"I really wish I could understand these drawings."
Sam pressed her lips together, annoyed that he could stare at cave drawings while the workers outside slowly burned to death. "Why don't you ask your people?"
"All knowing," he reminded her with a shrug and a smile. And she knew at least part of him was still in there.
The worst part. She angled herself closer to the pile of Air Force gear as he stepped past her. "You knew I would come, didn't you?"
"How could you not?" he asked magnanimously, reaching for a ladle of water. "Healer of the emotionally wounded. I was your one failure. The bird with the broken wing that wouldn't heal."
"You seem to be flying well enough on your own," she muttered.
"I hoped that you would understand." Tossing the rest of the water, he turned his back on her to return the ladle.
And she seized her chance, snatching up her sidearm and chambering a round. "I do understand. You're sick and you need help."
For a second, he looked legitimately surprised to find her weapon leveled at him, but it faded quickly. "That's your idea of help?"
"Yes. You're coming back with me." And then going to a padded room far, far away. Where she and everyone else would be safe from him.
"Well. You're gonna have to use it, Sam," he said, and her chest clenched. That hadn't been the plan. She was armed; he wasn't; the logical thing to do was surrender.
And it suddenly occurred to her that she'd forgotten logic didn't work on Jonas.
"Go on," he pressed, stepping closer, and she shifted on her feet, trying to distract him from the way her hands started to shake. "It's still loaded; pull the trigger. Do it!" he snapped, sending her pulse through the roof and cracking her nerves.
She was going to have to shoot him. And that had never, ever been part of the plan. She sucked in a breath and prayed for strength.
"Because so help me, that is the only way you're gonna stop me. What's a few deaths compared to the survival of my people? Killing their savior might irritate them a little," he said, moving in, "but at least I'd be gone."
Tears pricked at her eyes as she pleaded, "Don't make me do this." Because of all the terrible things that had happened on this planet – all the things she'd told herself were solely his fault – this would be hers. Her finger on the trigger. Her decision. Sam Carter, killer.
"Go on, pull the trigger. One more fraction of an inch."
He was inches from death, but it was her life that passed before her eyes. All the good she'd ever done, erased in one awful moment if she fired. She knew he was relying on that.
And she knew, in the moment before his hand wrapped around the weapon and took it from her, that he'd won.
That he would always win.
That, god or not, Jonas Hanson would own her for the rest of her life.
"You had the gun," he murmured, always willing to twist the dagger a little bit more. "You appeared to have all the power. Yet I was in control. That is the strength of a god."