Empowered by her fury, Jilly attempted to counter the killer’s torquing motion by swinging her legs forward, back, forward, like an acrobat hanging from a trapeze bar. The more successfully she swung to and fro, the more difficult he found it to keep twisting the rifle from side to side.
Her wrists ached, throbbed, burned; but his arms must have felt as though they would pull out of his shoulder sockets. The longer she held on, the greater the chance that he would let go of the weapon first. Then he would be not a potential killer anymore, but merely a madman on a high scaffold with spare magazines of ammunition that he couldn’t use.
‘Jillian?’ Someone down on the floor of the church called her name in astonishment. ‘Jillian?’ She was reasonably certain that it was Father Francorelli, the priest who had heard her confessions and given her the sacrament for most of her life, but she didn’t turn her head to look.
Sweat was her biggest problem. The killer’s perspiration dripped off his face, onto Jilly, which disgusted her, but she remained more concerned about her own sweat. Her hands were slick. By the second, her grip on the weapon became more tenuous.
Resolving her dilemma, the gunman’s tether snapped, or the piton pulled out of the wall, unable to support both his weight and hers.
Falling, he let go of the gun.
‘Jillian!’
Falling, Jilly folded.
* * *
The words astonishment and amazement both describe the momentary overwhelming of the mind by something beyond expectation, although astonishment more specifically affects the emotions, while amazement especially affects the intellect. The less-used word awe expresses a more intense and profound – and rare – experience, in which the mind is overwhelmed by something almost inexpressibly grand in character or formidable in power.
Awe-stricken, Dylan watched from atop the west scaffold as Jilly raced full-tilt along the east-scaffold platform, slammed violently into the gunman, plunged over the brink, hung from the assault rifle, and performed a credible audition for a job with the Flying Wallendas of circus fame.
‘Wow,’ said Shepherd as the tether snapped with a sound like the crack of a giant whip, dropping Jilly and the killer toward the church floor.
Penned in by the pews, the squealing wedding guests tried to scatter and duck.
Jilly and the gun vanished about four feet short of impact, but the hapless villain fell all the way. He struck the back of a pew with his throat, broke his neck, somersaulted into the next row, and in a tangle of limbs, he crashed to a stop, big-time dead, between a distinguished gray-haired gentleman in a navy-blue pinstripe suit and a matronly woman wearing an expensive beige knit suit and a lovely feathered hat with a wide brim.
When Jilly appeared at Shep’s side, the dead man was already dead but still flopping and thudding into the final dramatic pose in which the police photographer would want to immortalize him. She put down the assault rifle and said, ‘I’m pissed.’
‘I could tell,’ Dylan said.
‘Wow,’ said Shepherd. ‘Wow.’
* * *
Cries flew up from the wedding guests when the gunman caromed off the back of one pew into the next row and stayed down dead, his head askew and one arm akimbo. Then a man in a gray suit spotted Jilly standing with Dylan and Shep atop the west-wall scaffold, and pointed her out to the others. In a moment, the entire congregation stood with heads tipped back, gazing up at her. Evidently because they were in a state of shock, every one of them had fallen silent, so the hush in the church grew as deep as the quiet in a tomb.
When the silence held until it became eerie, Dylan explained to Jilly: ‘They’re awe-stricken.’
Jilly saw a young woman wearing a mantilla in the crowd below. Perhaps the same woman in the desert vision.
Before the crowd’s shock could wear off and panic set in, Dylan raised his voice to reassure them. ‘Everything’s okay. It’s over now. You’re safe.’ He pointed to the cadaver crumpled among the pews. ‘Two accomplices of that man are up here, out of commission, but in need of medical attention. Someone should call nine-one-one.’