The tapping of laptop keys drilled into Aidan’s head. He scrunched his eyes tighter. Fuck, his head pounded and his mouth felt like sandpaper.
“Aidan?”
At the sound of Flynn calling his name, the fog disintegrated, and everything came back to him at once. The gas seeping through the hospital air vents. The run to the back stairwell. And Cassie…
His eyes shot open, and he sat up. He was on a couch—Callum’s couch—with Flynn on his haunches beside him. His gaze shot across the room to the table, where Callum and Tyler sat with their laptops. Mia stood alone at the side of the room, her chest moving up and down with quick breaths.
“Where’s Cassie?” Aidan ground out, his throat so dry his voice almost didn’t work.
Flynn handed him a glass of water. “Don’t know. But we’re working on it.”
Acid filled Aidan’s gut. He forced the water down his throat as Callum started talking.
“I’m hacking into cameras outside the hospital to find what vehicle she was taken in.”
Tyler shot a quick look at him over the laptop. “Damien’s upstairs. Carina’s looking after him, and Dean’s up there too. Logan, Jason, Liam and Blake are helping at the hospital. The gas got turned off, but a lot of patients need moving until the facility is sterilized.”
Aidan shot to his feet. His knees almost caved, but he locked them in place.
Flynn grabbed his arm. “Whoa, take it easy. You took a shitload of tranquilizer. Carina should probably come down and take another look at you.”
Screw that. “I’m not damn well resting while the woman I love is God knows where about to be murdered!”
Mia flinched at his words.
“How much time has passed?” he growled.
“Almost half an hour,” Callum said quickly.
He shot a look to Mia. “What do you know?”
Her eyes widened. She was deathly pale. “I-I don’t know anything. I didn’t know he’d do something like this!”
He moved across the room, glad his legs were carrying him, and grabbed her shoulders tightly. “We always know more than we think we do. Did Elijah ever say anything? Any small detail could help.”
Her mouth opened to respond, then a voice from upstairs sounded.
“No—Damien, stop. You need to stay in bed.”
A second later, an angry-looking Carina and Dean, and a slow-moving Damien attached to an IV pole, appeared at the top of the stairs. Carina was holding his arm. Whether she was helping or trying to stop him, Aidan wasn’t sure. Probably both.
“Water,” Damien said quietly.
Carina looked anxious. “You need water?”
He shook his head, eyes only for Aidan. “In the conversation I overheard, Elijah quoted a verse from Revelation. ‘Then the angel showed me the river of water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.’”
Mia frowned. “He quotes that verse a lot. Always in regards to our salvation.” She gasped. “And in her birthday card, he wrote something…”
Aidan’s hands tightened. “What?”
“‘He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters.’” Her breathing became rapid. “I thought he was trying to comfort her with the verse. I thought he was talking about her recent kidnapping and how she’d be okay. I didn’t realize—”
“He was going to murder her in water,” Aidan finished.
He turned, running frustrated hands through his hair.
“Found the van,” Callum said quickly, his fingers flying over the keys. “I’ve tracked it on a couple of different traffic cameras. It’s heading north.”
“North?” Aidan frowned, moving behind the laptop. “He’s not heading back to Utah?”
“Nope.” His fingers continued to fly, and he paused the footage on the screen. “This is the last image we have. After this, there are no more traffic cameras. It’s all open road.”
He turned back to Mia and Damien. “What’s north?”
Damien shook his head, frustration on his face. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t—” Mia stopped abruptly.
He stepped closer, his heart pounding. “What is it?”
“He has a picture in his office. It’s of me and Cassie in the water when we were kids. I always found it strange that he had it displayed, because he has no other photos. Not even in his house. This one is large and framed, hanging on the wall right above his cross. I assumed it was because I was his daughter. But maybe…”
Maybe it was where he’d always planned to murder Cassie. “Do you know where it was taken?”
She swallowed. “I asked him once…and he said it was Lady Face Falls.”
Callum typed on his laptop. “The falls are in line with where he’s driving.”
Aidan was moving before anyone could stop him. He snatched Callum’s keys from the side table and ran outside. He’d just reached the car when Tyler slipped in front of him.
“No way are you driving in your current condition.”
He didn’t have time to argue, so he let Tyler take the keys and ran to the passenger side.
Callum and Flynn slid into Flynn’s car, hauling a rucksack that he knew would be filled with weapons.
As they pulled away from the house, Mia and Damien stood on the porch, and Mia yelled something.
Save her.
Cassie stumbled for what had to be the tenth time. She would have fallen on her face by now, but Sampson had one hand on her wrist and the other on her elbow.
“Almost there,” he said quietly.
The guy had been gentle and soft-spoken the entire walk. It was annoying the hell out of her. What kind of murderer was gentle?
Wind rushed past them, and a shiver coursed up her spine. It was cold. Really cold. The dress was thin, and her feet felt like blocks of ice. Her bleeding and bloody feet, that was.
She was kind of grateful for the cold, really. It was the only thing keeping her upright. In the heat, this amount of walking would have had her passing out within minutes. She didn’t want to pass out. She wanted to slow them down as much as she could, but she also wanted to be conscious to plunge the hidden knife into whichever unlucky soul tried to kill her.
And she would. She wasn’t dying without a fight.
The first half of the trail had been almost completely flat and easy to traverse. This second half, though… Man, it was tough. The majority of the ground was jagged, wet and blocked by dozens of fallen trees. Which was actually a blessing, in terms of slowing them down. She had to have faith that Aidan was okay. That he and his team would find her. And the slower they moved, the more time it gave Aidan to work out where she’d been taken. If he managed to find her, it would take him a tenth of the time to navigate these woods.
She tripped over another root, and yet again, Sampson kept her upright. If only the guy would walk in front of her, she could pull the knife from the dress and stab him before running.
The sound of the waterfall grew louder.
“So,” she finally said. “Can you tell me what the plan is now?”
“All will be revealed in good time,” Elijah said from in front of them.
She ground her teeth. “Okay, well, how about you tell me where we are at least. If I’m not going to live to see tomorrow, surely that doesn’t matter?”
For some reason, this all looked familiar, but she wasn’t sure why.
Elijah lifted a branch, and she stepped through after him. “Your mother took me to this waterfall just before your tenth birthday. You and Mia were swimming in the water, and the sun was hitting you in just the right way that you looked like an angel sent down from God.”
Her chest constricted at the mention of her mother. So the man planned to drown her in that same water?
The top of the falls came into view ahead.
“That night,” Elijah continued, “was when the vision came to me in my dream.”
She was still in disbelief that this psycho’d had one dream about her when she was a child, then spent the next twenty years planning her death.
“Every time I’m here, I feel God’s presence.”
“They’re going to find you, you know,” she said quietly. She probably shouldn’t be angering the man, but she didn’t care at this point. “They’ve got Joshua and Antwon. It won’t be long before they find you and Isaac and everyone else involved.”
“Let’s not speak of such things at such an important time.”
Elijah stopped beside the waterfall and looked down. She paused beside him, and when she followed his gaze, she gaped. Holy crap, that was a steep decline to the base of the waterfall.
And there, on the rocks surrounding the pool below, were dozens of members of Paragons of Hope. All the members who’d been missing during the police raid. All dressed in white and holding candles.
Her gaze brushed over each face, pausing for a moment on Mrs. Alder. Of course. She’d never liked the woman, so she shouldn’t be surprised to see her there. Still, the housekeeper had lived with her and Damien, cooked for them, cleaned, for the last two years. Did she hate her so much that she wanted to watch Elijah kill her?
“Do they know what you’re about to do?” she asked.
“Yes,” Elijah said quietly. “This is my inner circle. Members who understand what I’m trying to achieve. Who understand sacrifice.”
What sacrifice? They weren’t sacrificing anything.
Elijah began to climb down the rough-hewn steps, and when Sampson gave Cassie a little push, her eyes widened. “You can’t be serious. You want me to climb down there with bound hands?” She’d fall and break her goddamn neck.
“I won’t let you fall. I promise.”
He promised?
He tugged her down a step, then another. Her foot slid, and she yelped, but Sampson’s hand on her arm tightened, keeping her rooted to the spot.
Cassie’s heart raced in her chest the entire way. Terrifying. It was absolutely terrifying. When they finally reached the bottom, she wanted to get down on her hands and knees and kiss the earth beneath her feet.
But she didn’t. She couldn’t with Sampson pulling her forward.
A member walked up to Elijah and handed him a bundle of clothing. He removed his top, then his shoes and pants, before sliding on the white outfit. For a moment, he looked at the water and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.
Jesus Christ. This was it. The man was going to drown her.
Finally, he turned to her. “It’s time.”
Sweat broke out on her forehead. No. No freaking way. Did he just expect her to waltz into the water with him and let him kill her?
She shook her head, attempted a step back. “Elijah, you don’t need to do this. Please…”
“But I do.”
She spun around. Sampson was right there. “Don’t make this hard, Cassie.”
“You want me to make killing me easy?”
Elijah grabbed her arm and tugged her toward the water. She dug her heels into the dirt and tried to stay where she was, but his hands were like steel.
She gasped when the water lapped around her ankles. It was freaking freezing. So cold it felt like shards of ice stabbing at her skin.
Elijah kept tugging her with a strength she didn’t even know he possessed until they stood in the center of the pool, halfway to the waterfall. The falls splashed onto them, and the water in the pool reached just below her chest. Her entire body now shook violently from the freezing water.
Elijah didn’t seem bothered by the cold at all.
“The spirit of God hovers over the water,” Elijah called out loudly. “And today, we finally put our Lord’s vision into action. It has been years in the making. These last few weeks have diminished us, just as we knew they would if we didn’t enact his vision on time.”
No. Their diminishing was because he was a violent asshole who kept sending people to kidnap her.
She tugged at the bonds, not caring who saw her struggle. Elijah continued speaking to his people, but Cassie blocked him out.
She continued to struggle until she noticed the members raise the candles above their heads. Then she felt Elijah’s eyes once again fall to her. “It is time for you to enter the Kingdom of God, child.”
That was all the warning she got before his hands gripped her shoulders and he shoved her beneath the water.
She slammed her mouth shut just before water washed over her head. Icy cold enveloped her. She tried to shift, to pull away, but his hands were manacles. With bound hands, she reached into the pouch of her dress and grabbed the knife.
Then, using every ounce of strength she had left, she plunged it into Elijah’s thigh.
The hands on her shoulders instantly released as a deep red bloomed through the water.
Her body tried to float up, but she used her arms to keep her below the surface. She held her breath and swam toward the waterfall as fast as her body allowed.
