Heartbreaker (29 page)

Jess was shaken by what he heard. The Healers were fanatical in their devotion to Reverend Bob, he knew. They would sacrifice their children if he ordered them to—or blow themselves and any intended targets to hell with a smile.

The question was, were these just the ravings of a zealot or part of a plan that was being put into motion even as they spoke?

“Even if Reverend Bob was able to pull off all this, that still wouldn’t end the world. It would devastate this country perhaps, but it wouldn’t end the world.” Jess was calculating the odds of such a tale being true.

“Obviously, you are not a student of the Holy Bible.” Louis turned on his side, pushing a soaked strand of hair out of his face as he looked at Jess with narrowed eyes. “Or you would know that once America the Superpower is destroyed, the Red Hordes will pour out of the East to take over the world, which will bring about the Armageddon, which in turn will lead to the Second Coming and the joyous reunion of the Faithful with Yahweh, who will rule over an earth of peace and harmony forever.”

“With Reverend Bob at his right hand,” Jess said dryly.

“Exactly,” Louis answered, and closed his eyes.

L
YNN LOOKED AT
L
OUIS
, who lay in his puddle like a landed fish. She then glanced at Jess, who had positioned himself between her and Louis as though he would protect her from him.

Atavistic or not, came the fleeting thought, Lynn found that she quite liked protectiveness in a man. At least, in this man.

Jess was staring down at Louis. His expression was hard to decipher. He looked, she decided, both alarmed and increasingly angry.

The implications of that were scary.

“You don’t think that nonsense he’s spewing is true, do you?” she asked, aghast.

Jess glanced at her. “Maybe.”

“Of course I am telling the truth.” Louis opened his eyes and sat up, shivering, water pouring off him in streams. Jess shifted backward to avoid the growing puddle. “But while I was underwater, when I thought I must surely drown, I prayed to Yahweh for help and He led me to the air pocket. Then He spoke to me: He said, ‘Louis, you must stop it. The Lamb has made a mistake. You must go to the Lamb and tell him he is wrong, that now is not the time.’ ”

“Yahweh said that?” Jess asked carefully. Glancing from Louis to Jess, Lynn felt a stirring of fear. Jess believed him. Lynn could tell.

“I must find some way to reach the Lamb, to tell him what Yahweh has revealed to me.”

“What time is it?” Lynn asked, as realization started to hit.

Louis glanced at the watch on his wrist. “I have two forty-seven.”

If Louis was telling the truth and horrific bombs really were dispersed about the country and scheduled to go off on Monday, June 23, at nine
A.M
., they were running low on time. This was Sunday, June 22. They had just a little more than eighteen hours until half the country was blown into the stratosphere, and the other half was afflicted with a plague of deadly toxins.

Eighteen hours until the population of the United States was all but wiped off the map.

And the Red Hordes descended.

The thought was so ridiculous that Lynn had trouble taking it seriously.

Until she looked at Louis’s face. And Jess’s.
They
were taking it seriously. Both of them.

If Jess believed Louis there was a very strong possibility that Louis was telling the truth.

Unbelievable as it seemed, a fanatical religious cult might really have come up with the means to end the world.

At least, the world as they knew it.

I have to get to Rory!
It was Lynn’s first panicked thought as the terrible implications sank in.

But how? She and Jess were trapped—trapped in a flooded, abandoned mine with this apocalyptic knowledge that no other sane person shared—and they couldn’t do a thing to alert anyone, much less the authorities, to the dreadful danger.

They were as helpless as bees in a jar.

In eighteen hours she and Jess were going to die. Rory was going to die. Her mother was going to die, and Jess’s daughters, and all the girls on the camping trip. Owen would die. Pat Greer would die. Her house would become so much cosmic dust. Chicago would become so much cosmic dust. Half the freaking United States would become so much cosmic dust.

And Lynn couldn’t think of any way to stop it from happening.

Except prayer. She tried that, feverishly.

“Where is the Lamb now?” Jess asked Louis. Focusing on him to quell her rising panic, Lynn was impressed with his calm. He was grim but in control. There was not a trace of panic about the man.

“At the compound. Near Castle Rock, South Dakota, in the headquarters we built in the geographical center of the country. The Lamb chose the location for just that reason. The True Disciples should be gathering there with him to await the end.”

“Very loyal of them.” Jess’s voice was dry. Lynn marveled at his coolness. She didn’t feel cool. She felt sick. And very, very scared.

“They want to sit with the Lamb at Yahweh’s right hand. They will go to Yahweh with joy, singing hymns of praise. But the time is not right. Yahweh does not want us yet. He told me so, and I must tell the Lamb. But how?” Louis glanced around fretfully. He looked as convinced of their captivity as Lynn was.

“Good question.” Jess turned to Lynn. Over Jess’s shoulder, Lynn kept a careful watch on Louis. Who knew what the lunatic might try? The whole cockeyed story might be nothing more than a trick to get them off guard.

Lynn wished she could make herself believe that. But instead of attacking Jess as soon as his back was turned, Louis’s eyes closed once more, and he folded his hands as though he were praying.

How could a man capable of helping to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people pray?

“Lynn, listen.”

Jess’s murmur focused Lynn’s attention on him. Well, most of it. Out of the corner of her eye she still kept tabs on Louis. She trusted him about as much as she would have a coiled rattlesnake.

“If Louis is telling the truth—and I have a real bad feeling that says he might be—we can’t just wait here and let it happen. We’ve got to try to stop it.”

“I agree.” Lynn was all for stopping mass murder whenever possible. Especially when she, Jess, and her daughter were slated to be three of the victims. But the scope of the undertaking required to even begin to halt this was mind-boggling. “Unfortunately, I think we have a little problem: Until the water goes down we’re trapped in here.”

“I’m going to try to swim out. See how the water ends about eight feet below us? I’m betting that it’s at that same level everywhere in the mine. If I can find the passage we came in through, I should be able to swim along it until I reach the surface of the water, then walk on out.”

Lynn considered that for a moment. “What if the passage is blocked?”

She remembered the barrage of falling rock when the ceiling and floor had collapsed. The passage could have collapsed, too, in the violent shaking that followed. In fact, it probably had.

“Then I swim back, and we think of something else. Like trying to widen this tunnel behind us.”

“It’s solid rock,” Lynn objected. It would take a jackhammer at the very least to widen that passage.

“That’s why I want to try to swim out first.”

“It’s dangerous.” Lynn glanced down at the shiny black lake below them, realizing as she did so just how true her words were. The man-carved walls rising on all sides to the cavern roof were smooth, slippery with moisture, and vertical. Once he was off the ledge it would be nearly impossible for Jess to get back up. Neither she nor Louis, or even the two of them together, would have the strength to pull him up or to anchor any kind of lifeline while Jess climbed it. Besides, with his injury she doubted that Jess could climb anything. Certainly he would not be able to scale the sheer rock wall the way he had the face of the cliff.

Once he was in the water the die would be cast. There could be no turning back. He either made it out or drowned.

She pointed this out.

“Lynn, sweetheart, there’s no choice. I can’t just sit here twiddling my thumbs while Reverend Bob does his best to blast us and the whole country with us to kingdom come.”

Sweetheart
. Jess used the endearment as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to call her. If any other man had said it Lynn would have taken offense.” But coming from Jess—Lynn was surprised by how very much she liked having him call her that.

She wanted to be his sweetheart.

Meeting his gaze, Lynn felt a warm glow of pure happiness start in the center of her chest and spread tingling along her nerve endings. It was then that the realization hit: If he was life candy, then she was going to want some every day.

The future suddenly teemed with wonderful, exciting possibilities to be explored.

All because, she thought misty-eyed, she had found Jess.

Just in time to be blown into sub-atomic particles with him in the next day’s nuclear holocaust.

“No
way
,” Lynn said aloud.

“What?” Jess frowned at her apropos-of-nothing vehemence.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” she said with determination, glancing at the surface of the water below. Maybe they could swim out. Before—once the bad guys were dead—they had no immediate incentive to try to escape. In fact, she had secretly welcomed the time alone with Jess.

But now all that she held dear was on the line. And life was suddenly too precious to lose.

“We?” He looked at her with lifted brows.

“You don’t think you’re leaving me behind, do you? If you’re swimming out I’m swimming out.”

“It’s dangerous,” he objected, just as she had.

“I’m going,” Lynn said, her gaze meeting his. For a moment they measured strength of wills.

Then Jess shook his head.

“You
did
say you could swim, right?” It was capitulation, and they both knew it.

“Just get in the water, Romeo. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Romeo, huh?” Jess grinned, leaned over, and kissed her, hard and quick. Lynn’s toes curled at the contact. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Take it any way you like. But get in the water.”

Jess glanced at Louis, his face hardening. “Okay, let’s go.”

“Me?” Louis looked over the side and shuddered. “I can’t get back in that water. I can’t!”

“I thought you wanted to carry a message to the Lamb.” On his knees, Jess moved inexorably toward Louis.

“There must be some other way—” Louis’s objection ended in a shriek as Jess shoved him off the ledge. Arms flailing, he hit with a loud splash. Jess glanced at Lynn.

“Saves arguing,” he said with a lopsided grin.

“We could have just left him here.”

“We may need him. He may know something we need to know. And I don’t want to leave you alone on the ledge with him.” Sinking back on his haunches, he glanced down at the floundering Louis and then focused a suddenly serious look on Lynn. “That water’s
cold
. And the passage may be blocked. The smart thing for you to do would be to wait here and see if I make it through. If I do, I’ll come back for you.”

Lynn shook her head. “I’d go out of my mind worrying, wondering if you got through or if you got trapped under there and drowned. If you didn’t come back within a reasonable time, I’d end up coming after you anyway. Besides, think how much time we’d waste if you made it and then had to come back for me. Time
is
kind of a consideration here, remember?”

Jess’s lips tightened. He looked at her with a frown. “I think you ought to stay here.”

“Haven’t we already had this argument?”

“Lynn, listen. I—”

Before he could finish his objection she doused the Bic and tucked it deep inside her bra for safekeeping. Holding her nose, she swung her legs over the side and pushed off.

“Lynn!” Jess’s voice echoed in her ears as she fell feetfirst into the water.

It was like plunging into an ice-water-filled sensory-deprivation chamber. The intense cold was shocking. The blackness was impenetrable. Lynn could neither see nor hear nor breathe. It was so dark that for a moment she could not be certain which way was up. Feet kicking, arms beating the water, she fought for the surface.

She came up, gasping. Never in her life had she felt water so cold. Hypothermia suddenly went from being an abstract concept to a real possibility.

At least, she thought with black humor, if the passage was blocked they would die fast.

Just another of the thousand and one ways she had found to possibly meet her Maker on this happy camping trip!

Was she having fun yet? Lynn gave a mental snort at the question. Next time around—if there ever was a next time—she was opting for that cruise.

“Lynn, swim away from the side. I’m coming in,” Jess called. Lynn obeyed, wondering without much real concern if Louis would follow suit. Splashing sounds told her that he had. A much louder splash announced when Jess hit the water.

She waited, treading water, feeling like a cork bobbing on the surface of a dark, deep, arctic sea. Her movements were rendered clumsy by the cold and the weight of her soaked clothes. Shedding them was an option, she knew—it would certainly make swimming easier—but when and if they ever reached daylight again, she would be down to her underwear.

Saving the world in a Wonderbra and matching panties was not an option she cared to consider.

less surfaced with a splutter and called to her.

“Okay,” he said when she reached him, touching him to signify her presence. “We’re going to swim over to the far wall. Stay close.”

It was hard in the pitch darkness to determine where the far wall was, but since Jess had just come off the ledge they turned their backs on that and swam. When Lynn’s fingers brushed solid rock she stopped swimming, treading water instead. Jess floated beside her.

“Louis?” Jess called.

“I’m here,” Louis answered in a thin voice. He sounded as if he was just a little farther along the wall. “You shouldn’t have pushed me in. Yahweh would have provided a way.”