Spurrier disentangled himself, climbing on wobbly legs. “Good job,” he said. “I was afraid you would shoot him.”
“You said to make it look like an accident. Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
“Yeah!” Spurrier scowled down at Trent. “Don’t you know you can’t thwart God’s will?” He was sniffing, trying to staunch the blood gushing from his nose.
On the floor, Trent moved slowly, his hands surrounding a piece of glass from the lantern. It was a struggle to sit up, and the hot glass cut his hand, but it was his only chance, his only weapon, a lousy piece of glass in this hellish inferno.
His fingers tightened over curved glass probably from the bell of the lantern. Miraculously, it still held enough oil to leak through Trent’s fingers. He held on tight, trying to keep the precious liquid from drizzling out.
The air was thick with smoke, flames rising higher. Bernsen was frantic. “Come on, man, let’s just break the fucker’s legs and get the hell out of here!”
“We can’t be blamed for this! It has to look like an accident,” Spurrier insisted, coughing, his fury radiating in waves as Trent watched from the floor.
“It will,” Bernsen insisted. His eyes moved restlessly, anxiously watching the ever-growing fire. He grabbed the wooden club again. “I’ll crack his knees. He won’t be able to move. Then everything will burn here. No evidence. An accident. Like you said. It’ll look like he tripped and fell, hit his head on the table, and, trying to get out, broke his damned legs. Then we get the fuck outta here before anyone comes.” Hyped up on adrenaline and fear, Bernsen was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“I’ll do it,” Spurrier insisted, regaining some of his power over the kid as the fire crept closer, across the floor. Enraged, he spat a broken tooth toward a window, then wrested the club from Bernsen’s hand.
To Trent, he said, “Here’s an example of God’s will you’ll appreciate.”
“God’s will? Oh, yeah, right. One more murder on your hands. Lauren, Drew, Nona, and Maeve aren’t enough. God would be so proud.”
“I already told you that wasn’t me. Why would I bother with Prescott and Vickers and, what, now Mancuso? I had nothing to do with them.” His eyes burned bright with a rabid fervor. “They weren’t part of the mission.”
“We have to go!” Bernsen was frantic.
The flames were closer, circling. Burning crazily.
With the rifle still trained on his heart, Trent watched as Spurrier squatted, the chunk of bloody oak in one hand, flames gathering around him. “One at a time, Trent,” he promised, loving the power he was wielding. “You’re gonna hear each of them shatter. The pain will be excruciating.” He grinned with the satisfaction of the truly self-deluded.
“Again, God’s will,” Trent taunted, fingers clutching the glass so hard he felt his own blood flowing.
Spurrier’s temper flared. “You’ll be thankful to die, rather than suffer.”
“Will I?” It was Trent’s turn to grin. “Don’t bet on it!” Striking as quick as a rattler, Trent flung the piece of glass and its oily contents into Spurrier’s face.
“What the fuck!” Bernsen cried.
Spurrier recoiled, dropping the chunk of oak, his hands going to his eyes. Blinded, he backed up toward the fully engulfed mattress. “Kill him!”
Bernsen hesitated. “What?”
“Kill him now!” Spurrier ordered.
“Gladly!”
Trent slid to one side.
Bernsen fired.
Blam! The report rocked the building.
Hot pain sizzled through Trent’s shoulder.
Before the kid could get off another shot, Trent rolled across the floor.
Spurrier howled in pain as flames crawled up his pants. “Help! Oh, for the love of God, help me!”
The kid turned toward his leader.
Pain rattling through his body, Trent rolled toward the kid and swept Bernsen’s feet out from under him.
Crack!
The rifle fired again as the kid went down with a heavy thud. “You bastard!”
The bullet went wild, ricocheting through the room.
Bernsen scrambled to his feet.
Spurrier was yelling in pain, the flames climbing up his body. Howling, digging at his eyes, he fell to his knees, a burning pyre.
“Oh, God!” Horrified, a true coward, Zach crawled frantically toward the kitchen. Abandoning his leader, leaving the damned rifle on the floor, he ran.
Trent lunged at the fleeing kid.
Zach dodged quickly. Terrified, the TA took off through the back door.
And straight into the muzzle of Frank Meeker’s gun.
“Stop. Police!” the deputy ordered, Bert Flannagan at his side. Trent, trying to climb to his feet, witnessed it from the hell of the living room.
Zach was pinned against the porch wall. “Oh, fuck!”
“You okay?” Flannagan asked Trent, sliding by Meeker, unintimidated by the wall of flame in the living room.
Trent turned to Spurrier. “I’ll live,” he said, forcing himself to his feet.
“Help!” Spurrier, blinded, screamed. Fire climbed up his clothes and caught in his hair. Anguished howls erupted from his throat.
Trent spied the fire extinguisher under a flaming chair and dived for it.
“Don’t!” Flannagan warned. “It’ll blow!”
“We can’t let him die!” Trent grabbed the cannister, the hot metal burning his hands. Spurrier was trapped behind an ever-climbing wall of flame, his body afire, his face a blackened, horrified mask, his shrieks of pain echoing over the roar of the flames.
“Oh, hell, let me.” Flannagan ripped it out of Trent’s hands and turned the hose on Spurrier and the surrounding flames. CO2 filled the air.
Spurrier fell to the floor where he screamed and writhed. “Take me, Father,” he cried desperately as the smell of burning flesh rose to the heavens. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
As if he truly thought he were Jesus Christ.
CHAPTER 43
“So now we wait,” Eric Rolfe said smugly. “The others should be joining us, once they’ve finished their missions.” He glanced over at Missy, and she nodded, her blond hair pale in the fallout shelter, her expression one of supreme satisfaction. She’d cleaned her teeth of blood and now seemed confident that whatever horrid plan they’d all hatched together was working.
“What missions?” Jules asked from a hard folding chair, the one she’d been forced to take.
Whimpering Nell sat to one side of her, and Shay, belligerent, her eyes hot with fury, was seated on the other. They were trapped in a small subterranean room that, Jules guessed, was the fallout shelter from the fifties, the one Charla King had mentioned. It apparently had been recently fitted with a state-of-the-art security system and backup power and had been converted into some kind of weird underground chapel that housed not only an altar but also a floor-to-ceiling cabinet that held guns, rounds of ammunition, night goggles, and God only knew what else. It was certainly enough firepower to arm a secret militia. The place gave her a serious case of the creeps; the kids holding guns on them scared her to death.
“You don’t need to know anything else,” Missy said in her grating voice. Nonchalantly studying the nails on one hand while pinning the three captives down with a handgun with the other, she seemed at home in her position as prison guard. “The Leader has it all planned out. Perfectly.”
“Your leader is a murderer,” Jules said.
“Hey, don’t!” Nell shook her head, afraid to make any waves. Eyes round with terror, she said, “I’m sure … I’m sure he’s a great guy.”
Shay let out a huff of disbelief, and Jules couldn’t take the naive, desperate girl’s rationale. “A great guy? Get real. Three people are dead. Probably a fourth if you count Lauren. The one thing he isn’t is ‘a great guy.’”
“There are always sacrifices,” Missy said blithely as if the people who had died
were meaningless.
“Four people dead?” Nell repeated, swallowing hard, her voice a frantic squeak. “But I thought just Drew and Nona …”
“And Maeve,” Jules said, “We found her mutilated body in the stable tonight.”
“Maeve, too?” Nell cried, horrified, shaking, a fresh spate of tears running down her cheeks. “Oh, no, no, no.”
“Who cares who’s dead?” Missy really wasn’t interested. “We just do what he tells us to.”
“No questions asked? Even murder?” Jules tried to get through to these kids. “Taking innocent lives?”
“God’s will,” Missy insisted. “And I don’t know about any murders.”
“There’s gonna be more,” Eric predicted. His smile was wide, an evil grin meant to remind them that they were in his control. He could do anything he damned well pleased with them, and there would be no consequences.
Nell whimpered.
Eric loved intimidating the poor girl. “If you ask me,” he said slyly, “we’re already a few shy.”
Missy shot him a look, warning him to be quiet.
Eric, however, was on a roll. “But I think we’ll make up for it tonight.”
“Shut up,” Missy advised.
Eric scoffed at her. “They want to know, so let’s tell them.” To Jules, he said, “I told him he should have taken out Howell, too, but he went soft on her.”
Maris Howell, the teacher Jules replaced?
“She was nosing around, like Lauren, and he let her go. Stupid.” Eric’s nostrils flared and his fingers tightened over his handgun. “I would have taken her out. Got rid of the problem once and for all.”
“Maris Howell?” Jules said. “Because of her affair with Ethan Slade?”
Again Missy and Eric exchanged glances, their smiles telling all. “What affair?” Eric finally said, and laughed brutally, the horrid sound intensified by the small, confined space. Missy, too, giggled in her tiny voice as they shared a private little joke.
“She was caught with Ethan Slade,” Jules pressed, trying to understand.
“A setup.” Rolfe was enjoying himself now, thinking he was smarter than everyone. “Because she was spying, the Leader came up with a story to get her out of the school. Ethan really played it up, crying on her shoulder, convincing her that he needed special attention.” Eric pulled a tragic face, rubbing at an imaginary tear in his eye. “Boohoo. She bought it. Comforted him. Embraced him.” Rolfe was nodding, enjoying bragging about how smart they all were. “We took pictures and Ethan worked it so that when she showed up to talk to him, he was half naked. With a little cutting, pasting, and editing, it looked like she was seducing him—at least to Ethan’s parents.”
“Poor darling,” Missy added.
“Sick darling,” Shay corrected.
Nell whispered, “Don’t! Shay, for the love of God!”
“That’s why we’re here,” Eric said. “For the love of God.”
“I don’t think so,” Jules said, sickened at the depths of their depravity, of how easily they twisted other people’s lives, of how ruthlessly they killed. All in the name of God.
Eric shrugged, and Jules doubted that he cared one iota about God or Christianity or even the Leader. Eric Rolfe was all about Eric Rolfe. “So, we all backed Ethan, she got the boot, Slade is now in a college program. A win-win.”
“Except for Maris Howell,” Jules pointed out, wondering at the depths of this group’s penchant for evil. “Her reputation was ruined. But this ‘great’ leader. Who is he?”
“Hey.” Eric leaned closer. “Howell got off lucky.” His eyes glittered like hard stones. “I would have killed her.”
“But, then, you’re a prick,” Shay said.
Without thinking, Eric swung a meaty fist. His knuckles bashed into Shay’s jaw. Her head snapped back. Blood slid from the corner of her mouth.
“Stop it!” Jules cried, jumping up from her chair, only to be pressed back by the barrel of Missy’s gun.
“You’re one sick bastard!” Shay spat, and Nell began to cry again, sobbing loudly, wailing in terror.
“I’m gonna love seeing you die,” Eric snarled at Shay as hurried footsteps sounded on the other side of the door. “You, Nell, shut up!”
The scared girl bit her trembling lower lip and blinked, but her tears still rained down her cheeks.
A sharp rap on the wall separating the fallout sheltercum-place of worship resounded.
“Showtime,” Eric said eagerly as he opened the door.
Jules felt all hope die as she watched the enfolding scene.
Tim Takasumi, Kaci Donahue, Roberto Ortega, and Ethan Slade appeared in the doorway. They were all nervous and twitchy, high on adrenaline or God knew what else, all suited in black, all carrying weapons.
“They’ve got him,” Kaci cried, her face a mask of concern. “They’ve got the Leader!” She was freaked, gesturing wildly with her gun.
What? Jules wondered; maybe there was still a chance … She exchanged glances with Shay.
“Who?” Eric demanded. “Who’s got him?”
“That fuckin’ Trent, that’s who!” Ortega said, his eyes dark with fury. “The Leader, he’s fucked up, too. Burned to hell.” He, too, was freaked. Squirrely. “There’s more. They’ve got Zach, too.”
“No!” Missy cried, her smug face dropping into horror. “No way.”
“It’s true!” Takasumi said, nodding his head violently.
They were all charged up, feeding on each other’s anxiety.
Ortega glanced at the hostages, then back to Rolfe. “I’m tellin’ ya, man, he’s locked up. In the clinic. Guarded by that pig Meeker.”
Good, Jules thought, a crack in their defenses, but she wondered how it happened that the Leader was captured. Whoever he was, he wouldn’t have gone down without a fight, and that might mean Trent was hurt. Although Ortega said Trent got the better of their precious freak.
“What do we do now?” Slade demanded, nervous and edgy. “We can’t just sit here.”
Rolfe’s hateful gaze scraped the room to land on his hostages. His eyes narrowed and his lips flattened in renewed determination. “We get him back, that’s what we do.” He hooked a thumb at the hostages. “We’ve got bargaining chips. Either they release him, or we start shooting our little bitches here. And we’ll start with this one,” he said coldly, a spark in his eyes as he leveled his pistol at Shay.
“No!” Jules cried.
With a wicked grin, he pulled the trigger.
Jules screamed.
But he caught the hammer before it hit. “Pop,” he whispered to Shay in dark delight. “You’re dead.”
The clinic became their fortress.
With Zach Bernsen locked in one of the detox rooms and Spurrier on an IV that knocked him out in the infirmary, Trent sat on a gurney in the hallway. Nurse Ayres, lips compressed, glasses perched on the end of her nose, deep circles under her eyes, worked steadily to dislodge the bullet in Trent’s shoulder using only local anesthesia and sterile tweezers.
It hurt like hell.
“You’re lucky,” she said. “Just missed the brachial artery.”
“Lucky,” Trent repeated, not exactly feeling as if the Fates were shining on him. “What about Spurrier?”
She shook her head. “Doubt if he’ll make it.” Grumpy and efficient as ever, she frowned under the bright fluorescent lights as she worked, swathing his upper arm and shoulder in bandages.
“Keep him alive,” Trent told her. “Whatever you do, don’t let him die.”
“I’ll mention it to God,” she said with a wry twist of her lips. “Next time He asks.”
Trent could barely manage a smile. His body ached; he was bruised and battered, but he could deal with the physical pain; none of it much worse than what he’d suffered during his days in the rodeo. What troubled him was far deeper, a dark pain deep in his soul: Jules was missing. He’d heard the news from Deputy Meeker who had checked.
Her missing wasn’
t good.
Not with the maniacs who followed Spurrier on the loose. If only she’d stayed put … no, strike that, if only he’d stayed with her, protected her. Guilt, so often his companion, had found him again.
But he wouldn’t lie idle. Somehow, by God, he was going to find her. Save her. He wasn’t going to lose her again. Nuh-uh. No way in friggin’ hell!
They’d learned from a near-dead, pain-wracked Spurrier that he had thought he would take over the school, that Tobias Lynch was a fraud, misinterpreting God’s will. Though Lynch liked a challenge and willingly took the most mentally troubled students to Blue Rock, encouraging and rewarding them, he was failing. Spurrier had known about Lynch’s private records, had read them himself when Tobias was in Seattle with the wife that Spurrier had once coveted. Cora Sue and he had been lovers, even after Lynch’s marriage to her. She, Trent gleaned, had always regretted marrying Lynch, but she’d followed her father’s suggestion, fearing that Radnor Stanton would cut her out of his will should she disobey and hook up with the more radical, younger man.
In the ensuing years, Kirk Spurrier had vowed to show Stanton and Cora Sue that she’d made a mistake of monstrous proportions. Lynch had even hired him, trusting that forgiveness, not bitterness, was the right path.
His error.
Trent, testing his shoulder, couldn’t believe that one man could be so delusional. But Spurrier was. Worse yet, he’d convinced a small army of brilliant, if sick, young people to follow him. While Lynch had wanted to help those who were the most ill, Spurrier had used them to his advantage.
Now, Meeker, with help from Bert Flannagan and Wade Taggert, supposedly had the campus on lockdown. The students were locked in their dorms, staff members guarding the lobbies. The fire at Trent’s house still smoldered and the cabin next door, DeMarco’s, singed. DeMarco, it seemed, could sleep through Armageddon and had been found in his house, head under the covers, totally unaware of the chaos ensuing around him.
Some of the TAs were missing—the usual suspects, it seemed, all of whom had already been named by Bernsen who was giving up information grudgingly, trying like hell to work a deal to save his own pathetic hide.