“Go,” she whispers to the boy as she wipes tears from her face. “Do it just like we talked about. Go down the steps to the back door, and then wait. One of them will be watching the back, and I need to lure him away. When you hear me shout, you count to ten. Slowly. As soon as you get to ten, go through the door and run. Run, Purdue. Make it to the train and don’t look behind you.”
“What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me. Find your way to Canada. Find your uncle. You’ll be safe. No one will be coming for you after today. I promise.”
Purdue shakes his head. “I’m not sure I can do it.”
“Yes, you can. I know you can. You’re strong. Now go, my sweet! There’s no time!”
The boy is torn. The back door leads out of the church, but the back door takes him away from her. He holds Madeleine’s hands tightly, as if he cannot let go. She peels away his fingers and squeezes them. Her smile is hollow, but she fills it with love. Her eyes memorize his face.
“Go.”
And he does.
She watches him fly as fast as his skinny legs can carry him, with his hair flapping like bird wings. She watches the boy until he gets to the steps and disappears, and then it’s all up to her. She must draw the men to the sound of her voice. She must keep them away from Purdue.
Madeleine spins around. She aims the rifle in her hands at the church doors. She shouts as loud as she can so they can hear her. And so Purdue can hear her, too, and begin the countdown to his escape.
One, two, three . . .
“We’re coming out!” she calls. “Don’t shoot, we’re coming out!”
But of course, she knows they will shoot her if they can. They must. They are desperate men.
“Don’t shoot!” she cries again.
She goes to the church door. She tears it open, and her finger closes around the trigger of the rifle. Eight, nine, ten . . .
The train whistle screams again, louder and closer. In her head, she can see the boy bursting through the back door and sprinting through the fields. It won’t take him long to get to the tracks. She hopes he can see the train and feel its thunder. But he isn’t safe. Not yet. First, the men must die.
Madeleine fires into the night.
She aims at any shadow she can see. She wants to kill. She wants to destroy these four men, these animals who would bury a boy in the ground.
There, behind the police car, is a flash of light, a burst of noise. One of them fires back at her, but the shot goes wild. She targets the spot; she fires again, and again, and again, and then she hesitates on the trigger to draw him to his feet. He stands to shoot, but she is faster. In the next instant, she fires once more, with deadly aim. Bullet tunnels through flesh, knocking the man backward. That one is dead. Clean kill. She cannot see which one, but he is in uniform.
One of the deputies. One of the traitors.
Madeleine moves quickly. She runs sideways through the rain, across the church lawn, toward the shoulder of the rural highway. Nearby is movement. Another man runs from her right, from behind the church; the noise and gunfire have drawn him forward and away from Purdue, just as she planned. They are close. He fires. She fires. They exchange bullets like greetings in a foreign language, but he is a nervous young man, unprepared for what it means to take a life.
He misses her entirely, while her bullet goes into his heart.
Another uniform. Another deputy. Two are gone, and two others remain.
Liam, the ginger man. The hired killer and torturer.
And Denis.
Madeleine makes a mistake now. There is something hypnotizing about the body at her feet, the man she has killed. She cannot tear her gaze away from him, and so she waits too long in one place. She is an easy target. A shot erupts behind her, an explosion that reaches her brain only after the pain comes. She looks down at herself, sees blood mixing with the rain, a red river on her chest. A bullet has passed through her shoulder, shredding muscle, breaking bone.
Madeleine sinks, as if falling to the ground, but it’s a ruse. Instead, swallowing down the pain, she whirls around, firing the whole time, firing firing firing. She sweeps the air in a semicircle of bullets. Liam is there, with his wet red hair. He has nowhere to hide. She hits him, hits him again, hits him again. There are at least five bullets in his chest. His face has a look of shock and surprise. His heart is pumping out its last beats, and he knows he is done.
But not quite done.
There is enough hatred left in him to lift his pistol. He aims at Madeleine, pulls the trigger, rips open her stomach. The bullet has the kick of a rocket. The agony is like flame in her bloodstream. She gasps, but then she swings her own rifle up once more, pulls the trigger once more.
A red hole appears in the forehead of the red-haired man. He drops like stone.
Her vision grows cloudy. Darkness encroaches on her. This is more than the darkness of the night. The sharp pain grows dull. She has a sensation of floating, of flying, of the solid earth becoming lava under her feet. She is dying, but she refuses to die yet.
There is one man left. The last man. Madeleine tries to shout. She wills air into her chest, tries to croak out a name above the storm.
“Denis!”
Where is he?
Where is that old man willing to trade the life of a boy for his own sins?
“Hello, Madeleine.”
Yes, he is right there. He is on the dirt road, leaning on his cane. He has watched the battle, watched his men die. They are gone, and he lives, but Madeleine is almost gone, too. They both know it. She grows dizzy, seeing the rain and the church turn upside down. It’s raining on the sky. Her body is heavy, like lead, a weight she cannot sustain. Her legs wither and fall beneath her. She is on her knees now.
Denis has a gun, but he doesn’t need to use it. He simply stands on the road, with the rain sweeping across him, waiting for the inevitable, waiting for Madeleine to die. She must fight back. She tries to bring up her own gun, right it, fire it, but it weighs at least a thousand pounds in her hand. She pulls the trigger. An explosion rocks her ears; smoke fills her nose. A bullet sears the ground, burying itself in the soft grass, the recoil knocking her sideways. Denis looks at her with a sad little smile, still saying nothing.
The wind blows. Not a strong wind, not even a gust, just a whisper of air, but it is enough to take her by the shoulders and lower her to the ground. She is on her back now. The sky is over her head, dark and violent. She stares at it, stares into the silver streaks of rain, blinks in confusion. A breath comes in; a breath goes out. Her lungs are in an ocean, sinking under a red tide of blood.
He is standing directly over her now. Denis. How much time did it take for him to limp down from the road through the tall grass and arrive at her feet? She was unaware of him moving at all. Time is slowing. Soon it will freeze altogether, never going forward, one second hanging in the scale without giving way to the next one.
Denis studies her like a scientist, curious about the moment of death, unmoved by her pain. His gray hair is wet and flat, his body gnarled, his expression not even malevolent, just inexpressibly sure of itself. The elite are accustomed to winning, to getting whatever they want. But he will not win this time. He is too late. Purdue is on the train.
She has no breath left to speak to him, but her triumph is in her eyes. The boy is gone. You’ll never get him.
He simply smiles at her, as if he can read her thoughts. The train whistles again, like a cry of freedom behind the church, but something is wrong. Denis’s head turns the way a snake’s head swivels to watch its prey. When he looks back at her, she can see his eyes agleam.