A furious howl of grief exploded from Seth as he ran forward. Pike had found his target … a knife was sticking out of Honor’s chest. His entire body close to meltdown, he raised a shaking hand to the knife.
“It’s not deep,” she whispered.
His gaze flew to her face. “What?”
“It’s barely inside me, Seth. Look. It hit a bone.”
Relief and happiness flooded him. She was right. The blade had pierced her sternum enough to make the knife stand up, but it hadn’t gone deep at all.
“She all right?”
He looked over his shoulder at McCall, who stood several feet behind him. “She’s fine. Knife hit the bone.”
Behind McCall, Seth saw Livingston untie Kelli and then cover her with a blanket. Assured that she was fine for the time being, he turned back to Honor. Unzipping one of the pockets of his vest, he pulled out gauze and bandages.
“We need to get everyone out of here as soon as possible,” Honor said. “Someone might have heard the gunshots.”
“Let’s take care of this first.” Gently, he tugged on the knife, more relieved than he’d ever be able to express that it almost fell into his hands. Though blood oozed from the cut, the tip of the knife hadn’t even penetrated a quarter of an inch.
Placing gauze on the wound to stop the bleeding, he held it with one hand and cut the ties at her hands and then her feet with the other. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I should have come sooner.”
“You came at exactly the right time.”
He shoved the bucket of water away and helped her stand. Tugging at his Kevlar vest, he dropped it on the ground, then unbuttoned his flannel shirt and pulled it off. “Let’s get this on you.”
“Thanks—it was getting drafty in here.”
Grinning at her unbelievable spirit, Seth stooped down and pulled a space blanket from his vest. “Wrap up with this. I’m going to check on Kelli. Okay?”
Honor nodded. “I’m fine. Go.”
Seth turned to see Kelli sitting on the floor, her face almost hidden by her long hair. Though she was wrapped in a blanket, he could see her body trembling. Feeling unusually tentative, he went to his knees before her and said softly, “Kelli? Honey?”
Her blond head came up. Her face was paper white, and tears filled her eyes. “Uncle Seth?” Her disbelieving whisper clutched at his heart. “Is it really you?”
“Yeah, it’s really me.”
An expression of such joy came over her face, it was all Seth could do not to grab her and hold her close. Not knowing what she’d gone through, he hesitated to make the first move. Kelli, apparently, had no reservations as she threw herself at him. Seth’s arms closed around her and held her as she sobbed against his chest.
Tears stung his eyes, and he looked upward as he whispered a prayer of thanks. He had never given up hope that she was alive, and despite the thinness of her body and her obvious distress, she looked unharmed and whole. God only knew what Pike had done to her, but Kelli was a Cavanaugh through and through—a survivor.
She pulled away slightly and peeked up at him. “I’m never leaving home again.”
Laughter erupted from him. “I think that’s something your parents will wholeheartedly endorse.”
Shivering from equal parts shock and cold, Honor grabbed one of Pike’s buckets. Dumping the water out, she tipped it over and sat down abruptly. Her legs felt like overcooked noodles and her entire body was one mass of quivering nerves. She couldn’t believe it was over.
“Listen up, everyone,” Noah said. “Thorne’s on watch outside. He’ll alert us if anyone’s coming this way. A chopper’s on the way … ETA three minutes. It’ll land as close to this building as possible. We took care of the guards at the walls, but we don’t know what kind of resistance we’ll face once the chopper lands.”
Honor tightened the blanket around herself and took deep breaths, hoping to calm the jittery nerves that continued to send jolts through her. The shocks she’d received hadn’t been high voltage enough to do any real damage; they’d just caused sudden, tremendous pain. The knife wound, other than the scare it’d given Seth, was a small, insignificant throb just over her left breast. All in all, other than being weak as a kitten, she felt damn good.
And what made it all the better was seeing Seth hold Kelli in his arms. Honor’s relief that the young woman was safe was almost overwhelming. She could only imagine what he must be feeling.
How much had these poor girls been through before tonight? Their recovery was going to take a while, but thank God they were alive so that could happen.
The other women in the community would have to be dealt with delicately. Noah had probably already talked with the authorities. And though she knew that most, if not all of the women had been abducted and abused, she couldn’t help but hurt for them. Their lives were going to be torn apart once again.
She took in the room that Pike had apparently used for his training purposes—every available space filled with some sort of contraption or device meant to inflict pain. Never had she seen a more classic example of a sexual sadist. Problem was, not only had he used the torture devices for his own sick enjoyment, he’d somehow managed to control his victims’ minds. There was no telling what kind of therapy it was going to take or how long it would be before his victims were able to regain their lives.
A movement in her peripheral vision caught Honor’s attention. She stiffened. Was that someone or had she imagined it? She went to her feet and took a step forward, trying to peer into the darkness. “Is someone there?”
A shrill scream of rage echoed through the room. Tabitha appeared like a ghostly specter from a darkened corner and walked slowly toward her father’s body.
Tears streamed down the young woman’s face, her expression ravaged with horror and grief. Honor couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. She had, no doubt, been a victim of Pike’s incredible cruelty since her birth.
“Tabitha, I—” Honor jerked to a halt when the girl’s hand flew up … she had something in her hand. Dammit, a weapon … she had a weapon. “Gun!” Honor shouted.
Too far away to tackle her, Honor focused instead on where Tabitha was pointing the weapon. Seth! The distance seeming insurmountable, Honor began running toward him. Her legs felt weighted and heavy, her body sluggish, as if she were moving in slow motion. Seth … she had to reach Seth!
He had been stooped down, holding Kelli, but when Honor shouted, he went to his feet. Standing in front of his niece to shield her, he never had the chance to defend himself.
Before Honor’s horrified eyes, she saw his body jerk. Terror almost locked her limbs as, helplessly, she watched Seth fall face-first to the ground.
More gunfire erupted. The sounds were dim, almost as if they were miles away. A part of her mind acknowledged that one or more of the men were shooting back at Tabitha.
Denial screaming through her, Honor gently rolled Seth over. He’d taken his Kevlar vest off when he’d given her his shirt, and he hadn’t put it back on. Why, oh God, why hadn’t he put it back on? A thin T-shirt was the only thing that covered him. He’d had no protection at all.
A litany of prayers repeated in her head:
Please, God, please, let her have missed
. Even as Honor uttered the prayers, she already knew the truth. A cry of denial echoed in the room. Tabitha had found her mark … Seth had been shot multiple times. A bullet hole high up on his shoulder, one right above his heart, another below his heart.
“Honor, hurry or he’ll bleed out.”
She turned to see Noah on his knees beside her. Holding a cloth against one of the wounds on Seth’s chest, Noah handed her another cloth. “Keep the pressure hard and steady.”
Nodding numbly, she did as she was told. She vaguely heard Noah yell for a medic. Apparently the chopper had arrived, bringing much-needed medical help. Her eyes were glued to Seth. He was unconscious, his face slack and pale.
Her hand shaking, she pressed her fingers against his neck. His pulse was weak, almost nonexistent. She leaned over him. “Seth … can you hear me?”
No response.
She put her mouth to his ear. “You’re going to be fine. Hang on. Please. Just hang on.”
His eyelids flickered as if he knew she was there, but they never opened. “I love you,” she whispered hoarsely. “Please don’t leave me again. Please.”
“Step aside, ma’am.”
Gentle but firm hands pulled her away. The medics had arrived. Backing away, knowing there was nothing more she could do, she watched as one man started an IV and another fastened a protective collar around Seth’s neck. Frozen from the inside out, she kept her eyes on his face as the medics lifted him onto a stretcher.
She shot a glance at Noah. “I’m going with him.”
His face grim, he nodded. “Call me when you know his condition.”
Barely hearing him, she ran to keep up with the men racing Seth to the helicopter. Honor tried to deny the facts, but she knew it was useless. She’d seen mortal wounds too many times not to know the truth. People didn’t live through those kinds of injuries. Seth was going to die.
thirty-one
Two days later
Janisville Medical Center
Janisville, Wyoming
Beeping machines were the only sounds in the stillness of dark midnight. Honor sat in a chair, as close to the hospital bed as she could get. Though there was a couch across the room, she had yet been able to move that far from Seth. The only time she’d left him was to go to the bathroom. Any other time, even when the doctors had given her an order to leave, she’d stubbornly shaken her head.
She would stay out of their way, she wouldn’t make a whisper of a sound, but she would not leave him.
His family was on their way in an LCR jet. They would have been here sooner, but the blizzard that had held off for three days had finally blown in, holding up their flight. Honor was expecting them at any moment. She hoped they’d make it in time.
Seth had held on longer than anyone had thought he would. An artery in his heart had been severely damaged, and his liver had been punctured. The wound in his shoulder was the least significant of his injuries, requiring nothing more than extraction of the bullet. After ten hours of surgery to repair the artery and the tear in his liver, along with two blood transfusions, the doctors had emerged with weary, defeated expressions and offered little hope. The artery in his heart was badly torn, the damage more extensive than they’d thought. They’d repaired the tear … done what they could. Now it was up to Seth.
After the surgery, she’d been told the next forty-eight hours were critical. With that news, she’d let herself believe there was hope. If he could hang on for forty-eight hours, he could recover. Seth was strong and tenacious … incredibly stubborn. She knew he could make it!
The hospital was small but well equipped. Noah had offered to fly Seth to a larger facility, but the doctors didn’t believe he would survive the trip. And when Honor had asked if there was anything she could do, one of the surgeons had taken her hand and gruffly whispered one word: “Pray.”
Twelve hours after his surgery, Seth had gone into cardiac arrest. A medical team had worked on him for a full three minutes, until finally, blessedly, she’d heard the
beep … beep … beep
. His heart had started beating again.
Honor had been standing in the corner, out of the way. Pressed against the wall for support, she had been praying fervently for a miracle. After Seth’s heart had started beating again, that same doctor had turned toward her and she had seen the knowledge in his eyes. They had bought him some time, nothing more.
Seth’s family was bringing one additional person with them. The family priest.
Honor still hadn’t accepted that she was going to lose him. Maybe at some point, it would take hold, but as long as that machine kept beeping, she could not, would not, lose hope.
He hadn’t regained consciousness during the entire ordeal. Skin that had been bronzed from the sun now looked almost bleached white. The lines around his mouth and his eyes indicated that, though he wasn’t conscious, somewhere deep inside, the pain was there and he was suffering.
She had gone over in her mind, again and again, the last few seconds before Tabitha had shot him. She should have been able to stop her. She should have screamed faster, louder. Found a way to jump in front of Seth. She should have had a gun. She shouldn’t have screamed … he’d stood up because she’d screamed. She should have done something, anything, to save Seth’s life. If he died, it would be her fault.
Dear God, how was she going to live without him? Sobs built in her chest; her breath hitched. How could she live without this heroic, wonderful, loving man who’d done nothing to deserve what had happened to him?
Unable to be even this far away from him, Honor got to her feet and stood at the side of the bed. Though wires were attached to him, they were on the other side. She grasped his hand and held it to her mouth. Once his family arrived, she might not have this chance to be alone with him again.
Lowering the railing at the side, she eased down onto the bed and curled up next to him. Careful not to touch any wires or tubes, she placed her cheek against his and held him lightly, tenderly. If these were the last moments she would have to be close to him, he needed to hear all the things she’d held back. All the things she could have told him five years ago. And all the things she should have said in the last few weeks.
“Seth, I need you to know how much I love you. You’re the finest man I know. I blamed you for breaking us up years ago, but I never told you how heroic and wonderful I think you are. You did what most people wouldn’t have been able to do. You’ve got more honor and integrity in your pinkie than most people have in their entire body.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you this before. My stubborn pride …” Pressing her forehead against his shoulder, she whispered, “Please forgive me.”
Swallowing hard, the painful lump in her throat ever present, she whispered one more plea, praying that if he heard anything she said, this one would get through. “Please, please, don’t leave me alone. I’m begging you, darling. Please don’t leave me again.”
“Honor?” a soft female voice whispered.
She lifted her head, her eyes so blurred with exhaustion and tears, she could barely make out the woman standing at the door. Older, with grayish-blond hair and a grief-ravaged expression on her face. Seth’s mother.
Releasing a shaky, resigned breath, Honor pressed a kiss to Seth’s cheek and whispered in his ear, “You will always be the only man I’ll ever love, Seth Cavanaugh.”
She sat up and put her feet back on the floor. “I needed to say goodbye.”
Mrs. Cavanaugh’s mouth trembled uncontrollably for a moment, then she said, “He never stopped loving you.”
“How do you know that?”
“When he came to tell us the truth about his undercover work, we were all shocked. Even though I’d never believed most of the things people were saying about him, I can’t deny that I’d almost given up on him. Months would go by without me even hearing from him. When he did call, he just wasn’t my Seth anymore. And when I found out what he had been doing and why he’d pushed us out of his life, I was stunned. We all were.” Her wrinkled throat worked as she swallowed. “Some of the family didn’t want to give up their anger. I should have put my foot down harder, called them out for being so stubborn and childish.” She shook her head. “We just didn’t really consider what Seth endured all those years.”
She gave a small, apologetic smile, as if she realized she’d gotten off track. “Anyway, I asked him if he was going back to you, now that it was over. He said that you had gotten on with your life. But I saw the deep pain in his eyes. He still loved you.”
Standing on shaky legs, Honor turned to put the bed’s rail back up. Unable to look at Seth’s mother without losing complete control, she gazed down at Seth. “I never stopped loving him, either. I never will.”
She gave one last fleeting caress to his hand and then focused on the door behind Ruth Cavanaugh. His family deserved to have time alone with him to say goodbye. “I’ll be just outside.” She cleared her throat and added huskily, “If it looks like he’s letting go, would you call me back in? Please.”
Mrs. Cavanaugh opened her arms, and Honor flew into them. Though unable to shed the tears that filled her eyes, she held Seth’s mother, who sobbed out her grief. At some point, Honor knew, she would need to let go of the emotions that swamped her, but not yet. Letting go meant giving up, and she resolutely refused to do that.
Steeling her spine once more, she gently disengaged herself from Ruth Cavanaugh’s arms and stepped back. “Is the rest of your family outside?”
“Yes, all of his brothers and sisters are here. And our priest, Father Dawkins. I asked them to give me a few minutes before they came in.”
Before leaving, Honor turned to see the older woman bend over Seth and gently kiss his forehead. Unable to watch the tender goodbye between mother and son, she went out the door.
* * *
“Honor?”
Her head jerked up. Noah stood at the entrance to the waiting room. They’d talked very little since Seth’s surgery. She knew he’d been in discussions with the doctors several times a day. She knew he had offered anything and everything to help.
“How are you doing?”
Unable to form words past the giant lump residing in her throat, she lifted her tired shoulders in a helpless shrug. What could she say, anyway? She wasn’t doing well at all and doubted she ever would again—that fact would not change.
His expression grave, he nodded his understanding. “The nurse told me his family was in with him. Thought, if you’re interested, I’d catch you up on what’s been going on with the case.”
Focusing on something other than losing Seth sounded like a small reprieve from hell. She managed a husky “Yes.”
Noah dropped into a chair across from her. “The FBI took over the case. They raided the community and gathered everyone they could find. The women and children have been separated from the men. Don’t really know what’s going to happen to the men. Just from general discussion, sounds like Pike might have brainwashed some of them, too.”
“He abducted men, too?”
“Don’t know yet, but from the sound of it, looks like he convinced them to join and then coerced them to stay.”
“Does anyone know who Pike was? Where he came from?”
“Real name was Leonard Sykes. Years ago, he served three years in a California prison for rape. Found religion while he was there … or at least his self-made, twisted version. Got out for good behavior and started collecting people. Not sure how he hooked up with his first followers. He fell off the grid after his parole was up. The land in Wyoming once belonged to one of his members. Apparently, that member mysteriously disappeared.
“So far, they’ve identified eight other women as missing persons. There’s one woman who’s been missing for over twelve years. Thank God for police and FBI records, because getting any of the victims to open up has been almost impossible. It’s going to be slow going figuring out what happened to each of them.”
“What about Drenda or Karen … has anyone seen either of them?”
“Yeah, they’re both there. Both married.” Noah sighed and added, “And both pregnant.”
Honor closed her eyes. The horror these girls had gone through was something she could barely comprehend. “And Kelli, Anna, and Missy—how are they doing?”
“They’re all back with their families, but they’re going to need extensive counseling.”
Honor nodded. She knew that Joel had flown in with his family, but Beth, Kelli’s mother, had stayed in Texas with their daughter.
“I’m assuming the girls were subjected to what I went through, only more?”
“More and much worse.” Noah’s mouth tightened. “Sadistic son of a bitch alternately drugged and starved them. I’m surprised they’re in as good health as they are.”
“Sounds like they’re strong women.”
Noah nodded. “Oh … and we found a body, cut up into pieces, in the trunk of one of Pike’s vehicles.”
“Do you know who?”
“Pretty sure it was his son.”
“He killed his own son?”
Noah shook his head. “Coroner doesn’t think so. Thinks the daughter did it. She had blood under her nails and in her hair that matched her brother’s.”
Honor swallowed. She knew she shouldn’t be shocked. These people were the sickest of the sick. Still …
“We found an underground tunnel … that’s apparently where the daughter came from. And how Aidan missed her.”
Honor nodded. Blaming Aidan, or anyone else, for Tabitha’s crime would be ridiculous. If anyone was at fault, she blamed herself. After witnessing the girl’s cruelty firsthand and seeing her insane devotion to her father, she should have known to be on the lookout.
“So what now? What happens to all those people?”
“That’s up to the authorities. We rescued the girls. They’ll take care of the arrests and prosecutions. And they’ll find and notify the relatives of the other women who were abducted. Our job is done.”
Yes, that was good. A case solved, victims rescued. A successful mission was complete. With only one hitch: a very good man had given his life.
“I don’t suppose it’d do any good to tell you that you need to get some rest.”
“I can’t leave him … I just can’t.”
“Is there anything I can do? Anything I can get you?”
“No, I’m just going to stay in here until his family is through visiting. Then I’ll go back in and sit with him.”
A warm hand touched her cold ones, gripped together in her lap. “I’ll check in with you a little later. Call me if you need me.”
Honor nodded tiredly, and vaguely sensed Noah leave the room. Her head pressed back against the wall, she closed her eyes and drifted in limbo, waiting for either Seth’s family to leave or for that dreaded moment when the doctors and nurses would rush to his room once more and Seth would be gone for good.
Allowing her memories to comfort her, she returned to one of the sweetest in recent memory. She and Seth in the bedroom at her mom’s house, naked-dancing to sappy old love songs. Gliding around the room, getting lost in the music and each other’s arms. Had it only been days ago? It seemed like forever since she’d felt his lips moving over hers, felt his warm, hard body against her, or heard that beautiful husky voice of his whispering softly.
She had lived for five years without him and cursed herself for not seeking him out and discovering the truth. They had lost all that time together because she’d been too angry and hurt to find him.
“Honor!”
Her eyes popped open. One of Seth’s brothers stood at the entrance to the waiting room. She couldn’t place his name. Tears pouring down his face, he waved at her to follow, then turned and disappeared before she could speak.
Every instinct inside her told her to run the other way. She didn’t want to say goodbye. If she followed him, she would face a finality she wasn’t sure she could handle.
As if she were walking through molasses, her feet shuffled slowly down the hallway, toward Seth’s room. She stopped at the door … heard sobbing. Pressing her forehead against the doorjamb, she whispered a short, silent prayer for courage.