There was a faint rattle—padlock against wood. The door.
Lucy’s eyes slipped along the walls again. Was this the best place to hide? She had surprise on her side, and that was a potent force. She didn’t want to waste that advantage.
She didn’t hold her breath, but rather took shallow, calm drags that wouldn’t give away her position, the way a gasp would following too long without oxygen. The air was heavy with manure, and it slipped into her body, into her nostrils, her throat, her lungs. She ignored it.
Metal clattered against metal as the person worked the heavy locks.
Another second passed. Then another. Lucy eyed the shovel once more. She’d just decided to risk going for it when the door swung open.
Lucy curled herself down smaller, deep in the shadows, her shirt sticking to the sweat on her lower back.
There was some shuffling against concrete, and then a soft curse. It shivered along her spine.
She recognized the voice.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
LUCY THORNE
Now
“Come on out, Agent Thorne,” Josiah Cook called.
Lucy concentrated on breathing, still thinking about the shovel. It wasn’t in easy reach, but it was still doable. Or maybe she could distract him, lure him into the back of the shed somehow while she slipped out behind him.
Because he’d left the door open, she could tell.
Something’s wrong, something’s wrong, something’s . . .
But it made sense. Of course it was Josiah. The man at the heart of all this, the protector of the Church, the defender of the shield laws. The man with the power who had everything to lose.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
Lucy glanced behind her. Although the tractor provided good coverage, it had trapped her a bit, putting her far away from the exits. It would be tough to get him close enough to her to leave a direct path to the door.
So a weapon it would be.
The clay pots were too heavy to maneuver, so she dismissed those. There was the shovel, but there might be something even better. Outside, the clouds must have shifted, because the light streaming in was brighter, reached farther into the nooks and crannies and corners than it had before.
And that’s when she saw it.
It was old-fashioned. A musket, maybe. In any other situation, Lucy might have doubted it was operational. But knowing this type of farmer, it was probably kept in good enough condition to shoot.
“I just want to talk,” Josiah continued, and for the first time since he’d walked in the door, Lucy actually listened to his voice. It was trembling, breathy. Panic and desperation crawling at the edges.
He certainly didn’t sound like a seasoned serial killer. No, he sounded more like a cornered animal.
She didn’t know if that helped or hurt her cause. Cornered animals could be far more dangerous than even the sleekest, most confident predator.
Lucy eyed the musket. It wasn’t that far away, but going for it would force her out from behind the tractor. There was a good chance he had some kind of gun, and taking the chance to get the one on the wall would put her out in the open, make her vulnerable. She ran the odds in her head. The payoff would be big, the risk moderate.
Josiah was still talking, walking the perimeter of the room.
Her hands brushed the floor, searching, searching, searching, and then. Yes. There. A rock. Small enough to almost be called a pebble, dragged in with the tractor wheel. But she tested it in her palm. It had enough heft to be thrown, to make noise.
She waited, waited until Josiah was close to the back but on the other side of the shed. There was only one shot at this.
When he was where she wanted him, she breathed in, let herself count to three, and lobbed the rock toward the far-right corner.
Josiah swung wildly, and then there was a blast. She didn’t let herself think about the fact that he’d been ready to blow a hole through her torso with the shotgun. Lucy just rolled out of her tuck across the floor and in one smooth motion pushed to her feet, grabbing the musket from the wall.
It was heavier than she’d expected, but she let her body compensate as she turned to face Josiah, weapon already lifted, sighting on him without hesitation.
He was red, sweating, visibly trembling as his eyes darted between her and the hole he’d just put in the side of his shed. “I didn’t . . .”
“Right,” she drawled out. She didn’t even know if the weapon she held was loaded, but there was something to be said for confidence, faked or otherwise. “You didn’t mean to hurt me. Except that hole in the wall would have been my chest.”
“It’s not . . .” Josiah’s voice shook. When before he’d always seemed bigger than his short frame, now he just looked small, the power, the charisma dimmed enough to see the empty man beneath it. “I panicked.”
“You came in here with a shotgun, Josiah,” Lucy said, calm despite the pain, the fear. “Can you honestly say you weren’t planning on using it?”
Josiah’s eyes dropped to the weapon in his hands as if he’d forgotten he was holding it.
Something’s wrong. None of this made sense. The motive, yes. But nothing else.
“Josiah, drop the gun,” she tried, just to see.
He didn’t, but he also didn’t lift the barrel any higher, either. When he responded, it was in a whisper. “You don’t understand.”
Heartbreak. That’s what that emotion trembling in the words was.
“Okay,” she said, shifting just a step toward the door. “Try me.”
He glanced up at that, mouth slightly open as if surprised. “I . . .”
“Josiah,” she said again in her most soothing voice. We all need a reminder that we’re human. “Josiah. I don’t know what you’ve done so far, but shooting me would be a line you can’t uncross.”
So was killing a twelve-year-old boy, but Lucy didn’t mention that part. She was just trying to get him to drop the gun.
But it had been the wrong tactic. His fingers tightened on the grip, and he lifted it once again so that it was aimed directly at her heart. “It’s too late.”
“It’s never too late.” Lucy shifted. She was nowhere close to safety, but there was a large worktable running the length of the wall behind her. If she could just sidestep the piles of debris blocking it, she could throw herself beneath its shadows. She would at least be harder to hit that way. “It’s never too late to make the right choice.”
At that Josiah let out a little hiccuping sob. “Do you believe that?”
What had been the rest of that verse? She was too frazzled, too high on adrenaline to recall the actual words. But it had been something about falling short, about being redeemed. “Your life is made up of a series of actions, Josiah. One alone doesn’t damn you.”
Josiah laughed, but it was wet, almost mocking. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”
“Tell me, then,” Lucy said, quiet and commanding. His body bent toward her as if he wanted to drop to his knees, as if she were his confessor.
He looked up, met her eyes. “Do you think you’re a good person?”
Lucy took another step to the right. She didn’t care about this bullshit. “Are any of us?”
His shoulders collapsed at that. “I was just trying to keep it all together. That’s all.”