Page 93 of The Final Cut

He recognizes me.

His hand twitches toward his jacket, mouth beginning to form my name. I set the tray down on the narrow ledge beside me and close the distance before sound catches up with intention. One hand clamps the back of his neck. The other drives his head into the stone wall hard enough to empty his knees of tension. Nash catches the man before he drops, smooth and silent, and drags him into the storage alcove.

No words.

Better.

Nash binds his wrists with a zip tie from his pocket and takes the man’s radio. His eyes lift to mine, a brief, assessing look.

He expected me to kill him. I expected it of myself, perhaps.

We keep moving.

The second and third guards stand outside the chapel door, speaking low. One is young and nervous. The other is older, bored, shoulders loose in the way men get when they trust the house more than their own eyes.

Sabine reaches them first. “Kitchen needs one of you in the reception hall. Guest list issue.”

The older guard frowns. “I was told⁠—”

“You were told to stand outside a closed door while Mrs. del Rosario prepares to receive seventy donors.” Sabine tilts the clipboard toward him. “If the wrong name walks past her in front of the board chair, you can explain that your priorities were decorative.”

His annoyance turns toward the easy target. Her.

I step behind him.

Nash moves on the younger one at the same time.

The struggle lasts four seconds.

The younger guard gets a hand half under his jacket before Nash pins his wrist and drives an elbow into his throat, then folds him neatly against the wall. My guard has more training. He turns into me, blade already out. I catch his wrist, take the cut along my palm instead of my ribs, and put him down with two strikes that leave him breathing through blood and fear.

Sabine’s face tightens at the sound.

“You said clean,” Nash murmurs.

I wipe my hand on the guard’s jacket. “He chose ambitious.”

We pull both men into a side room used for choir storage. Robes hang along one wall, white and cream and gold, waiting for voices that will sing over whatever Isabel has done in the room ahead.

Nash takes position beside the chapel door, and I reach for the handle. He catches my wrist.

There it is. The clash we have been carrying since the cabin.

His grip is hard. His eyes are harder. “You don’t go in blind.”

The need to tear through the door nearly shoves sense from my skull. Delia is inside. Delia, who was made to stand straight, or else, under Isabel’s hand. Delia, who looked at me once when she was twelve with blood in her mouth and asked whether obedience ever stopped hurting.

“Let go,” I say. “I’m fine.”

Nash does not let go. “Look first.”

Sabine steps around us and touches a panel hidden in the carved frame. “Observation slit. Old convent feature. For the sisters.”

Nash releases me, and I lean in.

The chapel is small, private, and viciously beautiful. The old stone floor boasts a narrow altar with candles burning in red glass cups. A statue of the Virgin stands in the corner with chipped fingers and a face serene enough to be obscene. The room has been dressed for punishment with the care of a woman arranging flowers.

Delia kneels at the center of the floor.