15. Deacon #3
Then he does the thing I did not expect. He turns his back to me and faces the door.
“You wanted me to trust you with my back,” he says. “Earn it.”
The words settle between us, heavy and clean.
I move.
Nash takes the first man as he enters, striking hard with the butt of his pistol and driving him sideways into the wall. I catch the smaller figure behind him, a woman with a compact gun already rising beneath her jacket. She fires once.
The bullet grazes my side, hot and shallow, tearing fabric and skin over my ribs. Pain flashes white.
I close on her before she fires again.
Her gun arm breaks against the doorframe. She chokes on the sound. I put her down and kick the weapon under the pew.
Nash is still fighting the first man, who turns out to be larger than Ever made him sound. He has both hands on Nash’s jacket and is trying to drive a knife up under his ribs. I pull the man off him by the collar, opening him for Nash’s fist. The blow lands with a sound like a door slammed shut.
The man drops.
For one second, Nash and I stand in the chapel doorway, breathing hard over the bodies of Isabel’s faithful.
His eyes cut to the blood spreading along my side.
“Bad?”
“Annoying.”
“That means bad.”
“It means we need to move.”
Sabine already has Delia at the side door. Delia is looking at my ribs.
I point toward the corridor. “Go.”
She moves.
We move through Sainte Aurelia in pieces. Sabine first with Delia under her arm and a clipboard in her hand, looking like security escorting a difficult guest. Nash behind them, tray in hand again. I take the rear, hand pressed once to my side to check the wound. Wet. Shallow. Manageable.
Ever feeds us camera gaps through the comm, voice tight but steady.
“Hall left clear. Kitchen occupied. Two staff at sink. Wait three seconds. Now.”
We wait. We move.
A server sees us near the pantry and opens her mouth.
Nash shifts the tray toward her. “Reception is missing the rosemary biscuits.”
The server’s eyes widen in pure professional horror. “What?”
“Find them!”
She bolts toward the kitchen.
Sabine almost laughs. The sound dies before it becomes dangerous.
At the service door, the van waits with the rear open. Delia hesitates at the threshold.
I see it happen.
The air outside. The rain. The line between the place Isabel controls and the world where Reva waits. For women raised under Isabel’s roof, crossing a doorway is rarely simple. There is always a price somewhere. Always a hand waiting to pull her back.
Nash steps aside, giving her the exit instead of blocking it.
“Delia,” I say.
She looks at me.
“Come.”
Her eyes flash. “Don’t talk to me like a dog.”
“Then stop making me worry you’ll bite.”
For a second, I think she might. Then she steps outside and climbs into the van.
Nash gets in after her. Sabine stays outside.
I pause on the pavement. Rain slides into my collar and down my spine, finding the graze at my ribs. It stings. I let it.
“Come with us,” I tell Sabine.
She shakes her head. “Not yet.”
“Sabine. You were seen.”
“My brother leaves tonight because Blackwood gave his word. I have more to do before Isabel understands I’m gone, too.”
“She will kill you if she knows.”
“She kills everyone eventually.”
The words are calm. That is what makes them terrible.
Nash calls from inside the van, “Martel.”
She looks past me.
“You have twelve hours before my people move your brother. After that, you are either out or you are choosing to stay. I do not rescue people who refuse the door twice.”
Sabine’s mouth tightens. “Understood.”
She looks at me one last time. There is history in her eyes, and warning, and something like farewell without the sentiment.
Then she shuts the van door.
We pull away from Sainte Aurelia through the service lane, a catering van full of stolen granddaughter, blood, broken rosary beads, and the first real crack in Isabel del Rosario’s pretty little empire.
Delia sits on the bench across from me, coat pulled around her shoulders, wet hair clinging to her jaw. She has one hand pressed over her scraped palm. The other curls around something small.
A red rosary bead. She caught one. Kept it.
Nash notices but says nothing.
Delia’s gaze lifts to mine. “Reva is really waiting?”
“Of course she is.”
Her mouth trembles once before she crushes the expression flat.
Delia turns toward the blacked-out window. For a while, only the rain speaks.
Then she says, so quietly I nearly miss it, “I didn’t think she would send anyone.”
Something in my chest twists.
“She sent all of us,” Nash says.
Delia does not look back, but her fingers close around the bead until her knuckles pale.
I lean my head against the wall of the van and close my eyes for three seconds.
The wound at my side burns. Isabel is still alive. Sabine is still inside the lion’s mouth. Cal’s still in a hospital bed with Shiloh standing guard. Reva’s at the cabin, staying when every part of her wanted to run.
We haven’t won anything clean. We’ve only taken back one body from the room where Isabel meant to make an example.
Today, that’s enough.
Today, we bring Reva her sister.