The candelabra whistles through the air, twenty pounds of wrought iron aimed at Jonas Vale’s skull with enough force to shatter bone.
“ELI—”
A shout, distorted by distance.
The voice is swallowed by silence, but it detonates in my chest like a grenade. Ten days of nightmares, ten days of imagining her voice calling my name from shallow graves, and now—
Dalia.
The candelabra slips from my hands, wrought iron clattering against stone. Vale’s smile widens as I stumble backward, my carefully constructed rage collapsing into something that might be hope or terror.
She’s alive. Or someone wants me to think she is.
Either way, I’m already moving.
Weapon drawn, muscle memory from a thousand training scenarios taking over when conscious thought fails. The two cultists press themselves against the wall as I pass, but I barely register them. Vale calls after me but his words dissolve into white noise.
The front doors of the church slam open as I shoulder through them, heavy wood hitting stone with enough force to jar my teeth. Cold night air slaps my face, pine-sharp and clean after the suffocating incense inside. My pupils are struggling to adjust from candlelight to darkness.
But I see them anyway.
Two figures locked in a deadly dance on the grass. The field stretches between us like a killing ground. Even in the darkness, even at this distance, I know that silhouette like my own heartbeat.
It’s her.
My chest constricts with relief so sharp it’s almost painful. Ten days of carrying her death like broken glass in my lungs, ten days of failing her in my dreams, and she’s alive. Fighting. Refusing to go quietly into whatever hell they’ve built for her.
But she’s losing. The man on top is bigger, trained, using leverage and body weight to pin her down. I see the way her movements are growing weaker even from here. Exhaustion. Dehydration. Whatever they’ve done to her over the past ten days.
Time to even the odds.
I raise my weapon skyward and fire. The gunshot cracks across the field like thunder, muzzle flash strobing white against the darkness.
Stupid. But it gets his attention.
The attacker jerks upright, head snapping toward me. Dalia kicks him and rolls away, a pale blur against dark grass. My heart hammers against my ribs.
“Police!” The word tears from my throat as I break into a run. “Get away from her!”
The grass is slick and uneven, and I nearly twist my ankle in a hidden divot. Adrenaline makes everything feel disconnected at the same time—sounds too loud, movements too fast, my breathing echoing in my own ears.
Thirty meters. I can see the attacker clearly now—male, maybe two hundred pounds, dark tactical clothing. The way he moves, the way he’s not panicking despite my approach—this isn’t some amateur cultist. This is someone who knows violence intimately.
Dalia crawls away from him, moving like someone who’s been hurt. Her hair catches starlight, and even at this distance I can see the tremor in her movements.
“Get on the ground!” My voice cracks with the effort of maintaining authority when every instinct screams at me to empty my magazine into center mass. “Hands where I can see them!”
The man stands slowly, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking past me, toward the church, like he is waiting for something. Not scared. Just mildly annoyed, like I’ve interrupted his lunch break.
Twenty meters. Close enough to see the tactical knife in his belt, the way his weight shifts on the balls of his feet. Close enough to put three rounds in his chest if he so much as twitches wrong.
“Hands behind your head. Interlace your fingers.”
He complies with the lazy confidence of someone who thinks he already knows how this ends. As Dalia struggles to her knees behind him, gasping and clutching her throat, he actually laughs.
Ten meters.
“Dalia.” I keep my weapon trained on him while tracking her movement in my peripheral vision. “You hurt?”
A cough. “Yeah.” Her voice is sandpaper rough. “But alive.”
“Can you move?”
“Yes.” But when she tries to stand, her legs give out. She catches herself on hands and knees, shoulders shaking with exhaustion.
The sight of her like that—broken but not beaten, hurt but still fighting—sets something feral loose in my chest.
“Easy,” I call to her. “Take your time.”
The guard watches this exchange with interest. “Touching.”
“THERE! THEY’RE OVER THERE!”
A woman’s voice, shrill and angry, coming from behind me. Multiple footsteps in grass, coming fast.
Shit.
I force my hands to stay steady on the weapon. The guard is watching my face, reading every micro-expression, looking for the moment when emotion overrides training.
I risk moving closer to Dalia, weapon still trained on the guard. She’s swaying slightly, but upright. I can see dirt and blood on her clothes, scratches on her arms.
“Stay behind me,” I tell her as I position myself to shield her from any incoming harm.
She moves closer, and I feel her presence at my back like a physical anchor. Whatever they did to her, it didn’t break her.
“Elias.” Her voice is quiet, meant only for me.
“Grab the gun”, I tell her and I feel the weight disappear from my backup holster as she arms herself.
“How many?”
“I don’t know. Three, maybe six total that I saw.”
The guard tilts his head, studying us like lab specimens. “You should have stayed home, Detective. Should have let sleeping gods lie.”
That’s when I hear it. Distant but unmistakable—the high-pitched wail of sirens cutting through the night air. Multiple vehicles, still distant but coming fast. The guard hears it too, and for the first time his confident expression wavers.
“Backup?”
I don’t answer, but inside I’m doing the math. Kelsi said she’d give me two hours before calling in a welfare check. It’s been… what, ninety minutes? Maybe less. She called it in early.
The question is whether we can stay alive long enough for it to matter.
Quick tactical assessment: Dalia mobile but compromised, now armed. Around three people approaching from the church, not sure if they are carrying a gun. I'm counting on the fact they wouldn't want to harm their vessel.
Dalia’s breathing against me, her heart hammering against my back where she presses close. Everything else is just problem-solving.
“Can you run?” I ask quietly.
“Yes.”
The guard’s weight shifts forward slightly. Fight-or-flight response kicking in. “You’re surrounded. Outnumbered. This is our territory, and you don’t know the terrain.”
“Maybe.” I adjust my grip on the Glock, thumb brushing the safety. “But I’ve got seventeen rounds and a really bad attitude.”
“I’m sorry,” Dalia whispers behind me, voice breaking.
“Hey.” I keep my voice gentle despite the approaching people. I think one of them might be holding a shotgun.
I can’t turn around, can’t take my eyes off the threat in front of us, but I need her to hear this. “You have nothing to apologize for. Nothing. You understand me?”
A shaky breath against my back. “Okay.”
“Besides,” I add, and this time I let her hear the grin in my voice. “These bastards picked the wrong detective duo to mess with.”
Then, faint at first, almost lost in the wind through the pine trees that ring this godforsaken field, a sound that doesn’t belong to this place, this moment. In front of us, a voice rises to a shriek: “Kill them! Kill them both!”
I adjust my sight and shoot.
Dalia is instantly moving next to me and we dodge in the same direction, using the enforcer as body cover. I hear another shot, probably from the shotgun and roll on the ground, always positioning myself to cover Dalia.
I shoot another blind shot at our attackers, Dalia doing the same next to me.
My ears are ringing without proper protection and it's hard to make out whether we are winning or just stalling the inevitable.
The sirens are getting louder now, transforming into a roar. Everyone in this field can hear them, can do the same math I’m doing. The tactical situation just shifted dramatically.
The guard we have been using as a makeshift cover breaks left toward the tree line in a dead sprint. I let him go. He’s not the immediate threat anymore.
“It’s over,” I call out, loud enough for everyone to hear. “You’ve got maybe thirty seconds before this place is crawling with law enforcement.”
The sirens are close enough now to feel in my bones. Multiple vehicles, emergency response in full deployment. I can see light bars strobing through the trees—red and blue salvation cutting through the darkness.
In the chaos, I hear running footsteps. Not approaching—retreating. Raina’s followers, deciding martyrdom isn’t in their job description after all.
Emergency lights paint everything in surreal colors. A state police car. Then another. And another. County sheriff. More vehicles than I expected, more than I dared hope for.
The sound is overwhelming now—sirens, engines, radio chatter as units coordinate their approach. Beautiful chaos. Professional mayhem. The machinery of law enforcement deploying around us like armor.
Dalia’s breathing is steadying against my back, her pulse slowing as the adrenaline starts to ebb. We’re going to survive this. We’re going to walk away.
The moment I’m certain we’re safe—surrounded by backup, no immediate threats—I move toward her. My weapon hits the grass as I reach for her, mouth crashing against hers with ten days of desperation and relief and love so fierce it threatens to tear me apart.
She tastes like fear and hope and coming home.
Her arms wrap around my neck with equal desperation, and we collapse together onto the dew-soaked grass under the weight of everything we’ve survived. She’s shaking—we both are—but she’s alive and warm and here.
“I thought I lost you,” I whisper against her lips, words barely audible over the chaos surrounding us. “I thought you were dead.”
“I’m here.” Her voice breaks on the words. “I’m here, I’m okay, I’m—”
I kiss her again, deeper this time, trying to memorize the taste of her, the way she fits against me like the missing piece of my soul. Her fingers tangle in my hair, holding on like I might disappear if she lets go.
Around us, the field transforms from nightmare into crime scene. Professional voices calling coordinates, establishing perimeters, requesting medical response. The beautiful, bureaucratic noise of justice deploying.
But all I can focus on is the woman in my arms. Alive. Safe. Mine.
“Dalia,” I murmur against her temple, but the words come out rough with emotion I can’t control anymore. Relief and exhaustion and something deeper—the knowledge that I almost lost the only thing that makes any of this worthwhile.
She pulls back just enough to meet my eyes, and what I see there—love and gratitude—nearly undoes me completely.
“Let's go home,” she whispers.
The cavalry has arrived. The nightmare is over.
And for the first time in ten days, I believe in happy endings again.
ns216.73.216.208da2
