The psychopath had planned everything so carefully, drilling his brothers into a trance, sending them out to be slaughtered, but Dash hadn’t once considered how he was going to make his escape without a set of keys.
Will raised the Sig Sauer, lining up the sights on Dash’s heart, yelling, “Stop!”
Dash’s head snapped up.
“Police!” Will said. “Hands in the air.”
Dash dove to the ground. Will fired two rounds before he realized what Dash was doing. He had surrounded himself with wounded. He grabbed a woman by the arm, yanking her up to her knees so that her body shielded his. She had already been shot in the leg. Dash’s hunting knife was pressed so hard into her neck that blood sagged into the collar of her white blouse.
Terror cut into every line of her face. She had passed the moment of fear and was paralyzed by the threat of darkness.
“Let her go.” Will started walking toward Dash, both the Glock and Sig Sauer out in front of him. “Now.”
“Two weapons,” Dash said, his face ducking below the woman’s shoulder. “You think you can make the shot, Wolfie?”
Will needed four more steps and he’d have this man dead on the ground. “I think I can kill you before you draw your next breath.”
“Hey, asshole!” Dobie yelled.
Chunks of concrete spit up at Will’s feet.
Dobie was shooting at him. The second bullet went wide. The third took out a window. The only reason Will wasn’t dead where he stood was that the kick from the rifle had slammed Dobie back into the van.
Will ducked behind a metal garbage can while Dobie scrambled.
The kid yelled, “Come out, you fucking coward!”
Will kept his Glock on Dash. He trained the Sig on Dobie. His arms formed a triangle between the three of them.
He yelled, “Dobie, put down the rifle! Right now!”
“Fuck you, asshole.” Dobie was out in the open, the weapon high on his shoulder.
SWAT was on the roof. Amanda was armed with her five-shot in the doorway. Sirens were roaring down the street. Bodies were everywhere. Someone was going to kill this kid.
“Hold your fire!” Will heard his voice scratch up like a needle on a record. “I’m GBI! Hold your fire!”
Dash was grinning, reveling in the horror. He had seen the armed men moving down the street, the snipers on the roof. He was shaded by a tree, on his knees, holding a hostage in front of him like a shield.
The only gun that had a possible shot on him was Will’s.
“Dobie,” Will kept his Glock pointed at Dash, but he begged the kid, “please, Dobie, put down the rifle.”
“I’m gonna murder you, you fucking pig!” Dobie was furious, burning from the betrayal. “You were my friend!”
“Dobie, I’m still your friend.” Will stood up from the trashcan. He waited for a bullet from either Dobie or SWAT. When nothing came, he took a step toward the kid, then another. His eyes stayed focused on Dash even as he got farther away from him. “Dobie, put the rifle on the ground. Please.”
“Fuck you!”
Dash’s grin was so smug that Will longed to put a bullet between his teeth. The knife was still tight against the woman’s throat. Tears mixed with blood on her face. She was trying not to breathe, to keep her body as still as possible.
This was Will’s calculation: There was a Glock on Dash’s belt. The minute Will looked away, Dash would cut her throat, then draw the weapon and shoot Will.
Dash was clearly doing the same math. His smirk did not falter. He told Will, “Tricky situation, brother.”
Will nodded once, as if he agreed, but Dash didn’t know about Amanda standing just inside of the shattered doorway. He didn’t know that she had a better angle at his head, that she was a better shot than Will.
“Fucking look at me!” Dobie demanded.
Will kept his eyes on Dash even as he moved closer to Dobie. He saw what Amanda was probably seeing: that the hostage wasn’t the only concern. There were scores of people behind Dash, innocent civilians, broken bodies scattered like driftwood on the Capitol lawn.
The enablers and mongrels.
Secretaries. Politicians. Police officers. Janitors. Assistants.
“You lied to me!” Dobie raged at Will. “I trusted you, and you fucking lied to me!”
“Please.” Will was only a few feet away. He turned to look the kid in the eye, knowing that he was giving Dash the open target of his chest. “Dobie, it’s over. Please, put down—”
The sniper’s bullet split open Dobie’s head.
The kid’s arms flew up. The rifle dropped.
Will turned away, but he could smell the coppery blood in the air, feel it draping his skin like a delicate piece of lace.
The sound of Dobie hitting the ground felt like a death blow to his own body.
Will looked down at the sidewalk. A string of blood wrapped around his boot. Dobie’s blood. It was on Will’s arm, stuck in his beard.
He looked up.
Dash had not moved. The woman was still acting as his shield. His head was low behind her shoulder. The Glock was still on his belt. The smug look was still on his face.
He hadn’t killed the hostage, hadn’t tried to kill Will, because he wanted something.
Will guessed the what before his eyes saw the answer. People were holding up their phones, recording everything that was happening. Even with their hands covered in blood and dead bodies all around them, they were still filming.
Will wiped Dobie’s blood out of his eyes with the back of his arm. He told Dash, “Let the woman go.”
“I don’t think so, brother.” Dash tightened his grip around his hostage. She let out a gasp, but remained still. “I found myself without my angels this morning. We’ll need new sisters to replenish the flock.”
Will felt his jaw tighten. The women at the Camp. Only Gwen had served them breakfast this morning. The food had been cold. Was that because the women who cooked the meals and cleaned the clothes and bore the children were dead?
Dash said, “The cause demands purity, brother. Untainted bloodlines. We lead by example. We wipe the world clean starting with ourselves. We march triumphantly for the last widows of the revolution.”
“The women,” Will said. “The children. Are they—”
“Cleansed.” Dash’s smirk had turned into a grin. “‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.’”
Will couldn’t breathe. The heat had punctured his skin. His brain was on fire.
Had he sacrificed Sara?
Dash said, “Those words were spoken by Thomas Jefferson, the father of the Declaration of Independence, one of the original Framers of our Constitution.”
Will blinked blood out of his eyes. “Did you kill them? Just tell me if—”
“My name is Douglas Shinn. I am the rightful leader of the Invisible Patriot Army.” Dash had turned his head away. He was talking directly into the cameras. “As the chosen prophet of Martin Elias Novak, I call on the white men of this country to look at our deeds and rejoice in the carnage brought on by the IPA. Join me, brothers. Join me in reclaiming your rightful place as men. You will be rewarded with riches beyond your imagination and the company of good white women.”
Sara?
“We must turn away the disease-ridden, the desperate, the brown and black mongrels who will rape and murder our children.”
Will looked at the woman’s throat. Thin, like Sara’s, with the same delicate indentation at the base.
“Join me in returning the world to its natural order, brothers. Pick up your arms. Raise your fists. Let the world know that we will not be cowed.”
Will’s finger slid down the side of the Glock to the trigger. All that mattered was the knife at the woman’s throat. The polished lines of the blade reflected the blue of the sky. The blood weeping from the wound was dark red. Will’s eyes tunneled onto the stainless-steel blade. Dash�
��s hand was steady. There was no fear inside of him. He was exactly where he wanted to be: at the center of the world’s attention.
Dash told the cameras, “Today, brothers, we sign our name on these Capitol grounds in our own blood. We sacrifice ourselves for the greater good. Let all the enablers and the mongrels take heed of our valor in battle. White blood! White power! White America! Forever!”
The tip of the blade started to move.
Will pulled the trigger.
The explosion of gunpowder filled his ears with a high-pitched whine. Will was temporarily blinded by the flash at the end of the muzzle. He felt the heat of the empty shell ejecting out of the side of the Glock.
The whine was replaced by a piercing scream. The hostage was frantically crawling away on her hands and knees. She gripped Dash’s knife in her hands.
Dash lay on his side, eyes wide, mouth gaping open.
He was still alive.
Will’s aim had been off by three inches. The bullet had ripped open Dash’s scalp above his ear. The blood flowed like water into the ground.
Blood and soil.
Will stared down at the man between the sights of his Glock. The metal notches framed the crisp white of Dash’s skull, the broken blood vessels and yellow fat and black follicles of hair.
Dash reached up to the wound. His fingers probed the deep gash. He touched the smooth bone. The glassy look left his eyes. He rolled onto his back, clutching his head.
“Fuck!” Dash screamed. “Fuck!”
Amanda took the Glock off his belt, cuffed together his wrists. Her jacket was off. She was down on her knees, wrapping it around Dash’s head.
Will should help her. People were suffering all around him. The grounds had turned into a graveyard. But Will could not move. His body was made of granite.
The women at the Camp. The children. Dobie.
Sara?
Will’s gun was still pointing at Dash’s head. His finger had stayed on the trigger. His elbows were slightly bent to absorb the recoil. His feet were still in a shooting stance because his body wanted to shoot this man and get it right this time.
“Wilbur,” Amanda called up to him.
Will sniffed. The taste of Dobie’s blood came into his mouth, stuck between his teeth, settled into his lungs. He felt every single muscle between his brain and his finger working against each other as he tried to think of one reason not to murder Dash in cold blood.
“Sara’s okay,” Amanda told him. “Faith talked to her on the phone. Sara’s all right.”
Sara?
“Will,” Amanda repeated. “Breathe.”
An image teased at Will’s rage like water lapping against the side of a boat.
He wasn’t here anymore. The Capitol, the grass, the trees, were gone.
He was standing in Sara’s apartment. She was about to kiss him for the first time.
This was bad.
Will should’ve kissed her first, a long time ago, but he wasn’t sure that she wanted him to kiss her and he didn’t know where to put his hands and he was so anxious and so scared and so fucking hard that just thinking about how soft her mouth would feel had sent a jolt into every fiber of his being.
Sara had put her mouth close to his ear and whispered—
Breathe.
“Wilbur?” Amanda snapped her fingers.
The sound was like a light switching on.
The Capitol. The grass. The trees. The monuments.
Will’s mouth opened. Air filled his lungs. His finger moved off the trigger.
He returned the gun to his holster.
He nodded to Amanda.
She nodded back at him.
Will’s senses continued to fill in the world around him. Rescue teams were everywhere. Fire trucks wailed. Sirens roared. First responders. Atlanta Police. Sheriff’s deputies. Highway Patrol. Every law enforcement officer in the vicinity had heard the gunfire and started running toward the sound.
The good guys.
Amanda told Will, “We had a three-minute warning thanks to Faith and Sara. We got some people out or sheltered in place. The chambers were empty, but I’m not sure how many …” Her voice trailed off, but she didn’t need to finish the sentence. There was no way to count the dead. There were scores of them around the lawn. More were inside of the building. Even the wounded looked like they were floating back and forth across the line between life and death.
“Miss?” Dash’s voice trembled up an octave. “Miss, I need help. The bullet that struck me …”
“It’s a flesh wound.” Amanda stared down at him. “You’ll live. At least long enough to be sentenced by a judge.”
“Please, miss, you don’t understand.” Dash’s teeth were chattering. Tears edged into the corners of his eyes. “Please. Call the CDC. I don’t want to die the same way they did.”
EPILOGUE
FOUR DAYS LATER
Sunday, August 11, 10:17 a.m.
Sara was pulled awake by the sound of a dog lapping water from the kitchen bowl. She squinted at her watch, but found only her bare wrist. She turned to see if Will was in bed, but there was no Will.
As usual, he had risen at the crack of dawn. Sara had listened to him stirring a packet of hot chocolate into a mug, talking to the dogs, doing his stretches, checking his email, because Will’s bedroom door opened up next to the kitchen and Sara could never sleep late when she stayed here.
She pulled Will’s pillow to her face. She could still smell him on the sheets. After wasting countless hours in her cabin prison cataloging the ways she was going to screw him, Sara had been unable to do anything for the last three nights but cry in his arms.
Will seemed content to just hold her. She knew that Dobie’s death still weighed on him. The fact that he was even talking to Sara about it was evidence of his turmoil. He was plagued by ifs. If Will had shot Dash before the van doors had opened. If he’d shot Dash outside instead of trying to get the people out of the way. If Will’s two shots hadn’t missed when he’d first seen Dash on the Capitol lawn.
If he’d managed to get Dobie to drop the rifle before the sniper’s bullet had ended his short, hate-filled life.
Though Sara agreed with the choices Will had made, she hadn’t tried to rationalize his actions or smooth away the blame. She knew that Will had to get there on his own. Sara was familiar with all the different ways your best, most educated decision could result in the worst outcome. Sara had always carried around inside of her the memory of every patient she had ever lost. Now, Benjamin, Grace, Joy, Adriel, all of those little pieces of white confetti, had joined the unforgotten souls that lived inside her heart.
She looked at the clock by the bed.
10:21 a.m.
They were supposed to meet her family for lunch in two hours. Sara had sequestered herself at Will’s for too long. She had wanted to hide from the minute-by-minute deluge of information, that her father continuously watched on the news.
Eddie was obsessed with learning more about Dash. About Gwen and Martin Novak. About the surviving brothers who were still spreading their message of racist, misogynist hate to any reporter who would hold up a microphone to their ugly mouths.
Forty-six dead at the Capitol. Ninety-three wounded. All of the survivors had been infected with botulism by the coated bullets. All of them had been infused with HBAT.
Even Dash.
Fortunately, there had been no infections from the Air Chef meals. The aluminum food containers were being loaded onto the conveyor belts when the FBI had raided the facility. Testing had shown that botulism coated the bottoms of each tray. Had the food been processed and loaded onto planes, every passenger who ate a meal on any of the thousands of flights out of Hartsfield would’ve been infected with the toxin.
The assumption was that Michelle Spivey had been taken to the airport that day so that Dash could blow up the country’s main strategic stockpile of HBAT. Without the anti-toxin, there would have been countless deaths. Botulism could be a sl
ow-moving, unpredictable toxin. As Dash had said, even the historians would not be able to arrive at a final tally. Sara could only imagine how furious Dash had been when Michelle had collapsed just yards away from completing the mission.
Or maybe he hadn’t been furious.
Maybe by the time they had driven Michelle to Emory Hospital, Dash had persuaded himself that the HBAT didn’t matter. He had two bombs ready to go. He had a hospital deck with staff and visitors streaming in and out.
Brothers, let’s go with plan B.
Sara’s main question had been about how Dash had obtained a vial of HBAT in the first place. Gwen had recognized the anti-toxin, which meant that Dash had known about it, which meant that they were probably keeping an emergency supply in case they got infected. The substance was highly controlled, only available to civilians through Homeland Security or the CDC.
Beau Ragnersen had finally provided the answer. The HBAT had come from his personal cache.
Under Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi military had produced 19,000 liters of botulinum toxin. 10,000 liters of the toxin had gone into aerial bombs, artillery shells and warheads. They had tested the neurotoxin’s effectiveness on Iranian prisoners of war. HBAT had been standard issue in US military push packs ever since. Beau Ragnersen had smuggled one home from Afghanistan as a souvenir. In addition to the anti-toxin, he had treatments for everything from chlorine poisoning to anthrax. Though Beau denied having any involvement with the IPA, the fact that he had handed over the anti-toxin was enough circumstantial evidence to tie him to multiple counts of murder in the first degree and conspiracy to commit two acts of domestic terrorism.
Amanda believed it was only a matter of time before he started telling the truth.
Will believed that Beau’s nihilism would kick in and he’d ride out the death penalty.
Sara rolled onto her back. She stared up at the ceiling. The faces of the sick children from the bunkhouse swarmed into her vision. Benjamin, Adriel, Martha, Jenny, Sally. The infected eyes, the running noses, the hacking coughs. They would’ve likely all survived the measles outbreak, albeit with lasting scars.
Sara wondered when Gwen had decided that it wasn’t worth trying to save them. As with Tommy, the woman wouldn’t want to waste supplies on lost causes. The suitcase in her car was filled with medications she’d taken from the bunkhouse. There were more white dresses in the trunk, along with a list of hotels between North Georgia and Arizona, where Gwen had apparently been planning to meet Dash once the Message had been delivered. New Camp. New brothers and sisters. New children.
The Last Widow: The latest new 2019 crime thriller from the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author Page 44