The hammer’s click was a death sentence. Cardie pressed against the ghost gum, bark digging into her shoulder blades, and watched Ethane level the revolver. His face was all hard lines and old grudges—the Bush Butcher, they called him.
The priest's question still hung in the air. "Do you, Ethan Knight, take this woman—"
Scarlett Reed raised one hand, a blade of a gesture that stopped the ceremony cold.
The cathedral’s organ fell silent as the massive oak doors swung inward with a groan. Three hundred guests turned in unison. Framed against the stormy sky, a woman in a severe black suit stood alone. Her ice-blonde hair was cropped short, her eyes the color of a frozen lake.
Colt Rek’s shadow cocked his own Glock and shot the Maguire boy through the windowpane. The glass shattered, the kid crumpled, and Colt’s hands—his real hands—were still empty. It was 3:00 a.m. GMT, and in Cedar Grove, Iowa, the darkness had stopped following orders.
