Which makes this, Marcus said softly, so much more poetic.
Richard loses his daughter and his grandchild. I lose mine too, perhaps, but I have already learned how to live with that pain. Your father has not.
I could barely hear anything beyond the roar of blood in my head.
“I tried to stop him,” David said, voice breaking.
Marcus snapped toward him.
“You tried nothing. You stalled for six months and failed three times. The brake line in February. The home security tampering in May. The water contamination in August. Every single time you failed because you are weak.”
I stared at David.
Three attempts.
Three failures.
He had been trying to kill me and failing on purpose.
“You don’t have it in you,” Marcus said. “Alexander was weak. You are weaker.”
Then he said, in a voice as calm as weather:
“David, raise your weapon.”
David slowly lifted the gun.
His hand shook violently.
“Point it at Emma’s chest.”
He did.
“You have sixty seconds. If you do not fire, I trigger both devices. Liam dies. Linda dies. Emma dies anyway. Everyone loses.”
The guards on the catwalk tightened their positions, ready to shoot David if he turned the gun anywhere else.
“Sixty seconds,” Marcus said. “Starting now.”
David aimed at me.
His eyes were full of tears.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “God, Emma, I’m so sorry.”
I turned to the screen.
“You’re lying. You wouldn’t kill your own grandchild.”
Marcus’s smile never moved.
“I sacrificed one son already. What is one grandchild?”
“You’re bluffing,” I said, gambling everything.
“Forty seconds,” Marcus said.
David’s gun shook so badly I could see it from where I stood.
“Marcus,” David said, voice shredding, “please. Is there really a bomb on Liam?”
“Thirty seconds.”
“Answer me!”
Marcus leaned back and swirled his drink.
“Of course there is. Did you think I’m a fool? The moment the FBI breaches, I trigger it. The moment you fail me, I trigger it.”
So he knew.
Or believed he knew.
My hand found the panic button in my pocket.
If Marcus was telling the truth, breaching now would kill everyone.
If he was lying, it was our only chance.
“Ten seconds,” Marcus said.
David’s finger slid to the trigger.
Mom screamed my name.
The gun steadied.
Five.
I looked into David’s eyes and saw the exact instant he chose.
Four.
His grip changed.
Three.
I squeezed the panic button twice.
Two.
David’s gun swung away from me, away from my chest, toward the giant screen.
One.
He fired.
The bullet smashed through the screen. Glass burst outward in a storm of sparkling fragments. Marcus’s face exploded into static, sparks, smoke.
The guards on the catwalk shouted and spun toward David.
“Traitor!”
At the same time the doors blew inward.
Black-clad FBI agents flooded through the loading bay and south entrance.
“Federal agents!” Carter’s voice thundered. “Drop your weapons!”
A shot cracked from above.
Then another.
Sergeant Rodriguez on the roof dropped two of the catwalk guards in quick succession. Their rifles clattered down onto the concrete. The third guard pivoted toward the breach team and Rodriguez’s third shot sent him over the rail.
Then I heard it.
Fast beeping.
From two directions at once.
Mom’s chair.
Liam’s backpack.
“Device!” someone shouted.
David moved before anyone else did.
He sprinted to Liam, ripped the camouflage backpack off the boy’s shoulders, and tore it open. Inside was a cylindrical device, wires exposed, red light blinking faster and faster.
An FBI explosives tech lunged forward, took one look, and yelled, “Flashbang!”
Too late.
The device detonated in David’s hands.
White light.
Thunder.
A shock wave punched through the plant.
I threw an arm over my face, but the flare burned through my eyelids and sound vanished into one long piercing whine. When my vision partially cleared, everything was blurred and washed in brightness.
David lay on his back several feet away. His hands were badly burned, smoke lifting from the skin. Liam was on the ground beside him, curled into himself, mouth open in a sound I couldn’t hear. Mom’s chair had tipped. Carter was already at her side, cutting the restraints, trying to shift her weight off the pressure trigger beneath the seat.
Then a side door burst open.
Two more men in black tactical gear charged in from the blind side of the room, firing.
The gunfight turned the plant into chaos.
Muzzle flashes strobed in the dim space. Bullets tore into steel tables and concrete. One FBI agent went down clutching his leg. Another fired back from behind a processing station. Shards from an overhead light rained down.
And then, impossibly, Dad appeared in the doorway behind the breach team.
He had disobeyed Carter. He had come anyway.
His service pistol was in his hand.
“Emma!”
One of the shooters turned toward him. Dad threw himself behind a steel table just as rounds tore through the air where he had been standing.
Carter cut through the last zip tie and dragged Mom sideways off the chair.
The device under it detonated.
Another flashbang.
Another concussive wave.
The chair flipped. Metal legs bent. Mom and Carter hit the floor and rolled.
Alive.
Rodriguez fired again from the roof and dropped one of the backup shooters midstride. The second pivoted and aimed at David, who was still on the concrete, half-blind, his hands too damaged to grip a weapon.
I didn’t think.
I moved.
I slammed into David’s shoulder just as the shooter fired.
The bullet meant for his head tore through the upper part of my left shoulder instead.
Pain exploded white-hot through my body. My legs folded and the floor slammed into me hard. Warm blood spread fast across my shirt.
Through the haze I saw Dad rise from behind the steel table and fire three times.
The shooter went down.
Then everything went strangely distant.
I lay on my back staring up at the hanging meat hooks overhead while the room blurred and flickered around me. My shoulder felt like it was on fire. I couldn’t move my left hand. Couldn’t feel my fingers.
David’s face appeared above me, blackened with soot, hands ruined, tears running down his cheeks. His mouth moved. I couldn’t hear him.
Why?
I read it on his lips.
Why did you save me?
Blood bubbled in my throat when I tried to answer.
“Because,” I forced out, each syllable agony, “someone has to end this.”
His face collapsed.
He bent over me, forehead against mine, and I felt his tears hit my skin.
Then Dad was there, pressing hard against my shoulder. Then Mom, bruised and shaking, crawling toward me. Then medics. Gauze. Gloved hands. Bright lights.
The edges of my vision dimmed.
The last thing I saw before the dark took me was Liam being carried out by an FBI agent, his hands still clamped over his ears, and David—hands ruined and useless—still reaching for me.
The smell of antiseptic and the steady beeping of a monitor brought me back.
White ceiling tiles.
Dimmed fluorescent lights.
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