“We didn’t come all this way to run back because I’m feeling a little peaky,” Jared bit out. “Kami! Come on.” He didn’t say it, but that didn’t matter because she heard it in his mind anyway. I’ll be fine. Nicola won’t be.
“All right!” Kami said, pushing away the thought of what had happened to Nicola, because Jared was right: she’d come here with a mission. “We’ll talk to Henry Thornton. Then we’ll go home.”
“So, what are you going to say when we press the buzzer?” Jared asked.
“I’m not going to ring the buzzer,” Kami informed him.
Jared said, We’re breaking in? I’m so happy I never have to be bored again.
Kami slipped in through the open gate and waited, Jared beside her. She didn’t have to wait long, and her luck was better than she could have hoped for. A woman came out, pushing a pram. Kami held the door for her with a smile. The woman smiled back absently, and as she went out the gate, Kami and Jared slipped in through the door.
“Not looking like a delinquent is very helpful,” Kami told Jared serenely. “Which is why you should take a step back when I knock on Henry Thornton’s door. Once it’s open, if we have to, we’ll push our way in.”
Flat 16 was on the ground floor. Kami knocked on the green door and lifted her face to the level of the eyehole with a guileless smile.
The door opened.
“Hi,” Kami said warmly, and stopped, startled.
It was Henry Thornton. She recognized him from his Internet profile, dark curly hair above a thin serious face, but that was hardly a surprise. Henry’s profile had said he was twenty-four, but he looked younger just now. He also looked strangely helpless, his cheeks flushed and his eyes too bright.
Henry was sick too.
“If you’re here to ask me if I’ve accepted the love of our Savior into my heart,” Henry said, “I feel awful right now and I feel Jewish all the time, so—”
Kami laid her hand flat against the door, trying to maintain an ingratiating smile. Unfortunately, that made the door swing inward just a little too much.
Henry saw Jared. His eyes narrowed. He breathed, “Lynburn.” He didn’t shut the door; he bolted backward from it.
Kami hesitated, her palm sti
ll against the door, uncertain whether causing it to swing all the way open would be a mistake or not. Henry might be more inclined to talk if they didn’t seem too pushy.
She hesitated, but she only hesitated for an instant. Then Henry pulled the door wide open and came running through it, right at Jared. The back of Jared’s head hit the wall at the same time the side of his head caught a blow from the object in Henry’s hand.
Jared was on the ground, and Henry was standing over him with the gun trained on Jared’s face. “Did I not make myself clear?” Henry shouted. “I want nothing to do with it!”
Jared blinked slowly, about to lose consciousness. “What?” he asked in a thick voice.
“I don’t care what rewards you offer,” Henry said. “You disgust me. You and all those who follow you don’t deserve power. You deserve to be wiped off the face of the earth.”
Kami heard a little click, like a door closing. She knew what that was. It was the safety catch on the gun.
Kami ran in through Henry’s open door and right into his kitchen. She picked up the first thing she saw, which was a wooden stool. She charged back out, swinging it over her head and into Henry’s.
Henry stumbled and fell to his knees. The gun went flying. Kami hit Henry across his back with the stool again before she could lose her nerve. Then she dropped the stool, dashed down the corridor, and picked up the gun.
The metal slid in her sweaty hands. Kami swallowed the lump of panic in her throat and said to Henry Thornton, her voice emerging small and calm: “I wouldn’t move if I were you.”
Henry sagged on the carpet.
Kami didn’t understand why he’d done this, why he and Jared were both sick, but she wasn’t sticking around to ask him questions when Jared needed help. She decided that Henry was unlikely to be able to assault her with any success, fumbled at the catch on the gun, and shoved it in the pocket of her ruffled skirt. Then she stepped over Henry and knelt beside Jared.
“Hey,” she said, and when his eyelids did not even move, she barged into his mind. Hey, Jared. Come on.
Sick pain flooded through her, his pain. She wondered grimly how long he had been feeling this bad.
Jared! she shouted in his mind, blazing urgency everywhere. I’m right here. Jared, please!