CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Rachel heard Jack holler out in pain. When her backside hit the floor, she instantly sprang back up, ignoring the quick burst of pain that roared in her left hip. She barely saw the red ribbon of freshly drawn blood across Jack's arm as she sprang back up. She hesitated in squeezing off a round, always wanting the firing of her service weapon to be a last resort.

Instead, when she sprang up from the floor, she saw that she had a clear path to their assailant's ribs. She delivered a perfect and hard jab into the man's side, and the effect was immediate. The figure went to the floor in a heap, the knife clattering away along the scarred hardwood.

Rachel stood over him with her gun pointed at the prone man before she fully registered the sting of aggression in the room. The barrel steady, she aimed it directly at Theo's heaving chest.

"Don't move another inch," she commanded, her voice eerily calm amidst the chaos. "Are you Theo Barnes?"

But the man was too busy sucking in air from the punch to answer properly. Rachel thought she'd maybe punched a little too hard; she'd likely snapped a rib or two. She looked over at Jack and saw that he seemed to be fine. He was cradling his arm to his chest, blood dropping freely.

"You okay?" she asked.

"I think so. It barely dug in, I think."

Theo remained crumpled on the ground, a sob escaping his lips as he clutched at his own side, where pain seemed to have taken root. Tears welled up, carving clear paths down his dirt-streaked face.

"I had to do it," he gasped out between ragged breaths. "They were all vile. Corrupt! I had to stop them…had to…"

As Barnes did his best to speak, Rachel noticed the pallor of his skin, the way his body shook—not from fear, but from something internal, consuming him from the inside out. She wondered if maybe she had broken a rib and it had perhaps punctured a lung. Either that, or he was faking it, trying to lure them into a false sense of safety.

"Please," Theo whimpered, his body trembling slightly in the space directly between the kitchen and living room. "Please…you don't understand. I have…"

He winched and moaned, gritting his teeth as he let out a whimper. Rachel knew this sort of pain; she'd lived with it for a few months. She didn't think he was faking. Something in him was broken, and he was coming to some sort of point of no return.

"You don't understand the pain," he whimpered. "Make it stop. I can't... I can't take it anymore. Just shoot me…"

Rachel kept her gun trained on him, yet her mind raced, filling in blanks. Something wasn't right here. There was more to this, something they'd not expected. But what were they missing?

"Rachel?" Jack's voice was strained, but she didn't dare divert her attention from the broken man before them.

"Wait…"

The response was clipped as she continued to assess Theo's condition. The evidence was stacking up before her eyes—the uncontrollable shaking, the sweat beading on his brow despite the cool air, the unhinged look of a man driven not by malice, but by deep, unrelenting torment.

"Please," Theo begged again, his voice barely above a whisper. His eyes, once fiery with conviction, now shimmered with tears. "Just end it. I can't live with this agony."

Rachel's finger remained firmly on the trigger, but her heart thudded with an unexpected pang of compassion. What plagued this man ran deeper than guilt or madness. Something was physically tearing him apart, and it was etching lines of suffering into his every feature. And she didn't think her single jab to the ribs had done it.

"Theo, what are you—"

But she was interrupted by a soft sound from elsewhere in the house. A strange sort of splashing noise. And then, having heard that, she heard something else. It was a noise they should have heard when they'd entered but it was an almost ambient, background noise.

Running water. And then the splashing made more sense, especially when partnered with the small, muffled cry they'd heard earlier. Rachel stiffened, her instincts screaming at her to investigate.

"Go," Jack said, nodding toward the sound of the running water, clearly seeing the sudden shift in Rachel's focus. "You'd be more help than I would right now," he said, indicating his cut arm, "and I don't see Barnes getting up at any point." He said this, though he'd reclaimed his grip on his Glock, pointing it in Barnes's general direction.

Rachel nodded and pivoted on her heel, Glock still in hand, and strode toward the sound of running water. Each step thudded ominously against the hardwood floor, leading her to a bathroom midway down the hallway.

As she reached the bathroom door, the scene froze her for just a moment. It felt as if every muscle in her body was demanding her to move, but as every ounce of her body tried to do so, there was a malfunction somewhere within it all.

Natalie King, the missing actress they had been searching for, was submerged in a bathtub filled to the brink. All her clothes were still on, and her body was anchored by bricks. Her limbs were tied together behind her back, but she was doing her best to free herself, bucking wildly as the water continued to run into the rub. Water had splashed out all along the floor in her attempt to get out. She was nearly submerged completely, just the very surface of her face and her nose above the water. She'd not been able to yell for help because there were several strips of duct tape over her mouth.

Rachel holstered her gun in a fluid motion and lunged forward. She slipped on the wet tiled floor a bit but maintained her balance. She turned off the water first and then grabbed Natalie's shoulders, moving her into a sitting position, which was more difficult than it should have been with the presence of the bricks that had been tied to her legs. Her hands, trained for precision and quick action, worked frantically to remove the oppressive weights, and then worked on the bindings. As she worked, she wondered a bit morbidly if these same bricks had been purchased when Barnes had purchased the brick used to smash Rebecca Clarke's head.

With a strength born of sheer adrenaline and determination, Rachel grasped Natalie under her arms and hauled her out of the tub. Water cascaded over the sides and soaked her pants, but Rachel barely noticed, her focus razor-sharp on the woman gasping for air in her arms. Natalie coughed and spluttered, her chest heaving as she fought to reclaim her breath.

"It's okay…you're okay now," Rachel murmured, her voice steady despite the pounding of her heart. She scanned Natalie's face, looking for signs of consciousness, relieved to find the dazed but unmistakable glint of life in her eyes. She was slightly in shock, understandably, but she seemed to have her wits about her.

Natalie nodded, trying her best not to weep, to focus solely on drawing in breath. "Thank you…thank you…" she gasped.

"Can you sit up?" Rachel asked.

Natalie nodded and, with Rachel's help, was able to move into a sitting position on the wet floor with her back resting against the cabinet beneath Theo Barnes's sink.

"Okay. Can you tell me wh—"

"Rachel!" Jack's voice interrupted, calling through the house with urgency. "I'm calling an ambulance. Something's not right with Barnes!"

Rachel processed the information, but it was hard to give a damn about the health of a killer when she was looking into the face of the woman who'd nearly been his fourth victim. "Breathe, Natalie. You're okay now." Her words were both a command and reassurance as she watched Natalie's chest rise and fall with shallow breaths.

"Yeah…I'm…I'm good." She was still crying, but she was keeping it mostly under control.

"We have the man who did this to you," Rachel said. "That was my partner you just heard. Can you stay here for just a minute or two while I go check up on him?"

Natalie nodded, but her eyes looked frightened.

"I'll be back before you know it," Rachel said.

She then retraced her steps to where she'd downed Barnes. She saw that in the few moments she'd been gone Jack had wrapped his arm in a makeshift tourniquet fashioned from a tea towel—crimson staining the white fabric. His eyes met Rachel's, conveying a sharp pain but also a silent acknowledgment of control over the situation.

"Cut's not deep," he grunted, nodding at his arm. "I'm honestly more worried about him." His gaze shifted to a crumpled figure on the floor.

Barnes was curled up, a shell of the man who had just wielded a knife with deadly intent. His body convulsed, muscles contracting violently as if trying to fold inward, away from the world. Foam flecked the corners of his mouth, his eyes rolled back in the throes of what appeared to be a seizure.

"Jesus..." Rachel exhaled, kneeling beside Barnes. She knew protocol, knew that moving him could cause more harm than good. But her instincts screamed to do something—anything—to alleviate the sight of human suffering.

"Help is on the way," Jack said, his voice steady despite the adrenaline that still coursed through them both. He glanced back at the door they had broken down not long ago, the entryway to a nightmare they were still navigating.

Rachel's fingers hovered over Barnes's pulse, the erratic thrumming like a Morse code of distress. His body was locked in convulsions, beyond the reach of her reassurance or commands. She could only watch as his muscles tensed and released in violent rhythm.

"Can you hear me, Barnes?" she asked, her voice low but clear.

There was no flicker of recognition in his eyes, just the whites showing as they darted beneath fluttering lids. Her training had prepared her for many things, but the raw helplessness gnawing at her now was an unwelcome guest. What did it say about her heart and her stature as an agent that even though this man was a killer, her first reaction was to help?

"Jack," she said, turning her head to look at him, her expression softening momentarily with concern. "I found Natalie in the bathroom. She was bound, submerged in the tub. If we'd been any later—" Rachel let the sentence hang, the gravity of the situation settling like lead in the air between them.

"Thank God you got to her," Jack replied, pressing a cloth to his own wound—a futile attempt to stanch the slow seep of blood.

"An ambulance is coming for Barnes and Natalie," he added, meeting Rachel's gaze with an unspoken understanding that their work here was far from over. "This will be over in just a few minutes."

Rachel nodded, about to rise and check on Natalie once more, when her phone rang. She quickly grabbed it out of her pocket, the screen casting an eerie glow in the dim space between the kitchen and living room.

"This is Gift," she answered curtly, her eyes never leaving Barnes, who lay shuddering on the linoleum floor.

"Agent Gift? This is Agent Leery."

The name registered just faintly at the edges of her mind. She knew the name but couldn't quite place it.

"Who?"

"Agent Leery," he said. "One of the four agents on rotation watching your house. Agent Gift… you need to come home."

The words sent a cold spike of alarm down her spine. Home? Why? And even if something was wrong, why was Leery calling instead of Carson?

"What's happened?" she asked, her tone sharpening with authority and a hint of dread.

When he answered, Rachel felt as if an entire sheet of ice had cut her heart in half. She looked up at Jack, her eyes wide with panic, and for a terrifying moment, she thought she was going to pass out. She was helpless to listen to Leery as he explained what had happened at her house as the world teetered on the brink of madness around her.