“Well, if it isn’t Dr. Sanderson. Is this a case of physician heal thyself or what?” Sam croaked in his gravelly voice. Meagan was bleeding badly from both arms and legs, and she looked like Sam had been using her as some sort of pin cushion without the pins.
His strength continued to return so that now his eyes were open and things were beginning to come into focus. “You think this is some sort of a sadistic game, Sam? Pretty sure I owe you a bullet to the head.”
Sam chuckled. “I know I can’t kill you, but it’s a shame you managed to get up. Maybe I can kill her.”
Before Elliott could react, Sam turned the gun on Cassidy and fired a single bullet in her direction. How Elliott had managed to let her walk out there with no cover, without even a weapon drawn, was beyond him, but he couldn’t move fast enough to react, and Brandon was across the room. Sam’s laughter mixed with the sound of his own scream of, ”NO!” as he tried to position himself between Cass and the bullet.
He wasn’t fast enough. But it didn’t matter. The bullet stopped a good two feet from her, hung in the air for a moment, and then fell harmlessly to the ground. “That all you got?” she asked, folding her arms and cocking her head to the side.
Sam’s confusion created the perfect opportunity, and without fixating on the fact that his little friend had just stopped a bullet with her mind, Elliott turned on Sam, aiming low, and hitting him in the gut, right underneath the arm he had yet to return to Meagan, his gun still pointing helplessly at the ground.
The cowboy let out a groan, and Meagan took advantage of it, throwing an elbow and raising her leg so that her heel caught him between the legs as she flung herself toward Brandon. Sam fired multiple times in her direction, but Cass caught all of the bullets before they hit their target, and they all tinkled to the ground like falling confetti.
With a grin on his face he could not control, Elliott regained his legs and took off toward Sam. Seeing he was outnumbered and had no protection now, the cowboy headed for the shadows, his hand covering his midsection where a gaping hole trailed smoke behind him.
His IAC was fully operational now, and Elliott could see Jamie coming in the room behind him, hitting Meagan with a beam of comforting blue light before he even worked his way over to her. Elliott followed behind Sam’s smoke trail, imagining he was hunting a wounded animal, and smiling like a fool.
It didn’t take long for him to catch up to Sam in the room full of mirrors. “You can’t catch me, Sanderson. The moment you fire at the wrong figure, I’ll duck away.”
Elliott chuckled. “That’s okay. I got plenty of bullets.” He shattered the mirror to his left, just to watch Sam jump, which he did, but he didn’t try to flee. This room was his last resort, and this is where the old son of a bitch would finally die.
“Tell me something, Sam,” Elliott said, taking aim at the next mirror. “Why did you do it? Why turn on your own team like that?” The second mirror splintered into a thousand tiny slivers.
“Revenge,” Sam said simply. “I wanted to pay Cadence back for Henry. I wanted Aaron to know what it felt like to lose someone he loves.”
The third mirror was so close to Sam’s true location that when it exploded, he jumped and covered his face. Elliott knew exactly where he was now. “You do know that Aaron’s first wife died, right? That he also lost his little girl?” Elliott didn’t even know all of the details, and he wasn’t about to tell Sam even if he did. “Cadence did everything you were trying to do, and you just couldn’t handle it, could you? A newbie, a girl, hunting Henry down and then Holland. You really takin’ orders from her now?” He moved a few steps closer, blocking off the only visible exit in the room so that Sam would have to come through him or make a hole in the wall. He saw that Brandon had moved into position to cover the back exit of the building, so even if Sam made it out of the room, he couldn’t escape the building.
“I did what I thought I had to do,” Sam muttered, and Elliott could hear regret in his voice. “I never chose to come back as this.”
“So why not just disappear into the night? Why come here? You did what Holland told you to do? Came here to drug me, kill Meagan, and what? Take me back to her to be some sort of a science experiment for Hines?”
Sam said nothing, though his head hung a little lower. Elliott took a few steps closer, and Sam turned, facing him now. The last time they had stood like this, Sam had fired his weapon right into Elliott’s head, and it had been the last thing he’d seen before he died. Now, Sam’s weapon was useless and hung at his side like a broken appendage.
Elliott slung his Beretta around his shoulder and pulled his Glock. “I really want to shoot you in the head right now, watch you fall to the ground, maybe spit on your ashes a few times, but I’m a bigger man than you, Sam.”
“Whatcha gonna do with me, then?” Sam’s voice was quaking.
“I don’t know,” Elliott admitted. “I haven’t decided yet. Maybe keep you in a cage in my apartment where I can torture you. Take your body parts off one at a time. Not sure.” He knew he’d do none of those things, but it was nice to see Sam’s trembling increase. “Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s not up to me.”
“What do you mean?” Sam asked, but before he could answer, a noise behind Elliott caught both of their attention, and Elliott took one large step to the left.
Meagan opened fire, driving Sam back into the mirror behind him. It shattered at the force of the impact, and shards of glass mingled with ashes as Sam was blown into the next world. “Take that, you son of a bitch,” the tiny Hunter said, panting, wiping her upper lip on her blood soaked shirt.
Elliott moved over and wrapped his arm around her shaking shoulders. Jamie had healed her just enough to let her come and get some vengeance of her own, and God knew, she deserved it. “Come on, Meag. Let’s go home.”
He didn’t need to tell her twice, and the two of them turned their back on the man who’d tortured them for over a year, glad they’d never see his snarling face again.
