Page 76 of Inferno

She squeezed her eyes shut, her face turned away from him.

Walter got up. She heard the clink of a chain. Before she even moved, he had it secured to the ties around her wrist.

She heard him walk away, and then the front door of the cabin shut.

Samantha tugged on the chain, the other end secured to the metal corner post of the bed, on the floor. Tears gathered in her eyes, spilling down her cheeks. The raw one stung. All she could think was…how many times had he chained Marianne on the floor by the bed?

This monster knew who the arsonist was.

He knew what their foe had planned. And if he went through with it, people at the police department could die. Maybe lots of them.

Samantha looked at the floor again, searching for the thing she’d seen. Why she fixated so hard on it right then, she wasn’tsure. But then, she had no power here. No ability to save herself or the officers she worked with from dying. What she could do was hold herself together…while tears rolled down her face and her heart felt like it was breaking all over again.

How was she supposed to get out of this?

Her fingers found the slight difference, a raised bit between two wood planks. Ignoring a splinter that embedded itself in her finger, she pried out something tiny. She couldn’t even see what it was.

The chain secured to her wrists clinked.

She lifted the tiny thing and found a chain attached to it—delicate like a necklace—that ran through her fingers. She held the now warm metal in the palm of one hand and moved her finger over it like she was reading braille.

A cross. On a chain, a necklace.

Marianne.

She’d been a believer.

Marianne had held out hope that God would save her. That she would be rescued from the situation she was in, even though Samantha had repeatedly asked her to testify against Walter.

She’d trusted God.

What had Marianne been thinking at the end? Had she kept her faith or fallen to despair? Sergeant Deerdan—dead as well because of Walter. Like Samantha would be soon enough.

Because God had abandoned them.

THIRTY

The sun was only an orange glow behind the high-rise across the street. Julio had lost count of how many coffees he’d had, but the table was littered with mugs and paper cups. Every few minutes another cop came in from the room-to-room search they’d conducted, or an FBI agent from downstairs showed up, adding to the mass of people in the room.

Someone hung up a phone. Lieutenant Gage Deluca, the former SWAT commander, called out across the room. “Deerdan is out of surgery.”

More than one person whooped. Someone said, “Let’s find this guy.”

The door opened, and a dark-haired Hispanic woman wearing a blue police officer uniform came in. But Julio recognized her. He tapped Romeo on the shoulder. “Isn’t that your sister?”

Romeo levered himself out of the office chair high up enough to say, “Cat!” Then he slumped back down while his sister weaved through people.

Across the room, a half dozen people stared at a map on the wall, congregated around it as if that topographical map of Benson was the epicenter of the search for Samantha.

Cat squeezed his shoulder. “Simon is on his way over.”

“Great,” Romeo said. “Then everyone at Vanguard will be on the case.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Julio asked. “The more people we have looking for Samantha, the better. Right?”

A few feet away, some guy in a suit with a badge on his belt said, “A cop was nearly killed in our house. We don’t need Vanguard’s help.”

Julio shut his mouth. They were all like this right now, determined to find the guy who’d tried to kill Sergeant Deerdan and had taken Samantha. Territorial. Embarrassed it had happened inside the police department. He didn’t blame them, considering the fire department had been suckered into all being gone and left their house wide open to an attack that nearly killed Julio and Samantha.

---