Eleven (45 page)

The smile disappeared. The hand came off her father’s head.

“Did he make you feel less than perfect?”

Amanda’s facial expression hardened, and then fell. “Keep quiet!”

I held out my hands. “Please let her go. It will show a sign of good faith to let her go.”

“No!”

“They will be here soon.”

“You told them where I am? You have sinned!” Spittle flew from her mouth.

“It’s the FBI. They have ways of finding people.” I used the term
they
in an effort to separate Paige and I and make us more relatable to Amanda.

“They won’t find us here.” She picked up the scalpel from the table, wielding it in the hand that had moments ago caressed her father’s brow. “You don’t seem to understand that I’m in control here, not you, not the FBI.” She moved closer to her father. “You made me do this to him.” She slid the knife into his torso, holding the skin taunt with the side of the other hand that held the gun. The man let out a moan that turned into a wail. “See what you made me do.”

Her attention was more on her father than on us. She laid the gun on an angle across the man’s torso, and although her hand was close to it, she wasn’t in control of the weapon. This was my opening except I knew the moment I’d move she’d turn on me with both the gun and the knife. There wasn’t much time to think about it. I had to act.

Amanda moved closer to her father. She looked down at him affectionately, yet there was something more in her eyes. She was losing control, quickly. If I didn’t move now, the man would die.

I brushed a hand on Paige’s thigh trying to communicate through touch and energy that I was making a move.

“Ssh, don’t cry daddy.” Amanda caressed his forehead.

The man’s moans were low as if his sedation kept him groggy and not fully aware of the level of pain his body was experiencing.

Amanda watched over him, hovering there as a loved one does a sick relative in a hospital. I moved toward her slowly still uncertain how I was going to gain the control in the room.

“The phone continually rings straight to voicemail.” Zachery referred to Keith Knowles’ cell.

“She’s got him.” Jack pushed the gas on the patrol car harder. They had called in backup, and their sirens wailed through the city streets and out to the country roads. They served as a reminder that law enforcement couldn’t stop all evil from happening but they could hopefully hold the guilty accountable and prevent some of it.

“How did your sister know that Keith isn’t her father?” Jack glanced in the rearview mirror to their captive passenger.

“What do you mean not her father?” Reggie curled his lips backward and up toward his nose.

“You didn’t know,” Zachery said, shifting in his seat and looking through the bars separating the front from the back.

“No. But she was always different from the rest of us. I just thought she was the black sheep. They say every family has one.”

“She never said anything to you about finding herself, or who she was.” Zachery did his best to lead the man along.

“Mandy always talked about that sort of crap. How can you find yourself? Are you lost? Anyway, a while back she got on it more. Started withdrawing from us.”

Zachery turned back around to face the road.

Jack glanced over at him. “She did find out the man she thought was her father wasn’t.”

Reggie’s voice came from the back. “She got in arguments with dad more. I don’t know what about, but they’d yell for hours until one of them would storm out of the house. Normally it was Mandy. She has a temper, especially when she doesn’t get her way or people can’t relate to her standpoint.”

Jack looked back in the rearview to the caravan following behind them—five more squad cars and two ambulances. He was ready to take this woman down, save a man’s life, and get his team back alive.

My heartbeat sounded in my ears, dulling my sense of hearing, yet awakening my perception in other areas. Amanda’s movements seemed to slow down. I broke down her passes in segments. Her attention was solidified on her father. It was almost as if Paige and I no longer existed.

“You could have told me. I would have forgiven you.” Her words came out in a whisper.

She moved the knife over his torso again. Before she lowered the blade, the time to act was now. I rose to my feet quickly and enforced a roundhouse kick to the small of her back. She let out a roaring scream and crumpled to the ground. Her gun fell just out of reach. The blade remained in her hand.

“You must pay!” She slinked across the floor toward me, the bloody knife jabbing at the air, hungry to strike more flesh.

I closed the distance between us careful not to get slashed by the swaying blade. The gun was near Paige’s feet, four feet away. Amanda must have noticed my calculating as she made a move toward it. I lunged across the floor at her and attempted to pin her to the ground. The blade flew wildly, swiping the air with deadly force. She squirmed and moved beneath me, trying to get control, trying to strike me. I lost grip on her. The blade swiped past my head. She kneed me in the groin. With it the pain took my clear vision but reinforced my desire to survive.

“You can’t stop God’s work.” Amanda made a move for the gun, and I roped my hands around her ankles.

Her legs kicked in an attempt to free herself and buy the other required few inches to reach the gun. I pulled back on her, but she extended and reached the gun. The blade dropped to the ground. The gun pointed at me.

“Get off me or I will shoot her!” Amanda glanced at Paige, but for too brief a time for me to make any movement toward her. If I did, I’d have a bullet between the eyes.

“I will do what I came here to do.” Amanda scooped the knife from the ground and rose to full height. Her attention was on me, the gun aimed at my forehead. “Try something like that again, and they’ll be collecting your brain matter from the floor.”

I sat there, filtering dirt through my fingers, feeling powerless. But as Amanda brushed the skirt of the cot, I noticed a black mass under the bed. She moved more to the right, and the light in the room revealed its identity. This would be how we’d get out of here alive.

Jack and Zachery noticed the rundown church from a ways down the road.

He turned on the radio to address the other cars. “Sirens off now!”

“Copy.” The officer from the other cars came back, even though it wasn’t necessary as everything went to silence.

Jack looked to Zachery. “We don’t need to scare Amanda into doing something. Her mind works differently. If she feels threatened, she won’t back off; she’ll go at it stronger which means no one will walk out—”

“You think she’s going to kill dad,” Reggie interrupted.

A smirk lifted the corner of my mouth as I viewed the find as a buoy among stormy seas.

Amanda’s attention had become fixed on her father again.

I moved across the floor slowly, inching my way toward the underside of the bed. My fingers grazed the grip of the gun. If I could get just a little closer…

A foot kicked me in the abdomen. I curled as a poked caterpillar, both of my hands cradling my gut.

“You must want to die.” She aimed the gun at me; a flicker in her eyes darkened them. She sat the gun on her father’s torso and came at me with the scalpel. “You want to feel their pain before you go? Be cleansed of your sins?” She came down toward me, the knife gripped tightly in her hands.

“Were they all sinners?” I had to buy time for the knot to untie from my core.

“Yes, I told you.”

“Even Sally Windermere?”

“She was a fornicator.” Amanda came down on top of me and straddled my torso.

“And she alone was guilty? Why not her fiancé too?”

Amanda smiled. “It was a lady’s turn to pay for sins. Now it is a man’s. But plans can be modified. You, her—,” she bobbed her head backward to gesture at Paige, “—and then him. The man who called himself father.”

The man who called himself father?
My suspicions had been completely accurate, but I tested them further. “Why him?”

“He committed the greatest sin. Hypocrisy. He pretended to be my father when he wasn’t. Lance is.”

Hearing the verbal confirmation sent images and audio through my mind as a slideshow. Reggie had said Keith may have appeared righteous, but added the man wasn’t that pure, and the way Amanda came to Bingham’s defense at the college, terming him a good friend. But what cemented my assumption was her smirk and how it held a familiarity that had first transported me to Bingham. Something in her eyes brought a sense of déjà vu. “I see the resemblance.” I extended my arms to reach a gun. My fingertips fell shy of contact.

“You’re being
snide.”