The Last Widow

Hank had limped around the car. He stood beside Sara—not too close, but close enough. Sara could feel the threat of him like a chemical burning her skin.

Will gripped the key fob in his fist as he walked toward the BMW. He was angry, which was good. Unlike most men, fury cleared Will’s mind. His muscles were tensed. She focused all of her strength, all of her hope, onto his broad shoulders.

“Vale.” Hank was speaking to Vince. He wasn’t using their code names anymore. The pretense was over. Either Sara or Will had given themselves away or Hank had figured out that the police sirens they were hearing in the distance would soon find their way down Bella’s street.

Hank lifted his chin, indicating Vale should follow the rest of the team to the car.

“Out,” Hank told Michelle, his voice low. He had a gun in his hand. It was small, but it was still a gun.

Michelle winced as she crawled over the center console. She held up her pants with one hand. The fly was unzipped. Blood dripped over her fist, ran down her legs.

Sara’s heart turned to glass.

Michelle’s bare feet slapped the asphalt. A bout of dizziness made her reach for the car to steady herself. She had open sores between the webbing of her toes. Needle tracks. They had drugged her. They had cut her. She was bleeding between her legs.

Rape.

“Don’t scream,” Hank said.

Before Sara could react, a blinding pain shot from her wrist to her arm and into her shoulder. She was forced onto her knees. The road bit into her skin. Hank twisted her arm again. Sara had her fingers laced behind her head by the time Will reached the BMW.

He leaned into the car.

He looked up.

His jaw tightened down so hard that she could see the outline of the bones.

Sara watched his eyes track—Hank pointing a gun at her head. Michelle holding up her bloody pants. Three armed men surrounding him. No way to save Sara even if he sacrificed himself in the process.

This final realization brought an expression to his face that Sara had never seen before:

Fear.

“You let—” Michelle’s voice was hoarse. She was talking to Hank. “You l-let him rape me.”

The words were a hammer to Sara’s heart.

“You c-can’t—” Michelle gulped. “You can’t pretend it’s n-not happening. I’m telling you now. You know what he—”

“All right!” Hank shouted over her. He told Will, “I need you to slowly get your head out of the car and put your hands up.”

Sara could only watch as Will complied. His eyes kept darting around. His brain was furiously working, trying to find a way out of this.

There was no way out.

They were going to kill Will. They were going to make Sara fix them and then they were going to tear her apart.

“You let him do it,” Michelle whispered. “You let him h-hurt me. You let him—”

“We need a doctor,” Hank shouted at Will. “No offense, brother. Wrong place, right time. Let’s go, lady. Get in the car.”

Sara had been expecting this moment, but she did not realize until now what her response would be.

“No.”

She didn’t move.

Her knees were part of the asphalt.

She was as sentient as a mountain.

Sara had been raped in college. Viciously, brutally, savagely raped. She had been robbed of her ability to have children. Had her sense of self, her sense of safety, forever stolen. The experience had altered her in ways that she still, almost twenty years later, was discovering. She had vowed that she would never let that happen to her ever again.

Hank’s grip tightened around her arm.

“No.” Sara wrenched away from him. The fear had drained away. She would die before she let them take her. Sara had never been more certain of anything in her life. “I’m not going with you.”

“Lady, that wasn’t a gas main that exploded at the campus.” Hank looked at Will. “We just blew up dozens, maybe hundreds of people. Do you think I give a shit about having your blood on my hands?”

His words nearly cut her in two. All of those sick and injured people. Students and children and staff who had devoted their lives to helping others.

“No,” Sara repeated. She was openly crying. They were going to kill her eventually. All she could control was what happened between now and then.

“Get in the car.”

“I won’t go with you. I won’t help you. You’ll have to shoot me.” She stared her resignation into Will. She needed him to understand why she was refusing to go.

Will’s throat worked. Tears were in his eyes.

Slowly, finally, he nodded.

“How about I kill her?” Hank pointed the gun at Michelle.

“Do it.” Michelle’s voice was strong, devoid of her earlier stutter. “Go ahead, you spineless piece of shit.” Her fist was clenched around the waist of her pants. Sara could see a bloody bandage, popped sutures, at her bikini line.

Had they operated on her?

“You still think you’re a good man,” Michelle told Hank. “What’s your father going to say when he hears about who you really are? I heard you talking about your dad, how he’s your hero, how you wanted to make him proud. He’s sick. He’s going to die. His last breath, he’s gonna know what kind of monster he helped bring into this world.”

Clinton laughed. “Damn, girl, the way you’re talking makes me wonder how tight your daughter’s pussy is.”

There was a flurry of movement above Sara’s head. Hank’s arm swung around, pointing the gun at Clinton.

Click-click-click.

The gun had jammed.

“You son of a—” Clinton’s Glock was out of his holster.