“Mordecai, you’re confused,” Julie said.
He shook his head slowly, smiling. “No, my Jewel. I’m the only one in this room who isn’t confused. I understand everything so clearly. I always have. It’s everyone else who’s mixed up, misled, on the wrong path. This life is nothing, Jewel. We’re spirit beings. Our time in these bodies is just a blip on the radar screen of the Universe.” He glanced past her. “Tell her, Lizzie. Tell her how it will be.”
Lizzie smiled softly, moving closer to Mordecai, putting one hand and then her head upon his shoulder. “We’re surrounded,” she said. “We’re not going to survive this, are we?”
“Not in the physical world, no. But we will survive.”
Nodding slowly, she lowered her eyes. “And we’ll reunite with our Source, and then we’ll understand why all this was necessary.”
He nodded. “And we’ll be together. All of us, together.”
“Yes.”
A bullhorn-enhanced voice came through the walls. “Mr. Young, I implore you. Talk to us. We can’t give you what you want if you don’t tell us what your demands are. Tell us your demands.”
“My demands?” he said softly. Then he sighed. “I have to go upstairs now,” he said. “Our blood cannot be the only blood spilled here today. We have to make our point. We have to make sure they remember.”
Again Lizzie nodded. “We have to go down fighting,” she said. “But I have to die fighting by your side, Mordecai. Please, don’t deny me that. I can’t bear to survive if you don’t. I don’t want to live another sixteen years grieving you.”
Julie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She held Dawn to her side, edging away from the two lunatics one millimeter at a time.
Mordecai stared at Lizzie for a long moment. “All right.” Reaching to his side, he removed a handgun from the holster that hung there, pressed it into her hands.
Mordecai started up the stairs again, but stopped when a high-pitched alarm screamed through the house. “Damn! They’re trying to get in the back door!”
Julie grabbed Dawn and pushed her to the floor, then lay down on top of her, certain they were about to be caught in the cross fire. Mordecai came off the staircase, leaping over them, lifting his rifle.
Lizzie flung her arms around him. “Mordecai, I’m so afraid!”
He embraced her. “I know. But I have to go before they get inside.”
“One kiss,” she whispered. “One last kiss before we face them and death.”
His face softened, and he lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her deeply, passionately. And then a deafening shot exploded between them.
Mordecai went stiff, his eyes flying wide, still clutching her. “Lizzie?” he whispered.
“I love you, Mordecai. I’m sorry.”
He fell backward. Julie scrambled to her feet as the weapon fell from the other woman’s hands. Lizzie stood there, staring unseeingly at the fallen man, tears flowing silently down her face.
“I had to make him believe in me,” she said, her voice strained. “I’m sorry I hit you, Jewel.”
Julie tugged Dawn with her, wrapping her free arm around Lizzie, and running for the kitchen and the back door. As they rounded the final corner into the kitchen, the back door burst open and Sean lunged inside, wide-eyed.
Then he saw her, and the relief in his eyes was palpable. He moved toward her, pulled her and Dawn into his arms. “Thank God, thank God, when I heard that shot, I thought—”
“Where is he, where’s Young?” Lieutenant Jackson, crowding past them with her gun drawn, sounded fierce.
“I shot him,” Lizzie whispered. “I killed him. I had to.”
Jackson’s taut stance eased, her weapon lowered just a little. “And who are you?”
“I’m…Elizabeth Marcum. I’m Dawn’s…” Her eyes rose, locked with Julie’s. “I’m Dawn’s English teacher.”
Julie held Lizzie’s eyes, thanking her without a word.
Jackson frowned. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Lizzie closed her eyes. “I knew Mordecai once. A long time ago. I knew about this place, and when I heard he was alive and that he’d taken Dawn, I suspected he might have brought her here. So I came….”
“Naturally. Rather than notifying the authorities. Makes perfect sense.” Jackson turned to the men who’d entered with her. “Where’s the body?”
“At the foot of the stairs,” Lizzie whispered, pointing the way. She was starting to shake.
Jackson nodded to the other two men. “Go get him. Search the place for anyone else while you’re at it.” They hurried out of the kitchen to obey. Then the lieutenant picked up her radio, spoke into it. “Phelps? The suspect is dead, the hostages safe. We’re coming out.” She replaced the radio in its holder at her side and turned to the back door. “Let’s get you all out of here, hmm?”
Dawn put an arm around Lizzie. “You were only pretending the whole time,” Dawn said. “You saved me,” she whispered. “You saved us all.”
“I love you,” Lizzie said. “I always have.”
Sean stumbled a little as the four of them followed Jackson out the back door. Julie pulled his arm around her shoulders, tried to help him as much as she could, limping along on her wounded ankle. “He didn’t miss when he shot at you, did he?”
“No. I was kind of surprised that I wasn’t dead.”
She closed her eyes. “I thought you were.” Her voice broke when she said it.
“And you cared?”
She looked up at him. “To put it mildly.”
He smiled, though she could see he was in considerable pain.
“Are you going to be okay?”
“I have to be. No way do I plan to die and let you have this story all to yourself.” He stopped their progress. They’d circled the house and were nearing the front, where all the police were parked. Julie was relieved to see a pair of ambulances waiting, lights ablaze. But he caught her chin in his hand, turned her face to his. “Besides—and I hate like hell to be the first one to say it, trust me on that—but I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you, Jones.”
“I kind of figured that out when you stood there and let Mordecai shoot you to protect me. You jerk.”
“Well, you know, I figured a grand gesture is always good in these situations, and I didn’t have a ring handy, so—”
“Shut up, MacKenzie.” She leaned up and pressed her mouth to his. He kissed her softly, lifted his head away, searching her eyes.
“Am I supposed to interpret that as reciprocation?”
“Dawnie says I’m slow to pick up on these things. I didn’t know it until you were lying there in the grass, bleeding. But, yeah. I’m probably in love with you, too.”
“Well, hell, I should have gotten shot a long time ago.” His knees bent a little. He sagged, then forced himself upright again. “So what does Dawn think about it?”
“Let’s get you to that ambulance, Sean. You can ask her yourself.”
He walked with her, but she could tell he was getting weaker. They reached the ambulance, and he sat on its rear bumper as the medics crowded around him. “Back off, guys, just let me get out of this gear.”
Julie knelt in front of him, helping him peel away the shirt and the Kevlar vest he wore. She saw the bandage on his chest and felt her heart skip a beat as her eyes shot to his.
“Stop looking at me like that. I’m fine. I think the adrenaline rush is just wearing off, that’s all.”
“Sean?” Dawn asked. She’d been standing with Lizzie, talking to Jackson, and from the look on the lieutenant’s face, Julie thought she knew a lot more than she had before. Dawn ran to them when she saw them at the ambulance. “Oh, God, Sean, are you okay?”
“Come on, kid, no man dies before putting fifty thousand miles on his Porsche. It’s just not done.”
One of the paramedics moved in to peel the bandage from the wound, and Sean winced. “Listen, Dawnie, come here.”
She came closer, and Julie
rose to encircle her daughter with one arm. The medic plucked the gauze wad from the wound, then leaned over to look at Sean’s back and shook his head. “You shouldn’t even have been moving, much less running around like that. The bullet’s still in there.” He turned his head. “Bring that stretcher over here.”
Someone did, and Sean got to his feet so they could open the ambulance doors. But he didn’t get on the stretcher. “Not yet,” he said. Then he turned to Dawn again.
But before he could say anything, her face crumpled and she moved closer to him, hugged him gently. “Don’t die, okay? I really want to keep you around.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Besides, my mom’s nuts about you, in case she didn’t get around to telling you so when you were kissing her back there.”
He grinned. “She did. So are you okay with that?”
“I’ve been okay with it longer than either one of you have. God, you adults can be so slow to see the obvious.”
“We need to transport you, now,” the paramedic said.
Sean nodded. “Okay.” Ignoring the gurney, he turned and climbed into the back of the ambulance.
“We’ll be right behind you,” Julie promised. Then she turned, finally curious about the increasing activity of the police. Frowning, she called out to Lieutenant Jackson, who was talking animatedly to Lizzie. “What’s going on?”
Jackson looked at her. “There’s no body.”
“What?”
“Young isn’t there. He’s gone.” She walked closer, holding up a vest like the one Sean had been wearing. “We found this. And I imagine the bullet in it will match the gun Lizzie fired.”
“He’s not dead?” Lizzie whispered. “Mordecai isn’t dead?”
“We’ve got men going through the house. We’ll find him. If you shot him from as close as you told us, he’ll at least have a couple of broken ribs, and he’ll be hurting bad. He won’t be moving fast.”
Lizzie shook her head very slowly. “You won’t find him,” she whispered. “You’ll never find him.” She looked toward Julie. “But you can bet he’ll find me.” She looked at Dawn. “And you,” she said softly.
“Jax!” Sean called. “She’ll need protection. They all will.”
“I know. Look, Ms. Marcum, we’re going to keep you safe, I promise you that. Besides, there’s no need to panic. They’ll probably have him in custody within a few minutes. But I’d like to take you out of here now, get you somewhere safe, just in case. All right?”
Lizzie looked at her blankly. “There is nowhere safe. Not for me. I betrayed him. There’s nothing Mordecai hates more than a traitor.”
A team of men came out of the house, approaching Phelps and shaking their heads. They hadn’t found Mordecai in the house. Julie’s heart went cold.
Lizzie wrapped Dawn up in a fierce hug, kissed her cheek, then turned and let Jackson put her into the back seat of her unmarked car. Julie looked at her, held her eyes for a long moment before the door closed; then she turned to Sean.
“Come in the ambulance with me,” Sean said. “I don’t want you two out of my sight again until this bastard is in custody.”
Julie didn’t argue. She didn’t want to be away from him anyway. Taking Dawn’s hand, she let her daughter help her into the back of the ambulance, then Dawn climbed in with her. One medic joined them, making it crowded. The other closed the doors, then got into the front. A police officer joined him there to ride along.
Detective Jackson’s car pulled into motion right behind the ambulance. Julie saw Dawn staring intently out the rear window, her eyes locked with Lizzie’s, in the other car. The vehicle bounced over the dirt road, and Sean winced with every bump. Julie held his hand, stroked his arm, wished she could make it better.
When they got to the bottom of the mountain, they took the narrow road that led to the highway, but when the ambulance turned north, the car that followed it turned south.
Dawn pressed her palm to the glass in the rear doors. Julie leaned closer and saw Lizzie’s hand pressed to the glass of the vehicle in which she rode in the opposite direction. Julie stroked Dawn’s hair. “She’s gonna be all right, baby.”
Dawn shook her head slowly. “I don’t know, Mom. I…I don’t think I’m ever going to see her again.” She turned into her mother’s arms and finally gave way to the tears.
Sean reached out, ran a hand over Dawn’s shoulder, then Julie’s hair. “What a pair,” he said softly. “I think I’m gonna have my hands full with the two of you.” He met Julie’s eyes, held them. “Making the hurt go away. Making you smile again, after all this. It’s gonna be one hell of a challenge. But I think I’m up for it.”
“You’ve already made up for whatever mistakes you think you made in the past, Sean. My God, you saved my daughter for me. You saved me while you were at it. You got that redemption you’ve been looking for.”
“This has nothing to do with the past, Jones.” Leaning closer, he wrapped them both in his arms. “It’s all about the future, from here on in. Our future, the three of us. If that’s okay with the two of you?”
Julie just stared at him.
Dawn elbowed her. “Mom, I think the guy just asked you to marry him.”
“He did?” Dawn nodded. Sean nodded, too. Julie swallowed hard. Then she shrugged. “Well, you do realize I’m going to insist on top billing on the invitations.”
“Is that a yes, Jones?”
She smiled. “That’s a yes, MacKenzie. You lucky son of a gun.”
He kissed her, while Dawn and the paramedic grinned from ear to ear.
EPILOGUE
Mordecai sat on the pew in the very back of the church, aching deep in his soul as his only child walked down the aisle. She was serving as maid of honor at her adoptive mother’s wedding, and she looked beautiful, in a lemon-yellow gown, carrying a bouquet of black-eyed Susans.
Beautiful. Yes.
But Dawn wasn’t what he’d hoped for. She wasn’t what he’d believed she was. The signs had made that clear to him. He’d had plenty of time to meditate and commune with spirit since that dark day in Virginia. In fact, he’d gone into the mountains, fasted and denied himself water for four days while he waited for guidance to come.
And it did. It always did. And he understood now. Dawn wasn’t the one. She wasn’t heir to his legacy. The child who was would not be his biological offspring but someone chosen by God. He would find the heir. He would—just as the holy monks of Tibet always found the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. He would find the heir. All he had to do was watch the signs.
It troubled him that Dawn would live in fear of him, never knowing the things he knew. He didn’t want her to be afraid. So he’d decided to visit her one last time. When her mother opened his wedding gift, she would know. She would understand.
The bride came down the aisle next, and everyone rose to their feet. At the altar, Sean MacKenzie turned to watch her approach in a slender, figure-hugging gown of vanilla-tinted satin. She didn’t wear a veil, just a red rosebud in her hair. She looked lovely, Mordecai thought. She really did. And the man who awaited her seemed unable to wipe the happy smile from his face.
Dawn had wet eyes as she watched Jewel coming to the altar. When she got there, and they all turned to face the minister, Mordecai slid from his pew and moved silently to the door. His gift was simple. A packet of legal documents, relinquishing all parental rights to Dawn Jones, formerly known as Sunshine Young.
He thought it would probably be the most memorable gift the couple received.
As he exited the church, stepping into the bright sunshine, he pushed the ridiculous toupee from his head, shoving it into his coat pocket, but left the sunglasses in place.
He’d rather hoped Lizzie might show her face at the happy event. But no. She was safely relocated in some faraway place, living under an assumed name, thanks to a helping hand from the federal government.
But nothing could stand between him and Lizzie. Nothing. She had been his only r
eal love. She was the mother of his child. She had lulled him, won his trust, and then put a bullet into his heart, or tried her best to. She’d betrayed him in the most hateful way he could imagine. With a kiss.
Just like Judas.
He had a gift that could not be denied, even by those who might question his sanity. And he had a powerful connection to his Lizzie, his Judas.
He would find her.
And when he did, she would learn the true price of betraying the Son of the Father.
“Amen,” he whispered, and he walked down the church steps to his car.
* * * * *
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