Tossing the lock to the floor, Josie yanked the door open and saw nothing but blackness. She stepped into the closet. The light from the hall surged in behind her, illuminating the small space. “Amber?” she called.
A body slammed into Josie. Shaking arms wrapped around her. A number of unpleasant smells assaulted her nose. Amber’s cheek was clammy against Josie’s neck. Her thin body vibrated against Josie’s as she sobbed. Getting her bearings, Josie returned the hug. She held Amber close to her with one arm while her other hand stroked her matted hair. In her head, a voice repeated the same relieved phrase: she’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive.
“It’s okay,” Josie finally managed. “Let’s get you out of here.”
A shadow crossed the doorway, plunging them back into semi-darkness. Amber lifted her head from Josie’s shoulder and gasped. Raising one of her thin arms, she pointed and said, “He took me! He took me!”
Josie turned her head to see Mettner standing there in shadow. The whites of his eyes suddenly grew large. “What?” he said. “I—”
Behind him another shadow moved and over his shoulder, Gabriel’s dark eyes blazed with hatred. The gleam of a pistol flashed. Josie pushed Amber aside, reaching for her weapon. With practiced ease, she unsnapped her holster and drew her firearm. She opened her mouth to form the word, “Mett!” just as the pistol in Gabriel’s hand lifted to the back of Mettner’s head. Josie had only a split second to register the shock and confusion on Mett’s face as she raised her own weapon and took one step to the side to get a better draw on Gabriel. She yelled, “Drop your weapon!” and then another voice yelled it, but Josie wasn’t sure if she had actually heard someone else, or if her own command had echoed in the small room. Gabriel’s index finger inched toward the trigger. Then the sound of a gunshot boomed all around them. The whole world seemed as though it was in suspended motion as Josie stood there, finger on the trigger of her pistol which she had not yet fired.
She was vaguely aware of Amber screaming. Then Gabriel crumpled to the ground. Behind him stood Noah, smoke spiraling up from the barrel of his gun which was now pointed at the floor. Expertly, he circled Gabriel’s prone form until he found his pistol, and then he kicked it away. Blood bloomed from a wound just under Gabriel’s right collarbone. He stared up at Noah, mouth gulping for air. Noah muttered, “That is the last time you get near my wife.”
Mettner turned slowly, taking in the scene, and then falling to his knees when he realized how close he had come to death. From behind Josie, Amber crawled. “Finn!” she cried. “Finn!”
His head turned toward her voice and his body followed. Soon, they were in each other’s arms, and Mettner was rocking her and whispering in her ear, “I’ll never let you go again. Never.”
Forty-Seven
While Josie and Noah used her coat to put pressure on Gabriel Watts’ wound, Finn led Amber out of the darkened room. He pressed her face into his chest as they passed by Gabriel’s prone form and guided her out to the team room. From across Gabriel’s body, Josie stared at Noah. “Thank you,” she said softly. Noah nodded. “Keep pressure. I’ll call for backup.” Josie pressed her coat down into Gabriel’s wound while Noah used his cell phone to call dispatch and the Chief. When he hung up, he took over for her. “Vivian is still on the run, but she’s here in the building somewhere. Someone in the crowd said they saw her on one of the upper concourses. People are still trying to get out.” He lifted a chin toward the doorway to the team room where Josie could see Mettner and Amber huddled together on a bench. “Take them and go. I’ll stay here with him until help arrives.”
Josie nodded and got up, herding Mettner and Amber down the long hall to the first set of steps she could find. She left them in the lobby where patrol units had just arrived and begun to seal off every exit so that Vivian Toland could not escape. She went back into the stairwell, climbing to the second-floor concourse. As she raced around it, people still milled, staring at some spectacle ahead. She stopped when she saw that what they were all staring at was a soaking wet Thatcher Toland sitting on a plush tufted bench and blotting his face and hair with a paper towel. Gretchen stood beside him. As if sensing Josie’s question, Gretchen explained, “He wants to help find Vivian. He came running up here. We couldn’t stop him. Then he fell, and here we are.”
Thatcher looked up at Josie. “This is my fault,” he moaned. “But you must know that I had no idea things would turn out like this.”
“Like what?” Josie said.
Thatcher motioned all around him as if the explanation was obvious. “Like this. With people dead, and my wife… I didn’t know! She promised me that after the opening of this church, I could come clean. That’s what I wanted to do in the first place. She promised me that I could tell the whole world, for better or worse, and that we could try to become a family, and that she would support me, stand next to me and bear the stain of my horrible sin. Even if there were criminal charges, she said. I told her that Eden would never press charges against me. I thought that she should, even though her father had blackmailed me over the entire thing at the time. I told Eden that when I saw her. I went to unburden myself to her and make amends. I told her that it didn’t matter what she thought had happened between us, or whether or not she had ever had feelings for me or thought that she had—I was wrong. Full stop. She was a child. I was the adult. It was my job to protect her, not to exploit her schoolgirl crush on me, or whatever flirtation we had. It took me years to understand that.”
Josie held up a hand. “You went to Eden. You approached her.”
“Yes!” he said. “How could I go on TV to promote my book, acting like I’m somehow an expert on rectifying your mistakes when I never apologized to the one person I harmed the most?”
“Why were you at Amber’s house the other day?” Josie asked.
“I wanted to talk to her, too. Eden told me how Amber had helped her, how Amber helped save my child! I just wanted to talk, but she wasn’t home. Her mother was there instead. I tried to talk to her. Eden had told me everything. She told me about all of her mother’s marriages and how her father and aunt were in on them.”
“Did she tell you that Vivian was in on it as well?”
Thatcher shook his head. “She said that, but she was wrong. At least, I thought she was wrong. I confronted Vivian after I spoke with Eden. She told me that she knew that Lydia married older men for their money but that all she did was sell their houses after they passed away. She wasn’t really ‘in’ on it. Anyway, I told Lydia I knew everything. Not just about the marriages but about Dr. Rafferty.”