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He slipped, pulling Samantha by the noose over him as he yanked on the rosary.
Bentz flew out into the cavern.
The killer was struggling to kill her, his head flung back, the cords on his neck visible as he stretched the rosary.
Gasping and flinging her body weight in the chair, Samantha struggled, but her face, which had been so red, was draining of color.
Bentz didn’t wait.
Father John’s head was exposed.
He aimed.
Fired.
Blam!
The gun blast echoed loudly in the chamber.
Father John’s head popped backward, his sunglasses flying off. His body jerked once, and then went slack. Sam was still in the chair, lying over the now-dead form of her captor. Still was fighting to breathe.
Bentz rushed forward, yanked the noose of bloodred beads from her neck, and heard, as if in the far, far distance, the wail of sirens over her own ragged gasps for air.
“You’ll be all right,” he assured her, though he didn’t believe it himself. “You’re going to be okay.”
He righted the chair, cut her bindings with his jackknife, and she scooted across the wet stones of the floor, scrambling as far away from the inert form of Father John as she could.
“Ty?” she croaked. “Where’s—?”
“With the boys. He’ll be here.” With one last look at the dead man to make sure that he wasn’t moving, he knelt beside her, noticed the deep red gashes all around her throat, cuts in the unique pattern of a rosary. “Hang in. You’re going to be all right. It’s over,” he told her, and sent up yet another prayer that he wasn’t lying, that now, finally, the Rosary Killer was dead. Now and forever.
CHAPTER 41
The next afternoon, as the sun was sending rays through the dirty office windows, Bentz was seated at his desk at the station. He held his badge in one hand, rubbing it, thinking of the years he’d spent on the force, wearing this piece of metal, being shielded by it, believing it made him the man he was. Now it was time to turn it in. As he sat in his desk chair for the last time, he heard rattling as the painting crew tore down sheets of plastic that had been a barrier from the construction zone.
The renovation to the department was about over. After more than two months of delays, Montoya would have his own office again.
With a new partner.
Hopefully a younger partner.
Unless Bentz chickened out.
So far he hadn’t. He’d promised Olivia that he’d hang it all up, kick back and enjoy life, and spend more time with the family. “If you really can’t give it up,” she’d told him, “you can go into private practice.”
“Become a private dick?” Bentz had scoffed at the idea. “No way!” Now, though, he was rolling it around in his mind. It would be safer and something to do. He really didn’t see himself spending hours upon hours fishing or trotting Ginny to toddler preschool, or taking up—what? Gardening? Bow hunting?
“Give me a break,” he muttered.
Montoya walked into the office just then, grim as he had been since the day before when he’d arrested his brother and sent him off to Oregon.
“You okay?” Bentz asked as Montoya dropped into his chair.
“Do I look okay?” New lines bracketed his mouth and eyes and he appeared not to have slept for a week.
“You look like shit.”
“Feel like it, too.” Scowling, he glanced out the window.
