“Don’t like the dark, I see.”

She turned quickly and for an instant thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, because all she saw was a huge, hideous shadow looming toward her. But when she blinked, it was only a man.

A very average man. Average height and weight, average brown hair, and average blue eyes. Wearing a very average business suit.

Somehow, that made it worse.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “Not Duran.”

That surprised him. “No. I’m Varden.”

“So this was your game.” She wasn’t really thinking about what she was saying, just talking to stall for time.

“It was.”

“Bucking for a promotion?”

He smiled thinly. “If so, you’ll help me get it, Sarah.”

“Pass. Where’s Tucker?”

“Safe. I just sent one of my men to…watch him. We’ll let him go, of course, as soon as you leave with me.”

She smiled. “Sure you will.”

Varden shrugged carelessly. “He’s of no interest to us.”

“But I am. Want to tell me why?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I know it’s because I’m psychic. I don’t know how you mean to use that.”

“Come with me and find out.”

Sarah stared at him almost curiously. “It’d be a feather in your cap if I did, wouldn’t it? Why is a willing psychic better for you?”

His mouth tightened. “We’re wasting time. It’s over, Sarah. It’s time to go.”

Even though she had been expecting it, Sarah jumped just as he did when, high above their heads in the rotting building, the old church bells began a jangling, discordant song, accompanied by the sharp reports of gunfire.

“Your backup, I presume,” Varden drawled, his face calm even as his hand dived inside his jacket and produced a businesslike black automatic. “We were expecting them, Sarah.”

“You’re a very good shot,” Leigh said, looking admiringly toward the church and its swaying bells.

Murphy swore and aimed a shot at one of the broken windows, where a head had momentarily appeared. “I’d rather hit some of them instead of the damned bells. Just one, at least. Come on, Leigh—”

“No bodies, Murphy. We can’t afford them.”

“We can’t afford to leave our own here, either,” Murphy snapped. “Dammit, Leigh, will you get down? One lucky shot and—”

Leigh obeyed, ducking for a moment behind the pile of old lumber they were using for cover. When there was a lull in the gunfire coming from the church, she got off a few shots of her own. She hardly knew one end of a gun from the other, but the illusion of an army was needed, so periodically she aimed her pistol at the largest expanse of wood she could find on the church and fired.

“You’re a menace,” Murphy noted as what was left of a stained-glass window shattered under one of Leigh’s bullets.

Leigh winced. “Now, if that isn’t bad luck, I don’t know what is.”

“We make our own luck,” Murphy told her flatly.

“Um. Maybe so, but I think I’ll circle around and check on Nick. There’s less glass on his side. And I’ve got to take care of step two.”

“I wish you’d let me handle that,” Murphy said.

“You’re a much better shot than I am. You and Nick are needed for this.”

“Will you, for Christ’s sake, be careful?”

“You bet.”

“We were expecting them, Sarah.”

“Were you? Damn.”

His eyes narrowed at her mild tone. “What have you done?”

“Read my mind.” She knew that taunting him was a bad idea, but she couldn’t help herself. She had been getting angry for a long time, and Cait’s senseless death the night before had turned anger into rage.

He cocked the pistol and leveled it at her. “We’re going upstairs, Sarah. Now.”

The bells jangled above them, along with gunshots and, now, a crackling, whispery sound.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Varden! Get out of there!” The voice came echoing down the stairs, urgent and more than a little panicked. “They’re burning the place!”

Sarah had counted on a moment of surprise, and she got one as Varden’s gaze lifted instinctively toward the burning church above them. She moved instantly, leaping away from him and the light and toward the protection of a jumble of wooden crates.

A bullet splintered wood a heartbeat behind her, accompanied by a snarl from Varden.

Sarah didn’t waste a moment, moving as swiftly as she could toward the corridor she knew would lead her to the escape tunnel. She tried to keep the boxes and junk of the cellar between her and him, but she had to circle widely to pass by him. She counted on Varden to head toward the stairs and his own escape.

For once, her instincts and senses failed her.

He was there, in front of her, gun leveled and face savage, blocking her way to the tunnel. “Bitch. Where do you think you’re going? I haven’t come this far to let you get away now.”

For an instant, staring down the barrel of that gun and listening to the whispery “voices” of the fire spreading above them, Sarah felt an urge to just accept the inevitable.

I’m going to die here. The vision’s coming true.

Destiny.

But the rage bubbling inside her was, finally, stronger. “I want my life back,” she snarled right back at him. “You can’t have it, you son of a bitch. You can’t have anything I am.”

Whatever he saw in her face, it was clear that Varden recognized a point of no return. And his own defeat. But his failure was mixed with thwarted fury. His free hand lifted, a walkie-talkie in it, and he snapped, “Braun! Kill Mackenzie!”

Murphy tried to keep Leigh in sight as the older woman put step two of their plan into action and torched the building. It was supposed to be a fairly simple action: toss a couple of incendiaries against the back of the church and set that end on fire, driving those inside out the front door.

Murphy had argued for a good, old-fashioned turkey shoot but was overruled. So it was with utter disgust and an itchy trigger finger that she watched several men stumble from the burning church within minutes and pile into two waiting long black cars.

The gunfire over, she eased the hammer back on her pistol but remained wary until the men had fled the scene.

“Not very loyal, are they?” Nick noted as he joined her. “They left at least two of their own behind.”

“They’re bastards, every last one,” Murphy said, more or less automatically. Her gaze was directed toward the church. Through one of the glassless windows, she could see inside the church. See flames and falling pieces of timber. And…

“Jesus. Is that—?”

Nick followed her gaze, and his thin face tightened. Very quietly, he said, “Oh, my God.”

“Braun! Kill Mackenzie!”

Sarah’s heart stopped for an instant. But then a voice she recognized as well as her own erupted from the walkie-talkie in a cheerful response.

“Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but Braun sort of fell down on the job.”

On the last syllable, a Molotov cocktail crashed against the wall just a few feet from Varden, and he flinched away from it instinctively, his gun hand lifting to shield his face from the heat.

Sarah wanted to kick him where it would hurt the most but still didn’t dare touch him, and it was with immense satisfaction that she saw Brodie step from the doorway behind Varden and bring a bottle of something crashing against the back of his head.

Varden dropped like a stone.

“Aw, gee, did that hurt?” Brodie stared down at him pitilessly.

Tucker came through the doorway to stand beside him and said reflectively, “Terrible waste of thirty-year-old scotch.”

“You wasted the first bottle,” Brodie reminded him.