RANDY AND Vincent emerged from the stairwell first. “You’ll want to turn left again,” Vincent said softly. “The hallway ends in the reception area.”

Randy nodded to Bobby and Adrian and set off toward the front of the building, Bobby heading off in the opposite direction.

This had better work.

The hallway carpet—a swirling pattern of brown and forest green, unlike the gray and black of the floors below—muffled the sound of their footsteps. They passed a series of numbered doors that probably led to more suites. Daylight from up ahead spilled down the hallway toward them, providing Randy with a sense of hope. Move toward the light, Randy. Just keep moving toward the light.

Right before the hallway opened out into the reception area, one of the suite doors swung open and a gray-haired man in swim trunks and a t-shirt stepped into Randy’s path. At first he gave Randy a blank stare but then his eyes widened. Without thinking, Randy swung the gun away from Vincent’s head and pointed it at the other man. “Don’t you even think about raising an alarm,” Randy said in a cold voice.

The man slowly put his hands up, and a wry grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Is this a new act they didn’t tell me about?”

Of course. If this was a place where people were injured for sport, the sight of someone with a gun wasn’t going to raise many eyebrows.

Maybe getting out of here would be easier than Vincent claimed. Odd that the man didn’t act concerned about Vincent, though. Perhaps Vincent stayed mostly behind the scenes so the guests wouldn’t recognize him.

Randy lowered the gun and grinned. “I’m Randy. Adrian and I are new here, and this guy is showing us around. Isn’t that right?”

“Uh-huh,” Adrian squeaked from behind him as Vincent gave a wordless nod. With luck, the man wouldn’t notice Vincent’s bound wrists.

The man’s grin broadened and he stuck out a hand. “Nice to meet you, Randy. I’m Tom. What’s your deal?”

Randy tried to keep his composure. Tom wanted to know what sort of things Randy did to the victims trapped within the walls of this anti-sanctuary.

Jack’s gloating face flitted through his mind. “I like to beat them until they’re unconscious,” he said.

Tom gave a nod of understanding. “You’re one of the tamer ones, then.” He glanced furtively up and down the hallway before lowering his voice. “There’s one fella here who likes to drink their blood. He’s almost bled a few of them dry. Kinda creepy if you ask me, but who am I to judge?” He laughed. “I’m off to the pool. See you around, I suppose.”

“See you around.”

When Tom passed them by, the three of them let out a collective sigh of relief.

“Nice guy, huh?” Randy whispered to his companions before continuing down the hallway. He prayed they’d run into no further delays. It was best they keep moving.

FEAR KEPT creeping back into Bobby’s heart after he split off from the others according to plan, and he knew it was from the entities that dwelled within the healer and those who influenced Jack. They smothered his courage like a wet blanket over a fire.

It would take a lot more than simple fear to make him give up, though. The only thing that could stop him now was death.

As he darted down the corridor, he kept repeating one thought: Please keep me calm. Please keep me calm.

He froze in his tracks when he heard a man talking to Randy further down the corridor and held his breath to hear better, but the bend in the hallway as well as the hum of the air conditioning system made it hard to make out the words.

At least Bobby wasn’t in a position where he could be seen.

The Spirit prodded at his thoughts. Keep moving.

He kept an eye out for the set of doors Vincent had described to him, then smiled when he saw the wooden double doors off to his right. Vincent said they led straight out the back of the building and that Bobby would have to take cover in the woods as quickly as possible before he was seen by any guests who might be lounging outside in the late afternoon sunshine.

He doubted he looked tough enough to pass for a member of their crowd. Not that he wanted to.

After checking behind him to make sure nobody was coming around the corner, Bobby shoved open the doors and stepped into a small vestibule where a set of metal doors with windows provided entry into the outside world. He pressed his face against the glass to get an eye for his surroundings. Part of a tennis court was visible way off to the left. Directly in front of him was a stone patio with a built-in wooden pavilion giving shelter to a table large enough to seat twelve or more guests.

It didn’t seat anyone at the moment.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Let’s go.”

The metal doors squeaked when he shoved through them. For several seconds he stood motionless on the patio, trying to get a sense of where exactly he was. Birds chirped in the evergreens surrounding the property but no man-made noises like traffic or low-flying aircraft met his ears.

Just where in the world was he?

Voices off to the left nearly made his heart go into orbit. Without thinking, Bobby dashed off the patio into the trees and took refuge behind the largest trunk he could find. Then he peered back the way he’d come to see what was going on.

A man and woman came from the direction of the tennis courts at the same moment a gray-haired man in swim trunks emerged from the building. A grayish aura poured off of the woman but not the men.

“—tonight’s show—”

“Oh, I completely understand.”

Their voices cut off when they entered through the doors Bobby had just exited. The man in trunks paid no attention to them and rounded the corner of the building, disappearing from view.

Bobby’s timing couldn’t have been better.

He studied the sky for a sense of direction. The sun hung low at one end of the sky, so if that was west, it must have been about five or six o’clock. But was it the same day he and Randy had gone to search for Adrian in the house behind St. Paul’s, or had a much longer span of time passed?

The answer to that could wait.

Narrowing his gaze, he assessed the best route out of here. Vincent said the lane leading off the property was “long,” but the healer didn’t know how far it extended since he wasn’t permitted to leave and hadn’t seen it for himself. Bobby’s plan was to stay far enough inside the trees while following the path of the gravel lane so that nobody driving on it would immediately catch sight of him.

Keeping beneath the trees, Bobby passed around the side of the Domus, which looked like a giant lodge made of cut logs. Someone flying over the Domus in a plane would probably assume it was some kind of mountain resort.

A hundred steps further and the front parking lot came into full view. A Trautmann Electric Company van sat in a spot near the door.

Leave, the Spirit urged.

But the sight of the van sparked something in his mind. If a key had been left inside, he might be able to drive it out of here with Randy, Adrian, and Vincent.

Leave!

“In a minute,” Bobby whispered as he strode boldly toward the van. Maybe if he didn’t act so furtive, nobody would suspect him of doing something wrong.

Bobby put a hand on the driver side door handle and pulled it open.

Angel, the Trautmann employee he had so recently interrogated, was slumped to the side behind the wheel.

Dead.

And he wasn’t alone. An equally lifeless woman with curly black hair sat in the passenger seat. Both she and Angel appeared to have been shot execution-style in the temple.

He thought of Jack shooting the man in the suite. Looked like Graham’s beloved grandson was trying to clean things up as he took over.

Recoiling from the scene, Bobby made to dash back to the trees when a window in the front of the Domus exploded into a thousand glimmering shards.

Leave, leave, leave!

Okay, okay. I’m out of here.

Gunfire had erupted inside the building. Bobby hunched over and scuttled back under the cover of the evergreens, then took up a post to see what would happen.

A woman inside was screaming, men were shouting, things were breaking, and Bobby was trembling so badly he thought he would break, too. He couldn’t just let Randy and the others stay there to be killed. It was against everything he’d ever stood for.

You need to let them go. Get out while you still have a chance.

“But they’ll die.”

Caleb’s words of warning returned to him then. Caleb said that he must preserve his own life.

You have to think of the bigger picture.

Images of a world at war filled his mind. If Bobby died saving his friends, the world would be without a Servant, causing another disruption like the one that happened more than a century ago.

You need to leave NOW.

Even though he didn’t want to, Bobby tore his gaze away from the great log structure and stumbled off through the woods in search of civilization.

IT FELT like he’d been walking for hours, though he knew a much shorter length of time had passed. Every so often Bobby mustered up his reserves of strength and jogged for a few hundred feet before his strength ebbed. His body wanted to pass out every time he exerted himself and he had to force himself to keep going even when his vision threatened to go gray.

He understood more than ever why Phil wanted him to get into shape. If he made it out of the woods here—literally—he would start up a regular exercise regimen. He would have to start out small, of course, and slowly work up his stamina.

Too many people’s lives would depend on Bobby’s strength.

At last, when long fingers of shadow stretched across the forest floor, the sound of an engine carried through the trees. He jerked his head up and caught a glimpse of movement traveling from right to left up ahead.

A car!

He broke into a run.

Sixty seconds later, the trees ended at the edge of a curving road and continued on the other side, where the ground stretched upward into a low mountain.

Twelve or so yards to his right, the gravel lane leading back to the Domus was blocked off by a nondescript white gate.

He returned his attention to the road. Right led uphill, and left led downward. The road made a gentle curve to the right half a mile downhill.

No vehicles were coming from either direction; the car he’d glimpsed a minute before now long gone.

I can’t give up hope.

He would have to sit and wait for someone to pass by—hopefully someone completely unassociated with the Domus.

So he stood there. Waiting.

And waiting.

After ten or so minutes, it occurred to him that if the police were going to follow up with the 911 calls he had placed, they would have been here already. But he’d walked parallel to the lane as he made toward the road. No emergency vehicles had entered the premises.

That meant no emergency vehicles were coming.

And with all that gunfire…

Tears filled his eyes. Randy had removed the bullets from the gun he was going to point at Vincent so he wouldn’t accidentally kill him. If someone had started firing at him, he had no way to defend himself.

God, help them.

Though at this point it was likely they were beyond any kind of physical help.

He pulled out his phone anyway and made to dial 911 again but discovered that the phone had no reception.

Maybe there hadn’t been any to begin with and the calls hadn’t even made it through.

He pocketed the phone.

Off in the distance, the whine of an engine approaching from the right echoed off the mountainside and through the trees.

Bobby waved his arms like a madman.

A red pickup truck roared around the bend and was gone before Bobby’s brain could properly register the fact that the driver gave no indication of having seen him.

The silence of nature settled around him once more, but only briefly. Another distant whine carried through the trees from the same direction. Knowing the action he was about to take would seem drastic, Bobby stepped out onto the pavement and waved his arms again.

A logging truck heaped high with felled tree trunks barreled around the curve toward him. “Help!” he shouted, stepping off the pavement. “Please help me!”

Brakes squealed and the truck slowed, coming to a stop on the gravel shoulder a quarter of a mile downhill. A pair of hazard lights blinked on.

Bobby checked for oncoming traffic and jogged toward the truck, praying with every cell of his being that the driver wasn’t one of them.

The driver sported a short Mohawk and wore a muscle shirt that revealed sleeve tattoos on his arms. He rolled the window down and peered at Bobby in trepidation. “You all right, man?”

“No,” Bobby panted, rubbing a stitch in his side. “That lane back there—there’s people trapped. Prisoners. I just got out.”

The driver’s eyes grew round. “You’re serious?”

“Yeah, and my phone won’t work. Is there a way you can radio in to someone to get help?”

The driver blinked. “I don’t have a radio like that in here. Get inside and let’s talk before someone comes along and creams you.”

Bobby obeyed, climbing into the cab’s passenger seat. A plastic bobblehead skull sat on the dash.

“My name’s Dusty,” the driver said.

“And I’m Bobby. Do you think you can remember where that lane is?”

“Sure, man. I pass it every day. We’ve been working about ten miles back. I was taking this load to the mill and was about to call it a day when you showed up.”

“Where’s the nearest town? I need to call the cops.”

Dusty’s brow scrunched. “There’s a little place at the bottom of the mountain called Peabody. There’s a gas station that might let you use their phone.”

“How much farther?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes?”

“Take me there. Please.”

“No problem, man.” Dusty let off the brake and pulled back onto the road, throwing a worried look into the left mirror. “There’s really people trapped back there?”

“Unfortunately. That’s why we’ve got to hurry.”