Chapter Thirty-Two

The rifle slapped against Evan's back as he raced after Blue. Snow had begun falling hard, blanketing the road in a thin white carpet. Soon it would be too hard for Blue to track Marlie's scent at all.

Evan's stomach knotted with more fear than he'd ever known, and the worst-case scenario played out in his head—that he wouldn't find her in time. If at all.

They came to a sharp bend in the road. Blue circled, as if he'd lost the track. A second later, he picked it up again but slowed to a walk. With every step they took, the knot in Evan's stomach tightened. The trail was disintegrating faster by the second.

Through the falling snow, he could just make out a wood shed looming in the distance. Two people stood in front of the shed. As he got closer, fear splintered his heart. Marlie and Noah .

Jesus . Standing behind them…was Frank Manello, pointing a gun at Marlie's back. Both she and Noah were between him and Manello. Evan had no clear shot.

Dammit . No time for a plan that wouldn't get them all blasted full of holes.

With a flick of his wrist, he signaled for Blue to go around the backside of the shed. His dog took off, galloping behind the small building and disappearing from view. Between him and Blue, they'd hit Manello from two directions. If luck was on their side, they'd take him off guard. If not, Evan would be pushing up daisies.

Judging by how loudly Manello was shouting, time had just run out.

Evan pounded down the road, eating up the distance and heading straight for Manello. "Hey!" he shouted, needing a distraction while Blue hit him from the other side.

Blue bounded around the far side of the shed, looking to Evan for a command. "Attack!" Evan shouted, running faster than he'd ever run in his life.

From behind the shed, Blue leaped into the air, latching onto Manello's arm just as Evan plowed into the guy's chest. They all slammed to the ground. The butt of the rifle dug into his bad shoulder, sending stabbing pain to his entire upper body.

He rolled to his side, searching for Manello's gun. "Marlie, get out of here!"

From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed her dragging Noah around the shed.

Evan and Manello both grabbed the weapon at the same time. Manello gripped the handle, his finger on the trigger as he aimed the muzzle at Evan.

He clamped down on the man's hand with his own, preventing the slide from racking back and the gun from firing.

With his other hand, Manello pounded his fist on the side of Evan's head. Evan tightened his fingers harder on the gun. If he let go, the slide would kick forward, and a hot round of lead would lodge in the center of his chest.

Blue jumped back in, growling and biting down hard on Manello's arm and making the man scream.

Manello got in one good punch to Evan's head. For a moment, his vision blurred, clearing in time to see Manello now in full possession of the gun. Blue shook his head back and forth, his jaw still locked around Manello's bleeding wrist.

The guy kicked at his dog, getting in a blow to Blue's ribs. Unable to unsling the rifle sandwiched between his back and the ground, Evan yanked the Glock from his holster. Snow pelted his face like shards of ice, partially obscuring his vision. If he couldn't focus, he might hit Blue.

Still lying on the ground, he wiped the snow from his face, then slid his finger to the trigger. Manello swung the gun, aiming at Blue's ribcage. Evan squeezed off a shot.

The crack of the gun blasted the eerie quiet. Manello fell to his side and slumped to the ground. Not taking any chances the guy was still alive, Evan remained aimed in, breathing hard. Manello didn't move and probably never would again. The only clear shot, without risking hitting his dog, had been to the head.

"Blue!" he shouted. For a moment, he couldn't breathe. His dog had plastered his body to the ground as he'd been trained to do at the sound of gunfire. But he wasn't getting up. If that sonofa—

When Blue snorted and scrambled to his feet, Evan let out the unsteady breath he'd been holding. His dog was okay.

"Evan!" Marlie rushed over as Evan rose unsteadily. "Are you all right?"

Noah knelt, holding open his arms. "Blue! I knew you'd come!" Blue made whimpering sounds as he frantically licked Noah's face.

"I'm okay." He retrieved Manello's gun and stuck it in the back of his waistband. Blood seeped from a hole next to his left ear. The snow beneath the other side of his head quickly turned red, melting from the heat of the man's blood and cranial matter that had gushed from the exit wound.

He put two fingers to Manello's carotid. Nothing, not even a light thump. Reality crashed over him, draining the adrenaline in his system faster than water from a sieve.

He'd just killed the one person in the world who knew exactly what happened to his sister. Then again, Manello may have done the dirty work, but someone else knew. Of that he was certain.

Evan turned to Marlie and Noah, assessing them for outward signs of injury and finding none. Except for the blossoming red mark on Marlie's cheek that sure looked like she'd been hit. He ground his jaw, willing his next words not to fly from his mouth on a wave of anger because he should have gotten here sooner. So he could have smashed his own fist into Manello's jaw. "Is everyone all right?"

"We're fine. We're fine ," Marlie repeated, as if not quite believing it herself.

Noah lifted his head and was instantly rewarded with a lick to the mouth. "Yuck." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Took you guys long enough."

"Yeah." Helicopter crash and all. Now wasn't the time to get into it. "Sorry about that."

Noah pointed to Manello's body. "Are those his brains leaking out?"

Evan choked down a laugh. After facing incalculable danger and imminent death with the courage of a Navy SEAL, Noah had reverted to exactly what he was: a kid.

"Evan." Marlie blinked, her lovely eyes bluer against the backdrop of her pale complexion and the white flakes landing on her hair and cheeks. "You came."

Again, he forced the rage inside him to stand down. Manello had laid hands on her. If he hadn't already killed the man, he'd do it again. So many emotions rolled through him, so many unsaid words that should have been said before he'd let her walk away.

The radio crackled, startling him and preventing him from baring his heart and soul right then and there. "Evan, you there?" came Deck's voice.

He yanked the radio from his belt. "Ten-four. I found Marlie and Noah. They're okay. Did you find anyone else?"

"Uh, yeah. You'd better get back here. We've got a situation."

By the time they hoofed it back to the mausoleum, the wind had strengthened, whipping and twisting the inch or so of snow that had fallen into snow devils. Deck and Thor waited for them by the road. Brett and Blaze stood next to a SWAT sergeant guarding the front door.

"You're not gonna believe this," Deck said. It wasn't the words his friend used, so much as the thoroughly disturbed look on his face that set off alarm bells in Evan's head. "Six adults and lots of kids. About twenty of them, ages from twelve to eighteen, plus one seriously bawling baby. Some of those kids are definitely on the board in the war room, but here's the problem." Deck arched a brow. "The adults are surrounded by the kids. They're using them as human shields, and we can't get to them. They're refusing to come with us."

Evan's stomach went harder than a rock. He'd seen this before with kidnapped children. If too much time went by, they started to love their captors, or at least rely on them to the point that leaving them was worse. "It won't be easy, but somehow, we've gotta separate them. Marlie, take Noah to the truck and stay there." He pointed to the produce truck he'd commandeered, his mind already spinning with possible approaches he could make to sway the kids into leaving without creating a giant shitstorm that would put them in danger.

"Wait!" Noah grabbed his arm. "Let me talk to them. I almost convinced some of them to leave with me when I escaped. The others will never leave because they don't understand they've been lied to, and that this whole place is a lie. They know me. I can help."

What he was saying made sense. Hearing the ugly truth from one of their peers would carry more weight than hearing it from a bunch of badge-carrying cops they'd never seen before. Some of them had probably even had run-ins with the police, which wouldn't help matters. Even surrounded by a battalion of cops, taking Noah in there could still put him in danger. Marlie was his legal guardian. The decision was hers to make.

"C'mon, Evan," Noah said. "I know I can help, and if Caleb's in there with them, I know he'll help, too."

In a protective gesture, Marlie draped an arm around Noah's shoulders. "Okay, but I'm coming with you."

"No." Evan began shaking his head. Hell no . Putting Noah in another potentially dangerous situation was bad enough. He wouldn't do it again to Marlie, too.

"Don't you shake your head at me." She waggled a finger at his face. "Counseling kids is my specialty. It's what I do, so give me a chance to do it. Where he goes"—she looked at Noah—"I go. That's the deal. Take it or leave it."

As it had when he'd seen Manello's gun aimed at her back, fear raced through his veins like an evil drug. Dragging her into this less than ten minutes after she'd nearly been shot in the back… He didn't know if his heart could take seeing her in danger again, but she was right, and they both knew it. He took an unsteady breath. "Let's go."

At the front door, Brett stopped him. "Evelyn and Adama are here."

Hearing their names made him grind his teeth. "I know."

Brett frowned. "How did you know that?" Brett's frown turned to one of shock as he raised his brows. "You know who they are?"

"Yeah." He shoved open the door. Now wasn't the time to get into the sordid details. There were so many of them, it would take hours. Years. Decades .

The room was around five thousand square feet, with a ceiling at least twelve feet high. Three wood chandeliers, each the size of a VW bug, threw off garish light, casting shadows in every corner. The same cream-colored tile on the outside of the building lined the walls and floor, and one long aisle ran between rows of pews. He imagined if a church and a bathhouse had a baby, this was what it would look like.

"Stay behind me," he said to Marlie and Noah, then walked down the aisle to the raised dais that was more like a stage, flexing his fingers the entire way so he wouldn't ball them into fists. With all the kids surrounding them, Evan could barely see his quarry, but he knew they were there.

Hiding like goddamn cowards .

Sgt. Browning and the rest of the Cheyenne PD officers had taken up position around the room, as had the SWAT unit. On the dais, children stood in a tight circle, along with two other young couples. One of the women held a crying baby, rocking the infant and crooning something to it that clearly wasn't working. He searched the faces of the adult women, not seeing his sister. If she were there, he was sure he'd know her on sight.

Now that he was closer, it was the couple standing in the center of the group who had every muscle in his body ratcheting tighter. Involuntarily—or was it?—the fingers of his right hand twitched. He wished he could just shoot them both between the eyes and be done with it, ridding the world of two pieces of shit who didn't deserve to live.

"Evan," the man said with a smile so smug and superior, Evan wanted to wipe it off with his fist. "We were wondering when you'd get here."

This time, he couldn't help it, and fisted his hands, digging his nails into his palms hard enough to draw blood.

In his fifteen-year career, he'd arrested some of the worst people known to mankind, yet as he stood there, staring up at the dais, rage—the likes of which he'd never known toward another human being—surged through him with nearly enough force to knock him to the ground.

He swallowed the acid threatening to burn a hole in his stomach. "Hello, Neil. Elsa."