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Get up! Get up! For the love of God … Move!
But he couldn’t. His brain couldn’t connect with his muscles and in a last instant of clarity, Cooper Trent knew he was a dead man.
CHAPTER 42
Jules, hiding in the shadows of the frigid night, watching Nell and Shaylee being marched into the chapel, took off after them. Too many kids had died already, been murdered, and now her sister was being marched to her death, a gun pressed to Shay’s back. No way could she let this happen.
Fingers clenched over the pistol Trent had given her, Jules kept the small group in sight following at a distance. Shay was walking strangely, her hands behind her back, the person with the pistol shoving her, steering her.
Maybe she should shoot into the air to alert someone—anyone!—but she couldn’t. Shaylee’s captor could lose control, fire and kill her sister in an instant. The same horrible ending would happen if she tried to bluff her way and aim her pistol at the man pushing Shaylee forward. The way Jules saw it, she had no choice but to follow them into the chapel.
God help me. Oh, please, and be with her.
Prodding Shaylee, the biggest of them, a tall man or boy, herded the group inside. He was confident, knew his way around, didn’t bother with any lights.
Jules was only a few steps behind. She moved swiftly and silently, managing to catch the door before it slammed shut. Quickly, she slid into the shadowed warmth of the interior, the door clicking, uninterrupted behind her. She caught her breath as she got her bearings, then softly she crept through the nave. She heard footsteps ahead of her, the sound of feet shuffling along the hallway, then onto the staircase, muted by the carpet. She reached the landing, and thought the footsteps were heading down to the basement rather than up to the loft.
What was down there?
A dead end. Be careful.
Pistol clenched in her fingers, Jules started down the stairs, keeping a short distance between the group of four and herself. At the bottom of the stairs, someone clicked on a flashlight and she stopped midway down, barely daring to breathe. If the light were shined upward, she would be caught in its thin, hard beam.
“Let’s go! Move it!” a gruff voice ordered and the flashlight’s beam turned away from the stairs, bobbing along the hallway as the group navigated through the dark, tangled corridors.
Heart in her throat, Jules inched along the hallway behind them. What were they planning to do to Shay? Flashes of Maeve’s dead body cut through her brain, and she vowed nothing so vile would happen to her sister, the girl she’d loved and protected, despite all of Shay’s flaws. Jules wouldn’t allow a fate as brutal and macabre as Nona’s or Maeve’s to happen to her sister. Or anyone else. She had to stop the obscene killing spree and stop it now.
Nervous sweat collected on her spine as she inched forward, pressed against the wall, trailing behind as they proceeded through the warren of offices and halls.
Farther and farther into the darkness.
Her gaze fixed on that bobbing, weaving light ahead.
She swallowed back her fear and cast aside worries that she would stumble or in some way alert the attackers that she was on their heels.
Keep your cool, just be steady, she told herself, but was reminded of her nightmare, of walking through a darkened house, slowly following the sound of dripping water until, at last, she came across her father’s dead body.
In the dream she held a knife.
Tonight she had a pistol, and damn it all to hell, she’d use it if it meant saving Shaylee.
Just as she would have used the knife to save her father.
No way was she going to replay the same scene with its new cast of characters. Jules wasn’t about to come across her sister’s dead body. Not tonight.
She noticed the light disappear, as if it had turned a corner, outlining the wall in a faint, eerie glow. It’s now or never! Heart racing, dread propelling her, her gloved fingers trailing against the wall until she touched nothing, she followed.
At the corner she turned.
Took one step.
A bright, glaring light flashed in front of her eyes.
She gasped. Lashing out with the gun, she struck the flashlight down.
“Bitch!” a deep voice snarled. Eric Rolfe.
Blinded, she tried to back away. Someone jumped her from behind. Her attacker’s weight pushed her face down on to the thin carpet. She tasted dust and fibers, but fought. Twisting. Flailing. Hitting with the damned gun. Her attacker was breathing heavily, but wouldn’t give an inch. Jules’s eyes were still struggling to focus, the flashlight trained on her.
