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Danny Zuker shook his head. There was something akin to sadness on his face. “You don’t have a clue, do you?”

He raised the gun, almost reluctantly now. I had played my final card. I didn’t want to die like this, on the ground beneath them. I stood up, wondering what my final move would be, when it was made for me.

There was a single gunshot. The head of the man on my left exploded like a tomato under a heavy boot.

The rest of us turned toward the sound of the gunshot. I recovered the fastest. Letting the lizard brain take over again, I dived straight toward the man I’d already punched. He was closest to me, and he’d be weakest from my earlier blow.

I could get his gun.

But the man reacted with greater speed than I anticipated. His lizard brain at work too, I guess. He stepped back and took aim. I was too far away to reach him in time.

And then his head exploded in another crimson haze.

The blood splashed me in the face. Danny Zuker didn’t hesitate. He leapt behind me, using me as a shield. He wrapped his arm around my throat and put the gun against my head.

“Don’t move,” he whispered.

I didn’t. There was silence now. He stayed close to me, moving us back toward the house to keep himself protected.

“Show yourself,” Zuker shouted. “Show yourself or I’ll blow his brains out!”

There was a rustling sound. Zuker jerked my head to the right, making sure to keep my body blocking his. He turned me more toward the right—to where the rustling had originated. I looked out into the clearing.

My heart stopped.

Coming down the hill, gun still in her hand and aimed at us, was Natalie.

Chapter 35

Danny Zuker spoke first. “Well, well, look who’s here.”

My body had gone numb at the sight of her. Our eyes met—Natalie’s and mine—and the world exploded in a thousand different ways. It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life, this simple act of looking into the blue eyes of the woman I loved, and even now, even with a gun to my head, I felt oddly grateful. If he pulled the trigger, so be it. I had, in this single moment, been more alive than any time in the previous six years. If I were to die now—and, no, I didn’t want to, in fact, more than anything else I wanted to live and be with that woman—I’d die a more complete person, have lived a more complete life, than if I had died just a few moments earlier.

With the gun still trained on us, Natalie said, “Let him go.”

She never took her eyes off me.

“I don’t think so, sweetheart,” Zuker said.

“Let him go, and you can have me.”

I shouted, “No!”

Zuker drove the muzzle of the gun into the side of my neck. “Shut up.” Then to Natalie he said, “Why should I trust you?”

“If I cared more about myself than him,” she said, “I wouldn’t have revealed myself.”

Natalie kept her eyes on me. I wanted to protest. There was no way I would allow this exchange, but something in her look told me to keep still, at least for now. I thought about it. She was almost willing me to obey, to just let this play out the way she wanted.

Maybe, I thought, she wasn’t here alone. Maybe there were others. Maybe she had a plan.

“Okay then,” Zuker said, still hiding behind my body. “Put your gun down and I’ll let him go.”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Oh?”

“We bring him out to his car. You put him in the driver’s seat. The moment he pulls away, I put the gun down.”

Zuker seemed to be thinking that over. “I put him in the car. You drop your weapon and he drives off.”

Natalie nodded again, still looking directly at me, almost willing me to obey. “Deal,” she said.

We started toward the front of the house. Natalie kept her distance, staying about thirty yards back from us. I wondered whether Cookie or Benedict or some other member of Fresh Start was nearby. Maybe they were waiting by the car, armed, ready to take Zuker out with a single bullet.

When we reached the car, Zuker took an angle so that the vehicle and my body were still shielding him. “Open the door,” he told me.

I hesitated.

He pressed the gun against my neck. “Open the door.”

I looked back at Natalie. She gave me a confident smile that reached into my chest and crushed it like an eggshell. As I slipped into the driver’s seat, I realized with mounting horror what she was doing.

There was no plan to save us both.

There were no other Fresh Start members who were going to intercede. There was no one hiding, waiting to pounce. Natalie had kept my attention, had offered up this hope in her eyes, so I wouldn’t fight back, so I wouldn’t make the sacrifice she was about to make for me.

To hell with that.

The car started up. Natalie began to lower her weapon. I had a second, no more, to make my move. It was suicide. I knew that. I knew that there was no way the two of us could survive this. That had been her thinking. One of us had to die. In the end, Jed and Benedict and Cookie had been right. I had messed up. I had stubbornly followed some love-conquers-all inner mantra, and now here we were, exactly where I was warned we would be, with Natalie facing death.

I wouldn’t let that happen.