There was silence. And then Molly’s breath hitched as Darcy stepped into the light, a gun in her trembling hands.
It was a standoff. They both had weapons, but Rachel was the one who’d proven she wasn’t afraid to use hers.
“You’re just going to kill us both then, Rachel?” Darcy asked now, and Molly thought she might be aiming for caustic, biting. But in the end it just sounded pleading and sad, her voice thin and fragile.
“I wouldn’t have had to,” Rachel snapped, finally a show of emotion, though it was annoyance, not anger. Irritated at a minor inconvenience, swatting at a bug who got too thirsty, drank too much. “But look what you’re making me do, Darcy.”
Molly saw Rachel’s gaze drop to Darcy’s finger when it tightened on the trigger.
“I didn’t kill him, you know.” Rachel said it so casually, as if in passing, as if a bit curious but not too concerned.
Both Darcy and Molly recoiled at the denial as if it had been a slap.
Rachel merely lifted her brows, though Molly thought she could see a thin sheen of sweat at the woman’s temples. “You don’t have to believe me.”
Darcy shook her head, her body following, like a dog drenched in water unexpectedly. “An eye for an eye.”
The way she said it, the certainty, the grimness, had Molly clenching, braced to move, to roll, to escape, even though surely she was too weak to accomplish such a feat.
“An eye for an eye, a death for a death,” Darcy said again, manic, her eyes wild in a way they hadn’t been earlier, even when she’d been shattered.
“He was dying anyway,” Rachel threw out, and it sounded offhand, like her eyes hadn’t just flicked to the gun. But they had, and Molly had seen them do it. Rachel was trying to throw her off. “Noah was dying, Darcy. Whoever killed him, it was a mercy kill.”
A mercy kill. Molly’s head tipped back against the wall as if she could get farther away from the evil that stood before her.
That’s when they heard it.
Tires on gravel once again.
A truck. Two.
Darcy’s eyes flew to the window, but so did Rachel’s.
“You called Hicks?” Rachel guessed, but there was hesitation there, confusion. What was Darcy doing with a gun pointed at Rachel’s chest, then?
A door slammed; there were boots on the ground. Molly wanted to call out, but she couldn’t, her throat dry and scratched up.
“Say it.” Darcy’s attention was back on Rachel, locked on her. “You killed him.”
“Not him.” Rachel lifted a shoulder. “Others, yes. But not him.”
The words didn’t make sense.
“You killed him.” Darcy’s voice shook. Molly watched as she inhaled, exhaled, lifted the barrel just enough so that the damage would be permanent, fatal. “Admit it, you killed him.”
Molly wouldn’t have tried to stop what she knew was coming if she could.
But she did notice Rachel’s lips part slightly, a breath in, just like the one Darcy had taken as she’d sighted her gun.
In the second it took for that to make sense in Molly’s mind, the bullet left the chamber.
Darcy hit the floor without firing a shot.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
LUCY THORNE
Now
The crack of a gunshot was unmistakable. It sliced into the marrow of Lucy’s bones, took up space there. You failed, it said. Loud and clear.
Hicks had pulled in behind her, his feet hitting the gravel almost before the truck even stopped moving.
No matter what they walked in on next, though, they had failed to stop it.
Hicks paused beside her, and then they were both moving again, muscle memory kicking in where the brain lagged. Clear the room, find the weapons. Find the body.
The Dawsons’ house was small, easy to get through.
Whoever had taken the shot was in the kitchen.
Hicks stopped in the hallway, eyes on Lucy, following her lead.
Lucy stepped into the room, taking in the chaos in one sweep.
Molly on the floor. Screaming. Alive.
Darcy on the floor. Bleeding. Maybe alive. Less certain.
Rachel standing. Gun in hand. Definitely fucking alive.
“Drop your weapon.” It was out of Lucy’s mouth before she even thought it.
“She was going to shoot me,” Rachel said, her voice going soft and pleading. “She’s crazy, you know she is.”
Lucy didn’t take her eyes off Rachel. “Drop your weapon,” she repeated.
Rachel licked her lips and turned the gun sideways so that it was pointing at the wall. She didn’t let it fall, though. “She was going to hurt Molly. She snapped, Agent Thorne. It was never Eliza, it was Darcy.”
“No, no, no, no,” Molly muttered from the floor, but Lucy didn’t dare look away from Rachel.
She must not have known what had happened with Josiah. She must not have known about the text Darcy had sent.
You can’t stop me, but you can arrest me.
Maybe, maybe if Lucy had seen only that, she’d buy Rachel’s story. But Josiah had panicked.
And everything that hadn’t made sense in the shed—being left with weapons, her hands untied, Josiah’s breathlessness—now did. The puzzle finally complete.
Lucy had been distracted by the idea of power, of Josiah wanting to protect everything he stood to lose if the Church came crashing down around him along with the shield laws. But it wasn’t only him that would have been demolished.
A motive, finally found.
“Drop. Your. Weapon,” Lucy said.
Molly was still muttering on the floor, but at least she’d stopped screaming. Darcy was unconscious, possibly bleeding out. There was a static pause where Lucy thought Rachel would try to stick to her story.
But something flickered across her face, and the fear she’d been wearing almost convincingly fell away.
“You would never understand,” Rachel finally said, her voice cold, disdainful. The gun clattered to the floor, and Lucy advanced, still cautious in case Rachel had any other weapons. “Our mission is bigger than one sick child. I did what I had to do. I always do what needs to be done, do what others are too weak to stomach.”
“Yeah, not interested in your manifesto on why you like killing kids,” Lucy muttered.
Hicks was alert behind her, the air charged with his nerves. But he didn’t say anything, didn’t try to take over, just edged with the same precision as Lucy toward Darcy, controlling the chaos, eliminating the threat.
Rachel meanwhile was spouting some sort of propaganda, some sort of plea, some sort of righteous prayer, some sort of something that Lucy didn’t give a shit about. Rachel was a serial killer, just like any other. Just because her justification looked a little different from the norm didn’t make it worth listening to.
Instead Lucy was busy watching Rachel’s hands, making sure she didn’t reach for any other weapons, watching her eyes dart around the kitchen to look for a possible escape route, watching each twitch and breath, trying to anticipate the next move of a cornered animal.
It was because Lucy was so focused on Rachel, confident that Hicks was on Darcy, that she didn’t notice Molly was no longer on the floor until the girl was standing just behind Lucy’s shoulder.
There was a breath, just a breath, between the soft snick of the gun being cocked and the resulting crack as the trigger was pulled.