The Last Widow (Will Trent 9)

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.”