Chapter 5 - Beneath Saint Augustine’s
Emergency lights flickered red along the chapel walls.
Nathan dropped behind a pew.
Another gunshot shattered a stained-glass window above him.
Cold air and snow rushed through the opening.
“Marcus!” Nathan shouted. “Stop shooting!”
The answer came from behind the altar.
“You destroyed everything!”
Nathan could not see Sarah.
He could hear her breathing somewhere nearby.
Police officers entered through the underground passage. Marcus fired toward the sound, forcing them back.
Mara’s voice came through Nathan’s hidden earpiece.
“Stay down. We’re moving around the west side.”
The bomb trigger worried Nathan more than the gun.
If Marcus released it, the chemicals or explosives beneath the chapel could ignite.
“Marcus, you need me alive,” Nathan called. “The card is encrypted.”
Silence.
“You cannot open it without my authorization code.”
That was a lie.
Federal analysts had already accessed part of the database. But Marcus had built his crimes around Nathan’s identity. It was reasonable that he might believe the encryption required him too.
Marcus stepped from behind the altar, holding Sarah against his chest.
A gun pressed beneath her jaw.
Nathan saw blood spreading across her coat near her ribs.
She had been shot.
“Get up,” Marcus ordered.
Nathan rose slowly.
“Let me treat her.”
“She’ll live.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know exactly where I shot her.”
Nathan looked into Sarah’s eyes.
She was pale, but conscious.
Her left hand pressed against her side. The blood appeared dark rather than bright, suggesting the bullet had missed a major artery.
Still, she was weakening.
Marcus forced her toward a side door.
“You’re coming with us.”
“There’s nowhere to go.”
“I have a vehicle below the maintenance building.”
He knew about the tunnel.
Either Voss had warned him or Marcus had discovered it years earlier.
Marcus pushed Sarah down a narrow staircase.
Nathan followed.
The tunnel beneath the chapel smelled of rust and standing water. Old hospital signs remained attached to the walls.
PEDIATRIC SURGERY.
RECOVERY.
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Nathan imagined frightened families walking those corridors years ago, unaware that their children were part of a secret experiment.
They reached an underground records room.
Metal cabinets lined the walls.
Marcus had stacked fuel containers around them and connected wires to a homemade ignition system.
“You planned to burn the children’s files,” Nathan said.
“I planned to erase inaccurate information.”
“Dead children aren’t inaccurate information.”
“They would have died anyway.”
Sarah turned her head.
“That’s what you told yourself every night.”
Marcus struck her.
Nathan lunged forward.
Marcus aimed the gun.
“Don’t.”
Sarah nearly collapsed.
Nathan caught her before she hit the concrete floor.
Marcus allowed it because he needed her moving.
Nathan pressed his hand over the wound.
“The bullet is still inside,” he said. “She needs surgery.”
“She needs to reach the vehicle.”
A crash sounded deeper in the tunnel.
Police.
Marcus pulled Sarah upright and forced them onward.
Nathan kept pressure on her wound while walking.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Sarah’s eyes opened slightly.
“For what?”
“For believing your silence meant you didn’t need me.”
“I called.”
Nathan looked at her.
“What?”
“I called dozens of times. Marcus blocked the number. He answered once and told me you never wanted to hear my name again.”
Nathan felt rage rise through him.
“He lied.”
“I know that now.”
Ahead, a steel door opened onto the frozen reservoir.
A snowmobile waited beside the maintenance building.
Marcus dragged Sarah outside.
Wind swept across the ice.
The storm had weakened, but snow still moved in thin sheets over the reservoir.
Mara’s team emerged from the hospital behind them.
“Marcus Kane!” she shouted. “Drop the weapon!”
Marcus fired toward the building.
Officers returned fire.
He pushed Sarah onto the snowmobile and climbed behind her.
Nathan grabbed the rear rail.
Marcus accelerated.
The snowmobile shot onto the frozen reservoir, dragging Nathan several feet before he managed to pull himself onto the back.
Marcus looked over his shoulder.
“You never knew when to let go.”
Nathan struck him.
The snowmobile veered.
Sarah slid sideways, barely holding on.
Marcus raised the gun.
Nathan grabbed his wrist.
They struggled while the machine raced across the ice.
A shot fired into the sky.
The snowmobile hit a patch of broken ice and overturned.
Nathan struck the surface hard.
Sarah landed several yards away.
Marcus slid toward a dark crack spreading across the reservoir.
The ice collapsed beneath him.
He plunged into the freezing water.
The gun disappeared.
Nathan crawled toward Sarah first.
She was unconscious.
Her pulse was weak.
Behind him, Marcus’s hands clawed at the broken edge of the ice.
“Help me!” he screamed.
Nathan looked toward the man who had hunted three children, shot Sarah, and used dead patients to build a fortune.
For one terrible second, Nathan wanted to turn away.
Then he remembered who he was.
He removed his belt, crawled toward the hole, and extended it.
“Grab it.”
Marcus caught the leather.
Police officers reached them and pulled Marcus from the water.
Mara placed him in handcuffs while paramedics ran toward Sarah.
Marcus shivered violently on the ice.
“You should have let me die,” he said.
Nathan knelt beside Sarah.
“No,” he answered. “You’re going to live long enough to answer for all of it.”
Sarah stopped breathing.
Nathan began compressions.
A medical helicopter landed beside the reservoir twenty minutes later.
Nathan accompanied Sarah to the hospital.
Her blood pressure collapsed during the flight.
The bullet had damaged her liver and caused internal bleeding.
Nathan’s colleague, Dr. Elise Warren, prepared the operating room.
“You cannot operate on your sister,” Elise told him.
“She may not survive induction.”
“I know.”
Nathan stood beside Sarah until anesthesia began.
Her eyes opened once.
“The children?” she whispered.
“Safe.”
“Lily?”
“She saved them.”
Sarah tried to smile.
The operating-room doors closed between them.
Three hours later, Elise stepped into the waiting room covered in surgical scrubs.
Nathan stood so quickly that his chair fell backward.
“We controlled the liver bleeding,” she said. “But Sarah’s heart stopped twice.”
“Is she alive?”
Elise’s expression did not change.
“She is alive right now.”
Nathan waited for the rest.
“There was too much blood loss. We won’t know whether her brain was injured until she wakes.”
“When will that happen?”
“We don’t know.”
Behind the glass of the intensive care unit, Sarah lay motionless beneath the machines.
Lily stood beside Nathan, holding the photograph of her mother she had carried through the storm.
“Tell her to come back,” Lily whispered.
Nathan placed his hand against the window.
For the first time in his life, the surgeon had no operation left to perform.
May you like
All he could do was wait for his sister to choose life.
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