“Thank you,” Linda said, gazing at the expression of terror frozen on Zoya’s face for the rest of time. Linda was pale, and her hand was shaking as she dropped the knife. For all that she’d wanted to do it, there was no question she wasn’t a hardened killer.

“Thank you for believing me. Now we need to know what bedrooms are yours so we can put all these people in your beds.” Cain sat again as Lou made the trips up the stairs with Linda. He looped his arms through Zoya’s to keep her blood off him. Simon followed Linda out to the truck, and Jerry came back to help Lou with the rest. The pain in her side was starting to give her a massive headache, but she understood Zoya and what she’d done before Linda killed her. Even the most vicious of people had their soft spot, and Zoya’s, like hers, was her family.

If the day came when she was in Zoya’s position, she’d give her captors whatever they wanted to keep Emma and her children whole. There was never a doubt about that. Right now, she wasn’t in that position, but she did feel like shit.

“I turned the gas on,” Remi said as the guys went up with the last body. “We’re going to need more than that if we want this place to burn down to the ground.”

“I got that covered,” Jerry said. He got a hose from the basement, and they watched him cover the floors of the first floor in some kind of oil. “These old places don’t have gas heaters. They run off heating oil, and the propane for the stove has a big tank outside as well. I’ll rig that next.”

“He’s a handy guy to have around,” Remi said when they went out at Jerry’s insistence.

“He’s a good friend.” She got into the back seat with Linda, who was waiting with her first aid kit, and the boys were in the next car.

“Let me tie it tighter. You’re going to need to see a doctor to get the bleeding to stop.”

“Tie it so it lasts an hour,” she said, closing her eyes briefly. The only thing that made her feel better was that she wasn’t going home empty-handed.

“Okay,” Jerry said fifteen minutes later. “All we need is a trigger.”

“Get us to the end of the street,” Lou said, getting his gun out. Jerry leaned back as Lou aimed out the driver’s side window and fired with a silencer on. The fireball that went up at the impact of the bullet was impressive, but they weren’t sticking around to watch the inferno.

“Think of it as your next step to the life you want,” she said to Linda. “Eventually, you’ll get to where you want to be.”

Chapter Twenty