Page 97 of Viking Unchained

The grim, alert expression revealed none of the passion he’d shown her last night. That shouldn’t disappoint her, but it did.

“Finn is lookin’ at you, Mommy.”

“I know, honey. Don’t stare.”

She didn’t know what she was going to do with this man with a past . . . from the past. She loved him.

She knew that. And it had nothing to do with Dave. But today’s ceremony cemented her feelings about their future together. There was none. She would not sit through another memorial service for another man. She just couldn’t.

The mayor continued to drone on, followed by a state senator who used this opportunity for his own gain. Then Lieutenant Jacob Alvarez Mendozo, JAM, stepped forward.

She noticed Finn cock his head to the side, gazing at the statue behind her. Suddenly, he jumped up and hollered, “Move out of here, everyone. Move! Move! It’s behind the brass plate.” Rushing up to the platform, he literally picked her and Mike up, tossing them to the ground. “Run!” He did the same for Dave’s parents.

“Are you crazy, Ericsson?” JAM yelled.

“Look, damn you,” Finn said, pointing at the statue. “The screws holding the plaque have been tampered with.”

“Mayday! Mayday!” someone shouted.

“A bomb!” someone else shrieked.

A melee broke out then as people shoved and stumbled trying to get away.

When the bomb finally exploded, tossing Dave’s bronze body to smithereens . . . just as it had been in real life . . . chairs, wood, slivers of metal, and microphones flew through the air like deadly missiles. A horrified Lydia realized, slowly, that only a few people had been left within the perimeter of the blast.

And one of them was Finn.

Her keening wail filled her ears, and then she fainted.

And so it ends . . .

Jamal came out of the house to witness the explosion, happy to have at last completed his noble vengeance. He intended to slip away shortly, back to, not Michigan, but his homeland: Iraq.

However, in the settling dust, he noticed Lydia Denton and her crying son were alive and being ministered to on a bench in front of the drug store.

“Aaarrgh!” Running back into the house, he barely looked at the terrified eyes of the elderly couple still duct-taped to chairs in the kitchen. The room smelled from their soiled clothing since he’d refused to release them to use the toilet. No matter to him.

He ran toward the town center, pistol in one hand and rifle in the other. In the chaos, no one noticed him at first. So, he was able to get off two rounds before the idiot FBI and SEAL protectors rushed him. He had hit some people, but he was not sure who. Within twenty yards of the drug store, he saw Lydia Denton sit up straight and stare right at him. In her eyes, he saw not anger. Or fear. But pity.

How dared she pity him!

He shot both weapons at once before he felt a dozen bullets riddle his body.

It was over.

He fell to the ground, his lifeblood flowing out of him.

Finally, peace enveloped him.

A stitch in time . . .

Lydia and Mike sat in the waiting room of Doc Fallon’s clinic later that afternoon.

She had wanted Mike to go home with everyone else after they learned that Finn had only suffered superficial wounds, but the little boy insisted. Mike usually didn’t attach himself to new people like this, but it was as if he sensed that Finn was something more than his mommy’s friend.

“Why did that bad man make a bomb, Mommy?”

“He was sick, honey. In his head. A long time ago he lost his wife and his little boy, and he was missing them so much.”