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“Clare!” Definitely coming through a phone speaker.
She found the mobile device on the front pew. A video call displaying Selena, bound with a gag below her chin as though she’d shifted it off her face.
Clare lifted the phone but kept her attention on the sanctuary around her. Selena wasn’t here—she was somewhere else. The background of the video call wasn’t here or any of the buildings around her, or the basements and tunnels below.
“Are you okay?”
Selena started to cry. She had a bruise on her cheekbone, and blood at the corner of her mouth. “You need to come get me.”
“I will, honey. I promise.”
Someone started to laugh, low and mean. The phone shifted. “You expected things to go smoothly, I guess?”
“Hardly.” Aaron had surprised them multiple times so far. Clare walked back to the front of the building.
“You tell anyone, I kill her.” Aaron held a knife to Selena’s throat. Stained with blood. The knife he’d used on that cop?
“So far you haven’t killed anyone. That I know of. You probably want to keep it that way unless you want the cops to hunt you down.” She figured they would hunt him down anyway, but it would be good if he got complacent and messed up. It would make their job a whole lot easier.
“You want her back.”
“And you want the diamonds,” she countered. “So why the runaround? Tell me where you are.”
“Mile marker seven. Ditch the cop.”
Clare walked to a credenza in the vestibule to grab a pencil. “And then?”
“Walk a mile up the trail, there’s a cabin. The girl will be inside.”
“Anything else?”
Selena stared to speak. She got out barely a cry before Aaron ended the call. Clare’s stomach clenched. She looked out a gap in the front door and spotted the rest of Gage’s SWAT team. If he rolled up to the cabin with her, Aaron could get spooked and kill Selena.
Clare only needed a few minutes’ head start.
SWAT moved to surround the building.
She headed for the back exit and raced across the grass behind the old church. In the trees, she sent Gage a text that she was all right. Selena wasn’t here.
She ran through the trees to the garage behind the house two doors down. An old Pontiac sat in the garage. It barely ran, but she prayed then and hotwired it.
The ignition caught, and the car rumbled to life.
Her phone started to ring.Gage calling.
Instead of answering, she texted him the information Aaron had given her. She’d have a couple of minutes at best, Gage would be right behind her, and the SWAT team would be mad. But they’d back her up.
Clare bit her lip. She wanted to pray on the way to the mile marker, but the words didn’t want to come. Selena needed to be saved, and Clare was the one who had to do it.
For Kara.
If God wanted to help her with it, then that was His prerogative. It wouldn’t work unless God wanted a relationship with her as much as she might want one with Him. Relationships had to have balance. Ember had told her God was overwhelming with His love, and Clare had to admit she wanted to know what that felt like.
Give me peace, God.
Her phone rang again. Clare left it in the car and hoofed it up the trail, clutching the phone that had been in the church.
The cabin looked like a half-a-million-dollar structure that had been finished only a month ago. The weather had barely touched the exterior, and the surrounding grass still had lines between each strip of sod.
