At all costs

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Melissa Thomas loved her big old house. She just wished she had the money and time to take care of it the way her mother and father had. The house and its surrounding six and a half acres of woods were her parents’ legacy for their only child. And their curse. Her parents had been dead nearly ten years now, yet Melissa still couldn’t afford to replace the furniture she’d known as a child. Wisely invested, her inheritance would spin off enough cash to pay the property taxes every year, with enough left over for three college educations. But that defined the limit of the Thomas family’s solvency.

Still, the place was home for her; the repository for all her good memories. And, more recently, for her bad ones as well. Although solidly built at a time when carpenters took pride in their work, the place was beginning to show serious signs of age. The roof needed replacing, the walls screamed for a coat of paint, and the soil had begun to erode away from the foundation out front. It was a real worry. They couldn’t afford to have the work done by a contractor, and Nick was worthless with tools. He couldn’t drive a nail if it had tires and a steering wheel. So the repairs went undone, waiting for that time when they’d find themselves with a few dollars they didn’t already owe to someone else. Nick’s solution was just to sell the place. Typical. Address a temporary problem with a permanent solution. Kill a fly with a shotgun.

Ticked off as she was about Nick’s being gone at the precise time she most needed his help-she’d received twelve more Christmas orders just this morning-she had to admit that it was kind of peaceful, just her and the kids. At one level, that’s all she ever really wanted out of a marriage, anyway. And if this job interview could somehow jump-start his dead career, then maybe it would be good for all of them. This whole business with the Donovans in the news made her nervous, though. If Nick were anyone but his spineless self, she might even have been worried.

The pot on her wheel was giving her fits. The Aztec Urn, as it was called in the catalog, had a long fluted neck that ordinarily would have been the simplest thing in the world to fashion, yet for some reason she couldn’t get the proportions right. And this was her third try.

“Darn it!” She stopped the wheel and hammered the misshapen pot back into a lump of red clay with the palm of her hand. What she needed was a break, but she knew better than to take one. Not just yet. Once this one was molded, she’d have a full load to stick in the kiln, and then she’d reward herself with a late lunch. She should have grabbed a bite when she fed Lauren at noon, but she hadn’t been hungry.

Come to think of it, Lauren hadn’t made a peep in a long time. Probably still watching her Lion King video. Melissa knew her daughter needed more stimulation, but she just didn’t have time to be a mommy anymore. Next year, though, her baby would start school, and everything would work out just fine.

Maybe I’m trying too hard, she thought as she started up the wheel again. That was often the root of her creativity problems. Sometimes she’d get so tense about doing it “right” that she’d lose the feel for the clay. She tried closing her eyes this time. The tiny foam earphones on her head filled her mind with the peace of Copeland’s Quiet City, and as the haunting sounds of the solo trumpet ebbed and flowed with the melody, the base of the pot magically formed in her hands.

A shadow fell across Melissa’s face, and her eyes snapped open. A man she’d never seen before was standing in the archway that separated her studio from the kitchen. He held a package of some sort in his arms. In the green-filtered light cast by the tinted jalousie windows, the package looked almost human. A doll maybe? And it was dressed in the same outfit Lauren had been wearing.

Melissa screamed.

Nick slid the telephone receiver back into its clamp and thrust a hand angrily through his hair. “Dammit!” He looked at his watch. “It’s after two, for Christ’s sake. I thought these planes were supposed to be fast!” Under the circumstances, the Gulfstream could have been rocketing through Mach 3 and it still wouldn’t have been enough.

“Stay off the phone,” Thorne growled for the thousandth time. “Every one of those calls is like a trail of bread crumbs for the feds.”

Nick responded with an angry glare. At that moment, reinforcements from the FBI didn’t sound like such a bad idea.

“She could just be out of the house, you know,” Jake offered.

Nick shook his head. “No chance. She’s buried in catalog orders. She wouldn’t leave the house if it was on fire.” He sat back down in the overstuffed captain’s chair and rested his forearms on his knees. “She does this all the time when she’s really busy. She just turns off the phones. We’ve got one of those answering services through the phone company, and she just checks the messages at the end of the day. Drives me nuts. Suppose one of the kids was sick at school or something, you know?”

“They have a place to go, though, right?” Jake asked. “I mean, once you get word to them, they can leave right away?”

Nick opened his mouth to answer but closed it. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I guess they’ll just stay in a hotel.”

“Make sure they pay with cash,” Thorne warned. “If we miss this guy, he’s gonna be pissed. The last thing you want is another electronic trail.”

Nick’s features sagged. “I don’t know that I have that kind of cash.”

“Don’t worry,” Jake said. He patted the ever-present gym bags. “I’ve got you covered there.”

A speaker popped overhead, and the pilot asked everyone to return to their seats and to fasten their seat belts. They’d be on the ground in about ten minutes. Their destination was the Manassas Regional Airport, a discreet commercial airstrip in the far-west Virginia suburbs of Washington; large enough to accept corporate jets yet small enough to allow passengers to remain anonymous.

Thorne crossed his legs comfortably and folded his fingers over his knee. “So, ace, what about you? Now that you’re fishing for sharks, what happens when you pull one in?” His lips bent back into the condescending smile Jake had come to hate so much.

“I’ll make him talk,” he said, simply enough. He tried to sound decisive, but they all knew he was in over his head.

“Uh-huh,” Thorne grunted. “And suppose he doesn’t want to cooperate?”

“He will. He has to.”

“But suppose he doesn’t?”

Jake looked at Thorne carefully, knowing exactly what he was driving at, but refusing to address it. “He’ll talk,” Jake said. “Most people’s tongues loosen when they have a gun pointed at their heads.”

Thorne smiled, stared out the window. “The question is, is our man ‘most people’?”

Melissa shot to her feet, sending both her potter’s wheel and the Aztec Urn crashing to the floor. “Oh, my God!” she yelled. “Lauren!”

The whole room shook as she bounded across the floor of her studio, the cord from her headphones dragging the CD player to its death off the edge of its little table. “Lauren, baby! Oh, God, honey, are you all right?”

The little girl didn’t move, her body so still and limp that the man seemed to have difficulty holding on to her. As he passed her on to her mother, they both tried to scoop up a dangling arm, but it seemed intent on staying free. Melissa was gone in an instant, hurrying past the stranger without so much as a thank-you.

The man followed without an invitation.

Melissa ran as best she could over to the high-ceilinged great room and laid her treasure gently on the sofa. “Lauren, honey, wake up. Wake up, sweetie…”

“She’ll be okay,” the stranger offered.

His voice startled Melissa, she’d forgotten about him. “How do you know? What happened to her?” The first thing she noticed as she looked up was the coldness of the man’s eyes. The second thing was his gun.

“She’s not good at following orders, is she?” he said.

It had been years since Jake was in an airport, and even this little one out in Virginia’s boonies had five times more people milling around than he was comfortable with. This kind of travel should have been done only at night, but Nick was such a basket case that they’d had to come back early. Thorne insisted it was the most foolish thing they could do, that professional killers only worked at night, but Nick was equally adamant that they had to warn his family. With the telephone unplugged, the only alternative was to fly in. It wasn’t like he could call the local sheriff’s office and have them deliver the message.

Jake tried his best to stay invisible, wearing his sunglasses and baseball cap. He stood outside as Thorne took care of the rental car details. If Nick paced any more frantically, people were going to start looking for the maternity ward.

Finally, Thorne emerged from the sliding glass doors, car keys in hand, and they followed him across the parking lot to the cluster of five rental cars: four Escorts and a Grand Marquis. Thorne treasured his comfort. “Put your gloves on, people,” he instructed as he thumbed the remote to unlock the Grand Marquis’s door.

“I’ll drive,” Nick said, stepping in front of Thorne. “I know where we’re going.”

Thorne held his ground-and the keys. “Good. Then you sit up front and tell me where to go.”

Nick shook his head, eyes desperate. “But…”

“I’m driving, Nick,” Thorne said simply. “Now, we can argue about it, or you can fight me for it, but when we’re done, I’ll still be behind the wheel. You’re wrapped way too tight to drive anywhere.”

“We’re wasting time, boys,” Jake chided as he climbed into the backseat.

Defeated and deflated, Nick settled into the shotgun seat. While Thorne slid in behind the wheel, Nick gave his instructions in a burst. “Left out of the airport onto Nokesville Road. Follow the signs toward Warrenton.” He checked his watch. “And for heaven’s sake, step on it.”

Melissa’s mind was a complete blank. She felt dizzy, and her legs wobbled as she tried to figure out what she’d really heard. Not good at following orders?

“You look confused,” the man said with an odd smile. “Let me clear it up for you. I’m here to let you save your children’s lives.”

“Who are you?” Melissa breathed.

The man chuckled. “Everyone always asks that. Like it matters.” He smiled. “You can call me Wiggins, if you’d like.”

She still couldn’t move. “But why… What…” Her brain refused to function in complete sentences.

“I know it’s confusing,” he said apologetically. “But I really don’t want to hurt your children any more than I already have.”

Her eyes grew huge, and they shot back to her helpless little girl.

“Really,” he said. “She’ll be fine. I’m afraid I had to get a little rough with her as she tried to squirm away. Once she got a whiff from my magic handkerchief, though, she settled down. She should be under for at least an hour.”

Melissa’s face lost all color.

“You know, you really shouldn’t let such a little girl answer the door,” he chided. “No harm done, though. She’ll be awake just in time to greet little Nicky and Joshua as they come home from school.”

Melissa’s world started to spin, and she sat down hard. She figured she’d fainted, because barely a second passed before he was right there, his face just a few inches from hers, his pistol pressed against her temple.

“Now don’t go wimpy on me, Melissa. There’s no time. We’ve got a lot of work to do before the boys get home.”

“Please don’t…” she sobbed.

“Just think of your children as Thanksgiving turkeys,” he whispered. “And how awful it would be to be carved alive.”

“Something’s wrong,” Nick whined. “I can feel it.”

To Jake’s eye, the scenery hadn’t changed in the last twenty minutes. Hell, it hadn’t changed in a year. Heavy woods just led to more heavy woods, the monotony of the landscape broken only by the occasional house or gas station. Rural Virginia was no different than rural South Carolina or rural Arkansas. Only the terrain and the foliage changed. The isolation was a constant.

From Route 28, they took Vint Hill Road to cross over to Route 29, and from there, on into Warrenton. After that, the turns and the route numbers came too quickly and too frequently for Jake to keep track. No one even bothered to name the roads out here. They just stuck a number on a post.

Soon the woods began to give way to fields and rolling hills. Stone walls took the place of barbed wire along the roadside, some of them in pristine shape, others crumbling under a century of neglect. Multimillion-dollar mansions alternated with more modest farmhouses and barely habitable shacks.

“How much farther?” Jake asked. Anything to cut the tension.

“About three miles.”

“Now sign it,” Wiggins instructed. They were in the master bedroom upstairs, gathered around a tiny antique writing desk.

“No one’s going to believe any of this,” Melissa sobbed. Her tears dropped heavily onto the mauve stationery, smearing the ink of her suicide note.

He smiled. “You’d be surprised what people will believe. Now hurry up and sign it. You’re running out of time. It’s after three.”

But the note was all wrong! She didn’t hate herself, and she wasn’t hopelessly lonely. She loved her children, and they loved her right back. Even the stuff about Nick was all wrong. He wasn’t the best husband in the world, but she could have done a lot worse. This whole thing made no sense.

If she signed the note-every word dictated by this madman-what would her children think of her as they grew older? They’d spend their entire lives hating her for abandoning them; for filling their minds with memories of finding her dead body.

“I won’t do it,” she declared.

Wiggins’s eyes flashed-a second of anger that disappeared instantly, replaced by his professional calm. He glared straight through Melissa’s eyes, into her brain. “Fine,” he said. “Don’t sign it. I don’t want you to sign it.” He snatched the note from beneath her hand and crumpled it up tightly, stuffing it into his pocket. When his hand came into view again, it held a knife. He snapped it open, revealing a finely honed three-inch blade. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She winced, anticipating pain, but panicked when she saw him heading out of the bedroom toward the stairs. “Where are you going?”

He never slowed, didn’t say a word.

“Oh, my God!” she yelled. “Lauren!” She bolted out of her writing chair and ran after the killer. She caught up with him at the top of the stairs and tried to tackle him, but he didn’t even seem to feel the impact. She fell to the floor and tried to hang on to his ankle, but he just kicked himself free.

“Please!” she yelled. “Please! I’ll do it! Please don’t hurt her.”

“I told you, Melissa,” Wiggins said calmly as he marched down the sweeping, carpeted staircase. “I told you this would happen, but you didn’t believe me.” His heels clicked as he stepped onto the hardwood of the foyer. “I’m going to have to get really creative with the boys.”

“No!” she shrieked. “I’ll do it!” She sailed down the steps, barely touching them as she charged at him. “Touch my little girl, you son of a bitch, and I’ll kill you!”

She was five feet away when Wiggins stopped suddenly and whirled, thrusting his hand into the air like a traffic cop in an intersection. She skidded to a halt and nearly fell.

He glared at her and brought the point of his knife within inches of her face. “Are you asking for a second chance?”

She nodded frantically. “Yes.”

“Then ask me.” His voice was barely a whisper.

“I am,” she whispered back. “I’m asking you for a second chance.”

He smiled. “Ask me to let you kill yourself.”

She tried. “Please,” she said. She choked on her voice as she began to sob. She slumped to her knees. “Please…”

“Say the words,” he insisted, “or I’ll field-dress your little girl right there on the sofa.”

She tried again. Really tried, but the words wouldn’t come. “Please…”

“Say the words!” he boomed, his voice shaking the glass on a curio cabinet.

She was helpless now. Terrified. Fear and sadness flowed from her soul like a raging river as she finally croaked out the words. “Please. Let. Me. Kill myself.”

Wiggins stood over her, admiring his handiwork. Finally, he stooped down to her level and used one finger on the point of her chin to raise her eyes to meet his. “I don’t normally give second chances,” he whispered.

“That’s it!” Nick yelled. “The white mailbox on the right. That’s my driveway!”

Thorne hit his signal and slowed to make the turn. All very legal. All very slow.

“Goddammit, Thorne, move it!”

“Look!” the driver snarled. “If our target is already there, I’m sure as hell not charging up the driveway into a trap! It won’t make a difference, anyway…”

Jake saw the words cut divots out of Nick’s heart.

“… and if he isn’t there yet, then we’ve got nothing to worry about.” He cleared the mailbox and began inching his way up the long driveway, scanning the horizon for threats.

“Whose van is that?” Jake asked, pointing to the end of the driveway. The block lettering on the side read “Mike’s Plumbing.”

“Oh, shit,” Nick breathed. “Step on it, Thorne.”

Thorne hesitated, then stopped. “This isn’t good.”

It was three-twenty now, and the boys’ bus would arrive out front at any minute.

This time the note was short and sweet. “Good-bye.” She’d addressed it individually to all of her family, and she’d signed it without objection. With her children’s lives in the balance, her own meant nothing.

Wiggins led Melissa to the little balcony overlooking the foyer and handed her the rope. It was clothesline, really; an eight-foot nylon tube with little tufts of white stuffing sticking out of either end. “Tie this onto the railing,” he instructed.

She moved mechanically, like her hands were suddenly a couple of sizes too big. Much to her surprise, though, they didn’t tremble. She was terrified, yet resigned to her fate. It was for her children.

Wiggins watched her work, observing every detail.

She tied the knot carefully, making sure it would hold, even as she feared that the railing itself might not stand the strain of the jolt. Probably wouldn’t matter, anyway. Once her neck snapped, the rest would be academic.

“Very good,” Wiggins praised. “Now, you see that little loop I tied on the other end?”

She looked at him quizzically, then nodded.

“Good. I need you to pull some rope back through the loop to form a noose.

She did what she was told, looking up for confirmation that she was doing it right.

“A little bigger,” he said.

And bigger it grew. She knew that a single screwup would kill her children. She had doubted that once, but not anymore.

He backed away now, putting some distance between himself and his victim. “Okay, Melissa,” he said softly. “The rest is up to you now.” He walked down the stairs to watch the action from the foyer.

She looked at him strangely; like she suddenly didn’t know who he was. She still didn’t understand why, but the time had come to kill herself. She prayed it wouldn’t hurt too much. She eyed the rope in her hands, then slowly and deliberately slipped the noose over her head, adjusting it just so on her neck, with the knot lined up to her spine.

She was crying now, though still amazingly calm as she slung one leg over the railing, and then the other, moving carefully to keep from falling. As if it would matter. The tiny ledge beyond the white wooden rail spindles protruded just enough to support Melissa’s heels; and even then, she had to jam her Achilles tendon into the spaces between them. With her hands behind her, knuckles white against the dark wood of the banister, she looked like the bowsprit of a great schooner. The tears flowed freely now as she looked down at her murderer.

“You’re doing great, Melissa,” he coaxed. There was now an easy gentleness to his tone that she found more frightening than his anger. “You’re almost there. Just take a step.”

She looked down at him, wanting to beg; hoping to tap into a tiny vein of compassion. But there was no pity in those eyes. There’d be no reprieve. She tried to speak but found her throat packed with sand. She swallowed dusty air and tried it again. “Promise me you won’t hurt the children,” she croaked.

He put his fists on his hips and shook his head. “We’ve already been over this.”

“Promise me.”

His eyes narrowed as his features hardened. “Jump, Melissa. End it. Now. They’ll be home soon.”

“Promise me!” A fierceness returned to her voice. It wasn’t a request anymore. It was a demand.

He found it amusing. He stared at her for a moment longer, then finally shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “I promise. Now jump!”

She glared down on him, trying to kill the bastard with the strength of her hate alone. When he refused to break eye contact, though-when he chose instead to smile up at her-she knew the battle was lost. Out in the family room, she heard the mantel clock chime the half hour. Nicky and Joshua would be home at any minute. She had to get this done.

Forgive me, she thought, and she adjusted the rope one last time behind her. Then she let go. And jumped.

“He’s in there,” Thorne whispered, and he climbed out of the car.

Jake followed, sliding out of the backseat. “How do you know?”

“Because that’s what I’d drive if I thought I might have to dispose of a couple of bodies. Call it intuition.”

Nick stayed in the car as Jake and Thorne played commando, sneaking quietly up the grassy slope toward the house.

“Screw this,” Nick spat. In one smooth motion, he slid over to the driver’s seat and slammed the gas pedal to the floor. The rear wheels dug trenches in the grass as the big boat of a car launched forward, the acceleration slamming Jake’s door shut.

He passed his partners in a blur, rocketing straight toward the front of the house. He covered the three hundred feet in no time at all, destroying a dozen azaleas and a thirty-year-old boxwood as he slid to a stop on the front walk.

Stealth be damned, he jumped out of the car and dashed full speed up the two steps to the front door. When he found it ajar, he panicked and flew into the foyer. “Mel-oh, God!”

Melissa saw the door fly open, even as she leapt into the air, and the reality of her rescue hit her like a bolt of lightning. Her body jerked and arced wildly as she abandoned her suicide and turned in midair, clamoring for a handhold on the railing. Her left hand nicked it but missed, and she brought her right around in a giant overhead arc, catching the polished banister in her palm.

She slammed heavily into the ledge and the spindles. A splintering crack! startled her, and for just a fraction of an instant, she feared that the wood had snapped. Then the bolt of agony reached her brain, launched from her ruined shoulder. Suddenly, the railing felt white-hot in her palm, and as her grip started to slip, she said another prayer for her children.

Nick had never seen the man before in his life, but he knew from his eyes exactly who he was. The entire scene registered with the speed of a camera flash. The murderer in the foyer. His wife struggling overhead.

Little Lauren, looking sleepy and disheveled, took it all in from the kitchen doorway.

Wiggins moved toward Nick with viper-speed. But for an extra two feet of separation, Nick would have died right there. As it was, Wiggins had to close the gap by a step, and Nick used the half-second delay to dive out of the way. As he skidded across the floor, his attacker changed course.

Nick saw the kick coming, and he rolled to his right, just as he heard Lauren’s panicked voice yell, “Daddy!” The kick missed, but Wiggins adjusted one more time, settling for a crushing blow to Nick’s ankle. He stomped on it; like someone else might stomp on a bug.

Nick howled in agony. He tried to pull his leg away, but the foot just flopped to the side, like it didn’t even belong to him. His vision seemed to liquefy. Again, he saw the kick coming, this one to his head and moving a million miles per hour.

Lauren screamed one more time.

Thorne moved with tremendous speed, sailing across the foyer in no time flat. For the final ten feet, he was airborne, arriving shoulder-first and launching Wiggins into the opposite wall. The murderer hit hard, knocking a curio cabinet off the wall and sending the shattered remains of Melissa Thomas’s most prized pottery skittering across the floor.

Thorne recovered quickly, but Wiggins was faster, sweeping the newcomer’s legs out from under him with a vicious roundhouse kick. Wiggins was on him the instant he hit the floor, and suddenly, the struggle looked like something you’d see in the halls of a high school: a wrestling match, with only a few punches thrown-and those to little effect-as each man struggled for dominance over the other.

Jake moved in, weapon drawn, and pulled Nick out of the way by his armpits. “Help my wife,” Nick groaned, and he pointed overhead.

Melissa looked like she was trying to swim, her legs kicking uselessly in the air as she dangled from her one good arm. What the hell? Jake wondered, and then he saw the rope. “Oh, my God!”

The two fighters broke apart as Thorne’s head snapped back and a smear of blood flooded the lower half of his face. Thorne countered with two savage lefts to the killer’s mouth. A tooth hit the floor, and the men locked it up again.

Jake took the stairs two at a time. As he arrived at the top, he saw the angulation in Melissa’s ruined shoulder and realized for the first time just how desperate her situation was. If she let go, she was dead.

Melissa greeted Jake with a look of faint recognition. “You-” she said, not completing the sentence. She eyed the Glock in his fist and gurgled out something like “Shoot him.”

Jake didn’t bother to respond. He needed the killer alive and prayed Thorne would be able to hold his own while he concentrated on saving this woman’s life. He examined the complex knot on the railing for just a second before abandoning it as hopeless. Reaching over the top, he grabbed a fistful of shirt and heaved her high enough to where she could regain her foothold on the ledge.

“Shoot him!” she said, air returning to her lungs.

He helped her climb back over the banister. “I can’t,” he said.

A heavy thump and a crash whipped his attention back down the stairs as Thorne and Wiggins exploded apart, each tumbling backward onto the wooden floor. Thorne landed in the broken glass.

Wiggins landed on Lauren.

“Mommmeeeee!!!”

In an instant, Wiggins had the little girl in his grasp, his forearm around her middle, squeezing her hard enough to turn her face red. The Beretta appeared in his other hand, and he brought it toward the little girl’s head.

Melissa and Nick shrieked in unison, “No!”

On the floor, Thorne rolled to his side, and there was a flash of silver as he slapped his own weapon out of its holster. A tongue of flame six inches long jumped from the muzzle of Thorne’s big. 45, and the house rocked with noise as Wiggins’s gun hand left his arm. Fingers flew through the air like chips from a log, and the Beretta dropped harmlessly onto the polished hardwood surface of the foyer.

The impact of Thorne’s bullet spun the attacker into the wall with tremendous force, but he never let go of the girl, who flopped in his arm like a doll.

Jake flew down the stairs as Thorne drew a bead for his kill shot. “God, Thorne, no!” He slapped at the chrome-plated. 45 even as it rocked the house one more time. “We need him alive, goddammit!”

“Get out of my way!” Thorne yelled, and he brought the gun around one more time.

But he was too late. Wiggins had shifted arms again, the tattered stump of bone and tissue painting horrifying red stripes across Lauren’s pink coveralls. She stood tall and still in his arms, though, her feet dangling by his knees as his knife blade pushed into the underside of her jaw, just far enough to draw a bead of blood.

“Put the piece down or I’ll cut her throat!” he commanded.

Thorne never broke his aim. “Like I give a shit,” he growled. “Go ahead and cut it. I’d love to see your brain on the floor.”

“Oh, my God!” Melissa shrieked.

Nick was standing again, his weight on his only good foot. “Thorne!” he yelled. “For Christ’s sake, put your gun down. That’s my daughter!”

“Then make another one. I’m gonna kill this asshole.”

Wiggins smiled, even as he backed out of the foyer, toward the kitchen. “You gonna shoot right through her, tough guy?”

Thorne shrugged. “If I have to.”

Jake didn’t know what to do. He knew without the tiniest doubt that Thorne couldn’t have cared less about that little girl. Jake moved in behind him, his own weapon drawn, as together they backed the killer through the kitchen, toward Melissa’s workroom.

“Don’t kill him, Thorne,” Jake said softly, nearly whispering in his ear. “If you kill him, it’s all over. We don’t have squat for real evidence. That’s what we’re here for, remember?”

“Stay out of my way, Jake.”

Melissa and Nick joined the group, helping each other move as best they could. “Nick!” she wailed. “Stop him! My God, who are these people? What are they doing here?”

Thorne never broke eye contact with his target as he hissed, “Do me a favor, Nick, and get control of your wife.”

“Fuck you!” Melissa shouted. She darted out in front of Thorne, blocking his aim, and facing Wiggins eye-to-eye.

Nick panicked. “Melissa, no!”

“Please let her go,” she pleaded. “I tried…”

Wiggins was gone. Keeping the flailing, sobbing little girl between himself and his pursuers, he glided out of the kitchen and through the glass doors of Melissa’s studio.

“Get out of my way!” Thorne shouted as Melissa tried to block his path.

“He’ll kill her!” she screamed. She grabbed Thorne’s jacket in her fists. “Let him go!”

Thorne settled the issue with a slap that sent Melissa reeling.

Jake stood watching, horrified. He saw Nick’s wife hit the floor shoulder-first and heard her scream in pain. Nick shot him a look of pure hatred as he hobbled over to help her. Jake stared for a moment, absorbing his friend’s anger, but there was nothing to say. He hurried to follow Thorne into the yard.