Page 82 of Catching Fire

Watson, at least, took him seriously. “Why not?”

“The bomb. She made it and she wouldn't have blown herself up. She would have blown up Sanders.”

“Then I'm looking for Sanders,” Watson told him, and he turned back to the open space, wondering where Seline had gone. There were fields and sky in all directions. She might have gone through the fields or crossed the road they’d driven in on. He had no idea, and he turned a full circle praying for a clue.

It was only moments later that Verner hollered. “This way! I think I've got a trail.”

But right as she said it, just as he felt the relief of having a direction, Rossi also called out, “I've got a trail!”

The two agents were pointing in different enough directions that Kalan was forced to choose.

Either might lead to Seline. If he chose wrong, he wouldn’t be there when they found her.

But there was no time to linger, so he followed Verner, who’d already taken off at an alarmingly fast pace. He followed her simply because he was slightly closer to her than to Rossi.

Decker took off from the yard, leaving the house behind to follow them, but Verner waved him back. “Go with Rossi. I've got this guy.”

He might be onlythis guy, Kalan thought, but he was the guy who was going to do everything to save Seline.

They didn't move as fast as he would like. Verner had to stop periodically and check to see if she still had eyes on a trail. It seemed it would go cold—though, honestly, Kalan had no idea what they were looking for. And he was entirely at the mercy of her best guess for which direction to aim.

Verner would stop, look around, and then declare, “I think it's there.” And they would take off again, until they hit whatever point in the distance she had seen and the painstaking process would begin again.

The whole time, he wondered what might be happening to Seline.

They halted again in the middle of a cornfield, and this time when Verner looked up, she said, “It looks like the trail leads directly to that house.”

That housewas still standing, and Kalan was confident that if Seline had seen it, she would have run for it. She hadn't blown it up, too, so she might still be inside.

When he and Verner finally reached the house, it was almost eerily silent.

This time, Verner treated him like an agent. She motioned to him with two fingers indicating that he go one way while she went the other. She, of course, still had her gun drawn, and he was still empty handed.

There were no trees close to the house. No fallen branches he could pick up to use for a club. But he made a note to himself to grab the first weapon that he could.

Heading around the side of the house, Kalan nearly smacked into the man standing on wavering feet. He had blood on his hands and more dripping down his chest. His face was red and swollen, his mouth wide as he gulped for air. The sound he made was wrong—almost inhuman—and it took Kalan a full second to realize that he was looking directly at William Treat Sanders.

The man was damaged, possibly on his last legs, but he stepped forward toward Kalan. And while it had taken Kalan a moment to recognize Sanders, Sanders recognized him in a heartbeat. The red mouth pulled into a cruel smile and—though it was difficult to understand the words—Sanders’ meaning was clear.

“She's dead.”

With his own scream of rage, Kalan rushed at him. He pushed with two hands, sending Sanders stumbling backwards. It didn't matter how much the killer fought back, whatever Seline had done to him, he was too weak to have any effect.

Quickly, Kalan recognized that at least some of the blood was from a puncture wound, and the knife that caused it was still sticking out of Sanders’ chest.

Wrapping his own hand firmly around the handle, Kalan defied every medical protocol he knew and yanked the blade out. Sanders screamed in pain.

But Kalan didn't give him enough time to cut off the sound before he plunged it in again and again.

Chapter Fifty-Six

As soon as Sanders’ head rolled to the side and the breath seeped out of his body, Kalan let go of the knife.

Pushing himself off of the body, he ran screaming into the house.

Verner had taken no time to alert him that she’d found Seline, she simply knelt over the woman he loved as the agent shouted into her phone.

“I need medical here immediately. Severe trauma, knife wound, torso, severe blood loss.”

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