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Nate looked up, catching her eye. “She said she tried to stop him. Amy. He was going after Amy!”
“Upstairs,” Laura shot back, immediately on the move again. She shouldn’t have delayed. She shouldn’t have waited. She knew what was going to happen. Why had she held back?
She took the stairs two at a time, a pounding in her ears that threatened to drown out everything else. Up there, as she got closer, she could hear him.
“Amy,” he said, his voice half muffled by the distance. “Amy, come here.”
She knew what would happen next. She knew.
Nate’s feet were hammering up the stairs after her, and Laura was diving down the corridor, making for the room where she knew Amy slept. The room she had already barged into to rescue her once before. She had to do it again. She couldn’t hesitate. Not even for her own safety.
The door was open. Laura hit the doorframe with her shoulder, pain radiating from that spot, but she still managed to get her gun up. She pointed it at his broad back, his hands still dripping red from what he had done to his wife. Amy was curled up on the bed, behind her toys.
“Freeze!” Laura yelled, a desperation in her voice. He had to stop. He had to stop now. “FBI!”
Nate was behind her—she felt him there. Amy in front. Laura’s eyes darted between her shaking form and the Governor, watching him turn around slowly. She watched him register who she was. He was swaying slightly, his face red underneath the blood, with anger or with something else. Black eyes fixed on her, eyes so full of hate it made her shiver.
“You,” he snarled.
“Get down on your knees and put your hands behind your head,” Nate ordered him. Laura was glad. She was having a hard time finding her voice. “Do it! Now!”
The Governor stood there, his hands curled into fists, his wife’s blood soaking through his shirt. He stared at her with so much hatred and fury that Laura felt herself shriveling inside, as though he had the power to reduce her to nothing. He wanted to kill her. He wanted to kill them all.
“You’re not going to shoot me,” he sneered. “You won’t risk it. Not with her behind me.”
Laura froze, her hands shaking on the gun. He was right. Amy was right there. She could get hurt, caught in the crossfire. Even if she wasn’t, the sight of her father being shot to death right in front of her would be awful. The kind of thing you didn’t recover from. And she’d already seen so many things that would take so much recovery.
Laura couldn’t shoot.
Nate holstered his gun, a strangely violent movement that was more of a threat than holding it was. He flexed his muscles, bringing his arms up into a fighting stance.
“Get down!” Nate yelled again, and something got through the Governor’s single-minded focus. He fixed on Nate then and his lips opened up into a snarl, and before Laura could think of what to do or how to react he was rushing forward.
He tackled Nate, slamming into him with full force. Laura could only stand there helplessly, trying to point her gun but not knowing exactly where, as they fell to the floor together and began to grapple. She could barely keep track of what was happening, who was on top, Nate’s strength a good match for Fallow’s rage and recklessness. They were both snarling, making animal noises of pain and effort as they fought to get a punch in, to get the other one subdued. Laura’s heart pounded painfully in her chest, her hands shaking. If the Governor got his hands on Nate’s gun…
Could this be the moment he lost his life? The moment the aura of death she’d seen hanging over him came true?
But Nate was strong, so strong, and he hadn’t already beaten anyone to death. He was fresh in the fight. He grappled the Governor, got himself arranged a different way on the floor, and even as the Governor fought back Laura saw what he’d done. How he’d put the Governor on his knees. Put himself to the side. How he’d given her what she needed.
“Stop!” Laura yelled, and the shouted word gave her enough of Governor Fallow’s attention for him to notice.
To notice the fact that she had her gun pointed right at his head, and there was no one behind him now, not at this angle. Nate and Amy were both safely out of line. If she pulled the trigger, only he would die.
“Stop,” Laura said, the words coming out breathy and strained. “I have a clean shot.”
Governor Fallow stared at her with so much hate, it felt like he was trying to kill her with a stare.
But her words did the job. He froze on his knees, lifting his hands loosely out to the sides like that was a compromise, instead of putting them all the way in the air. He didn’t take his eyes off Laura.
Nate rolled to his own knees behind Fallow, pulled his handcuffs off his belt, grabbed Fallow’s hands, forced them behind his back. Fallow didn’t take his eyes away from Laura as Nate cuffed him. He didn’t take his eyes off her as Nate read him his rights, told him he was under arrest for murder. And if he carried on watching her when she stepped into the room at last, Laura no longer saw.
Because she was holstering her gun, rushing over to the bed, and taking Amy in her arms—holding the crying little girl and breathing hard in relief, clasping her so tightly, because she knew now she was safe.
CHAPTER FOUR
Laura got up at the sound of the knock at the dining room door. It was the only place she had been able to think of to take Amy. The front of the house was impossible, because she would have to go past her mother—and out there, Laura knew from experience, the press would gather quickly. The back of the house, the open land of the backyard, was not an option because the helicopters would soon be flying over.
The only place Laura could keep her safe, and away from the press, and stop her from seeing more than she needed to, was the dining room. So she’d hidden the two of them away in there, leaving everything else to Nate.
