Punches, a scuffle. Carter risked a look. The two men were fighting, battling for Larry’s pistol. Carter had to get up. Try to help. Try to stop Dr. Fear. He moved to lean forward and was drawn back by pain in his arm and ropes around his wrists. He was tied to something. Wood, but not big enough to be a tree. A fence post? Maybe if he could get his feet under him, with enough force he could break the ropes, or the post, or get his arms up and off over it. He’d just have to push through the pain. He looked down, to check if his feet were tied, and froze at the sight around his middle.
The vest. Wired with explosives.
A door slammed inside the barn across the yard from where Carter sat. He looked up before he could stop himself. The barn where he’d been held by Ryan. The light had shifted and all he could see inside the open barn doors were shadows and darkness. Had he put Barry and Trudy back in the basement? With Larry too? Had that been the door that banged? Ryan stepped out of the shadows, and Carter lowered his head, eyes closed, hoping the chancellor hadn’t noticed.
No such luck. “I know you’re awake, Special Agent Warren.”
He kept his lids lowered, peeking through his lashes, as he tensed his lower body for a fight. His bare feet weren’t tied. He could kick out at the very least.
Ryan read the tension and stopped just out of range. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Your arm is broken, you probably have a concussion, and you’re strapped into an explosive vest. You move too suddenly, you get dizzy and fall over, and you might go boom.”
Carter opened his eyes the rest of the way. Ryan crouched just beyond his feet, a syringe in one hand, the pistol in the other. “Parting gift from Larry,” he said, gesturing with the latter.
“What did you do with him?”
“Did you know he and your partner share a fear in common?” He tilted his head back and right, toward the barn, and Carter’s gaze followed. Smoke was starting to pour through the open doors. And backlighting the shadows, an eerie orange glow grew.
Fire. No.
“What will Lincoln think,” Ryan said, “if you can’t do your job and save them from fire? Will he ever trust you to have his back when he needs you? Or when his family needs you?”
He could prove himself. If he could just get free. He tested the bindings carefully, keeping one eye on Ryan, the other on the vest. He had to rescue Larry, Barry, and Trudy. Stop Dr. Fear. Then Lincoln could trust him, maybe even love?—
“You said it yourself in my house,” Ryan carried on. “And why would he, when he doesn’t even know you? When you don’t know you?”
Lincoln’s words from the other night came back to him, the soft smile and look he gave Carter on his way to bed. “He likes me now. He said so.”
“Does he still, now that he knows you got it wrong?” A weight came down on his ankle, and on his heart. Fears compounding, hope dwindling, darkness encroaching. “That you got everything wrong. Maybe he got his feelings about you wrong too.”
Reality was the darkest truth of all. “I screwed up,” Carter confessed.
“That’s right.” A prick between his toes. “Now it’s time for you to face your fears.”
Darkness—fear—took him.
Twenty
Lincoln could not believe he was here again. Hands and forehead pressed to the church wall, forcing down the sickness that kept surging up his throat. Except this time he only had himself to blame. This was his brilliant—or stupid—plan. He’d told Jeremiah to tell Susanne, who, as Lincoln had intended, had told the entire fucking town, judging by the packed pews out there, that he’d be playing at tonight’s service.
Playing and singing. Facing his fear in the hope of drawing Dr. Fear out. And the hope that Carter would be with him. Following Carter’s plan and giving Ryan a target.
Them.
“Dad, you need to breathe.” Elena’s voice was calm and steady through the earpiece. “Inhale and exhale.”
He tried to inhale and managed a wheeze.
“You can’t sing if that’s all the air you’re taking in.”
He tried again and managed a deeper breath.
“Better,” Elena said. She coached him through three more breaths before asking, “Why are you even playing?”
He rotated and rested back against the wall, then had to readjust owing to the holster clipped at the back of his waistband, underneath his sport coat. “For Carter.”
“Oh-ho!”
She sounded so much like her mother and aunt. He would never hear the end of this, even if they never heard the full story. But he couldn’t do this without hearing her voice first. “It’s case related,” he said.
