Blood from Charity’s neck poured over Devota and dripped onto the wedding dress.

“Get off me!” Devota ordered, trying vainly to free herself. Val reached the pistol just as Charity Varisco, her biological mother, died holding down Camille’s killer.

Slade scrambled to his feet.

“Don’t do it, Val,” he warned, but he was too late.

With dead calm, ignoring the pain in her shoulder and ankle, Valerie crawled over to the two nuns and placed the muzzle hard against the younger woman’s temple.

She would have pulled the trigger, but Slade’s fingers wrapped around hers. “No,” he said, shaking his head, drawing her close. “It’s over.”

The sound of footsteps, thundering wildly, resonated through the tomb.

The police.

Finally.

Val sagged against her husband, her emotions ragged, her heart dark. This, the crumpled form of a woman with scars crisscrossing her back, was her mother, the woman who had given her life and, in the end, saved it. Tears filled her eyes, and she blinked hard, clinging to Slade, wondering how she had ever doubted him, silently swearing she would never let him go again.

“It’s all right,” he said, his voice a whisper in the unused air of the musty room. “It’s all right.” One arm held her fiercely to him, infusing her with his strength.

Flashlight beams wobbled and crisscrossed before landing on the carnage.

“Stop! Police!” Bentz ordered.

“Drop your weapons!” someone else shouted.

“Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. Oh, God, what a mess!” Montoya’s voice, seeming to come out of a mist of pain.

With Slade’s help, she let go of the gun. Her fingers unclenched and it fell, slowly. The barrel clanged noisily against the floor.

“Help me!” Devota cried. “Help me. They tried to kill me. Please . . .”

“Don’t believe her,” Slade said to Montoya, his breath ruffling Valerie’s hair.

“I don’t,” Montoya said. “Then again, I don’t trust anyone.”

Slade wrapped his arm more tightly around his wife and said again, “It’s over.”

She clung to him and bit back tears. She knew she’d never let him go again . . . but she also knew he lied.

This horror, the breadth of Sister Devota’s madness and cruelty, wouldn’t be over for a long, long time.

If ever.

CHAPTER 53

CHAPTER 53

“You’re sure about this?” Val asked Freya on Monday, after she’d returned from a two-day stay in the hospital. She was sore as hell but glad to no longer be in the care of Our Lady of Mercy’s staff. If she never saw an IV line or a blood-pressure cuff or red jello again, it would be too soon.