Sanders (Terk’s Guardians #7)

Chapter 14

A nia murmured, as her body was shifted, and the cold air hit her. She opened her eyes in shock, immediately struggling.

As she was clasped to his warm chest, Sanders whispered, “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

She sagged against him, only to realize she was dripping wet. “What happened?” she asked, as a second shock hit her. She was completely nude.

“You fell asleep in the bathtub,” he explained, “and the water is quite cold now. So, if we don’t get you warmed up, you’ll risk getting seriously ill on us.”

She blinked, trying to process the information. “I can’t think of the last time I ever did something like that.”

“It all goes to show you how exhausted you are.” He put her carefully on the bed, covering her up with a towel and a blanket. “You’ll sleep better in here.” Then he filled her in on the events that occurred while he was out getting the food.

“Do I get time to sleep?” she asked, struggling with the news. “That guy followed you here and all.”

“I know, but I think he got the message to leave us alone. Meanwhile, if you can grab a little bit more sleep, you’ll be better off,” he replied. “I just couldn’t leave you in that cold water.”

“Thank you for that.” She yawned, tucked the blanket up to her neck, and carefully rolled over. “Maybe I will try to grab a few more minutes.” She closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, he was beside her. “Did you even leave?” she muttered, blinking through the haze in her brain.

He chuckled. “I’ve checked on you several times. You’ve been asleep for close to four hours.”

She stared at him in shock. “Seriously?”

He nodded. “Stop fidgeting. That’s a good thing because, although I hate to say it, we need to get moving.”

She groaned, closing her eyes, and whispered, “Now where?”

“Hopefully to a plane and home.”

“In that case, I’m in,” she said, sitting up and pulling the towel around her shoulders in an attempt to keep herself covered, which made absolutely no sense, considering he’d already pulled her out of her bath. She yawned again. “Just give me a chance to get dressed. Is there any coffee?”

“No, we’ll pick up some on the way, or get some on the plane.”

“On the plane works for me.” As she shifted into a sitting position, she winced at the pull on her back. “What the hell?”

He nodded. “Remember the broken glass from the car? It’s all been pulled out of your back, but you were cut up some, so it’ll sting, and it’s likely to be sore for a while.”

“Yeah, I remember now. That’s just great,” she muttered, slowly rolling her shoulders.

“It’ll be fine with a little more time.”

It wasn’t fine, but it was livable, and, if it made it possible for her to get out of here, then she was totally okay to pay the price.

Sanders pointed to a bag by the bathroom door. “Riff picked you up a couple things to replace your bloody clothes.”

She nodded and slipped into the bathroom, where she dressed, gathering her bloody clothes into the now-empty bag. Then she headed out to the main room to see both men sitting there, drinking coffee. She glared. “You said no coffee.”

He chuckled. “If you can call it that. It’s pretty cold and bitter, but we’re just a little more used to making do with it.”

“Yeah?” she muttered. She walked over, picked up his cup, and drained it instantly. “Maybe you’re used to it, but I’m not used to functioning without caffeine.”

“It’s all in the mind anyway,” Riff noted in a mild tone. She turned and glared at him, and he smirked. “Yet, it is so much easier when caffeine freaks get what they need.”

“Absolutely,” she declared. She walked to the door and quickly put on her shoes, only to find the men already packed up and waiting for her. “We really are leaving, right?”

“We really are,” Riff stated, with a smile.

“Any chance that we won’t get followed and shot at, or God-only-knows what else this time?”

“Not much of a chance,” Riff replied, his tone calm, certain. “But let’s get you out of here, so we can sort out who might still be trying to come after us. How well do you think your brand of persuasion worked on your father’s tracker?”

“Oh, I think he was quite intrigued, but I think he is worried about how he will prove it to my father. They are all so terrified of the man, so the prospect of being caught lying to him terrifies them. That’s why they are so freaking loyal.”

“Right,” Riff agreed. “If we ever see your father, if he’s out here, having any part in this nightmare on a personal level, maybe you’ll have a go at lying to him too.”

“I could,” she noted. “I just haven’t a clue what I would even try to say at this point.”

“Maybe don’t say anything. Maybe that’s all that’s needed is for you not to say anything. If he’s looking for answers and looking for you to be somebody other than you are, particularly if he doesn’t really know how much of this is even real or why this would even be something that his own daughter could do, he might be easier to convince than you think.”

“I don’t know,” she murmured. “Either way, let’s just get out of here, so we’re free and clear of whatever’s going on,” she muttered. “The sooner I’m over in England, the better. Surely MI6 or somebody there might convince my father that I’m not among his pawns anymore.”

“Maybe,” Riff said, with a nod. “Terk definitely has some pull in that regard. If nothing else, it might be enough to make you a protected citizen.”

“I’ll take that too,” she replied. “Anything that would get this nightmare to stop. Nothing like being a prisoner to entrench fear in your DNA.”

“We all understand that,” Riff declared, with a hard smile in her direction. “We’re all on your side. Now we just have to make it happen.”

And, with that, they ushered her out into the hallway, then turned to lock the door behind him. They walked downstairs and then outside.

She immediately felt herself tensing up. “It’s really hard to not consider that somebody is out here, waiting to shoot us,” she muttered, a chill settling over her.

“Do you have any reading that is what somebody is looking to do?” Riff asked, smiling at her.

“It’s what’s happened so far,” she murmured, looking at him strangely. “If you’re asking me if I’m getting any messages along those lines, I really don’t have anything to tell you.”

“In our business,” he explained, “abilities or not, our instincts are everything. That has saved our lives time and time again, so don’t ever discount it.”

“I wasn’t trying to,” she muttered. “I was just trying to stay alive, though I’m not sure that’s even a realistic expectation these days.”

“It is, because we’re getting you out,” Sanders stated, taking her arm and leading her to the car.

It was a small and very low-to-the-ground silver car, completely nondescript, and yet something was odd about it. As she got into the back seat, she asked in an amused tone, “What are we driving? Any chance this is bulletproof glass?”

The men chuckled. “No, not at all,” Riff replied, “but it is a street racing car, so, if we have a need for speed this time,… we’ll have a powerhouse.”

“Did you steal it too?” she asked in a joking manner. “Somebody will be pissed.”

Riff, his grin wide, looked at her in the rearview mirror and shook his head. “I didn’t need to. It was offered by somebody I know, who respects what we do.”

“Nice to have friends. I don’t suppose you told him what happened to the last couple vehicles we borrowed .” She added air quotes to emphasize her point.

He just chuckled. “Actually I did, but he also knows the game and how it’s played,” he shared, his tone completely unconcerned. “So, don’t worry about it. This friend of mine will hardly have a problem with any damage to his car.”

“Well then, I don’t know what kind of friends you have, because nobody I know has the money to turn around and pay for repairs on a rig like this,” she stated.

“We have some friends with very deep pockets,” Riff added, “and we have some friends who just like to be helpful. So, if this is a way that they can help out in a pinch, then they’re totally okay with it.”

She wanted to say something else, but they were pulling out of the parking lot. It was just instinctive for her to turn around and to look behind her, almost to say goodbye. Then she saw a man staring at them. “You know he’s watching us, right?”

“Yeah, sure do,” Riff noted, again in that completely offhand manner.

She glared at Sanders. “Why is it that you guys aren’t bothered?”

He flashed her a big grin. “Because we do see him, and we do know that he’s probably contacted somebody, but he’s not trying to hide it, and that’s an interesting thing in and of itself.”

“Why?” she asked in confusion. “Why wouldn’t he try to hide?” As she thought about it, the answer came to her all at once. “Oh, he’s already told them, hasn’t he?”

“He has told them, but that doesn’t mean he’s told them everything. We were pretty clear about the reasons your father wanted you, not necessarily in detail, but certainly enough for him to understand the scenario.”

“But a lot of people don’t care what we say,” she stated, as she twisted to look back at him again. She was surprised to see that he was still standing there, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. “Do you think he did something to give them a different lead?”

“I think that he’ll give them just enough to get paid but leave us a little bit of a buffer, so we can get out and away.”

“But how will he know that you can make good use of that buffer?”

At that, Sanders burst out laughing. “He knows, and that is what he’s counting on. At least he’s done his job, and he’s also out of trouble, so he can wash his hands of the whole thing, knowing that at least he gave us a fighting chance.”

“Yeah, what if I want more than a fighting chance?” she muttered, hating to even think that she was still a pawn in somebody else’s game. “He might think that he’s out of trouble, but there are no guarantees with my father.”

“And that’s something that he’ll find out for himself, one way or the other. He got into this, and now it’s up to him to get himself out of it. Whether he does so in a healthy and safe way… is his problem. Your father doesn’t have to know that he gave us a fifteen-minute head start, and, for one, I’m very grateful that he is giving it to us because, with that, we can be a long way away.”

And, with that reassurance, she sat back and tried to relax, but she needed food. Almost instinctively, as she leaned forward, Sanders twisted around and handed her a bag. She looked at it in surprise.

Sanders said, “I thought maybe you would like the last sandwich.”

“If I don’t get fresh bacon and eggs in a fancy restaurant by the ocean, I suppose a cold leftover sandwich will do the job nicely.”

His grin flashed at her, and he nodded. “I really like your attitude.”

“Yeah, sometimes there isn’t a whole lot of choice, is there?”

“No, but it’s how you handle the stressors in life that make the difference in how you move forward.”

“Yeah, but I don’t even know how I’m moving forward or what life after this will look like.”

“I guess neither of us does, and, while both of us are heading to something new and different, I, for one, am really excited.”

She couldn’t argue with that, and everything he said was true. Up until now, he had been her lifeline, so she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. “I just hope that maybe we’ll get there alive and well. Anything else looks to be a one-way street to a place I don’t want to go.”

“Don’t focus on it,” Riff interjected. “We aren’t very far away from where we need to be, so we’ll just keep driving until we get to our location. If we can’t make that one, we’ll go on to the next. We have three mapped out for today, and we have people ready and waiting at every turn,” he shared, with a smile. “One even includes a private plane.”

“You really do have friends in high places.”

“The boss has a friend based out of Africa. He comes over and travels quite a bit, so that is his plane. Although it isn’t well-known, it’s certainly legal and registered in all these locations. And, if that’s what it takes to help us out, he’s right there for us,” Riff explained calmly.

Pulling out the sandwich, Ania took several bites, hating the cardboard taste, but knowing it was better than nothing if she would have to run for it again. Just the thought of that exhausted her. She’d had a few hours of sleep, but it sure wasn’t enough for a mad and crazy run again. She looked over at Riff and then at Sanders, wondering how the men had ended up in circumstances where this was the norm. As much as she wanted to ask them, she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know. Yet she was so grateful they had come back for her.

“This won’t be the only time I say it, but I just want you both to know that… I really appreciate how you came to help me out,” she murmured. “I’m… I was doing okay, but I don’t know that I would have been able to evade my father and his goons much longer. As you may have noticed, my father is very crafty when it comes to getting what he wants out of life.”

“You don’t need to thank us,” Sanders replied. “You kept me alive mentally and emotionally when I was a prisoner, so I could hardly do less for you. I’m sorry it took as long as it did for me to get out and to rescue you. That wasn’t quite my plan. I pushed it and got here as soon as I could.”

“You don’t look much better even now,” she said bluntly. “So, you really owe a great deal to these women helping you out.”

He chuckled. “One of them reminds me of that on a regular basis,” he replied, with a smile. “But you’re right, I owe them both for this, and I will be quite happy to repay them, as time goes on. I don’t have any issues with that. Sometimes a good deed is not repayable in the exact same way, but I’m up for helping somebody else in whatever way is needed. Being rescued?… That’s huge, but being able to rescue? That’s even bigger,” he murmured. “So, my thanks go to the entire team,… especially Riff here.”

“Let’s not go there,” Riff muttered in an exasperated tone. “I can’t do that whole maudlin thing.”

She snorted. “Too damn bad. If we want to say thank you , we’ll damn well do it, and you can just shut up and take it. I think I might even hug you.” His startled look in the rearview mirror made her burst out laughing. “Yeah, I get the impression most people don’t talk to you that way, but maybe they should.”

“Yeah, and what makes you think that?” he asked, with a headshake. “Jeez, you let somebody into your life just this little tiny bit, and she walks all over you.”

She giggled. “Hardly, and somebody like you is bound to be used to it, whether you want to admit it or not. This work comes so naturally to you, and you are so used to a lot of this stuff. So, you don’t really see what a big deal it is to someone like me. It seems you were made for it, and you take to it like a duck takes to water.”

“It’s what I do,” Riff stated firmly. “When the time comes that I don’t want to do it anymore,… I’ll find something else to do. I have no intention of dying on the job, and I demand to live life to the fullest on the other side of this, whatever that is.”

“Yeah, well, if you’re hooked up with Terk and his group,” Sanders replied, “apparently that’ll mean a wife and babies.” The horrified look he got in response from Riff made Sanders laugh. “Yeah, you may think that now…” Sanders began.

“Yeah, and you know why,” Riff declared, looking serious all of a sudden.

“I do know why. I don’t know all the details, but I do know why,” he said. “But I also know that you can’t live in the past forever. At some point in time, that future will beckon, and it will be up to you whether you’ll answer that call, or choose to be alone and miserable for the rest of your life.”

She was surprised to hear that conversation, not knowing any of the details. As much as she wanted to ask, she had a feeling, based on the change in their tones, that her interference in that conversation would not be appropriate. Curious, but not willing to cross that line, she sat back and pondered it. Everyone had challenges and issues in their lives, so it was not surprising that Riff would have a few of his own as well.

It might also help explain some of his standoffishness. She could only hope that he found peace and quiet at the end of all this, because no doubt he was struggling. He may look put together, but he was exorcising demons of some kind. No matter how much she wanted to, it wasn’t for her to ask, but, as long as he found that sense of peace at the end of the day, she would be happy.

*

Sanders watched the vehicle pull up in the rearview mirror, looking over at Riff, who just nodded.

“I see him.”

Sanders glanced at the back seat, but Ania was dozing lightly in place. “Do we wake her?” he asked.

“No,” Riff said. “I’m hoping that we have a welcoming committee waiting for us when we get to the airport, with a little bit of backup.”

“That would be good,” Sanders muttered. “Any idea how they’re tracking us?”

“Depending on how advanced her father’s systems are, and what levels of the government he has access to, it could be any number of things,” he muttered. “Once you start involving high-level government operatives, there really is no end to the information they can access. It’s unfortunate, of course, because it would be a lot easier if we had an even playing field.”

“We do have access to an awful lot, though,” Sanders noted. “I mean, way more than I thought was even possible.”

“That’s because Levi has his own satellite, as does Bullard over in Africa,” Riff shared. “They’re both working to support Terk in the meantime, until he can get in the position of getting his own up in the air.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to just cooperate more instead of adding it to the cost?”

“Yes, but then you have all these wars raging around the world, and, as soon as somebody decides to take out one satellite, everybody’s impacted.”

That made a lot of sense, and, since there seemed to be money for it, redundancy could benefit them all. Now that Sanders had been one of the beneficiaries of such a system, he could only sit back and marvel at how much of the world functioned on a private level that he hadn’t known a thing about. He watched as the vehicle just stayed on their tail. “I wonder if her father will come into this mess personally,” Sanders muttered, “or if he will just stay on the sidelines.”

“It depends. If the tracker has already told him that he doesn’t think she has any abilities, then he might want to come see for himself. Not that he’ll be able to read Ania for gifts, not when he has none himself. Yet, if he doesn’t, he may always wonder if he had been taken for a ride. I would.”

Sanders could only nod and agree with that. “I would too, and nothing quite like finding out for yourself whether somebody is lying to you or not. In this case, he doesn’t want to lose something, but neither does he want to have all kinds of hell happen over it. This could turn out to be very expensive for him, and he could find himself called on the carpet over it.”

“Exactly, and I would think that he’s bound to be coming to that point soon. He isn’t the president of the country, for God’s sake, and somebody has to be watching what he’s doing. The question is, do they understand what he’s doing, not to mention how much in the way of resources he’s putting into this? There are bound to be questions as to whether he’s doing it on a personal level because it’s his daughter, or whether he’s doing it to benefit the country, or maybe a select group of people.”

“But think about it for a minute. Can they really keep that completely separate?”

“They have to. Otherwise everybody would utilize all those resources for themselves over and over again, and it wouldn’t benefit the government. Who’ll pay for it? These guys don’t have money rolling around for everybody to use, any more than the US or British governments will turn around and let us get all the stuff that we need.”

“Yet we get quite a bit from MI6, I understand,” Sanders noted.

“That’s different. We work for them for a price, maybe not strictly paid in currency,” Riff added, with an eye roll. “And while this job isn’t one of MI6’s, we’ve just come off several that were. One was where they lost their own people in transit.”

“Lost?” Sanders repeated, turning and looking at him.

“Lost, as in they were recaptured by the countries that they were running away from,” he muttered. “It got particularly ugly here recently, where a couple of their agents were killed too. So MI6 owes us. Thus any money that we spend, or any of their resources that we utilize for what we need, I don’t have a problem with. But you are right about Terk. It’s good that he has these kinds of mutual relationships.”

“Exactly.”

Just then Riff swore. “Hang on,” he cried out, as the vehicle from behind slammed hard into the back of the car. He turned the car, just as Ania let out a terrified scream, right when Sanders reached for her hand.

“Hang on,” Sanders explained. “We’ve just been found again, and they’re trying to ram us off the road.”

She just blinked, staring at him in horror.

“It’s okay. Stay calm. We’ll get out of this.”

She nodded slowly, taking a deep breath. “This is just unbelievable. Why won’t he just give it up? Why is it so important to get to me if he kills me?”

Such pain took over her facial expression that Sanders’s own heart ached for her. “Either your father will go to great lengths because he wants to control you, or he’ll go to great lengths because he’s afraid to lose whatever it is that you represent,” he explained. “But, at some point in time, even his bosses will get pissed off at him and will start asking hard questions.”

At that, she looked at him, blinking owlishly, and then slowly nodded. “That could be why he’s so adamant right now. He’s gone down this pathway, and he’s committed a lot to the task. So, if he doesn’t have something to show for it at the end of the day, it could go badly for him. That makes a lot of sense, and he could end up getting in quite a bit of trouble himself,” she noted softly. “When he’s up against a wire like that, there is no give in him.”

“He’s not alone. A lot of people are like that,” Riff declared, trying hard to shake the tail.

Just then the vehicle took another hard hit, and she lurched to the side. Yet Sanders still clung to her hand.

“We will get out of this,” Sanders stated firmly.

“Yeah? Is that your telepathy telling you that?” she asked, with a laugh. “Because the fact that we can talk to each other mentally really doesn’t cut it in this situation.”

“No, that’s quite true. You talking to your father’s tracker may have helped though, but we can’t see the results of that yet,” he added, looking around. “I’m not sure what to do,” Sanders told Riff, “but, if you have any ideas, feel free to tell me.”

“Yeah, maybe you should tell me what you are able to do, since I have no idea.”

“So, tell me what you would want in an ideal world,” Sanders suggested, “and let me see if I can figure out how to make it happen.”

Riff shot him a look and declared, “Get these assholes off our back.”

Sanders turned and focused his attention on the vehicle on their tail, realizing that it was big and that it was strong. Yet Sanders felt something inside him that he had felt a couple times before, during the testing he had gone through in captivity. Back then he had struggled to keep his response dampened down. It was an anger beyond anything he had ever experienced. He felt that same fury now that somebody would do this to them, when they were so close to freedom, that someone would try to take that away from them, from her.

Ania had been through enough already, so why the hell wouldn’t these guys just stop and let them go? Even though Sanders knew what was driving the goons, it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough because they wouldn’t let it be enough.

Sanders closed his eyes, and that same anger swirled inside him, and he stoked it, trying to build it up, when Terk popped into his head.

Stop. Don’t use the anger .

What?

You’ll regret it later. Stay detached from the anger, but use that energy that has been building up. Give that energy as much force as you can , Terk said. I’m not sure what you can do with that energy, but, if you need more, we’re right here. Just set aside the anger.

Intrigued at the instruction, Sanders took the energy, gathered it together to create a sphere, and swirled it around.

That’s right , Terk replied. Yes, focus on getting that vehicle off your back .

Sanders closed his eyes, his energy directed behind him, and he kept boiling up the energy, churning it faster, faster, until he almost had this fiery ball at his disposal. He opened his eyes, then turned and stared at the truck behind them. Sanders focused on one tire, and then mentally, with as much force as he could, he shot that fiery churning energy at the tire and watched in disbelief as the vehicle flipped over backward and came down flat on its roof, the wheels spinning in the air. His jaw dropped, and he watched in disbelief. “Good God,” he cried out.

Ania twisted, looked at the vehicle behind them, then turned to him and over to Riff. She took another look behind her, amazed, then back to Sanders. “Did you just do that?”

“I don’t know. Riff told me that we needed to get him off our tail, and I started to…” He looked down at his hands. “Then Terk told me to try to…” He sank back into the seat, frowning at Riff.

Riff’s eyebrows were still raised, totally surprised, as he looked at him. “Sanders, what the hell? If you’d told me you could do something like that, it could have come in handy before.”

“I didn’t know I could do that, and I’m still not sure I did,” he admitted. “Terk was somewhere in the back of my brain.”

“Terk’s good at that,” Riff noted. “But the fact of the matter is, I told you to get them off our back, and somehow that exact thing happened, and you’re the only one who was facing the car behind us,” he pointed out, looking at him several times, his gaze going from the road to him and then back again. “So, if you did do that, well, hot damn, we really do need you at home.”

“I don’t even know what the hell that is, what I just did, if I even did that,” Sanders admitted in confusion.

Terk’s laughter rolled through his head. We don’t really need to do a post-mortem right now , he shared. Just be ready in case another vehicle comes your way , he added, with a smile evident in his tone.

Did I really do that? he asked. I can’t say it’s anything I have ever attempted before .

But you were never in a position where you needed to either , Terk noted gently. I’m not here to tell you that we need to kill people or to hurt them, but, when it comes to evading people who are out to hurt us , he said, emphasizing his point, we must use all the tools that we have. You just found a new one, and, for that, I’m really proud of you. Welcome to the team . And, with that, Terk was gone.

Sanders sat in the front seat, still stumped, quite disbelieving, as he stared down at his hands. A chill ran up his spine, yet this warm glow radiated around his heart. He smiled at Riff. “For the first time, it seems maybe I’m not a useless slug after all.”

At that, Riff looked at him in shock. “I’m not sure where you got that idea.”

“Oh, maybe from being a prisoner for all that time,” he muttered. “It really kills your ability to do anything, and then before that, well…”

“And before that you were recovering from an accident, where you had severe injuries to your back and your liver and your intestines. Did you think we didn’t get a full medical report on you?” he asked, looking at him. “I get where you could have that sense of helplessness, that sense of not having anything to offer anymore, but you’ve just blown that idea out of the water—though you had plenty to offer before that, as far as I’m concerned. We just need to get you home and healed up.”

“I think that’s why I’m just sitting here, with a goofy grin on my face. Apparently I’m not completely useless,” he said, with a laugh. “But who the hell ever thought something like that was possible?”

“Yeah, you need to meet the rest of the team,” Riff suggested, with a smile. “We have somebody who can completely camouflage people around us—and buildings. Not sure that he can do it from a distance, though,” he added, frowning at that. Then out loud he said, “Hey, Terk, we might want to consider testing that camouflage thing from a distance and see what, if any, range he has.”

Terk’s voice filled the vehicle. “That’s not necessarily something he can do yet, but we are working on it. If we could do that from home, it would be a massive step forward. We’ve tested it a little, and he can do it on the grounds and in other parts of the building, but, so far, we haven’t been able to expand that reach yet.”

Riff chuckled. “Sanders, something like that is the direction this team is going,” he declared, beaming with satisfaction. “That’s how you know that you’ve found your place. It’s people like us, people working and developing something that nobody else in this world even understands, and if they did?… They would be all over it. That’s exactly what happened to her.”

Ania leaned forward. “ Her , meaning me?” she asked, with snort. “I am right here, and I can hear you.”

“You are here,” he agreed. “Now if you can do any of the shit that Sanders just did, fly at it,” he muttered.

“I’ve never tried anything like that, but I sure as heck don’t want anybody here in this country to know about it, even if I could,” she stated. “My life would definitely be much harder.”

“Not any longer,” Riff murmured, as they drove onto an airstrip, “because look at what’s up ahead.”

And right there in front of them, a plane waited. “Oh, thank God,” she cried out, as the vehicle came to a stop right beside the plane.

She got out, stretched, looked around a bit, and smiled. “I won’t be upset to say goodbye to this country,” she murmured. “Like, wow, it’s been a rough couple months.”

“You’re right. It has been,” her father agreed, as he stepped out from behind the plane, two men at his side. “If you think it’ll get any easier from here on in, you’re wrong.”

He lifted his handgun, and, instead of shooting her, which was what she expected, he shot Sanders without a warning.

His face blank with shock, Sanders dropped to the ground right in front of her.