6

He missed.

The shooter was standing behind the pulpit at the front of the room, a good thirty yards away. He wasn’t hit by the new shots, but he had been blindsided. He had obviously thought he was safe from Marcus’s direction, since the front doors were locked. Now he was under fire from an unexpected angle.

Enraged, the man in the mask began charging down the center aisle, screaming, weapon up, hunting for a target. And that’s when Marcus made his move. Scrambling back to the aisle along the left side of the sanctuary, he whipped around the corner, pressed his back against the side of the second-to-last pew in the row, and silently counted down from five. When he got to zero, he sprang to his feet, wheeled around, and aimed the Sig.

The shooter was exactly where he’d expected him to be. He was standing motionless, at the head of the center aisle, sweeping the vestibule with his AR-15, dumbfounded to find no one there. Marcus fired twice. Both rounds hit their mark. The first entered the shooter’s right temple and blew out the other side of his head. The second pierced the man’s neck, slicing right through his jugular.

The man instantly collapsed to the floor.

For several seconds, an eerie silence settled over the sanctuary. No one was screaming anymore. No one, in fact, made any sound at all. Marcus yelled, “Shooter down.” His deep voice echoed beneath the domed ceiling and across the second-floor balconies. Then he called for Kailea, who emerged from behind the Ford and raced to his side.

Marcus motioned for her to check the body, just to be sure. Kailea kicked aside the AR-15, bent down, checked the man’s pulse, and shook her head. She picked up the automatic rifle and handed it to Marcus before stripping the dead man of his ammo and giving that to Marcus as well. He told her to check the man’s pistol. She did, clearing the chamber and ejecting the mag.

“How many rounds?” Marcus asked.

“Ten,” she replied.

Marcus nodded and moved cautiously toward the front of the sanctuary. Sweeping his Sig Sauer from side to side, he scanned for anyone who could still pose a threat. All he found were the dead and wounded.

The nine o’clock service wasn’t nearly as heavily attended as the ten thirty service. That had long been a sore spot with Carter and the board of elders. This morning, it was a blessing. The second service was typically standing room only, even in the balconies. Yet as bad as this carnage was, Marcus shuddered at what it could have been had twice as many people been in the building.

“Clear,” Marcus said at last, convinced no other shooters were present. The guy in the bell tower could wait.

Then he remembered Marcy. He raced over and found the little girl slipping into shock. Putting his pistol back in its holster, he stripped off his leather jacket, wrapped her in it, and scooped her up, cradling her in his arms. She was trembling. Her eyes were glassy. They needed to get her to the hospital, and fast.

Marcus turned and saw Kailea holster her weapon and begin attending to the most severely wounded. As she did, Marcus thought about what she had just told him. Ten rounds. Nine in the magazine. One in the chamber. That was important information. He began visualizing how the brutal crime had likely played out. The man in the ski mask had to have been the one who had killed the usher on the front steps. That would have been his first shot —the shot he and Kailea had heard at the diner. Then the two men —if there were only two —had burst into the church building. One had proceeded to use the Glock to fire four more shots in rapid succession. That explained the four bodies lying in the vestibule.

Five shots.

Five people dead.

Five bullets missing from the magazine.

Ten remained.

At that point, Marcus realized, the lead shooter must have switched to his AR-15. He’d begun shooting up the sanctuary as his partner broke left and raced for the stairs heading for the bell tower to shoot anyone approaching the church building from any angle.

But why? Marcus wondered as he held this precious little girl. Who were these monsters? And why had they come to shoot up a house of worship?

He heard someone call his name and turned quickly, scanning every face of every person emerging from their hiding places. That’s when he saw his pastor, Carter Emerson. The man was lying off to the right of the stage, and he was writhing in his own blood.

“Carter!” he cried as he rushed to the man’s side.

Gently laying Marcy down on the front pew, Marcus bent and saw the massive gunshot wound in Emerson’s stomach. The man’s white shirt and black pin-striped suit were covered in crimson. Marcus immediately began applying pressure to the wound as he assured the man that everything was going to be all right. In truth, Marcus wasn’t so sure. Emerson was one tough cookie. He hadn’t always been an urban preacher. A million years earlier, he’d been a Green Beret. He’d done three tours in Vietnam and along the way had earned not one but two Purple Hearts for being wounded in battle, as well as a Bronze Star for demonstrating extraordinary valor during a covert operation behind enemy lines in North Vietnam. But that was more than a half century ago.

Just as Kailea reached them, the sound of automatic gunfire again erupted from the bell tower. Marcus directed his partner to continue applying pressure to Carter’s wound. As she did, he got up and looked out the nearest window. At least a dozen police cars and several ambulances had arrived on the scene. But rather than racing inside to help, the first responders were having to back up to get out of range of the wrath being rained down on them from above.

“Marcus, I’ve got this,” Kailea assured him. “Go take that guy down.”