Cassidy stumbled up hundreds of stairs, David pulling her behind him. The elevator was closed, security and the police presence working to keep people out of the building. The longer she climbed, the sicker she was just knowing how high they must be and the terrible fate David had in store for her.

She couldn’t stop thinking about it, the image of her hanging from the top of the Space Needle activating her fear of heights and nearly paralyzing her body, but he continued to drag her with him up higher and higher.

Her legs ached and her breath was coming fast, but the only sign David was affected by the difficulty of climbing hundreds of feet into the air was the perspiration saturating his underarms and back.

The elevators had been closed, guards posted at each bay. That didn’t stop David, though. He’d walked through a back service entrance and straight into a stairwell as if he were invisible to the masses. He believed God was helping him, but Cassidy was damn sure that wasn’t the case. He’d been lucky, and she could only hope his luck would run out soon.

She tripped and went down on her knee, the solid step unforgiving as it hit bone, and she gasped. “Slow down. You’re hurting me.”

“You’re not going fast enough. We’re on a very strict schedule. I don’t want too much time between the explosion at the market and what I have planned here, or the networks will go back to regular programming. Fucking heathens! You can never miss your soap operas or game shows. Not even for God.”

She clenched her jaw, her physical fatigue and fear making her brave in the face of this man. “You aren’t God.”

She was still on her knees on the stairs when David lifted his leg and kicked her in the ribs. “I may not be God, but I am as good as God to you. Now get up.”

Nausea was bubbling through her abdomen and she clutched at her side, unmoving. In one swift movement he brought his knee within a fraction of an inch of her already throbbing jawbone.

“Get up!”

With a strength she didn’t know she had, she pulled herself to a stand. David grabbed her hand and resumed his march, dragging her in tow. This time as they passed the window, her gaze swept the horrifying view.

So. High. Up.

She bent at the waist and threw up, barely missing her dress. David yanked her forward through the mess.

He started blabbering again, nonsensical words mixed in with talk of damnation and fire. He seemed to be losing his connection with reality and every way that mattered—every way except the planning of his attacks.

She yanked her hand out of his. “I’m not going.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Beat me.” She shrugged. “I don’t care anymore. You can’t make me go up there.”

He grabbed another fistful of her hair and pulled hard, her scalp already so tender from the last time he’d done so. “I’ll bet I can.”

“Try it. If you want me to hang me off the top of this thing, you’ll have to kill me before we get there.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re going to help me convince this city of sinners to repent and change their ways. Don’t you want that?”

“I don’t really give a shit.” She turned around, aware of her exaggerated movements like a drunk person. The first blow shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was. He slammed her head into the wall with such force she thought he might have killed her right then.

She continued to move down the stairway as David ranted, his footfalls heavy on the steps behind her. “Of course, none of them will do it. It’s already too late for them. It’s the example we’re setting for the others that matters.”

He kicked her in the back, sending her flying down the steps and headfirst into the landing, her white polyester dress sticking to her skin like a mummy’s wrap.

Austin isn’t coming. He isn’t going to save you.

She was dizzy and in so much pain, consciousness no longer a given. She tried to focus her eyes as David reached around her waist and picked her up, putting her over his shoulder.

The motion of his body as he carried her worsened her dizziness and nausea. “Stupid girl,” he said with a snicker. “If you were going to resist, you should have done it at the bottom of the stairway, not the top.”

She must have blacked out, because when she came to, she was sitting on the landing beside a door and he was strapping something on her face. She pawed at it.

“It’s a gas mask. Unless you’d truly like to die?”

She reluctantly pulled it onto her face. Dying was seeming like more and more of a possibility today. She thought of her parents and how upset they would be. She thought of Austin’s face when she’d refused to leave the compound with him. If she’d only known it would be the last time she’d see his face, she would have told him what was in her heart.

I love him.

He opened the door to the observation deck a mere few inches and threw something out of the stairwell. Voices erupted in a cacophony of panic from the other side of the door. Someone tried to open the stairwell door but David fought to keep it closed, the woman on the other side coughing heavily until there was no noise at all.

David turned to Cassidy, pushed his gas mask to the top of his head and smiled. “Are you ready for your big moment?”

You’re going to look so beautiful dangling from the Space Needle.

She took in a shaking breath and keened, her eyes squeezing shut. A voice in her head shouted for her to be brave, not to let this man see he’d broken her, but hysteria had taken hold and all she could do was cry.

She couldn’t imagine he was serious until now, would never believe he was capable of pulling off such a stunt until now— police officers unconscious on the other side of the door, the crazed look in his eye that said everything was going as planned.

Stop your sniveling and fight back!

This psychotic fucker had a God complex, and it was high time she knocked some holes in his theories. She ripped off her mask. “I’m not going to let you do this. You have no power over me.”

He raised his chin. “You vowed your loyalty to me and The Community.”

“I lied. You are not God. I have free will and I can do as I please.”

His eyes went wide. “I am your destiny. You are the pure woman I was promised.”

She laughed out loud. “I am not a virgin, you asshole. So if you’re looking for some sacrificial lamb to hang off the Space Needle like a spider on a string, you’re plum out of luck.”

He spit on her face, in her eye, in her mouth. “The devil can have you then, but the show must go on.”