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If anxiety hadn’t frozen Beck’s voice, he would have joined the banter. But his heart raced like a thoroughbred’s and his fucking palms wouldn’t stop sweating.
What were the odds they’d all make it out alive? That he’d hold Heavenly again? The only thing they had in their favor was the element of surprise. He hoped it would be enough.
“I’m totally taking you up on that.” Dean grinned.
“You locked and loaded, men?” Seth barked. “This shit show is about to get underway.”
As Liam, Hammer, and Adam answered affirmatively, Beck did something he’d hardly done in the last two decades—he prayed. Quickly and silently, he asked whatever God existed to please let them come through this confrontation unscathed.
“Yeehaw! Let the games begin,” River called from the rooftop deck before crouching behind his fortress of sandbags.
“Remember what I told you,” Seth called out. “We don’t know how much tactical experience these clowns have. If they all start firing at once, we’ll have our answer. If that happens, take cover and wait until they reload, then blow the sons of bitches to hell.”
In the distance, the faint rumble of heavy-duty engines chugging up the mountain cut through the morning. Birds squawked and flew away. Even the air seemed to flee.
Beck swallowed down his anxiety and clapped the PI on the back. “That’s our cue.”
Seth nodded. Together, they jogged onto the porch and hopped over the barricade of sandbags before hunkering down with the others and training their gazes on the end of the drive. Seconds ticked by like hours as the ground began to vibrate and the groaning engines grew louder.
Beck had nearly worn his nerves raw by the time the first truck rounded the curve. Heart tripping against his ribs, he lifted his weapon and flipped off the safety. When the Jeep barreled onto the driveway, his gut twisted at the sight of the massive gun. But seeing his mother and Jed through the windshield replaced his fear with white-hot fury.
That cunt, her psycho puppet, and their misguided army would not kill him today. Beck had too much to live for, especially his hard-fought happily-ever-after with Heavenly and Seth. They weren’t taking that from him, goddamn it.
Beck squeezed his weapon as the cavalcade halted on the far side of the drive, opposite him, aligned across the open space horizontally, setting up battle lines. The Jeep stopped in the open space in between them and the Saint Squad, that mounted machine gun pointed straight at the house.
Fuck.
The engines all fell silent, and the Saint Squad started pouring out of the mouth of the stretched-canvas covers like ants. He counted eighteen, all armed to the teeth with automatic weapons. Well, nineteen once someone took position behind the fifty cal.
Beck tried not to dwell on the fact they were greatly outgunned and outnumbered.
Jed and his mother stepped from the Jeep. The years had not been kind to Esther, but he doubted age had softened her. Beneath those wrinkles and gray hair still lay a fierce, evil bitch. Beside her, Jed lifted his chin, expression smug as he extended his elbow to Esther. She wrapped her bony fingers around his arm and the pair, flanked by their twisted army, stepped to the middle of the drive.
“I can see by your pathetic attempts to reinforce this cabin that you’ve been expecting us.” Then Jed’s gaze fell on Zach’s truck. “And it appears you were right, Mother. My little brother has turned Judas after all.”
“His day of reckoning is here.” Esther raised her hands to the heavens like some exalted profit. “Just like yours, Gideon.”
Her familiar voice no longer scared him as it had when he was a boy, but that didn’t stop bile from rising in the back of his throat.
Beck spit on the wooden porch and glanced at Zacharias. His younger brother had gone pasty white and begun trembling with fear. Jed and Esther’s hold on him was still fresh and poisonous.
“Come out and meet your Maker, Gideon,” Jed shouted. “I command it!”
Crouched beside him, Zach shook his head wildly.
Beck held up a reassuring hand. No way was he stupid enough to volunteer himself for their target practice.
“Show yourself, Satan,” Esther demanded.
“Confess your sins to your rightful Messiah and the almighty Lord,” Jed added.
“Why don’t you start by confessing your own sins, you crazy cocksucker?” Beck bellowed.
A patronizing smile spread across Jed’s face. “I am the Messiah. I am without sin.”
“I hate to break this to you, but you and the elders fucking all those underage virgins is definitely a stain on your soul. So is thinning out the competition for the prettiest little girls by sending boys into the desert to die. But I’ve got to say, incestuously impregnating your own daughter deserves a special place in hell. And now I hear you’re salivating for your eleven-year-old niece, you sick pedophile.”
“Blasphemy!” Esther spat. “He’s purifying our bloodline.”
