still had Nicky Horn’s blood on his knuckles.
She swallowed nervously. “What do you want to do?”
McKendrick returned his attention to the screens and didn’t favor her with a look again. “I don’t see we have much choice. We defend ourselves as best we can.”
“We can still give him up,” she ventured. “If it really is him or us. No one would blame us.”
McKendrick glanced scornfully at Horn, then his gaze came back in a double take. Until that moment he hadn’t realized how much damage he’d done. Or that he had thereby limited their options, already narrow, even further. “Like that? You still think he can make a run for it? Beth, he’d need a head start of about half a day. Even then he might not get past the bottom of the garden.”
“Maybe how far he gets isn’t the important thing. Maybe the important thing is whether the man outside keeps trying to get inside after he’s got what he came for.”
“And maybe,” said Nicky Horn through clenched teeth, “you should stop talking about me as if I was dead already.”
Beth looked at him almost as if she were seeing him clearly for the first time. However much it might have suited her to think otherwise, he wasn’t a monster. He’d made mistakes, he’d told lies. He’d been stupid and naïve. But the fact was, whichever of them cut the rope, Patrick Hanratty would not be alive today whatever Nicky Horn had or hadn’t done. It was a waste of time and effort to go on hating him when mere pointed dislike was all he was worth.
She eyed him speculatively. In an odd way, giving up the hatred freed her to think more clearly. To focus on the priorities. “You know something, Horn? This is your lucky day. You had your shot at being a hero and you blew it. Now you can have something most people never get—a second chance. You can save my life, and Mack’s, and Uncle William’s. All you have to do is what you should have done, and know you should have done, and probably wish you’d done, four years ago.”
“Is that what you want?” he asked, hollow-eyed. “If it is, I’ll do it.”
“Yes,” said Beth.
“No,” said McKendrick.
Almost, Horn seemed more tired than anything. He was weak and dazed from the beating, he was afraid of the man outside, and talking about what had happened on Anarchy Ridge had reopened wounds he’d thought half healed. But the tiredness was more disabling than any of that. A man could die of such tiredness. “Make your minds up,” he said. “Let me know when you have.”
The fanatic glint was back in McKendrick’s eye, the iron in his voice. “You want to die for what you did? You think that’ll even the score? Tough. I didn’t bring you here to die. You’ve had four years to get yourself killed, and you couldn’t manage it even with someone trying hard to help you. Now you’re in my house and you’ll play by my rules. Dying is the easy option. I’ve something else in mind for you. After it’s done, you can die if you want to. But right now you’ll fight for your life as if it was something of value, because you may be the only thing standing between my daughter and a man who’d kill her to protect his reputation. Is that clear? You belong to me. You’ll do what I tell you to do.”
McKendrick swiveled in his chair, brought Beth within the quadrant of his attack. “That goes for you too. I don’t want to hear any more about Patrick Hanratty—who loved him, who he loved, whether he jumped off Anarchy Ridge or was pushed. I don’t care. Do you understand? I don’t care. All I care about is getting us through this. All of us. Because whether you like it or not, Horn’s fate now is tied up with ours. Right now he needs me; soon enough I’ll need him. You don’t need to know why. You do need to know that this is how it’s going to be, and we’re not having this argument again. Now go find yourself something to fight with. We’re not going out with a whimper. If I’ve anything to do with it, we’re not even going out with a bang.”
Beth looked at him as if she didn’t know him, as if they’d never met. But she didn’t argue. She nodded and headed up the stairs toward the Great