Franks stepped on the Virginian’s sword, pinning it to the earth.

General Washington was staring defiantly at him. “Finish me then, you Hessian devil,” he declared with defiant courage. “My cause remains just.”

Franks lifted his sword and prepared to take his trophy. He’d bring the general’s head back in a sack. That would make his Hessian brethren happy. The blade hummed through the air.

No.

He stopped the blade just as it touched Washington’s throat. Franks had heard a voice inside his head. It was as clear and piercing as a church bell. He had not heard that voice for a very long time.

The Plan requires that this man lives. The Deal requires that you serve him.

Franks looked down the length of his sword, to where a single drop of blood was rolling down the steel from the small slice on the general’s neck. “Him?” he growled, but he pulled the sword back. It was pointless to argue with an angel. “So be it.” Franks stepped aside, wiped his blade on a dead man’s uniform, and then sheathed his sword.

“What are you doing?” Washington demanded.

“Sparing you.”

The general was staring, incredulous, first at the many grievous but ignored wounds on Franks’ body, and then at the dozen dead and dying soldiers Franks had placed into the snow in the space of a few breaths. “What manner of foul monster are you?”

“Apparently I am to be your monster,” Franks stated.

Then the cannonball hit Franks in the torso and blew him apart.

* * *

There was a loud banging on Heather’s cell door. She sat up on the cot. “What?”

“We need to talk,” Stricken shouted from the other side of the door.

She glanced around the windowless, eight-by-eight room. Even though the only items in the featureless place were a military surplus cot, a toilet, and a sink, she figured there had to be a camera somewhere. If she knew where it was, she would have given it the finger. “Screw you.”

“Oh, don’t be like that, Kerkonen.”

He was such a smug bastard. “I’ve already told your people everything. Go away.”

The slit they used to shove her food through opened in the bottom of the door. Now he didn’t have to shout. “That was all a big misunderstanding.”