Chapter 9 - THE MISSING GIRL HAD TWO NAMES
“Your daughter is Lauren?”
Cole couldn’t speak.
Price laughed from the ground.
I turned on him.
“Shut up.”
Cole took the phone with shaking hands.
“She changed her name when she turned eighteen.”
“Mia called her sister.”
“They grew up together. Mia’s mother took her in after my wife died.”
“So Mia lied?”
“No.”
Cole looked at me.
“I did.”
The admission sat between us.
“I told everyone Lauren ran away. It was the only way I could keep searching without the Vipers knowing I was still looking.”
Price chuckled.
“You weren’t looking very hard.”
Cole stepped toward him.
I blocked the sheriff with one arm.
“Not now.”
“You don’t tell me not now.”
“If you kill him, he stops being useful.”
Cole stared at Price for another second, then backed away.
The old church stood at the edge of town beside a cemetery no one used anymore.
I left Cole two blocks away.
“Alone means alone,” I told him.
“You think I’m letting you walk into that?”
“No. I think you’re covering the exits.”
Rex stayed with me.
The church door was open.
Inside, candles burned along the aisle.
Mia sat exactly where the photo showed.
The woman beside her—Lauren—had Cole’s eyes.
I moved closer.
“Mia?”
She looked up.
“Behind you!”
I turned.
A man swung a length of chain.
I took it across the shoulder, stumbled, then drove into him before he could swing again.
Rex pinned a second man near the altar without biting, just body pressure and teeth inches from his throat.
Two more came from the side room.
Gunshots shattered stained glass.
I overturned a pew, dragged Mia and Lauren behind it, and returned fire with the pistol I had taken from Price.
“Back door!” Mia shouted.
We moved.
The side hallway opened into the cemetery.
Cole’s cruiser came screaming around the corner.
He jumped out.
“Lauren!”
The young woman stopped.
For a second she looked seventeen again.
Then she ran into her father’s arms.
Mia started crying.
Rex barked toward the church.
A figure stood in the broken doorway.
Tall.
Lean.
Gray at the temples.
My chest stopped working.
The face was older than I remembered.
But I knew it.
I knew the scar under the left eye.
I knew the way he stood with his weight slightly forward.
I knew him because I had carried him through gunfire.
“Eli?”
The man smiled.
“Still slow on the draw, Jack.”
Then he raised a rifle and fired.
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