Page 96 of The Final Cut

“Can you walk?” Nash asks.

Delia gives him a look I admire despite the timing. “Can you?”

Nash’s mouth almost moves. “Good.”

Sabine passes Delia a dark coat. “Put this on. Head down through the corridor. Try not to limp if you can help it.”

Delia slides her arms into the coat, wincing only once. “You always did have a shitty bedside manner.”

Sabine’s face flickers. “Good to see you too.”

The comm crackles, and Ever’s voice cuts in. “Movement north passage. Two coming your way. Fast.”

Sabine curses under her breath. “Isabel?”

“Cannot confirm,” Ever says. “One tall male, one smaller. Thirty seconds.”

Nash looks at me.

The plan changes in his eyes before he speaks.

“Sabine takes Delia through service.”

“No,” I say. “I take Delia.”

“You take the rear threat with me. Sabine knows the service route and looks like she belongs.”

Every instinct rejects it. Delia’s hand tightens around my sleeve.

Nash sees it.

Then he does the thing I did not expect. He turns his back to me and faces the door.

“You wanted me to trust you with my back,” he says. “Earn it.”

The words settle between us, heavy and clean.

I move.

Nash takes the first man as he enters, striking hard with the butt of his pistol and driving him sideways into the wall. I catch the smaller figure behind him, a woman with a compact gun already rising beneath her jacket. She fires once.

The bullet grazes my side, hot and shallow, tearing fabric and skin over my ribs. Pain flashes white.

I close on her before she fires again.

Her gun arm breaks against the doorframe. She chokes on the sound. I put her down and kick the weapon under the pew.

Nash is still fighting the first man, who turns out to be larger than Ever made him sound. He has both hands on Nash’s jacket and is trying to drive a knife up under his ribs. I pull the man off him by the collar, opening him for Nash’s fist. The blow lands with a sound like a door slammed shut.

The man drops.

For one second, Nash and I stand in the chapel doorway, breathing hard over the bodies of Isabel’s faithful.

His eyes cut to the blood spreading along my side.

“Bad?”

“Annoying.”