by LENA DIAZ,
Stefano shoved Melissa forward. “Follow him, but don’t get too close.”
Jace glanced back. “So you’re the Watcher, but you’ve decided, what, to launch a takeover, try to wrench control of EXIT from the Council and from Cyprian? Is that what this is about?”
Stefano laughed. “You’re fishing, Atwell. Why don’t you just keep your mouth shut? Or you might end up like the guy you found in the general store.”
Jace’s shoulders seemed to tense, but he didn’t say anything. He kept striding forward, with Melissa and Stefano several yards back behind him.
“Why are you doing this, Stefano?” Melissa asked. “We grew up together. We’re practically sister and brother.”
“Practically?” he sneered. “Ask your father if he considers me to be his son. Then ask him what he considers my mother to be to him. His whore, that’s what.” He swore, as if he suddenly realized he’d said too much. “Just shut up and keep walking.”
Melissa felt sick at what Stefano had just said. Was her father taking advantage of Silvia? Using his role as her boss to force her to do something she didn’t want to do? The idea made her want to retch. It couldn’t be true. Could it?
“If my father hurt Silvia, I understand your pain and anger, Stefano. And I’m sorry.”
“Shut. Up.”
A few minutes later, he said, “Take a left, Atwell.”
Jace turned, then stopped and looked at the name over the building’s door. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Keep moving,” Stefano ordered.
Jace climbed the steps in front of them and went inside the Enforcement Alley jailhouse.
A foul smell hit Melissa as soon as she stepped inside. She didn’t know what that smell meant, but from the way Jace had stiffened, she thought maybe he’d recognized it.
Stefano forced them down a hallway to a row of jail cells, with bars from floor to ceiling. He stopped at the first one, its door hanging open, and waved Jace inside. Stefano kicked the door shut. The lock clicked.
“Let her go,” Jace demanded. “If you hurt her, her father will kill you. If I don’t kill you first.”
Stefano ignored him and shoved Melissa forward. Jace gave her a reassuring nod as she passed him. Seeing that he didn’t look worried gave her the strength she needed to face whatever was about to happen. Somehow, they’d figure a way out of this. They had to.
The next cell door was closed. But of course it did nothing to hide what was inside, the reason for the noxious smell that permeated the air. Melissa stumbled to a halt, pressing a hand against her mouth to keep from gagging. Three bodies lay on the floor on one side of the cell, their sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling. A fourth man sat on a cot against the far wall, his back against the concrete, with blood on his shirt near his collar. His eyes widened in surprise when he saw her. Adam Marsh.
“What are you doing, Stefano? Let her go,” he ordered.
“You’re not the one giving orders. Not this time.”
“Stefano,” Melissa said, trying to sound friendly, to talk to him as if her heart wasn’t breaking for the brother he’d always been to her. “I don’t understand. What’s going on? Did you . . . did you kill those men?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Get in the cell.” He motioned toward the next one over.
She ignored him and tried to buy more time. Because if she got in that cell, she’d be helpless to do anything to help Jace, Marsh, or herself. She looked past him at Marsh. “Stefano brought you here? He killed those Councilmen?”
“The Watcher called me,” Marsh said. “He told me to come here for an emergency meeting. But he wasn’t here when I arrived.” He waved at the others. “They were. And they were already dead. When I ran in to check on them, Stefano snuck up on me. We fought, and he slashed me across the chest with a knife. Before I could recover, he’d locked me up in here.”
“How bad?” she asked.
“It’s not that deep. I’ll be okay.”
She nodded with relief. “If Stefano isn’t the Watcher, who is?”
Stefano grabbed her hair and yanked her back. “I believe you already met him at the general store. His name was Garcia, and he did whatever I told him to do. Now get inside that cell. I won’t ask again.”
A thumping noise sounded at the beginning of the row, where Jace was locked up. Stefano turned around.
“Let me out of here, Stefano,” Jace demanded. The thumping sounded again. He was kicking the bars. Why? A distraction?
Stefano shoved Melissa toward her cell.
“Don’t you ever touch her again,” a voice called out. And it wasn’t Jace.
Melissa and Stefano both turned to see her father. His suit was dusty and dirt was smudged on his face. He stood at the end of the hallway near Jace’s cell. Holding a gun.
Stefano grabbed for Melissa, but she lunged toward the open cell door and rolled away from him.
A shot rang out, deafeningly loud in the small space. Stefano fell to the floor, clutching his stomach. His gun slid across the floor and bounced off the wall. “Damn you, Cyprian,” he gritted out. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Shut up. I don’t listen to traitors.”
Stefano glared at him. “Traitor? Listen to yourself. You sound like a damn zealot, or a dictator, running his own little kingdom. I’m no traitor. I just know when a good opportunity comes my way, and I grab it.” He clutched his middle, and sucked in a sharp breath.
Cyprian looked past him to Marsh, saw the bodies inside. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, none of it. I told Stefano to meet me here so I could force him to confess.” He pulled his phone from his pocket. “I learned how to record on this damn gadget so I could get Stefano to admit that he’d killed those first two Council members. I wanted to use his confession to prove my innocence. But when I got here, I saw him skulking around and realized something else was going on. I’ve been biding my time until I could surprise him and have the advantage.”
His face mirrored his regret as he kicked Stefano’s gun under a bench at the far end of the row, too far away for anyone to get it. “I didn’t know he’d brought the Council here, or I’d have come more quickly and tried to stop this.” He looked at Melissa. “And I didn’t know he was bringing you. This is a total mess.”
She put her hand on her father’s sleeve, relieved that he wasn’t responsible for any of these recent deaths. “It’s okay, Dad. You were trying to do the right thing. It’s over now. Mr. Marsh knows that you didn’t kill the Council members. Don’t you, Mr. Marsh?”
He nodded, while pressing his shirt against the wound that was still seeping through the cloth.
“Obviously, Stefano is behind everything,” Melissa continued. “He must have been using the Watcher as his pawn all along, including forcing him to call the Council to get them here. He already admitted to killing the Watcher.”
Stefano cursed viciously at them, reminding her he was still on the floor a few feet away. The fact that he wasn’t denying what she’d said only served to prove that she’d come to the right conclusions. It was all starting to make sense in a weird kind of way. Her father wasn’t the bad man Jace believed him to be. He was just trying to prove to the Council that he wanted the best for EXIT. And the Council wanted the same thing. Stefano was the one who’d manipulated everyone to try to make her father look bad. His resentments toward her father had twisted him and made him do things Melissa was certain he’d regret later.
“Why?” Cyprian demanded. “Why, Stefano? Why would you turn on me like this?”
Stefano glared at him, his hatred for Cyprian evident in every line of his body. “Turn on you? How could I turn on you when I’ve hated you my whole life? You treated me like scum while I was growing up. And you treat my mother like a whore.”
Melissa watched her father for a reaction. The surprise on his face reassured her that Stefano was wrong, that he’d obviously misinterpreted something.
“You deserve to lose everything and every
one you care about,” Stefano sneered. “That’s why, when my friend, Garcia, told me about being the Watcher, I couldn’t let the opportunity pass me by.” He winced and held his stomach, his fingers turning red from the blood seeping from his bullet wound. “All I wanted to do was frame you for those two Council members’ deaths and have the Council put you down like the dog you are. But they were stupid and gave you more time.” He waved at Marsh. “If you’d done your job, I wouldn’t have done all of this.” He gasped and clutched his stomach again.
“We need to help him,” Melissa said. “We need to get Stefano to a doctor. And we need to let Mr. Marsh and Jace out of these cells.”
Her father nodded as he stared down at Stefano. “I think I saw some keys hanging up on the wall where we came in.”
She hurried past him and got the keys. She’d just unlocked Jace’s cell door and let him out when a gunshot echoed through the room. Jace grabbed her and shoved her behind him, but not before she saw Stefano’s crumpled body lying against the wall, a bullet hole dead center in his forehead.
And her father standing over him with his gun.
Jace started forward, but her father turned the gun on him.
“That’s far enough, Mr. Atwell.”
“What are you doing, Cyprian?” Jace demanded.
“Proving my loyalty to the government, and to EXIT. Mr. Marsh signaled for me to take care of Stefano, and I did. He was a danger to all of us. Now, it’s over.” He lowered his gun.
Melissa leaned over to see around Jace. The Council leader was nodding his agreement. That her father and that man would calmly act like executing Stefano was the right thing to do had her feeling sick inside.
Jace took the keys from her and leaned down close. “Don’t turn your back on either of them,” he whispered. “Wait here.”
He headed down the row of cells.
“Hold it.” Cyprian raised his gun again.
“What now?” Jace demanded.
“Give the keys to Melissa. I don’t trust you.”
“The feeling is mutual. How about lowering that gun?”
“The keys, Mr. Atwell.”
“Not until you point that gun somewhere away from the vicinity of your daughter.”
Cyprian frowned but pointed the gun up at the ceiling.
Melissa took the keys and hurriedly unlocked Marsh’s cell. “Come on, Mr. Marsh. Let’s get you out of here.” She started to help him stand but he winced.
“Just a minute,” he said. “I need to . . . catch my breath.”
She looked at her father, who was standing with his back to the wall, watching them. Jace had moved past him and was kneeling by Stefano, as if checking his pulse. Why would he do that when it was so horribly obvious that Stefano was dead?
A pained sound came from Marsh again as he pushed himself to his feet.
Melissa turned back to him. “You seem to be in an awful lot of pain. Let me see how bad it is.” She hooked her finger in his cotton collar and pulled it down to see the cut.
“No, no, we can check it later,” he assured her, yanking her hand off his shirt.
But not before she saw the tattoo. A snake coiled around a dagger.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. Her gaze flew to his.
His eyes widened, and he grabbed for her.
She whirled out of his way and charged toward the open cell door.
Her father must have seen what she’d seen. His face turned a mottled red, and he roared a guttural sound of rage, like a wounded animal.
Almost as if in slow motion, Melissa saw everything happening at once.
Jace lunging toward her.
Her father aiming his gun at Marsh.
Marsh dodging to the side.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Jace falling just short of her.
Her father grabbing her and whirling around to face Jace, the gun pointed at her head.
And Marsh, lying deathly still on the cell floor, a gurgling noise coming from his throat as blood began to pool beneath his head.
Melissa tried to wrap her mind around what had just happened, around what was now happening, as Jace slowly stood, and her father dragged her backward, using her as a shield.
Marsh, Adam Marsh, leader of EXIT’s Council, had the tattoo of the Serpentine terrorist group on his chest, the same group that had killed her mother and brothers. Was he the man the witness had seen in the airport all those years ago? Had he orchestrated the bombing of the plane?
“Let her go, Cyprian,” Jace ordered. “She’s still your little girl. You love her.”
Her father laughed harshly. “Of course I love her. That’s why she has to die. Don’t you see? EXIT will never be the same. The legacy I fought so hard for no longer matters. It was built on a lie, on the promise of protecting others from terrorists like those who’d taken my family. But all along, Marsh was one of those terrorists. He was probably the man who ordered their deaths. And he probably ordered them for the same reason that I’ve done much the same thing—to make an enforcer out of a man, to make that man crave justice like he craves his last breath, to want to prevent the same horrors that happened to his own family.”
“Oh, Daddy,” Melissa whispered brokenly. “Please tell me you didn’t do that to anyone.”
“I did,” he whispered back. “Devlin Buchanan was the first. I ordered the murder of his fiancée to get him to want to become an enforcer. And I never thought a thing about it because it was all for the greater good. But . . . knowing that Marsh probably did the same . . . I know now that it’s all a lie. A cruel joke.” He kissed her cheek, but he didn’t move the gun from her temple or his arm from around her waist. “I love you, Melissa. More than you’ll ever know. And it’s because I love you that I do this. We’ll be with your brothers and my sweet Isabella in Heaven, a family once again.”
Melissa shook her head, tears splashing down her cheeks as she pushed against her father’s arm. But he was much stronger than she’d ever realized.
“No one else has to die. Please, Father. Don’t do this.”
She looked at Jace, just a few feet away, and saw the barely perceptible movement of his head toward her right.
“It’s just like Tarek, all over again,” Jace said.
And then she knew. He wanted her to dodge to the right, like he’d told her to do when Tarek was pointing a gun at them. She moved her head slightly, letting him know she understood. And suddenly she pushed down on her father’s arm and leaned to the right.
Jace lunged forward, knocking her father’s gun arm up toward the ceiling. A shot sounded, followed by an agonized scream.
The arm around Melissa’s waist went slack, and she was falling. Jace caught her and yanked her against his chest, half turning as if to shield her.
There on the floor, her father lay in a puddle of his own blood. The gun he’d been holding had skittered across the floor, out of his reach. And a knife was sticking out of the center of his chest, buried to the hilt.
“Daddy,” she screamed. She struggled against Jace’s hold. “Let me go. I have to help him!”
Her father gasped for air, arching off the floor.
“I had to do it,” Jace said. “He was going to kill you.”
“Let. Me. Go.” She clawed at his hands.
He swore and released her, but knelt down and yanked the knife out of her father’s chest—a knife she now recognized as the one that Stefano had worn on his belt—before she could reach him. Her father screamed, and blood gurgled from his wound.
She glared at Jace. “Why did you do that? You made it worse.”
“I couldn’t risk his pulling the knife out and using it on you.”
She turned her back to him and scooted up beside her father. He lay on the floor, his face a mask of pain, blood soaking his shirt.
“Dad.” Her voice broke, and she gathered him onto her lap, clutching him to her breast. “Daddy. I love you.”
His eyes fluttered open. “Melissa?”
&nbs
p; “I’m here,” she said, her tears splashing down onto his face. “I’m here. I won’t leave you. I love you so much.”
She vaguely registered that Jace had crouched beside her. She ignored him. He didn’t matter. Nothing mattered right now but the man who’d raised her, who’d loved her, who—in his own twisted way—had tried to make the world better, for her. And when he gave up on that world, his sick mind thought she would be better off in another world, in Heaven. He’d tried to protect her, by killing her. It made sense in a twisted, macabre kind of way. And she couldn’t hate him for loving her.
Her father whispered something, his right hand fluttering toward his breast pocket. “My pills,” he whispered. “For my heart.”
“Your heart?” She’d never known he’d had a heart condition. How could a daughter not know that about her father? She shook her head, hating herself in that moment. It was too late, of course. No pills could save him now. But it broke her heart watching him try to pull the bottle out of his pocket.
“Here, I’ll help you.” She reached for his pocket.
He yanked the bottle out.
Except that it wasn’t a bottle.
“No,” Jace yelled. He grabbed for the little metal square with a red button in the center.
Her father’s hand closed over the button, and he smiled.
A powerful explosion rocked the building. Jace covered Melissa with his body as plaster and pieces of wood rained down on top of them. Another explosion sounded from farther away, rocking the building again.
Jace jumped up and pulled her with him.
“Oh, Daddy,” she sobbed, realizing now that the dirt on his suit and his face was probably from him going into the tunnels, setting the explosives. “What have you done?”
His eyes fluttered open.
“Jace, wait, he’s still alive!” She pushed at Jace’s arm, trying to get him to let her go.
“Leave him. This whole place is going up. We have to get out of here.” He grabbed her hand.
“No! Pick him up! Take him with us. We can save him.” She desperately tried to tug her hand free.
“Melissa,” her father whispered. “Stay with me.” He coughed, and blood dotted his lips.