The two stared at each other a moment, then Tooney pivoted toward Sarah as he pulled a pistol from the inside pocket of his worn jacket. “I say we kill her.”
Sarah dug her heels into the ground and pushed back, as if moving away would help. There was no way to stop this man from shooting her, and that realization made her blood pump into her ears as time slowed to a horrifying length.
Hannah swatted at the muzzle of his gun and turned it away from Sarah. “Are you mad? Then we get nothing except a price on our heads. Let’s take her and go.”
He shook his head. “Even if we load up the rig now, they’re gonna make chase. I’m not goin’ back to that cell, Hannah. Not even for you. We kill her and it slows ’em down. We can escape. Get on a boat, go to America like you always wanted.”
“Please don’t,” Sarah pleaded. “Please don’t do this. Think of the consequences to Phoebe. Think of them to yourselves. You aren’t murderers.”
Tooney turned the gun back on her. “I am.”
“No,” Sarah whispered as she looked at Hannah for help. For something. The woman stared back, unreadable, unmovable, and Sarah knew that she would die here.
She braced herself, closing her eyes and thinking of her mother. She’d seen her in her vision when she drowned. She would see her again soon. And she thought of Kit. Loving him, loving Phoebe—she would never regret that, despite what was about to happen.
There was a blast of a gun firing and she tensed, but there was no pain that roared through her. She opened her eyes and found Tooney now lying dead on the ground and Hannah standing over him, smoke curling out of the barrel of her gun.
“I’m the brains, you overgrown bully,” she muttered. She turned to Sarah, and Sarah flinched again. Hannah swallowed hard and then said, “You tell the duke that I’m going to America. You hear? He doesn’t need to chase me—I won’t be back. I come back now and I hang.”
Sarah’s lips parted as she stared at the woman she saw as a monster. The same one who had just been her savior. “Why?” she whispered.
Hannah shrugged. “Because I may not want that girl, but I don’t want to hurt her. I never wanted to hurt her. Tell her that maybe, when she’s grown enough to know. Now I’ve got to run.”
She did so then, sprinting into the woods. As soon as she was gone, Sarah began to scream, hoping her voice would bring the men to her.
The echo of a gun firing brought Kit up short on the path they were following. His chest hurt like he’d been the one shot, and he stared at Lucas, unable to speak, unable to move, unable to think anything but one word:Sarah. It echoed in every part of him, vibrated to his very soul.
“We don’t know,” Lucas said.
And then the most beautiful sound he had ever heard in this world echoed from the same direction as the gunfire. Sarah’s voice, strong and clear, crying out his name. “Kit! Please! Kit!”
Kit shoved past Lucas, not caring that his friend was the only one of them armed, not caring that he was trained. All Kit cared about was getting to Sarah. She was all that mattered. All that would ever matter for the rest of his days. It was her, it was him, it was them and the family they would create with Phoebe and their own children.
And that was what drove him the last few feet, out of the trees and into the clearing. Kit saw her and it was like his world had light again. Sarah was sitting in the middle of the clearing, hands bound behind her back. A huge brute of man lay just a few feet away, blood pooling beneath his head.
As Kit rushed to her, Lucas ran to the man, checking his pulse and then shaking his head. “Dead.”
Kit was untying Sarah’s bindings, his hands shaking so hard he could hardly do it. She was weeping now, tears streaming down her face, and as soon as her hands were free, she gripped his cheeks, his shoulders, his arms, like she was testing if he was whole.
“I love you, I love you,” she whispered. “Phoebe?”
“Is fine,” he said. “She’s unharmed and with Diana.”
“Was there another assailant?” Lucas asked, gun still drawn.
“It was Hannah Beckett,” Sarah said, looking away from Kit for the first time and at his friend. “She was behind it. She ran off less than five minutes ago. That way.”
She pointed to the edge of the clearing and Lucas sprinted forward, leaving them alone, at least for a moment. Kit had so much he wanted to say, to do, to reveal, but only one thing that mattered.
He caught her cheeks and kissed her, breathing in that she was alive, that she was whole, that she was his and he would never let her go again. She clung to him, returning the kiss with the same fearful fever he felt, and their tears mingled before he finally pulled away and stroked her face. She had a bruise beneath her eye, and as she removed her hands, he saw the raw marks the ropes had left on her wrists.
“He hurt you,” Kit whispered.
“A little,” she admitted. “But not as badly as he wanted to. She…she stopped him.”
He drew back in surprise. “Hannah stopped him?”
“She’s the one who shot him, when he threatened to kill me in order to slow your chase.”
