to the tunnel. “Bitch. Where do you think you’re going? I haven’t come this far to let you get away now.”
For an instant, staring down the barrel of that gun and listening to the whispery “voices” of the fire spreading above them, Sarah felt an urge to just accept the inevitable.
I’m going to die here. The vision’s coming true.
Destiny.
But the rage bubbling inside her was, finally, stronger. “I want my life back,” she snarled right back at him. “You can’t have it, you son of a bitch. You can’t have anything I am.”
Whatever he saw in her face, it was clear that Varden recognized a point of no return. And his own defeat. But his failure was mixed with thwarted fury. His free hand lifted, a walkie-talkie in it, and he snapped, “Braun! Kill Mackenzie!”
Murphy tried to keep Leigh in sight as the older woman put step two of their plan into action and torched the building. It was supposed to be a fairly simple action: toss a couple of incendiaries against the back of the church and set that end on fire, driving those inside out the front door.
Murphy had argued for a good, old-fashioned turkey shoot but was overruled. So it was with utter disgust and an itchy trigger finger that she watched several men stumble from the burning church within minutes and pile into two waiting long black cars.
The gunfire over, she eased the hammer back on her pistol but remained wary until the men had fled the scene.
“Not very loyal, are they?” Nick noted as he joined her. “They left at least two of their own behind.”
“They’re bastards, every last one,” Murphy said, more or less automatically. Her gaze was directed toward the church. Through one of the glassless windows, she could see inside the church. See flames and falling pieces of timber. And…
“Jesus. Is that—?”
Nick followed her gaze, and his thin face tightened. Very quietly, he said, “Oh, my God.”
“Braun! Kill Mackenzie!”
Sarah’s heart stopped for an instant. But then a voice she recognized as well as her own erupted from the walkie-talkie in a cheerful response.
“Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but Braun sort of fell down on the job.”
On the last syllable, a Molotov cocktail crashed against the wall just a few feet from Varden, and he flinched away from it instinctively, his gun hand lifting to shield his face from the heat.
Sarah wanted to kick him where it would hurt the most but still didn’t dare touch him, and it was with immense satisfaction that she saw Brodie step from the doorway behind Varden and bring a bottle of something crashing against the back of his head.
Varden dropped like a stone.
“Aw, gee, did that hurt?” Brodie stared down at him pitilessly.
Tucker came through the doorway to stand beside him and said reflectively, “Terrible waste of thirty-year-old scotch.”
“You wasted the first bottle,” Brodie reminded him.
Sarah threw herself into Tucker’s arms.
“Not wasted,” Tucker said a bit thickly, his arms tight around her. “Hey, let’s get the hell out of here. This place is on fire.”
Brodie set an unused Molotov cocktail aside with a sigh. “You two go on. I’ll drag him along. Guess we can’t leave him down here to roast, much as I’d love to.”
Sarah avoided the spreading fire and darted over to grab the kerosene lamp to light their way back through the tunnel; the two men had infrared goggles hanging around their necks, but she didn’t feel much like plunging back into the darkness.
There was a crash from above and the floor of the church shuddered beneath the weight of whatever had fallen, so they didn’t waste any more time. Sarah and Tucker led the way swiftly, while Brodie followed with an unconscious Varden slung over one shoulder.
“Where’s the other one?” Sarah asked breathlessly as they hurried along the tunnel. “The one Varden wanted to kill Tucker?”
“I found him long before he heard that order,” Brodie replied. “Knocked him cold and dragged him to the mouth of the tunnel. Any sign of Duran?”
“No. Varden said this was his game.”
Brodie grunted. “That explains a few things.”
“Like what?” Tucker demanded as they emerged from the tunnel and into bright daylight.
“Like why he baited a trap. Not Duran’s style.” Brodie dumped Varden unceremoniously just outside the tunnel and looked around with a frown. “Now, where the hell—”