CHAPTER 32 IN THE SNAP OF GOD’S FINGERS
The gunshots echoed through the factory like firecrackers, each pop jolting Gabe's heart against his ribs.
He froze mid-step, one foot hovering above the concrete.
Cole was back there. Alone. His body swiveled halfway toward the sound before his mind caught up.
The kids. He had to protect the kids. But Cole might be bleeding out right now, might be calling his name.
Gabe's mouth went desert-dry as he forced himself forward, each step away from Cole feeling like a betrayal.
“Do… Do you think Cole is okay?” Savannah whispered with a tremor.
“Yeah,” Gabe managed, the lie bitter on his tongue.
He opened his mouth to reassure her further, but could only produce a strangled sound.
“He's—” Another lie died in his throat. “We need to keep moving,” he finally said, hating himself for every inch of distance growing between him and his husband.
Truth be told, Gabe's stomach had twisted into a cold, writhing knot that seemed to pull all his organs down toward his feet.
Every cell in his body screamed to turn back.
He pictured Cole cornered in that cavernous space, blood-spattered concrete closing in around him, the air thick with the acrid tang of violence.
The gangsters might be lurking in the shadows, fingers tensed on triggers—or they might be miles away.
Cole's muscled shoulders and quick reflexes had gotten him through bar fights and street brawls, but against two serial killers?
The image of Cole's body sprawled lifeless on that factory floor burned behind Gabe's eyelids every time he blinked.
You have to trust him to God—and focus on getting these kids out of here.
Gabe's ears strained in the silence, the absence of gunshots hanging in the air like a held breath.
Each passing second without that telltale crack could mean Cole was safe—or already beyond help.
He pushed forward, his boots scraping against the grimy concrete as he navigated the labyrinthine corridors, their walls slick with decades of industrial residue.
The wound in his side throbbed with every heartbeat, warm blood still seeping through his fingers when he pressed them against it.
If the deputy's hulking silhouette appeared around the next corner, Gabe had nothing—no weapon, not even the full strength of his own body.
But as he glanced back at Savannah's wide, terrified eyes, he felt something crystallize in his chest: an infallible certainty that he would place his broken body between these children and whatever came for them.
They locked eyes, both panting like wounded animals, the stunned hush of the abandoned factory swallowing their ragged breath.
Byrne's punctured eyeball hung like a deflated water balloon in his socket, oozing a viscous mixture of blood and vitreous fluid that traced a glistening crimson trail down his stubbled cheek.
Cole's fingers trembled with exhaustion, but they'd found the killer's thick, calloused thumb and were bending it backward against the joint, slow and methodical, like breaking a stubborn twig.
His vision blurred with sweat and tears as he fixed on the braided leather bracelet encircling Byrne's wrist—stolen merchandise—and hot tears welled up as Ezra's boyish face, forever frozen at thirteen, materialized in his mind's eye.
White-hot rage surged through his battered body like an electrical current, and he wrenched Byrne's thumb with savage force, feeling cartilage tear and bone separate with a wet, decisive snap.
The killer's face went slack with shock, pupils dilating to black pools, then narrowed with renewed focus, his split lips peeling back in a feral snarl that revealed blood-slicked teeth.
He lunged forward, smashing his granite forehead into Cole's nose with the force of a sledgehammer.
Cartilage collapsed with a sickening crunch as warm blood erupted in a crimson geyser, filling his mouth with copper and salt.
Cole's world contracted violently to a single pinprick of consciousness—blinding white light, volcanic pain, and bone-chilling cold.
Byrne reeled back, the shattered thumb jutting at an impossible angle, then drove his steel-toed boot into Cole's rib cage with a sickening crack .
Cole's body convulsed violently, spine arching off the concrete as his diaphragm seized.
His lungs collapsed into useless sacks, mouth gaping in a silent scream.
The killer loomed above him, each ragged breath spraying crimson mist, slamming his mangled hand against his thigh in rhythmic, psychotic thuds.
For one fractured second, Byrne's face contorted with something almost human—raw pain slicing through the murderous mask—before his features hardened back into predatory focus.
He lunged for the machete, snatching it up with a feral grunt.
Cole's shattered ribs ground together like broken glass beneath his skin, each desperate gasp for air sending lightning bolts of agony through his chest cavity.
Black spots swarmed his vision like hungry insects, pulsing with each labored heartbeat.
Through a crimson haze of his own blood, Cole glared upward at the towering silhouette.
Byrne loomed over him, a nightmare backlit by the factory's anemic light—his punctured eye socket weeping viscous fluid down his granite-like cheekbone, thick fingers white-knuckled around the machete's handle where rust-colored blood had already begun to congeal in tacky ribbons.
Byrne seemed to savor the pause—hovering above Cole like a horror-movie monster, machete gleaming under the sickly yellow light that filtered through decades of industrial grime, breath steaming in the cold air in rhythmic plumes.
His good eye glimmered with a wetness that wasn't tears but pure predatory pleasure, pupil dilated to a hungry black disk ringed by a sliver of ice-blue iris.
There was no need for words; the intent was carved into the granite set of his square jaw, the arched sinew of his corded forearm, the way he balanced on the balls of his feet with knees slightly bent, a predator toying with ruined prey, savoring the metallic scent of fear and blood.
Cole scrabbled along the floor, elbows and heels gouging shallow tracks in the muck—a slurry of rust flakes, ancient motor oil, and his own spreading blood.
His fingernails tore against the rough surface, leaving crimson half-moons in their wake, but there was nowhere to escape to.
The throb of blood from the two-inch gash at his neck made a hot, wet patch that spread with every labored heartbeat, soaking his collar and the upper third of his shirt in a warm crimson tide.
The cold floor was already sapping his strength, turning his muscles to trembling jelly; each breath became a desperate, whistling gasp through his constricted windpipe.
A boot crushed his calf into the concrete as Byrne knelt, machete descending in a slow, ritualistic arc.
Cole's hand shot out, not for the weapon but for the debris field of industrial carnage—fingers seizing a length of rebar, its jagged rust-flecked edge slicing his palm to ribbons.
Blood slicked his grip as he clutched it, the searing pain igniting something primal in his brain stem.
He unleashed a guttural roar and swung with desperate fury, the bar connecting with Byrne's jaw with a sickening crack that shattered bone and sent shockwaves of impact up Cole's arm like lightning.
Byrne's face exploded in a geyser of crimson, teeth, and tissue spraying in a wet constellation across the concrete.
The machete clattered away as he howled—a sound more beast than human.
Cole wrenched his leg free and rolled, vertebrae grinding against the wall.
The world strobed between blindness and hellish clarity, but pure survival instinct drove the rebar forward like a spear, keeping the blood-soaked demon at bay while Cole's heart hammered with such violence he thought his chest might split open.
“Fuck—” Cole's throat seized around the word, his voice drowning in a backwash of hot copper as blood fountained from his pulverized nose and throat.
Byrne's pupils dilated to black holes as he lunged—not with desperation but with the calculated ecstasy of a predator who savors the kill.
The rebar whistled through the air, catching only a glancing blow that tore Byrne's shirt and carved a shallow crimson furrow across his shoulder blade.
Cole's spine slammed against concrete as he scrambled backward, boot heels gouging trenches in the filth, each ragged breath like swallowing razor blades.
The killer's advance transformed into something primordial—a stalking crouch, unhurried and reptilian—machete retrieved and now gripped white-knuckled in his left fist, its edge catching sickly light while his mangled right hand dangled like a broken marionette limb, fingers spasming with involuntary neural misfires.
“This is where your legacy ends,” the man gargled, crimson spittle spraying from his mangled mouth, teeth floating in a soup of gore. “ Sever the bloodline.”
“ Fuck you.” Cole's vision tunneled to a red pinpoint, every cell in his body igniting with volcanic rage. His organs felt like they might rupture from the pressure as thirty years of terror and shame detonated inside him. “I don’t want your fucking legacy— or your diseased bloodline!” The sound that tore from his throat wasn't human—a primal howl that shredded his vocal cords.
He launched upward, rebar gripped white-knuckled like a medieval weapon.