STALKING SAPPHIRE (Sapphire Dubois: Book 1)

Chapter 19

She struggled to get back on her feet, holding back the one emotion that had been building: fear. The one thing Sapphire didn’t want to feel. The other core emotions were nothing, but fear, she hated.

She didn’t want to die hanging over the city on a cross, strangled. She didn’t want to die by the hands of the man who hurt Julia, tortured Shelly, and ended the lives of so many young women.

“I wouldn’t attack now if I were you; I can already tell you’re going off of emotion,” Marco said.

Sapphire held back her smile as her muddled thoughts grew clear. “Is that why you learned to fight—to hold back all that emotion?”

Marco scoffed and shook his head, but Sapphire continued.

“How did you feel when all those women destroyed your family? Or maybe it wasn’t the women. Maybe your father was just a cheating bastard and your mother wasn’t a good enough wife to keep him.”

Marco’s expression grew peculiar, but he just stood there shaking his head.

“Shut up,” he said calmly.

“Maybe your family wasn’t so perfect even before all the women. Maybe they had nothing to do with it at all.”

“They had everything to do with it. It was their fault! Their fault!”

“Whose fault?”

“Their fault!”

Marco attacked. Sapphire blocked the first two shots to the head, then grabbed his wrist, twisted it, and pulled his body downward. She sent a straight kick to his kneecap and Marco fell to the ground, letting out a scream.

“I get it now. You are such a good teacher,” Sapphire gloated, trying to hide the fact that her ribs were causing her horrendous pain. “I totally get it.”

He held his dislocated knee and curled into a fetal position. Sapphire bent down, out of his reach.

“So tell me, Michael,” she whispered. “If God is on your side, why are you the one on the ground?”

A lightning bolt cracked in the sky and struck alongside their building. The skyscraper shook and Sapphire lost her focus.

Marco kicked out his leg and hooked it up to hers. Sapphire slammed down on the ground for the third time in less than five minutes. This time she hit it with the back of her head and dark spots blurred her vision.

Marco grabbed her by the hair and held her in a chokehold. Limping, he dragged her across the roof, back to the cross.

“Do you believe me now?” Marco asked.

Though Sapphire struggled, Marco tied her body to the cross and moved it to the ledge.

*****

Aston pulled over where the map trace had ended and looked around. There were eight main buildings around him. Searching them all would take time he didn’t have.

The rain was still pouring down, and Aston shivered in his wet clothes. He pulled out a sketch of the symbol that had been burned on Shelly McCormick and spun it around without any result. He held the drawing, stared at it, hoping for something to jump out at him, to make sense. He had searched all over the Internet, scanned it into the computer to try to find a match, but hadn’t gotten one. Aston looked at it again, tilting it to the side. It didn't look complete. The reason it didn't look complete was because it was only half of a symbol. One a religious fanatic would use.