Page 43 of Her Last Secret

They edged closer to the back door with urgency in their step, their every muscle stretched taut in anticipation. Rachel continued to listen for more cries of distress as she and Jack stood poised on either side of the back door. She thought she might have heard it again but couldn’t be sure.

With a nod to Jack that was barely perceptible in the darkness, Rachel’s hand tightened around the grip of her gun, which she’d drawn from her holster in one fluid motion. Jack’s frame coiled like a spring, his leg muscles tensing before he delivered a powerful kick to the door.

The sound of splintering wood shattered the silence, a stark contrast to the stealth with which they’d approached. The door swung open, hinges groaning in protest, revealing the gloom of an unkempt kitchen. The smell of stale air mixed with something that she thought might be garbage that had sat a day or two too long.

They crossed the threshold, eyes darting across the room, scanning for threats or victims. Their practiced movements had Rachel turning to the right, Jack to the left, their Glocks held out in front of them. The house was quiet, though she didn’t think it was empty. She could sense previous movement within the space, another of those weird borderline-eerie sensations that practiced agents seemed to develop over time.

"Clear left," she called out, her voice low and controlled despite the pounding in her chest. Her gaze cut through the dimness, catching every shadow, every potential hiding spot where danger could lurk.

"Right’s clear," Jack responded.

The kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes and scattered mail. The living room sat ahead and they strode toward it side by side. The moment their feet crossed the threshold, the stillness of the house was broken.

A figure erupted from a shadowed alcove to Rachel's left, where darkness had cloaked his waiting form. His face was contorted in a mask of fury and desperation, his eyes wild as they fixed on his intruders.

"FBI!” Rachel yelled. “Freeze right where you are!”

But the figure had no intention of listening. And by the time Rachel had her gun leveled up to fire, the figure’s body had slammed into her and slashed out at Jack. As Rachel stumbled back toward the kitchen, she saw the gleaming of the knife blade as it tore through the air, heading in Jack’s direction.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Rachel heard Jack holler out in pain. When her backside hit the floor, she instantly sprang back up, ignoring the quick burst of pain that roared in her left hip. She barely saw the red ribbon of freshly drawn blood across Jack’s arm as she sprang back up. She hesitated in squeezing off a round, always wanting the firing of her service weapon to be a last resort.

Instead, when she sprang up from the floor, she saw that she had a clear path to their assailant's ribs. She delivered a perfect and hard jab into the man's side, and the effect was immediate. The figure went to the floor in a heap, the knife clattering away along the scarred hardwood.

Rachel stood over him with her gun pointed at the prone man before she fully registered the sting of aggression in the room. The barrel steady, she aimed it directly at Theo's heaving chest.

"Don't move another inch," she commanded, her voice eerily calm amidst the chaos. “Are you Theo Barnes?”

But the man was too busy sucking in air from the punch to answer properly. Rachel thought she’d maybe punched a little too hard; she’d likely snapped a rib or two. She looked over at Jack and saw that he seemed to be fine. He was cradling his arm to his chest, blood dropping freely.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I think so. It barely dug in, I think.”

Theo remained crumpled on the ground, a sob escaping his lips as he clutched at his own side, where pain seemed to have taken root. Tears welled up, carving clear paths down his dirt-streaked face.

"I had to do it," he gasped out between ragged breaths. "They were all vile. Corrupt! I had to stop them…had to…”

As Barnes did his best to speak, Rachel noticed the pallor of his skin, the way his body shook—not from fear, but from something internal, consuming him from the inside out. She wondered if maybe she had broken a rib and it had perhaps punctured a lung. Either that, or he was faking it, trying to lure them into a false sense of safety.

"Please," Theo whimpered, his body trembling slightly in the space directly between the kitchen and living room. “Please…you don’t understand. I have…”

He winched and moaned, gritting his teeth as he let out a whimper. Rachel knew this sort of pain; she'd lived with it for a few months. She didn't think he was faking. Something in him was broken, and he was coming to some sort of point of no return.

"You don't understand the pain,” he whimpered. “Make it stop. I can't... I can't take it anymore. Just shoot me…"

Rachel kept her gun trained on him, yet her mind raced, filling in blanks. Something wasn’t right here. There was more to this, something they’d not expected. But what were they missing?

"Rachel?" Jack's voice was strained, but she didn't dare divert her attention from the broken man before them.

"Wait…"

The response was clipped as she continued to assess Theo's condition. The evidence was stacking up before her eyes—the uncontrollable shaking, the sweat beading on his brow despite the cool air, the unhinged look of a man driven not by malice, but by deep, unrelenting torment.

"Please," Theo begged again, his voice barely above a whisper. His eyes, once fiery with conviction, now shimmered with tears. "Just end it. I can't live with this agony."

Rachel's finger remained firmly on the trigger, but her heart thudded with an unexpected pang of compassion. What plagued this man ran deeper than guilt or madness. Something was physically tearing him apart, and it was etching lines of suffering into his every feature. And she didn’t think her single jab to the ribs had done it.

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