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“Except for Maris Howell,” Jules pointed out, wondering at the depths of this group’s penchant for evil. “Her reputation was ruined. But this ‘great’ leader. Who is he?”
“Hey.” Eric leaned closer. “Howell got off lucky.” His eyes glittered like hard stones. “I would have killed her.”
“But, then, you’re a prick,” Shay said.
Without thinking, Eric swung a meaty fist. His knuckles bashed into Shay’s jaw. Her head snapped back. Blood slid from the corner of her mouth.
“Stop it!” Jules cried, jumping up from her chair, only to be pressed back by the barrel of Missy’s gun.
“You’re one sick bastard!” Shay spat, and Nell began to cry again, sobbing loudly, wailing in terror.
“I’m gonna love seeing you die,” Eric snarled at Shay as hurried footsteps sounded on the other side of the door. “You, Nell, shut up!”
The scared girl bit her trembling lower lip and blinked, but her tears still rained down her cheeks.
A sharp rap on the wall separating the fallout sheltercum-place of worship resounded.
“Showtime,” Eric said eagerly as he opened the door.
Jules felt all hope die as she watched the enfolding scene.
Tim Takasumi, Kaci Donahue, Roberto Ortega, and Ethan Slade appeared in the doorway. They were all nervous and twitchy, high on adrenaline or God knew what else, all suited in black, all carrying weapons.
“They’ve got him,” Kaci cried, her face a mask of concern. “They’ve got the Leader!” She was freaked, gesturing wildly with her gun.
What? Jules wondered; maybe there was still a chance … She exchanged glances with Shay.
“Who?” Eric demanded. “Who’s got him?”
“That fuckin’ Trent, that’s who!” Ortega said, his eyes dark with fury. “The Leader, he’s fucked up, too. Burned to hell.” He, too, was freaked. Squirrely. “There’s more. They’ve got Zach, too.”
“No!” Missy cried, her smug face dropping into horror. “No way.”
“It’s true!” Takasumi said, nodding his head violently.
They were all charged up, feeding on each other’s anxiety.
Ortega glanced at the hostages, then back to Rolfe. “I’m tellin’ ya, man, he’s locked up. In the clinic. Guarded by that pig Meeker.”
Good, Jules thought, a crack in their defenses, but she wondered how it happened that the Leader was captured. Whoever he was, he wouldn’t have gone down without a fight, and that might mean Trent was hurt. Although Ortega said Trent got the better of their precious freak.
“What do we do now?” Slade demanded, nervous and edgy. “We can’t just sit here.”
Rolfe’s hateful gaze scraped the room to land on his hostages. His eyes narrowed and his lips flattened in renewed determination. “We get him back, that’s what we do.” He hooked a thumb at the hostages. “We’ve got bargaining chips. Either they release him, or we start shooting our little bitches here. And we’ll start with this one,” he said coldly, a spark in his eyes as he leveled his pistol at Shay.
“No!” Jules cried.
With a wicked grin, he pulled the trigger.
Jules screamed.
But he caught the hammer before it hit. “Pop,” he whispered to Shay in dark delight. “You’re dead.”
The clinic became their fortress.
With Zach Bernsen locked in one of the detox rooms and Spurrier on an IV that knocked him out in the infirmary, Trent sat on a gurney in the hallway. Nurse Ayres, lips compressed, glasses perched on the end of her nose, deep circles under her eyes, worked steadily to dislodge the bullet in Trent’s shoulder using only local anesthesia and sterile tweezers.
It hurt like hell.
